Mechanical behaviour and Religion are, obviously, by far the most common and important modes of activity among civilised peoples, whereas in primitive culture the coercitive behaviour (Magic) is everywhere in evidence and Religion may be practically unknown. As one ascends from the lowest stages of culture, Magic gradually loses official recognition. Among us, though it leads only a surreptitious existence, it has by no means lost all influence. The list of magical superstitions that have retained a hold among us would be found tediously long. A numerous class of them includes the gambler's methods of securing luck. So-called 'religious' practices may really be magical. The cross, the rosary, relics, and other accessories of Religion, acquire in the mind of many Christians a power of the coercitive type; that is, for instance, the case when the sign of the cross, of itself, without the mediation of God or Saint, is felt to have power; or when 'saying one's beads' is held to possess a curative virtue of the kind ascribed to sacred relics by the superstitious. Even when the symbolism of the sign of the cross, and the meaning of the _Ave Maria_ are realised, it happens not infrequently that signing oneself and saying one's beads are regarded as acting upon the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, or God, in the manner of an incantation _i.e._ magically. * * * * * It has been the habit of most students of the origin of Religion to concern themselves exclusively with the origin of the god-idea, as if belief in the existence of gods was identical with Religion. They have ignored its other essential components: the motives or desires and the feelings, as well as the means by which, in Religion, the gratification of desire is sought. But the limitation of the problem of origin to that of the god-idea is not entirely amiss. For there are neither specifically religious motives, nor specifically religious feelings. Any and every human need and longing may, at some stage or other, become a spring of Religion, and conversely the feelings and emotions met with in any form of Religion appear also in non-religious experience. As to the practical means of securing the favour of the gods, it is agreed that they were at the beginning essentially the same as those men were already in the habit of using in their relations with their fellow-men. It is the Agent or the Power with which man thinks himself in relation, and through whom he endeavours to secure the gratification of his desires, which alone is distinctive of religious life. And so the origin of the idea of gods, though not identical with the origin of Religion, is at any rate its central problem.