us or semi-civilised, far beyond anything attained
by the Australian tribes, the degree of personality and individuality
reached by the vegetation deities was not such that those deities had
strictly proper names: the deity of the maize was still only 'the
maize-mother.' Amongst the Australians, who are so far below the level
reached in Mexico, the beings worshipped at the first-fruits
ceremonies may well have been as nameless as the beings worshipped by
the jungle-dwellers of Chota Nagpur. Around these nameless beings, a
ritual, simple in its origin, but luxuriant in its growth, has
developed, overshadowing and obscuring them from our view, so that we,
and perhaps the worshippers, cannot see the god for the ritual.

In Mexico the vegetation-goddesses struggled for existence amongst a
crowd of more developed deities, just as in Italy the _di indigites_
competed, at a disadvantage, with the great gods of the state. In
Australia the greater gods of the myths seem to have given way
before--or to--the spread of totemism. Where gods are worshipped for
the benefits expected from them, beings who have in charge the
food-supply of the community will be worshipped not only annually at
the season of the first-fruits, but with greater zeal and more
continuous devotion than can be displayed towards the older gods who
are worshipped only at irregular periods. Not only does the existence
of mythology in Australia indicate that the gods who figure in the
myths were once worshipped, though worship now no longer is rendered
to them; but the totemistic ceremonies by their very nature show that
they are a later development of the sacrificial rite. The simplest
form of the rite is that in which the community draw near to their
god, bearing with them offerings, acceptable to the god: it is at a
later stage in the development of the rite that the offerings, having
been accepted by the god, are consumed by the community, as is the
case with the totem animals and plants. At its earliest stage, again,
the rite is performed, at irregular periods, on occasions of distress:
it is only at a more advanced stage that the rite is performed at
fixed, annual periods, as in Australia. And this change of periodicity
is plainly connected with the growth of the conviction that the annual
first-fruits belong to the gods--a conviction springing from the
belief that they are annually accepted by the god, a belief which in
its turn implies a prior belief that t