Spiritual means of education, however, are always more effective than physical, if designed and applied with sufficient wisdom.  The bull-roarer, of which something has been already said, furnishes the ceremonies with a background of awe.  It fills the woods, that surround the secret spot where the rites are held, with the rise and fall of its weird music, suggestive of a mighty rushing wind, of spirits in the air.  Not until the boys graduate as men do they learn how the sound is produced.  Even when they do learn this, the mystery of the voice speaking through the chip of wood merely wings the imagination for loftier flights.  Whatever else the high god of these mysteries, Daramulun, may be for these people—­and undoubtedly all sorts of trains of confused thinking meet in the notion of him—­he is at any rate the god of the bull-roarer, who has put his voice into the sacred instrument.  But Daramulun is likewise endowed with a human form; for they set up an image of him rudely shaped in wood, and round about it dance and shout his name.  Daramulun instituted these rites, as well as all the other immemorial rites of the assembled tribe or tribes.  So when over the heads of the boys, prostrated on the ground, are recited solemnly what Mr. Lang calls “the ten commandments,” that bid them honour the elders, respect the marriage law, and so on, there looms up before their minds the figure of the ultimate law-giver; whilst his unearthly voice becomes for them the voice of the law.  Thus is custom exalted, and its coercive force amplified, by the suggestion of a power—­in this case a definitely personal power—­that “makes for righteousness,” and, whilst beneficent, is full of terror for offenders.

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And now it may seem high time to pass on from the sociological and external view that has hitherto been taken of primitive religion to a psychological view of it—­one that should endeavour to disclose the hidden motives, the spiritual sources, of the beliefs that underlie and sustain the customary practices.  But precisely at this point the anthropological treatment of religion is apt to prove unsatisfactory.  History can record that such and such is done with far more certainty than that such and such a state of mind accompanies and inspires the doing.  Besides, the savage is no authority on the why and wherefore of his customs.  “However else would a reasonable being think of acting?” is his sufficient reason, as we have already seen.  Not but what the higher minds amongst savages reflect in their own way upon the meaning of their customs and rites.  But most of this reflection is no more than an elaborate “justification after the event.”  The mind invents what Mr. Kipling would call a “Just-so story” to account for something already there.  How it might have come about, not how it did come about, is all that the professed explanation amounts to.  And when it comes to choosing amongst mere possibilities, the anthropologist, instead of consulting the savage, may just as well endeavour to do it for himself.