Before examining this apparent inconsistency, let us note Mr. Frazer's inadvertent proof that his irreligious Australians are religious. One part of the business of magic is to produce rain in season, sun in season, and consequently an abundant food supply.[36] The Dieri of Central Australia need especially excellent magic. 'In a dry season their lot is a hard one.' Having no religion, they ought, of course, to work by mere materialistic magic, like the Arunta.[37] But they, oddly enough, 'call upon the spirits of their remote ancestors, which they call Mura Mura, to grant them power to make a heavy rain,' and then men inspired by the Mura Mura work magic, or pray in sign-language, as you please.[38] Now the Mura Mura, the rain-givers, by evidence which Mr. Frazer himself has published, is 'a Good Spirit,' not a set of remote ancestral spirits. The witness is Mr. Gason, 'than whom' (says Mr. Frazer's authority, Dr. Stirling) 'no man living has been more among blacks or knows more of their ways.' If on this excellent evidence the Australian Dieri call for rain to a good spirit, then they have religion, which Mr. Frazer denies. But if Mr. Siebert, a German missionary, is right (and Mr. Frazer, as we saw, prefers his view to that of Mr. Gason), then the Mura Mura are only ancestral spirits. Yet to demand the aid of remote ancestral spirits by prayer is religion. In fact Mr. Frazer had said of the powerful beings of the Southern Australians 'it does not seem that these spirits are ever worshipped.'[39] But prayer is worship, and the Dieri pray, whether to a good spirit or to ancestral spirits, potent over the sky, and dwelling therein. If this is not religion, by Mr. Frazer's own definition, namely 'a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man, which are believed to direct and control the course of nature,' what is religion?[40] Yet in Australia 'nobody dreams of propitiating gods or spirits by prayer and sacrifice,' says our author.[41] None the less they 'call upon the spirits of their remote ancestors, which they call Mura Mura, to grant them power to make a heavy rain.' After ceremonies magical, or more prayers in sign-language, the Mura Mura 'at once cause clouds to appear in the sky.'[42] They see the signs which their worshippers are making. Here then we have prayer to 'powers superior to man' (whether to the Good Spirit or to ancestral spirits), and that, on evidence collected by Mr. Frazer, occurs in a country where, fourteen pages earlier, he had assured us that 'nobody thinks of propitiating gods or spirits by prayer and sacrifice.' Sacrifice, happily, there is none; the Dieri have not degenerated to sacrificing human victims like the Greeks.