(_b_) Similarly omens, from being divine messages, each relating to a particular undertaking, may come to be merely occurrences that encourage or discourage a man, or a tribe, at any time; because, by tradition, they are lucky or unlucky. Or practically the same result may be reached by philosophy: as with those Stoics who explained that omens are prophetic not as sent by the gods, but as involved in the same procession of fatal events. Fate, before any laws of nature had been discovered, was nothing but all-comprehensive Magic: which left out or mediatised the gods, because, in a philosophical consideration of the world, they are worse than useless. (_c_) As to prayers, in any rational conception of them, the form of words conveying them cannot matter to a god, as long as they are piously meant and devoutly meditated. Yet everywhere there has been a tendency to reduce them to strict formulæ, any departure from which may, it is feared, impair their efficacy. So far as this occurs, their operation is magical; they have become spells. Such is the result of custom, with mental inertia too dull to think; of an irreligious temperament, getting quickly through an uncongenial task; of a superstitious unimaginative spirit, afraid to omit any traditionary means of safety and for whom a praying-wheel is the way of peace. To rob prayer of its religious meaning, there is the ever-present example of the magical spells that operate by their own force. A form of words, whether magical or supplicatory, that has been among the antecedents of a time of peace or of gain, seems to be amongst its causes, and is repeated that such a time may continue. Of the countless cases in which prayers have degenerated into spells, none is more instructive than the one recorded by Dr. Rivers in his account of the dairy-ritual of the Todas. The prayers offered during this ritual are uttered in the throat, so that the words are undistinguishable; and they are divided into two parts: first, a list of sacred beings and objects mentioned by sacred names, much of it unintelligible; and, secondly, a petition for the protection and welfare of the buffaloes: the former is now the more important; the latter is apt to be slurred over, or perhaps omitted.[289] Of the Roman public prayers, Mr. Warde Fowler says: “The idea that the spoken formula (derived from an age of Magic) was efficient only if no slip were made, seems to have gained in strength instead of diminishing, as we might have expected it to do with advancing civilisation.”[290] To justify the belief in formulæ it may be asserted that the gods themselves prescribed them: an excuse for the superstitious dread of altering what is traditionary, and for the persuasion that the form itself has mysterious virtue.