A very little consideration shows that he performs at first no
abstraction at all; abstraction is foreign to his mental habit. He
begins with a vague excited dance to relieve his emotion. That dance
has, probably almost from the first, a leader; the dancers choose an
actual _person_, and he is the root and ground of _personification_.
There is nothing mysterious about the process; the leader does not
"embody" a previously conceived idea, rather he begets it. From his
personality springs the personification. The abstract idea arises from
the only thing it possibly can arise from, the concrete fact. Without
_per_ception there is no _con_ception. We noted in speaking of dances
(p. 43) how the dance got generalized; how from many commemorations of
actual hunts and battles there arose the hunt dance and the war dance.
So, from many actual living personal May Queens and Deaths, from many
actual men and women decked with leaves, or trees dressed up as men and
women, arises _the_ Tree Spirit, _the_ Vegetation Spirit, _the_ Death.

At the back, then, of the fact of personification lies the fact that the
emotion is felt collectively, the rite is performed by a band or chorus
who dance together _with a common leader_. Round that leader the emotion
centres. When there is an act of Carrying-out or Bringing-in he either
is himself the puppet or he carries it. Emotion is of the whole band;
drama--doing--tends to focus on the leader. This leader, this focus, is
then remembered, thought of, imaged; from being _per_ceived year by
year, he is finally _con_ceived; but his basis is always in actual fact
of which he is but the reflection.

Had there been no periodic festivals, personification might long have
halted. But it is easy to see that a recurrent _per_ception helps to
form a permanent abstract _con_ception. The different actual recurrent
May Kings and "Deaths," _because they recur_, get a sort of permanent