In its widest use the word covers an extensive range of purposes, and begets a large variety of questions. On whose behalf is the offering made, a single individual, or some social group, his family or clan, a secret society, a tribe, a nation? What persons are required for the due performance of the rite, the head of the family, the village magistrate, the fetish man, the priest? A complicated Vedic sacrifice needed the co-operation of various orders of priests. What objects are effected by it, a house or city-gate to be protected, a river to be crossed, a battle to be won, a covenant or contract to be sealed? To what powers does the worshipper address himself, in gratitude, homage, or submission, seeking renewal of favour, or purging himself of some sin, or desiring actual fellowship with his god? Behind these external features lie more difficult problems in connection especially with animal sacrifices, concerned {137} with the victim's qualities, and the appropriation of them by the deity or the worshipper; with the peculiar sanctity of blood, and the mysterious properties which it can impart; with the notion of the transmission of the life of which it was the vehicle; and the whole set of indefinite influences capable of propagation by contact, like the clean and the unclean, the common and the holy. And why, when the victim was offered, was the god supposed to be satisfied with bones and entrails and a modest piece of meat, all wrapped in fat? Greek wonder at so strange a practice could find no better answer than the tale of how Prometheus once cheated the gods of their share, and men had ever since followed his example. These questions belong to the obscure realm of beginnings, in which various answers are possible. All that can be attempted here is to offer a few illustrations of the different motives that seem to lie behind different forms of rite.