Page:Religion in the Making.djvu/24

 to his rock, Mahomet brooding in the desert, the meditations of the Buddha, the solitary Man on the Cross. It belongs to the depth of the religious spirit to have felt forsaken, even by God.

Ritual goes back beyond the dawn of history. It can be discerned in the animals, in their individual habits and still more in their collective evolutions. Ritual may be defined as the habitual performance of definite actions which have no direct relevance to the preservation of the physical organisms of the actors.

Flocks of birds perform their ritual evolutions in the sky. In Europe rooks and starlings are notable examples of this fact. Ritual is the primitive outcome of superfluous energy and leisure. It exemplifies the tendency of living bodies to repeat their own actions. Thus the actions necessary in hunting for food, or in other useful pursuits, are repeated