uits. The ceremonies at seed-time obviously admit of the
presumption, even if there be no spoken prayers to prove it, that they
too have a petitionary purpose; while the recorded instances of the
prayers put up at harvest time, and on the occasion of the offering of
first-fruits, suffice to show that thanksgiving is made along with
prayers for continued prosperity.

It is however not merely on the ground of the absence of recorded
prayers that it is maintained that there was a stage in the evolution
of religion when prayer was unpractised and unknown. It is the
presence and the use of spells which is supposed to show that there
may have been a time when prayer was as yet unknown, and that the
process of development was a progress from spell to prayer. On this
theory, spells, in the course of time, and in accordance with their
own law of growth, become prayers. The nature and operation of this
law, it may be difficult or impossible now for us to observe. The
process took place in the night of time and is therefore not open to
our observation. But that the process, by which the one becomes the
other, is a possible process, is perhaps shown by the fact that we can
witness for ourselves prayer reverting or casting back to spell.
Wherever prayers become 'vain repetitions,' it is obvious that they
are conceived to act in the same way as the savage believes spells to
act: the mere utterance of the formula has the same magical power, as
making the sign of the cross, to avert supernatural danger. If prayers
thus cast back to spells, it may reasonably be presumed that it is
because prayer is in its origin but spell. It is because oxygen and
hydrogen, combined, produce water, that water can be resolved into
oxygen and hydrogen.

This theory, when examined, seems to imply that spell and prayer, so
far from being different and incompatible things, are one and the same
thing: seen from one point of view, and in one set of surroundings, it
is spell; seen from another point of view, and in other surroundings,
it is prayer. The point of view and the circumstances may change, but
the thing itself remains the same always. What then is the thing
itself, which, whether it presents itself as prayer or as spell, still
always remains the same? It is, and can only be, desire. In spell and
prayer alike the common, operative element present is desire. Desire
may issue in spell or prayer; but were there no desires, there would
be neither prayer