the air, making a fine spray in imitation of mist or drizzling rain.
Then he upsets the vessel, spilling the water on the ground; whereupon
the dancers fall down and drink up the water, getting mud all over their
faces. This saves the corn. Now probably any dispassionate person would
describe such a ceremonial as "an interesting instance of primitive
_ritual_." The sole difference between the two types is that, in the one
the practice is carried on privately, or at least unofficially, in the
other it is done publicly by a collective authorized body, officially
for the public good.

The distinction is one of high importance, but for the moment what
concerns us is, to see the common factor in the two sets of acts, what
is indeed their source and mainspring. In the case of the girl dancing
in the hoop and leaping out of it there is no doubt. The words she says,
"Flax, grow," prove the point. She _does_ what she _wants done_. Her
intense desire finds utterance in an act. She obeys the simplest
possible impulse. Let anyone watch an exciting game of tennis, or better
still perhaps a game of billiards, he will find himself _doing_ in
sheer sympathy the thing he wants done, reaching out a tense arm where
the billiard cue should go, raising an unoccupied leg to help the
suspended ball over the net. Sympathetic magic is, modern psychology
teaches us, in the main and at the outset, not the outcome of
intellectual illusion, not even the exercise of a "mimetic instinct,"
but simply, in its ultimate analysis, an utterance, a discharge of
emotion and longing.

But though the utterance of emotion is the prime and moving, it is not
the sole, factor. We may utter emotion in a prolonged howl, we may even
utter it in a collective prolonged howl, yet we should scarcely call
this ritual, still less art. It is true that a prolonged _collective_