r enthusiasm
created makes him more susceptible to the influence brought to bear upon
him. This is true of religious singing and chanting, from the forest
gatherings of the primitive savage down to the more sedate and elaborate
assemblages in church or chapel.

Primitive dancing had both a sexual and religious significance,
although, as will be seen later, in the primitive mind the sexual
functions themselves are very closely associated with supernatural
agency. Tylor is of opinion that originally men and women dance in order
to express their feelings and wishes,[27] but it is certain it very
early and universally became associated with religious ceremonies, and
that because of the ecstasy induced. In some cases drug-taking and
dancing go together. In others, reliance is placed on dancing alone.
This latter is the case with the 'devil dancers' of Ceylon. In Africa
the witch doctor discovers who has been guilty of sorcery by the aid of
inspiration furnished during a dance. The whirling dance of the Eastern
dervish is well known. Dancing also figures in the Bible. The Jews
danced around the golden calf (Ex. xxxii. 19) in a state of nudity.
David, too, danced naked before the Lord. Dancing was also part of the
religious ceremonies attendant on the worship of Dionysos or
Bacchus.[28] Along with the drinking of certain vegetable decoctions,
dancing formed an important part of the witches' saturnalia during the
medieval period. When in a state of frenzy, partly drug induced and
partly the product of exhilaration caused by wild dancing, visions of
Satan followed. In the dancing mania of the fourteenth century, the
sufferers saw visions of heaven opened, with Jesus and the Virgin
enthroned. Dancing was one of the prominent characteristics of the
French Convulsionnaires in the eighteenth century. In more recent times
we have the dancing and singing connected with the Methodist revival. In
modern instances the dancing seems to have been consequent on religious
excitement rather than precedent to it, but in earlier times there is no
doubt that it was deliberately practised as a means of producing a state
of exaltation.

Among the commonest methods of inducing a sense of religious exaltation
is the practice of fasting. In various guises, this is the most
persistent form of religious self-torture. Amongst more civilised people
the reason given for fasting is that it is a form of repentance, the
genuineness of which is attested by