Theft is consequently almost unknown among them.

All the fables about animals and plants speaking and exercising volition; the practice of ordeals, resting on the belief that the sacred living elements, fire and water, will of themselves discriminate between the innocent and guilty; the propitiatory offerings to the sea and to rivers, such incidents as Xerxes binding the sea with fetters, Ajax defying the lightning, Aaron's rod that budded, the superstitions of sailors about ships: all result from the same primitive belief.

Many other instances of self-conscious life and volition being attributed to animals, plants and natural objects are given by Lord Avebury in _Origin of Civilisation_, by Dr.Westermarck in _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_, [103] and by Sir J.G.Frazer in _The Golden Bough_ [104] Thus primitive man had no conception of inanimate matter, and it seems probable that he did not either realise the idea of death.

Though it may be doubtful whether any race exists at present which does not understand that death is the cessation of life in the body, indications remain that this view was not primary and may not have been acquired for some time.

The Gonds apparently once thought that people would not die unless they were killed by magic, and similar beliefs are held by the Australian and African savages.