The essay on “The Relations of Religion and Magic” is an expansion of two presidential addresses, one delivered to the Anthropological Section of the British Association at York in 1906, the other to the section on the Religions of the Lower Culture at the International Congress for the History of Religions at Oxford in 1908. The essay on “The Rite at the Temple of Mylitta” was contributed to the volume of _Anthropological Essays_ presented to Sir Edward Tylor, in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday, in 1907. That on “The Voice of the Stone of Destiny” was published in _Folk-lore_, 1903. Both of these have undergone revision. The remaining essays are new. One of them deals as a preliminary with some of the difficulties that beset the enquirer into the religious ideas of the lower races, with wandering fires that mislead him, with barriers that seem impassable. The others seek to concentrate attention on particular instances of ritual or belief, to elucidate the ideas and emotions that underlie them, or further to illustrate their evolution. I am indebted to the publishers of such as have been already published for their courtesy in facilitating reproduction here. E. SIDNEY HARTLAND Highgarth, Gloucester, _January_ 1914. CONTENTS {xv} LEARNING TO “THINK BLACK” THE RELATIONS OF RELIGION AND MAGIC: I. THE COMMON ROOT II. THEORIES AND DEFINITIONS III. DEVELOPMENT IV. DIVERGENCE THE BOLDNESS OF THE CELTS THE HAUNTED WIDOW THE PHILOSOPHY OF MOURNING CLOTHES THE RITE AT THE TEMPLE OF MYLITTA THE VOICE OF THE STONE OF DESTINY BIBLIOGRAPHICAL LIST ENDNOTES RITUAL AND BELIEF {1} LEARNING TO “THINK BLACK” Sir Edward Tylor begins the chapters on Animism in that great work which laid the foundation of the modern study of the history of civilization, by a discussion of the evidence for the existence of tribes destitute of religion. In some half-dozen pages he easily shows that the existence of such tribes, “though in theory possible, and perhaps in fact true, does not at present rest on that sufficient proof which, for an exceptional state of things, we are entitled to demand.” He convicts travellers and missionaries who have made the assertion, of contradicting themselves; and he renders probable that the denial of religion to peoples in the lower culture is begotten of a perverted judgement in theological matters, and “the use of wide words in narrow senses.”[1.1]