+126. Religion and industry.+ Here we meet with a familiar cycle of notions and usages. We must assume them in all cases, whether they are reported or not, for the element of supernatural intervention, or magic, seems never to be wanting. At higher stages it gives way to religious ritual or to priestly blessing. The Japanese sword maker formerly wore a priestly garb when making a sword, which was a sacred craft. He also practiced a purificatory ritual. The sacred rope of rice straw, the oldest symbol of Shinto, was suspended before the smithy. The workman's food was all cooked with holy fire, and none of his family might enter the workshop or speak to him while he was at work.[188] There were also ascetic practices in the Shinto religion, which an elected representative of the community undertook each year for the prosperity of the whole.[189] There is never a case of authority in human society which does not go back, for its origin and explanation, to the influence of the other world (ghosts, etc.) over this world. +127. Artifacts and freaks of nature.+ In the Oxford University museum may be seen a case full of natural stones, flints, etc., so like the artifacts of the Chellean type that it would require a skilled observer to determine whether they are artificial or not. The collection includes apparent celts, rings, perforated stones, borers, scrapers, and flint flakes, so that the objects are by no means such as would lie at the beginning of the series of artifacts, in regard to which the doubt whether they were artificial would arise from their rudeness and consequent resemblance to stones broken by natural conjunctures. In the museum at Dresden may be seen a collection of stones, natural products, which might serve as models for artificial axes, celts, etc. One object shows the possibility of freaks of nature of this class. It is a water-worn stone which might be taken for a skull. In the Copenhagen museum is a great collection of stone tools arranged in sequence of perfection, beginning with the coarsest and rudest and advancing to the highest products of art of this kind. That collection is arranged solely with reference to the development of the flint and stone implements as tools for a certain use. The sequence is very convincing as to the interpretation put on the objects, and also as to the strain towards improvement. Time and place are disregarded in the arrangement. The earliest specimens in the series are very rude, and only expert opinion could justify their place amongst artifacts. It reminds us of what we are told about specimens of Australian "tomahawks." It is said of such a weapon from West Australia that if it was "found anywhere divested of the gum and handle, it is doubtful whether it could be recognized by any one as a work of art. It is ruder in its fashioning, owing principally to the material of which it is composed, than even the rude, unrubbed, chipped cutting-stones of the Tasmanians."[190] With regard to these