To the unsophisticated--and even to the sophisticated sceptic--it is manifest that animate objects do things. What they aim to do, as well as the logic of their conduct in carrying out their designs, are not precisely the same as in the case of man. But by staying by and learning what they are bent on doing, and observing how they go about it, any peculiarity in the nature of their needs, spiritual and physical, and in their manner of approaching their ends, may be learned and assimilated; and their life-work can be furthered and amplified by judiciously ministering to their ascertained needs and making the way smooth for them in what they undertake, so long as their undertakings are such as man is interested in bringing to a successful issue. Of course they work toward ends that are good in their sight, though not always such as men would seek; but that is their affair and is not to be pried into beyond the bounds of a decent neighbourly interest. And they work by methods in some degree other, often wiser, than those of men, and these it is man’s place to learn if he would profit by their companionship. Much of the scheme of life of these speechless others is a scheme of fecundity, growth and nurture, and all these matters are natural to women rather than to men; and so in the early stages of culture the consciousness of kind and congruity has made it plain to all the parties in interest that the care of crops and animals belongs in the fitness of things to women. Indeed there is such a spiritual (magical) community between women and the fecundity of animate things that any intrusion of the men in the affairs of growth and fertility may by force of contrast come to be viewed with the liveliest apprehension. Since the life of plants and animals is primarily of a spiritual nature, since the initiative and trend of vegetable and animal life is of this character, it follows that some sort of propitious spiritual contact and communion should be maintained between mankind and that world of fertility and growth in which these animate things live and move. So a line of communication, of a spiritual kind, is kept open with the realm of the speechless ones by means of a sign-language systematised into ritual, and by a symbolism of amity reënforced with gifts and professions of good-will. Hence a growth of occult meanings and ceremonial procedure, to which the argument will have to return presently.[46]