Excerpt from The Open Court, Vol. 42: Devoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science, and the Extension of the Religious Parliament Idea; June, 1928 The investigator may assume that the stratification of human minds, likewise the exigencies of growing societies, are such as to lead to the adoption of one or more factors of the hierarchy. It is also a labour saving device to postulate that the common sense of those societies which adopt one or more forms of initiation will choose the constantly recurring factors of isolation, hardships, ta boos, acquisition oi power, renaming and ceremonial rebirth, as the best means of launching out into a new career as chief, priest, member of a secret society or ordinary tribal member. The title of this paper involves the preliminary difficulty of de fining the term medicine man. Although a definition which shall meet the requirements of logic is difficult to formulate, there is, in the consideration of a definite geographical area, some facility in drawing lines of demarcation between the offices of priest, a chief officiating as priest, and a medicine man. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.