+113+. Sacred dances and processions are natural human expressions of emotions that have been adopted by religious sentiment, and are often supposed to have potency in themselves. They tend to disappear with the progress of general refinement and of ethical conceptions of life and of deity. They continue, however, far into the civilized period, in which we find dramatic representations (as the Eleusinian rites and the medieval Mystery Plays), processions of priests bearing or conducting sacred objects, processions of devotees with music, and pilgrimages to shrines. Such ceremonies, while they are regarded by educated persons simply as expressions of reverence and accompaniments of prayer, are still believed by many to have an innate or magic potency, insuring prosperity to the participants. DECORATIVE AND CURATIVE CEREMONIES +114+. Love of ornament is found among all savage peoples; the value they attach to beads and all colored things is well known to travelers and traders. It has been plausibly argued that the origin of clothing is to be found in the desire of each sex to make itself beautiful in the eyes of the other.[234] However that may be, the employment of leaves for headdresses and waistbands is general among lower tribes.[235] +115+. Equally popular is the adornment of the body by colored marks made with red ocher, pipe-clay, turmeric, charcoal, and such like things as are furnished by nature. Elaborate designs, of straight and curved lines, are traced on the skin, and these are gradually differentiated and become marks of rank and function. The war paint of the American Indians is governed by fixed rules, the object being to make the warrior terrible to enemies.[236] Rings, quills, sticks, and stones, worn in holes made in ears, nose, lips, and cheeks, are all originally decorative; and so also prickings and gashes in the body, often in regular outlines.[237] +116+. These latter, made according to tribal custom and law, become tribal marks (tattoo), and are then essential to one's standing in the community. This custom is general in Polynesia and in parts of North America.[238] The use of oil and other unguents early established itself as a custom of savage society. They were probably useful in a variety of ways. For the hair they made up for the absence of comb and brush; in combat they enabled the warrior to slip from the grasp of his enemy; they defended the naked body from rain, and from soiling and injury produced by contact with the earth and hard bodies; and in sickness they were regarded as curative.[239] Oil was abundantly used as an article of food.