After purification comes the ceremony of giving the name, fittingly performed in the temple, as in Greece, Rome, or Mexico. Elements of personality inhere so strangely in names, that this rite also acquires great significance. Perhaps the name of some ancestor is chosen, who may thus endow the child with some of his qualities, or at least be invoked for protection and aid. Divine powers have watched over his birth (p. 121); others may decide his destiny, like the three Greek fateful goddesses Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, or the venerable Scandinavian Norns. Or the aid of the stars must be invoked, and a horoscope must be prepared by the astrologer. Sometimes a special guardian power may be chosen for the infant, sometimes the choice is reserved for him at a later stage. Or he may be dedicated from the outset to some hallowed service, as the child Samuel was given to Yahweh. More important even than the rites of birth and infancy are those of the attainment of adolescence, when the youth is admitted to the privileges of manhood and instructed in the secrets of the tribe. All round the world the lower culture has its ceremonies of initiation, which have sometimes survived in more refined forms in more highly organised societies. They involve seclusion from the common life, for no woman must be cognisant {162} of what takes place, severe bodily trials to test the youth's power of endurance--fasts, scourging, loss of front teeth, tattooing (so that his status may be recognisable at once) and other forms of personal scarification and pain, under which the feeble sink, and the happiest are those who die, escaping the humiliations of the weakling's lot. Long abstinence in lonely places begets strange dreams and visions, and raises nervous excitability to its highest pitch. Strange forms appear with hideous faces and mysterious trappings; appalling sounds are heard; and it is only when the hours of terror are past that the initiated learns that the awful figures were his own kinsmen in masks and disguises, and the Australian is told that what he took to be the signal of Daramulun's advent was produced by the whirling of the bull-roarer. In the midst of these pantomimic incidents the novice dies to rise again. Perhaps he is buried in the fetish-house; or he passes through the bath into his new condition; or he is vivified by the sprinkling of blood. But he awakes to a fresh life. He must be utterly forgetful of the old; he must even sometimes feign ignorance of his parents' home and names. The elders then impart to him the customs and traditions of the tribe. He learns the rules of conduct, and duties of reverence and obedience to the aged, who are thus, in tribes without formal government, placed under the protection of religion. The {163} strain of prolonged excitement and attention fixes precept and counsel indelibly upon his memory, and he knows that the penalty of betrayal will be death.