It would seem, then, that though in religions of low {149} culture we meet religion under the guise of desire, we also find that religion makes a distinction between desires; there are desires which may be expressed to the god of the community, and desires which may not. Further, though it is in the heart of a person and an individual that desire must originate, it does not follow that prayer originates in individual desire. To say so, we must assume that the same desire cannot possibly originate simultaneously in different persons. But that is a patently erroneous assumption: in time of war, the desire for victory will spring up simultaneously in the hearts of all the tribe; in time of drought, the prayer for rain will ascend from the hearts of all the people; at the time of the sowing of seed a prayer for "the kindly fruits of the earth" may be uttered by every member of the community. Now it is precisely these desires, which being desires must originate in individual souls, yet being desires of every individual in the community are the desires of the community, that are the desires which take the form of prayer offered by the community or its representative to the god of the community. Anti-social desires cannot be expressed by the community or sanctioned by religion. Prayer is the essential {150} expression of true socialism; and the spirit which prompts it is and has always been the moving spirit of social progress. Professor Tylor, noticing the "extreme development of mechanical religion, the prayer-mill of the Tibetan Buddhists," suggests that it "may perhaps lead us to form an opinion of large application in the study of religion and superstition; namely, that the theory of prayers may explain the origin of charms. Charm-formulæ," he says, "are in very many cases actual prayers, and as such are intelligible. Where they are mere verbal forms, producing their effect on nature and man by some unexplained process, may not they or the types they have been modelled on have been originally prayers, since dwindled into mystic sentences?" (_P. C._ II, 372-373). Now, if this suggestion of Professor Tylor's be correct, it will follow that as charms and spells are degraded survivals of prayer, so magic generally--of which charms and spells are but one department--is a degradation of religion. That in many cases charms and spells are survivals of prayer--formulæ from which all spirit of religion has entirely evaporated--all students of the science of religion would now admit. That prayers may {151} stiffen into traditional formulæ, and then become vain repetitions which may actually be unintelligible to those who utter them, and so be conceived to have a force which is purely magical and a "nature practically assimilated more or less to that of charms" (_l.c._), is a fact which cannot be denied. But when once the truth has been admitted that prayers may pass into spells, the possibility is suggested that it