40 Science Religion and Reality 



and knowledge received from previous generations. Any laxity 

 in this weakens the cohesion of the group and imperils its cultural 

 outfit to the point of threatening its very existence. Man has not 

 yet devised the extremely complex apparatus of modern science 

 which enables him nowadays to fix the results of experience into 

 imperishable moulds, to test it ever anew, gradually to shape it 

 into more adequate forms and enrich it constantly by new additions. 

 The primitive man's share of knowledge, his social fabric, his 

 customs and beliefs, are the invaluable yield of devious experience 

 of his forefathers, bought at an extravagant price and to be main- 

 tained at any cost. Thus, of all his qualities, truth to tradition is 

 the most important, and a society which makes its tradition sacred 

 has gained by it an inestimable advantage of power and permanence. 

 Such beliefs and practices, therefore, which put a halo of sanctity 

 round tradition and a supernatural stamp upon it, will have a 

 " survival value " for the type of civilisation in which they have 

 been evolved. 



We may, therefore, lay down the main function of initiation 

 ceremonies : they are a ritual and dramatic expression of the 

 supreme power and value of tradition in primitive societies ; they 

 also serve to impress this power and value upon the minds of each 

 generation, and they are at the same time an extremely efficient 

 means of transmitting tribal lore, of ensuring continuity in tradition 

 and of maintaining tribal cohesion. 



We still have to ask : What is the relation between the purely 

 physiological fact of bodily maturity which these ceremonies mark, 

 and their social and religious aspect ? We see at once that religion 

 does something more, infinitely more, than the mere " sacralising 

 of a crisis of life." From a natural event it makes a social 

 transition, to the fact of bodily maturity it adds the vast conception 

 of entry into manhood with its duties^ privileges, responsilibities, 

 above all with its knowledge of tradition and the communion with 

 sacred things and beings. There is thus a creative element in the 

 rites of religious nature. The act establishes not only a social 

 event in the life of the individual but also a spiritual metamorphosis, 

 both associated with the biological event but transcending it in 

 importance and significance. 



Initiation is a typically religious act, and we can see clearly 

 here how the ceremony and its purpose are one, how the end is 

 realised in the yery consummation of the act. At the same time 



