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MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. 2. 
the religious “thrill,” and that its setting was vague. It is not 
at all my purpose to separate the “thrill” from the setting of 
associations that have always clung to it in different cultural 
areas, but I claim that at the time of the thrill and perhaps for a 
considerable time afterwards in the life of the individual, these 
associated elements are vague and ill-defined and that they 
only then become clearly differentiated when the cultural 
environment exerts its greater influence upon the individual. 
Now if we look at the dream-experience as a formal unit, we 
will notice that it contains a number of folkloristic elements, 
such as, for instance, the dreaming of a snake as an ill omen, the 
deceiving promises of the chickadee, etc. At the same time, the 
manner of obtaining the blessing, the visit to the home of the 
manito, etc., are all themes characteristically developed in the 
mythology of the people. Both these elements, folklore and 
mythology, begin to exercise their influence on the individual 
after the age of puberty. If, in addition, we allow for the increas- 
ing knowledge of the details of the dream-experience that in 
maturer years one is quite likely to obtain, all the conditions for 
the fixity of the dream-experience formula seem to be given. 
Summing up, we might say that the evidence at hand seems 
to warrant the suggestion that a boy approaches the ordeal of 
fasting with definite suggestions from those who are exercising 
control over him at that time; that he himself is probably most 
intent upon the religious experience he is obtaining, and that 
although this religious thrill is necessarily associated with sug- 
gestions from others and from himself, these latter play a sec- 
ondary part; that, finally, what I have called the dream experi- 
ence formula probably does not exist at the time of fasting in 
any clearly defined form, but it probably represents the increasing 
influence of the cultural environment, and the knowledge of 
those details ot the fast that he learns from the generation of his 
parents and grandparents, as he grows older. 
