+101+. The earliest known forms of social life are characterized by the performance of public ceremonies, which are almost always religious. Religion in some form enters into all the details of early life--there is no event that is not supposed to be caused or affected by a supernatural Power or influence. A vaguely conceived force (_mana_), an attribute of life, is believed to reside in all things, and under certain circumstances has to be reckoned with. Mysterious potencies in the shape of souls, spirits, gods, or mana are held to preside over and control all affairs--birth, sickness, death, hate and love, hunting and war, sowing and reaping. There is no dogma except belief in this extrahuman influence--no conception of moral effort as based on and sanctioned by a definite moral ideal, no struggle of the sort that we call spiritual. Religion consists of a body of practices whose authority rests on precedent; as it is supposed they have existed from time immemorial, they are held to be necessary to secure the well-being of the tribe (a sufficient supply of food, or victory over enemies); to the question why such and such things are done, the common reply of the savage is that without them the thing desired could not be got. +102+. In the earliest stages known to us these procedures are already elaborate and distinct; they are generally conducted by the tribal leaders (old men, chiefs, magicians), by whom they are handed down from generation to generation.[208] Their precise origin is lost in the depths of antiquity. Doubtless they arose from social needs, and their precise forms were suggested by crude observation and reasoning. Reflection on processes of nature, guided sometimes by fortunate or unfortunate accidents, may have led to the establishment of methods of procedure for gaining social and individual ends; and, as at this formative period the whole life of the community was permeated by religious conceptions, the procedures either were originally religious or speedily took on a religious coloring.