Every religion insists upon some quite determinate exterior form of worship, a precise manifestation, a creed; it endeavours to incorporate itself into a certain number of rites and customs, which are numerous and inviolable in proportion as the religion is primitive. The universality of an external form of worship in the different religions of the world is the consequence and the most striking proof of their sociomorphic origin. Man has always believed that he might be useful and agreeable to his gods so long as he has conceived them as analogous to himself and to his neighbours. * * * * * [Sidenote: Which soon came to be conceived as coercive.] Add that to the notion of seducing the gods that of constraining is soon joined. To the conception of an exchange of services is soon joined that of a species of coercion exercised in some vague manner by the intermediation of some friendly god or even by some simple magic formula which has once succeeded, once procured the object demanded! Formulæ consecrated by custom appear to be equally binding on gods and men. Accordingly the cult, at first more or less loose, more or less arbitrary, ultimately becomes minutely regulated; ultimately becomes what one knows as a rite. A rite, at its lowest, is simply the result of a tendency to repeat indefinitely an act which, at some time or other, has seemed to render a god or a fetich propitious. After propitiation comes mechanical custom. Religion, as Pascal well said, is to a large extent habit. Rites are born of the need to perform again and again the same act, under the same circumstances; a need which is the foundation of custom, and without which all life would be impossible. Moreover, there is something sacred in every habit whatsoever, and every act, whatever it may be, tends to become a habit and by that fact to become respectable, to be in some sort self-consecrated. Rites, therefore, strike root in the very foundations of our being; the need for rites manifests itself very early in the life of the child. Children not only imitate other people and themselves, repeat other people and themselves, but exact a scrupulous precision in these repetitions; in general they do not distinguish the end from the means by which, and the circumstances under which, it is pursued; they do not yet possess a sufficiently exercised intelligence to understand that the same line of action may lead to the same result in different ways and under different circumstances. I once observed a child of from eighteen months to two years old: if I got up from my armchair and paraded about the room for its amusement, and stopped, it was necessary before beginning once more that I should return to my seat; the child’s pleasure was much diminished if the repetition was not exact. The child was accustomed to be fed by a number of people indifferently; still if I had given it some one thing—milk to drink,