It was a little over ten years ago, 1967–8, that H. D. Lewis delivered the first series of Gifford lectures, The Elusive Mind, in the University of Edinburgh. It was my privilege that year to be an auditor in the Seminar at King's College that Professor Lewis was conducting with his students in the area of this topic. I had already read the works in which, in the midst of neo-orthodox and existentialist religious movements, he had devoted himself to critical valuation of those doctrines - witness his Morals and the New Theology (1947), and Morals and Revelation (1951). This earlier work prepared for a comprehensive interpretation of religious experience in his book in 1960: Our Experience of God.

From time to time one comes across pronouncements about the difference between English and German philosophy of religion. Such statements often sound plausible enough, but in my experience they will not stand up to any very close inspection. Let me, anyway, take an example of a general pronouncement regarding the relationship between German and English philosophy, a pronouncement which the author applies particularly to philosophy of religion. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James states:

The Continental schools of philosophy have too often overlooked the fact that man's thinking is organically connected with his conduct.

The aim of this paper is to examine the several aspects of prayer in primitive, i.e. nonliterate religions. The contention is that prayer does in fact exist among primitive people in their religious practices and that prayer does have a functional aspect in primitive religion.

I am deeply grateful to Professor Bertocci for his exceptionally valuable comments. In requesting that I should accept them for publication in Religious Studies, Professor Bertocci also urged me to reply in the same journal. This is, in itself, a very welcome suggestion, but it is with great reluctance that I take up space, in the journal I edit myself, to set forth my own ideas, even as replies to criticism.