In its sublimest essence, however, prayer has been recognised as something far beyond any form of suppliancy. It is, as an orthodox authority says, “the habitual state of a being who constantly lives in relation to God, and cultivates a constant exchange with Him.”[128] So understood, it is even more than inspiration; it is a communion of spiritual life, a dwelling in God. This is the precise mental condition of many of the mystics and devotees of primitive religions. They are with the god, the god with and in them. II. THE WORD FROM THE GODS.—If the mere name of the god was thus mighty and thus venerated, how much more the words he himself uttered! The “Word of God,” as understood by the worshippers, is the kernel and core of every faith on earth. Every religion is, to its votaries, a revelation. None is so material, none so primitive, as to claim any other foundation than the expressed will of divinity. None is so devoid of ritual as to lack some means of ascertaining this will. The word from the gods is clothed under two forms, the Law and the Prophets,—in other terms, Precept and Prediction. In every religion, from the most primitive to the highest, we find these two modes of divine utterance. In the earliest phases of religion, the law is essentially prohibitory. It is in the form of the negative, “Thou shalt not——.” Ethnologists have adopted for this a word from Polynesian dialects, _tabu_, or _tapu_, akin to _tapa_, to name,[129] that which was solemnly named or announced being sacred, and hence forbidden to the _profanum vulgus_. The _tabu_ extends its veto into every department of primitive life. It forbids the use of certain articles of food or raiment; it hallows the sacred areas; it lays restrictions on marriage, and thus originates what is known as the totemic bond; it denounces various actions, often the most trivial and innocent, and thus lays the foundation for the ceremonial law. The penalty for the infraction of the _tabu_ includes all that flows from the anger of the gods, reaching to death itself. A few examples, from the very rudest religions, will serve to illustrate this. The Kamschatkans in the beginning of the last century were very low in the scale of humanity and curiously pessimistic. They had a hero-god, Kutka, their mythic progenitor, of whom they told many strange and disgusting stories. They cursed him oftener than they blessed him, and refused to believe that anything good could come from the gods. But to escape the ill-will of these malevolent beings they practised various ceremonies and refrained from sundry actions calculated to displease those capricious spirits. Thus, one must not cook fish and flesh in the same pot, or he would be punished with sores; he must not step in the tracks of a bear, or he would be visited with a skin disease; he must not scrape the snow from his shoes with a knife, or there would be violent storms; and so on, through a long law of prohibitions.[130]