(_d_) That other religious ceremonies, repeated from age to age, have the same tendency as prayers to become dead forms from which the spirit of communion or devotion has departed—though under favourable conditions it may return from time to time—is too well known; and if in their emptiness they are still believed somehow to serve their purpose, it can only be as magical rites. One may be surprised to find at what an early stage of culture this tendency is fully realised. William Ellis, the celebrated missionary, says of the people of Raiatea: “The efficacy of their [religious] services consisted in the rigid exactness with which sacred days were kept, and religious ceremonies performed, without the least regard to the motives and dispositions of the devotees.... In their idol-worship, however costly the sacrifice, and however near its close the ceremony might be, if the priest omitted or misplaced any word in the prayers, or if his attention was diverted by any means so that the prayer was broken, the whole was rendered unavailing: he must prepare other victims and repeat his prayers over from the commencement.”[291] How this concern for details must be a relapse into magical notions may be read in the account of rites to stop the rainfall in Torres Straits; where (we are told) if the wizard omit any detail, the rain continues.[292] Perhaps the notion of the perfect definiteness of causation (though not consistently adhered to in other matters) arose from this meticulous anxiety of superstition: it also, however, furnishes excuses for failure both to priests and wizards. (_e_) In Magic there must be something deeply satisfying to the average mind: it precedes Religion, supplies the basis and framework of religious practices, and remains when Religion is in ruins; and when people change their Religion, they retain their Magic. Among the Fijians,[293] those who were Christianised lost their dread of witchcraft last of all the relics of their heathenism. Among the Cherokees, “Gahuni, like several others of their Shamans, combined the professions of Indian conjuror and Methodist preacher.”[294] In Norway, after the general acceptance of Christianity, Lapland witchcraft was still valued. The victory of the insurgents at Stiklestad, where St. Olaf fell, was thought to have been due to the magic armour of reindeer-skin that Thore Hund had brought from Lapland; though all St. Olaf’s men wore the cross upon helmet and shield.[295]