on instincts kindred to his,--in order that,
by understanding his behaviour, we may understand, and it may be better,
our own.

Anthropologists who study the primitive peoples of to-day find that the
worship of false gods, bowing "down to wood and stone," bulks larger in
the mind of the hymn-writer than in the mind of the savage. We look for
temples to heathen idols; we find dancing-places and ritual dances. The
savage is a man of action. Instead of asking a god to do what he wants
done, he does it or tries to do it himself; instead of prayers he utters
spells. In a word, he practises magic, and above all he is strenuously
and frequently engaged in dancing magical dances. When a savage wants
sun or wind or rain, he does not go to church and prostrate himself
before a false god; he summons his tribe and dances a sun dance or a
wind dance or a rain dance. When he would hunt and catch a bear, he does
not pray to his god for strength to outwit and outmatch the bear, he
rehearses his hunt in a bear dance.

Here, again, we have some modern prejudice and misunderstanding to
overcome. Dancing is to us a light form of recreation practised by the
quite young from sheer _joie de vivre_, and essentially inappropriate to
the mature. But among the Tarahumares of Mexico the word _nolavoa_
means both "to work" and "to dance." An old man will reproach a young
man saying, "Why do you not go and work?" (_nolavoa_). He means "Why do
you not dance instead of looking on?" It is strange to us to learn that
among savages, as a man passes from childhood to youth, from youth to
mature manhood, so the number of his "dances" increase, and the number
of these "dances" is the measure _pari passu_ of his social importance.
Finally, in extreme old age he falls out, he ceases to exist, _because
he cannot dance_; his dance, and with it his social status, passes to
another and a younger.

* * * * *

Magical dancing still goes on in Europe to-day. In Swabia and among the
Transylvanian Saxons it is a common custom, says Dr. Frazer,[5] for a
man who has some hemp to leap high in the field in the belief that this
will make the hemp grow tall. In many parts of Germany and Austria the
peasant thinks he can make the flax grow tall by dancing or leaping high
or by jumping backwards from a table; the higher the leap the taller
will be the flax that year. There is happily little possible doubt as
to the practical reason of this m