ONLY upon the basis of the foregoing assumptions is it
possible to understand the historical origin and further
development of religion. It must be admitted that when
religious evolution first begins sundry curious phenomena
confront us, preliminary to religion proper and deeply affect-
ing its subsequent course. Such are the notions of 'clean' and
'unclean', belief in and worship of the dead, belief in and
worship of 'souls' or 'spirits', magic, fairy tale, and myth,
homage to natural objects, whether frightful or extraordi-
nary, noxious or advantageous, the strange idea of 'power'
(orenda or mana), fetishism and totemism, worship of animal
and plant, daemonism and polydaemonism. Different as
these things are, they are all haunted by a common--and that
a numinous--element, which is easily identifiable. They did
not, perhaps, take their origin out of this common numinous
element directly; they may have all exhibited a preliminary
stage at which they were merely 'natural' products of the
naïve, rudimentary fancies of primitive times. But these
things acquire a strand of a quite special kind, which alone
gives them their character as forming the vestibule of religion,
brings them first to clear and explicit form, and furnishes
them with the prodigious power over the minds of men which
history universally proves them to possess. Let us attempt to
grasp this peculiar strand, common to all these modes of
thought and practice which stand upon the threshold of
religion.

1. We will begin with magic. There has been at all times,
and there still is to-day, a 'natural' magic, that is to say,
modes of behaviour exhibiting some simple analogy and
carried out quite unreflectively and without any basis in
theory, whose object is to influence and regulate an event in
accordance with the wishes of the agent. It may be noticed
on any skittle-alley or bowling-green. A bowler aims and
plays his bowl, wishing it to run true and hit the jack. He
watches eagerly as it rolls, nodding his head, his body bent

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