Anthropological study of religion has hitherto almost entirely overlooked the mysteries of various races, except in so far as they confirm the entry of the young people into the ranks of the adult.  Their esoteric moral and religious teaching is nearly unknown to us, save in a few instances.  It is certain that the mysteries of Greece were survivals of savage ceremonies, because we know that they included specific savage rites, such as the use of the rhombos to make a whirring noise, and the custom of ritual daubing with dirt; and the sacred ballets d’action, in which, as Lucian and Qing say, mystic facts are ’danced out.’[10] But, while Greece retained these relics of savagery, there was something taught at Eleusis which filled minds like Plato’s and Pindar’s with a happy religious awe.  Now, similar ‘softening of the heart’ was the result of the teaching in the Australian Bora:  the Yao mysteries inculcate the victory over self; and, till we are admitted to the secrets of all other savage mysteries throughout the world, we cannot tell whether, among mummeries, frivolities, and even license, high ethical doctrines are not presented under the sanction of religion.  The New Life, and perhaps the future life, are undeniably indicated in the Australian mysteries by the simulated Resurrection.

I would therefore no longer say, as in 1887, that the Hellenic genius must have added to ‘an old medicine dance’ all that the Eleusinian mysteries possessed of beauty, counsel, and consolation[11].  These elements, as well as the barbaric factors in the rites, may have been developed out of such savage doctrine as softens the hearts of Australians and Yaos.  That this kind of doctrine receives religious sanction is certain, where we know the secret of savage mysteries.  It is therefore quite incorrect, and strangely presumptuous, to deny, with almost all anthropologists, the alliance of ethics with religion among the most backward races.  We must always remember their secrecy about their inner religion, their frankness about their mythological tales.  These we know:  the inner religion we ought to begin to recognise that we do not know.

The case of the Andamanese has taught us how vague, even now, is our knowledge, and how obscure is our problem.  The example of the Melanesians enforces these lessons.  It is hard to bring the Melanesians within any theory.  Dr. Codrington has made them the subject of a careful study, and reports that while the European inquirer can communicate pretty freely on common subjects ’the vocabulary of ordinary life in almost useless when the region of mysteries and superstitions is approached.’[12] The Banks Islanders are most free from an Asiatic element of population on one side, and a Polynesian element on the other.