ABSTRACT
The consideration of ritual raises fundamental psychological questions about the inter-relation of the different elements of human nature, such as the relative casual priority of emotions, beliefs and impulses to action. For the different forms of ritual are responses to different situations and serve different purposes in the life of the individual and of society. The ritual activities as seen by the external observer may seem trivial or insignificant, and entirely disproportionate to the weight of significance which they convey to the initiated. Ritual is an expression of the urge to express and to communicate, to give external and visible form to certain experiences and to convey them to others. Its appeal is primarily to the emotions rather than to the intellect, to the heart rather than to the head. Ritual resembles language and art in that all three are media both of expression and of communication.
