of course, for sheer love of knowing, but also,--since we realize that
our own behaviour is based on instincts kindred to his,--in order that,
by understanding his behaviour, we may understand, and it may be better,
our own.

Anthropologists who study the primitive peoples of to-day find that the
worship of false gods, bowing "down to wood and stone," bulks larger in
the mind of the hymn-writer than in the mind of the savage. We look for
temples to heathen idols; we find dancing-places and ritual dances. The
savage is a man of action. Instead of asking a god to do what he wants
done, he does it or tries to do it himself; instead of prayers he utters
spells. In a word, he practises magic, and above all he is strenuously
and frequently engaged in dancing magical dances. When a savage wants
sun or wind or rain, he does not go to church and prostrate himself
before a false god; he summons his tribe and dances a sun dance or a
wind dance or a rain dance. When he would hunt and catch a bear, he does
not pray to his god for strength to outwit and outmatch the bear, he
rehearses his hunt in a bear dance.

Here, again, we have some modern prejudice and misunderstanding to
overcome. Dancing is to us a light form of recreation practised by the
quite young from sheer _joie de vivre_, and essentially inappropriate to
the mature. But among the Tarahumares of Mexico the word _nolávoa_
means both "to work" and "to dance." An old man will reproach a young
man saying, "Why do you not go and work?" (_nolávoa_). He means "Why do
you not dance instead of looking on?" It is strange to us to learn that
among savages, as a man passes from childhood to youth, from youth to
mature manhood, so the number of his "dances" increase, and the number
of these "dances" is the measure _pari passu_ of his social importance.
Finally, in extreme old age he falls out, he ceases to exist, _because