Now it is just when there is promise
of the approach of a good season that the natives of Central
Australia are wont especially to perform those magical ceremonies of
which the avowed intention is to multiply the plants and animals
they use as food. These ceremonies, therefore, present a close
analogy to the spring customs of our European peasantry not only in
the time of their celebration, but also in their aim; for we can
hardly doubt that in instituting rites designed to assist the
revival of plant life in spring our primitive forefathers were
moved, not by any sentimental wish to smell at early violets, or
pluck the rathe primrose, or watch yellow daffodils dancing in the
breeze, but by the very practical consideration, certainly not
formulated in abstract terms, that the life of man is inextricably
bound up with that of plants, and that if they were to perish he
could not survive. And as the faith of the Australian savage in the
efficacy of his magic rites is confirmed by observing that their
performance is invariably followed, sooner or later, by that
increase of vegetable and animal life which it is their object to
produce, so, we may suppose, it was with European savages in the
olden time.
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