In point of derivation and early development, learning is
somewhat closely related to the devotional function of the
community, particularly to the body of observances in which the
service rendered the supernatural leisure class expresses itself.
The service by which it is sought to conciliate supernatural
agencies in the primitive cults is not an industrially profitable
employment of the community's time and effort. It is, therefore,
in great part, to be classed as a vicarious leisure performed for
the supernatural powers with whom negotiations are carried on and
whose good-will the service and the professions of subservience
are conceived to procure. In great part, the early learning
consisted in an acquisition of knowledge and facility in the
service of a supernatural agent. It was therefore closely
analogous in character to the training required for the domestic
service of a temporal master. To a great extent, the knowledge
acquired under the priestly teachers of the primitive community
was knowledge of ritual and ceremonial; that is to say, a
knowledge of the most proper, most effective, or most acceptable
manner of approaching and of serving the preternatural agents.
What was learned was how to make oneself indispensable to these
powers, and so to put oneself in a position to ask, or even to
require, their intercession in the course of events or their
abstention from interference in any given enterprise.
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