corded to any great extent: they may not have been
recorded for the simple reason that they may not have been uttered.
The nature and the occasion of the rite with which the god is
approached may be such as to make words superfluous: the purpose of
the ceremony may find adequate expression in the acts performed, and
may require no words to make it clear. If a community approaches its
god with sacrifice or offering, in time of sore distress, it
approaches him with full conviction that he understands the
circumstances and the purpose of their coming. Words of
dedication--'this to thee' is a formula actually in use--may be
necessary, but nothing more. Indeed, the Australian tribes, in rites
analogous to harvest-offerings, use no spoken words at all. We cannot,
however, imagine that the rites are, or in their origin were,
absolutely without meaning or purpose. We must interpret them on the
analogy of similar rites elsewhere, the purpose of which is expressed
not merely, as in Australia, by gesture-language, but is reinforced by
the spoken word. Indeed, we may, perhaps, go even further, and believe
that as gesture-language was earlier than speech, so the earliest
rites were conducted wholly by means of ritual acts or gestures; and
that it was only in course of time, and as a consequence of the
development of language, that verbal formulae came to be used to give
fuller expression to the emotions which prompted the rites.

If then we had merely to account for cases in which prayer does not
happen to have been recorded as a constituent part of the rite of
worship, we should not be warranted in inferring that prayer was
really absent. The presumption would rather be that either the records
are faulty, or that prayer, even though not uttered in word, yet
played its part. The ground for the presumption is found in the nature
of the occasions on which the gods are approached in the lower stages
of religion. Those occasions are either exceptional or regularly
recurring. The exceptional occasions are those on which the community
is threatened, or afflicted, with calamity; and on such occasions,
whether spoken words of prayer happen to have been recorded by our
informants, or not, it is beyond doubt that the purpose of the
community is to escape the calamity, and that the attitude of mind in
which the god is approached is one of supplication or prayer. The
regularly recurring occasions are those of seed-time and harvest, or
first-fr