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 formed in conjunction with the explanatory purpose of the myth, is the primitive worship of the hero-person or the hero-thing. But there can be very little disinterested worship among primitive folk — even less than now, if possible. Accordingly, the belief in the myth will involve the belief that something is to be got out of him or it, or that something is to be averted in respect to the evil to be feared from him or it. Thus incantation, prayer, praise, and ritual absorption of the hero deity emerge.

If the hero be a person, we call the ritual, with its myth, “religion”; if the hero be a thing, we call it “magic.” In religion we induce, in magic we compel. The important difference between magic and religion is that magic is unprogressive and religion sometimes is progressive; except in so far as science can be traced back to the progress of magic.

Religion, in this stage of belief, marks a new formative agent in the ascent of man. For just as ritual encouraged emotion beyond the