chapter ix

of this book.

[524] Yet according to one passage in Mathews, the individual totem is hereditary among the Wotjobaluk. "Each individual," he says, "claims some animal, plant or inanimate object as his special and personal totem, which he inherits from his mother" (_Journ. and Proc. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 291). But it is evident that if all the children in the same family had the personal totem of their mother, neither they nor she would really have personal totems at all. Mathews probably means to say that each individual chooses his individual totem from the list of things attributed to the clan of his mother. In fact, we shall see that each clan has its individual totems which are its exclusive property; the members of the other clans cannot make use of them. In this sense, birth determines the personal totem to a certain extent, but to a certain extent only.

[525] Heckewelder, _An Account of the History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations who once inhabited Pennsylvania, in Transactions of the Historical and Literary Committee of the American Philosophical Society_, I, p. 238.

[526] See Dorsey, _Siouan Cults, XIth Rep._, p. 507; Catlin, _op. cit._, I, p. 37; Miss Fletcher, _The Import of the Totem, in Smithsonian Rep._ for 1897, p. 580; Teit, _The Thompson Indians_, pp. 317-320; Hill Tout, _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 144.

[527] But some examples are found. The Kurnai magicians see their personal totems revealed to them in dreams (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 387; _On Australian Medicine Men_, in _J.A.I._, XVI, p. 34). The men of Cape Bedford believe that when an old man dreams of something during the night, this thing is the personal totem of the first person he meets the next day (W. E. Roth, _Superstition, Magic and Medicine_, p. 19). But it is probable that only supplementary and accessory totems are acquired in this way; for in this same tribe another process is used at the moment of initiation, as we said in the text.

[528] In certain tribes of which Roth speaks (_ibid._); also in certain tribes near to Maryborough (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 147).

[529] Among the Wiradjuri (Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 406; _On Australian Medicine Men_, in _J.A.I._, XVI, p. 50).

[530] Roth, _loc. cit._

[531] Haddon, _Head Hunters_, pp. 193 ff.

[532] Among the Wiradjuri (same references as above, n. 4).

[533] In general, it seems as though these transmissions from father to son never take place except when the father is a shaman or a magician. This is also the case among the Thompson Indians (Teit, _The Thompson Indians_, p. 320) and the Wiradjuri, of whom we just spoke.

[534] Hill Tout (_J.A.I._, XXXV, pp. 146 f.). The essential rite is the blowing upon the skin: if this were not done correctly, the transmission would not take place. As we shall presently see, the breath is the soul. When both breathe upon the skin of the animal, the magician and the recipient each exhale a part of their souls, which are thus fused, while partaking at the same time of the nature of the animal, who also takes

## part in the ceremony in the form of its symbol.

[535] N. W. Thomas, _Further Remarks on Mr. Hill Tout's Views on Totemism_, in _Man_, 1904, p. 85.

[536] Langloh Parker, _op. cit._, pp. 20, 29.

[537] Hill Tout, in _J.A.I._, XXXV, pp. 143 and 146; _ibid._, XXXIV, p. 324.

[538] Parker, _op. cit._, p. 30; Teit, _The Thompson Indians_, p. 320; Hill Tout, in _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 144.

[539] Charlevoix, VI, p. 69.

[540] Hill Tout, _ibid._, p. 145.

[541] Thus at the birth of a child, a tree is planted which is cared for piously; for it is believed that its fate and the child's are united. Frazer, in his _Golden Bough_, gives a number of customs and beliefs translating this same idea in different ways. (Cf. Hartland, _Legend of Perseus_, II, pp. 1-55.)

[542] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 148 ff.; Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 194, 201 ff.; Dawson, _Australian Aborigines_, p. 52. Petrie also mentions it in Queensland (_Tom Petrie's Reminiscences of Early Queensland_, pp. 62 and 118).

[543] _Journ. and Proc. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 339. Must we see a trace of sexual totemism in the following custom of the Warramunga? When a dead person is buried, a bone of the arm is kept. If it is a woman, the feathers of an emu are added to the bark in which it is wrapped up; if it is a man, the feathers of an owl (_Nor. Tr._, p. 169).

[544] Some cases are cited where each sexual group has two sexual totems; thus the Wurunjerri unite the sexual totems of the Kurnai (the emu-wren and the linnet) to those of the Wotjobaluk (the bat and the _nightjar_ owl). See Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 150.

[545] _Totemism_, p. 51.

[546] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 215.

[547] Threlkeld, quoted by Mathews, _loc. cit._, p. 339.

[548] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 148, 151.

[549] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 200-203; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 149; Petrie, _op. cit._, p. 62. Among the Kurnai, these bloody battles frequently terminate in marriages of which they are, as it were, a sort of ritual precursor. Sometimes they are merely plays (Petrie, _loc. cit._).

[550] On this point, see our study on _La Prohibition de l'inceste et ses origines_, in the _Année Sociologique_, I, pp. 44 ff.

[551] However, as we shall presently see (ch. ix), there is a connection between the sexual totems and the great gods.

[552] _Primitive Culture_, I, p. 402; II, p. 237; _Remarks on Totemism, with especial reference to some modern theories concerning it_, in _J.A.I._, XXVIII, and I, New Series, p. 138.

[553] _Het Animisme bij den Volken van den indischen Archipel_, pp. 69-75.

[554] Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, II, p. 6.

[555] Tylor, _ibid._, II, pp. 6-18.

[556] G. McCall Theal, _Records of South-Eastern Africa_, VII. We are acquainted with this work only through an article by Frazer, _South African Totemism_, published in _Man_, 1901, No. III.

[557] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 32 f., and a personal letter by the same author cited by Tylor in _J.A.I._, XXVIII, p. 147.

[558] This is practically the solution adopted by Wundt (_Mythus und Religion_, II, p. 269).

[559] It is true that according to Tylor's theory, a clan is only an enlarged family; therefore whatever may be said of one of these groups is, in his theory, applicable to the other (_J.A.I._, XXVIII, p. 157). But this conception is exceedingly contestable; only the clan presupposes a totem, which has its whole meaning only in and through the clan.

[560] For this same conception, see A. Lang, _Social Origins_, p. 150.

[561] See above, p. 63.

[562] _Primitive Culture_, II, p. 17.

[563] Wundt, who has revived the theory of Tylor in its essential lines, has tried to explain this mysterious relationship of the man and the animal in a different way: it was the sight of the corpse in decomposition which suggested the idea. When they saw worms coming out of the body, they thought that the soul was incarnate in them and escaped with them. Worms, and by extension, reptiles (snakes, lizards, etc.), were therefore the first animals to serve as receptacles for the souls of the dead, and consequently they were also the first to be venerated and to play the rôle of totems. It was only subsequently that other animals and plants and even inanimate objects were elevated to the same dignity. But this hypothesis does not have even the shadow of a proof. Wundt affirms (_Mythus und Religion_, II, p. 296) that reptiles are much more common totems than other animals; from this, he concludes that they are the most primitive. But we cannot see what justifies this assertion, in the support of which the author cites no facts. The lists of totems gathered either in Australia or in America do not show that any special species of animal has played a preponderating rôle. Totems vary from one region to another with the flora and fauna. Moreover, if the circle of possible totems was so closely limited at first, we cannot see how totemism was able to satisfy the fundamental principle which says that the two clans or sub-clans of a tribe must have two different totems.

[564] "Sometimes men adore certain animals," says Tylor, "because they regard them as the reincarnation of the divine souls of the ancestors; this belief is a sort of bridge between the cult rendered to shades and that rendered to animals" (_Primitive Culture_, II, p. 805, cf. 309, _in fine_). Likewise, Wundt presents totemism as a section of animalism (II, p. 234).

[565] See above, p. 139.

[566] _Introduction to the History of Religions_, pp. 97 ff.

[567] See above, p. 28.

[568] Jevons recognizes this himself, saying, "It is to be presumed that in the choice of an ally he would prefer ... the kind or species which possessed the greatest power" (p. 101).

[569] 2nd Edition, III, pp. 416 ff.; see especially p. 419, n. 5. In more recent articles, to be analysed below, Frazer exposes a different theory, but one which does not, in his opinion, completely exclude the one in the _Golden Bough_.

[570] _The Origin of the Totemism of the Aborigines of British Columbia_, in _Proc. and Transact. of the Roy. Soc. of Canada_, 2nd series, VII, § 2, pp. 3 ff. Also, _Report on the Ethnology of the Statlumh_, _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 141. Hill Tout has replies to various objections made to his theory in Vol. IX of the _Transact. of the Roy. Soc. of Canada_, pp. 61-99.

[571] Alice C. Fletcher, _The Import of the Totem_, in _Smithsonian Report for 1897_, pp. 577-586.

[572] _The Kwakiutl Indians_, pp. 323 ff., 336-338, 393.

[573] _The Development of the Clan System_, in _Amer. Anthrop._, N.S. VI, 1904, pp. 477-486.

[574] _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 142.

[575] _Ibid._, p. 150. Cf. _Vth Rep. on the ... N.W. Tribes of Canada_, _B.A.A.S._, p. 24. A myth of this sort has been quoted above.

[576] _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 147.

[577] _Proc. and Transact., etc._, VII, § 2, p. 12.

[578] See _The Golden Bough_,[2] III, pp. 351 ff. Wilken had already pointed out similar facts in _De Simsonsage_, in _De Gids_, 1890; _De Betrekking tusschen Menschen-Dieren en Plantenleven_, in _Indische Gids_, 1884, 1888; _Ueber das Haaropfer_, in _Revue Coloniale Internationale_, 1886-1887.

[579] For example, Eylmann in _Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien_, p. 199.

[580] Mrs. Parker says in connection with the Euahlayi, that if the Yunbeai does "confer exceptional force, it also exposes one to exceptional dangers, for all that hurts the animal wounds the man" (_Euahlayi_, p. 29).

[581] In a later work (_The Origin of Totemism_, in _The Fortnightly Review_, May, 1899, pp. 844-845), Frazer raises this objection himself. "If," he says, "I deposit my soul in a hare, and my brother John (a member of another clan) shoots that hare, roasts and swallows it, what becomes of my soul? To meet this obvious danger it is necessary that John should know the state of my soul, and that, knowing it, he should, whenever he shoots a hare, take steps to extract and restore to me my soul before he cooks and dines upon the animal." Now Frazer believes that he has found this practice in use in Central Australia. Every year, in the course of a ceremony which we shall describe presently, when the animals of the new generation arrive at maturity, the first game to be killed is presented to men of that totem, who eat a little of it; and it is only after this that the men of the other clans may eat it freely. This, says Frazer, is a way of returning to the former the souls they may have confided to these animals. But, aside from the fact that this interpretation of the fact is wholly arbitrary, it is hard not to find this way of escaping the danger rather peculiar. This ceremony is annual; long days may have elapsed since the animal was killed. During all this time, what has become of the soul which it sheltered and the individual whose life depended on this soul? But it is superfluous to insist upon all the inconceivable things in this explanation.

[582] Parker, _op. cit._, p. 20; Howitt, _Australian Medicine Men_, in _J.A.I._, XVI, pp. 34, 49 f.; Hill Tout, _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 146.

[583] According to Hill Tout himself, "The gift or transmission (of a personal totem) can only be made or effected by certain persons, such as shamans, or those who possess great mystery power" (_J.A.I._, p. 146). Cf. Langloh Parker, _op. cit._, pp. 29-30.

[584] Cf. Hartland, _Totemism and some recent Discoveries_, in _Folk-Lore_, XI, pp. 59 ff.

[585] Except perhaps the Kurnai; but even in this tribe, there are sexual totems in addition to the personal ones.

[586] Among the Wotjobaluk, the Buandik, the Wiradjuri, the Yuin and the tribes around Maryborough (Queensland). See Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 114-147; Mathews, _J. of the R. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 291. Cf. Thomas, _Further Notes on Mr. Hill Tout's Views on Totemism_, in _Man_, 1904, p. 85.

[587] This is the case with the Euahlayi and the facts of personal totemism cited by Howitt, _Australian Medicine Men_, in _J.A.I._, XVI, pp. 34, 35, 49-50.

[588] Miss Fletcher, _A Study of the Omaha Tribe_, in _Smithsonian Report for 1897_, p. 586; Boas, _The Kwakiutl_, p. 322. Likewise, _Vth Rep. of the Committee ... of the N.W. Tribes of the Dominion of Canada, B.A.A.S._, p. 25; Hill Tout, _J.A.I._, XXXV, p. 148.

[589] The proper names of the _gentes_, says Boas in regard to the Tlinkit, are derived from their respective totems, each gens having its special names. The connection between the name and the (collective) totem is not very apparent sometimes, but it always exists (_Vth Rep. of the Committee, etc._, p. 25). The fact that individual forenames are the property of the clan, and characterize it as surely as the totem, is also found among the Iroquois (Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 78), the Wyandot (Powell, _Wyandot Government_, in _Ist Rep._, p. 59), the Shawnee, Sauk and Fox (Morgan, _Ancient Society_, pp. 72, 76-77) and the Omaha (Dorsey, _Omaha Sociology_, in _IIIrd Rep._, pp. 227 ff.). Now the relation between forenames and personal totems is already known (see above, p. 157).

[590] "For example," says Mathews, "if you ask a Wartwurt man what totem he is, he will first tell his personal totem, and will probably then enumerate those of his clan" (_Jour. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 291).

[591] _The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism among the Australian Aborigines_, in _Fortnightly Review_, July, 1905, pp. 162 ff., and Sept., p. 452. Cf. the same author, _The Origin of Totemism_, _ibid._, April, 1899, p. 648, and May, p. 835. These latter articles, being slightly older, differ from the former on one point, but the foundation of the theory is not essentially different. Both are reproduced in _Totemism and Exogamy_, I, pp. 89-172. In the same sense, see Spencer and Gillen, _Some Remarks on Totemism as applied to Australian Tribes_, in _J.A.I._, 1899, pp. 275-280, and the remarks of Frazer on the same subject, _ibid._, pp. 281-286.

[592] "Perhaps we may ... say that it is but one remove from the original pattern, the absolutely original form of totemism" (_Fortnightly Review_, Sept., 1905. p. 455).

[593] On this point, the testimony of Strehlow (II, p. 52) confirms that of Spencer and Gillen. For a contrary opinion, see A. Lang, _The Secret of the Totem_, p. 190.

[594] A very similar idea had already been expressed by Haddon in his _Address to the Anthropological Section_ (_B.A.A.S._, 1902, pp. 8 ff.). He supposes that at first, each local group had some food which was especially its own. The plant or animal thus serving as the principal item of food became the totem of the group.

All these explanations naturally imply that the prohibitions against eating the totemic animal were not primitive, but were even preceded by a contrary prescription.

[595] _Fortnightly Review_, Sept., 1905, p. 458.

[596] _Fortn. Rev._, May, 1899, p. 835, and July, 1905, pp. 162 ff.

[597] Though considering totemism only a system of magic, Frazer recognizes that the first germs of a real religion are sometimes found in it (_Fortn. Rev._, July, 1905, p. 163). On the way in which he thinks religion developed out of magic, see _The Golden Bough_,^2 I, pp. 75-78.

[598] _Sur le totemisme_, in _Année Soc._, V, pp. 82-121. Cf., on this same question, Hartland, _Presidential Address_, in _Folk-Lore_, XI, p. 75; A. Lang, _A Theory of Arunta Totemism_, in _Man_, 1904, No. 44; _Conceptional Totemism and Exogamy_, _ibid._, 1907, No. 55; _The Secret of the Totem_, ch. iv; N. W. Thomas, _Arunta Totemism_, in _Man_, 1904, No. 68; P. W. Schmidt, _Die Stellung der Aranda unter der Australischen Stämmen_, in _Zeitschrift für Ethnologie_, 1908, pp. 866 ff.

[599] _Die Aranda_, II, pp. 57-58.

[600] Schulze, _loc cit._, pp. 238-239.

[601] In the conclusion of _Totemism and Exogamy_ (IV, pp. 58-59), Frazer says, it must be admitted, that there is a totemism still more ancient than that of the Arunta: it is the one observed by Rivers in the Banks Islands (_Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia_, in _J.A.I._, XXXIX, p. 172). Among the Arunta it is the spirit of an ancestor who is believed to impregnate the mother; in the Banks Islands, it is the spirit of an animal or vegetable, as the theory supposes. But as the ancestral spirits of the Arunta have an animal or vegetable form, the difference is slight. Therefore we have not mentioned it in our exposition.

[602] _Social Origins_, London, 1903, especially ch. viii, entitled _The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs_, and _The Secret of the Totem_, London, 1905.

[603] In his _Social Origins_ especially, Lang attempts to reconstitute by means of conjecture the form which these primitive groups should have; but it seems superfluous to reproduce these hypotheses, which do not affect his theory of totemism.

[604] On this point, Lang approaches the theory of Julius Pickler (see Pickler and Szomolo, _Der Ursprung des Totemismus. Ein Beitrag zur materialistirchen Geschichtstheorie_, Berlin, 36 pp. in 8vo). The difference between the two hypotheses is that Pickler attributes a higher importance to the pictorial representation of the name than to the name itself.

[605] _Social Origins_, p. 166.

[606] _The Secret of the Totem_, p. 121; cf. pp. 116, 117.

[607] _The Secret of the Totem_, p. 136.

[608] _J.A.I._, Aug., 1888, pp. 53-54; cf. _Nat. Tr._, pp. 89, 488, 498.

[609] "With reverence," as Lang says (_The Secret of the Totem_, p. 111).

[610] Lang adds that these taboos are the basis of exogamic practices.

[611] _Ibid._, p. 125.

[612] However, we have not spoken of the theory of Spencer. But this is because it is only a part of his general theory of the transformation of the ancestor-cult into the nature-cult. As we have described that already, it is not necessary to repeat it.

[613] Except that Lang ascribes another source to the idea of the great gods: as we have already said, he believes that this is due to a sort of primitive revelation. But Lang does not make use of this idea in his explanation of totemism.

[614] For example, in a Kwakiutl myth, an ancestral hero pierces the head of an enemy by pointing a finger at him (Boas, _Vth Rep. on the North. Tribes of Canada_, _B.A.A.S._, 1889, p. 30).

[615] References supporting this assertion will be found on p. 128, n. 1, and p. 320, n. 1.

[616] See Bk. III, ch. ii.

[617] See, for example, Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 482; Schürmann, _The Aboriginal Tribes of Port Lincoln_, in Woods, _Nat. Tr. of S. Australia_, p. 231.

[618] Frazer has even taken many facts from Samoa which he presents as really totemic (See _Totemism_, pp. 6, 12-15, 24, etc.). It is true that we have charged Frazer with not being critical enough in the choice of his examples, but so many examples would obviously have been impossible if there had not really been important survivals of totemism in Samoa.

[619] See Turner, _Samoa_, p. 21 and ch. iv and v.

[620] Alice Fletcher, _A Study of the Omaha Tribe_, in _Smithsonian Rep._ for 1897, pp. 582 f.

[621] Dorsey, _Siouan Sociology_, in _XVth Rep._, p. 238.

[622] _Ibid._, p. 221.

[623] Riggs and Dorsey, _Dakota-English Dictionary_, in _Contrib. N. Amer. Ethnol._, VII, p. 508. Many observers cited by Dorsey identify the word wakan with the words wakanda and wakanta, which are derived from it, but which really have a more precise signification.

[624] _XIth Rep._, p. 372, § 21. Miss Fletcher, while recognizing no less clearly the impersonal character of the wakanda, adds nevertheless that a certain anthropomorphism has attached to this conception. But this anthropomorphism concerns the various manifestations of the wakanda. Men address the trees or rocks where they think they perceive the wakanda, as if they were personal beings. But the wakanda itself is not personified (_Smithsonian Rep. for 1897_, p. 579).

[625] Riggs, _Tah-Koo Wah-Kon_, pp. 56-57, quoted from Dorsey, _XIth Rep._, p. 433, § 95.

[626] _XIth Rep._, p. 380, § 33.

[627] _Ibid._, p. 381, § 35.

[628] _Ibid._, p. 376, § 28; p. 378, § 30; cf. p. 449, § 138.

[629] _Ibid._, p. 432, § 95.

[630] _Ibid._, p. 431, § 92.

[631] _Ibid._, p. 433, § 95.

[632] _Orenda and a Definition of Religion_, in _American Anthropologist_, 1902, p. 33.

[633] _Ibid._, p. 36.

[634] Tesa, _Studi del Thavenet_, p. 17.

[635] Boas, _Kwakiutl_, p. 695.

[636] Swanton, _Social Condition, etc, of the Tlinkit Indians_, _XXVIth Rep._, 1905, p. 451, n. 2.

[637] Swanton, _Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida_, p. 14; cf. _Social Condition, etc._, p. 479.

[638] In certain Melanesian societies (Banks Islands, North New Hebrides) the two exogamic phratries are found which characterize the Australian organization (Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 23 ff.). In Florida, there are regular totems, called _butos_ (_ibid._, p. 31). An interesting discussion of this point will be found in Lang, _Social Origins_, pp. 176 ff. On the same subject, and in the same sense, see W. H. R. Rivers, _Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia_, in _J.A.I._, XXXIX, pp. 156 ff.

[639] _The Melanesians_, p. 118, n. 1. Cf. Parkinson, _Dreissig Jahre in der Südsee_, pp. 178, 392, 394, etc.

[640] An analysis of this idea will be found in Hubert and Mauss, _Théorie Générale de la Magie_, in _Année Sociol._, VII, p. 108.

[641] There are not only totems of clans but also of guilds (A. Fletcher, _Smithsonian Rep. for 1897_, pp. 581 ff.).

[642] Fletcher, _op. cit._, pp. 578 f.

[643] _Ibid._, p. 583. Among the Dakota, the totem is called Wakan. See Riggs and Dorsey, _Dakota Grammar, Texts and Ethnol._, in _Contributions N. Amer. Ethn._, 1893, p. 219.

[644] _James's Account of Long's Expedition in the Rocky Mountains_, I, p. 268. (Quoted by Dorsey, _XIth Rep._, p. 431, § 92.)

[645] We do not mean to say that in principle every representation of religious forces in an animal form is an index of former totemism. But when we are dealing with societies where totemism is still apparent, as is the case with the Dakota, it is quite natural to think that these conceptions are not foreign to it.

[646] See below, same book, ch. ix, § 4, pp. 285 ff.

[647] The first spelling is that of Spencer and Gillen; the second, that of Strehlow.

[648] _Nat. Tr._, p. 548, n. 1. It is true that Spencer and Gillen add: "The idea can be best expressed by saying that an Arungquiltha object is possessed of an evil spirit." But this free translation of Spencer and Gillen is their own unjustified interpretation. The idea of the arungquiltha in no way implies the existence of spiritual beings, as is shown by the context and Strehlow's definition.

[649] _Die Aranda_, II, p. 76, n.

[650] Under the name Boyl-ya (see Grey, _Journal of Two Expeditions_, II, pp. 337-338).

[651] See above, p. 42. Spencer and Gillen recognize this implicitly when they say that the arungquiltha is a "supernatural force." Cf. Hubert and Mauss, _Théorie Générale de la Magie_, in _Année Sociol._, VII, p. 119.

[652] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 191 ff.

[653] Hewitt, _loc. cit._, p. 38.

[654] There is even ground for asking whether an analogous notion is completely lacking in Australia. The word churinga, or tjurunga as Strehlow writes, has a very great similarity, with the Arunta. Spencer and Gillen say that it designates "all that is secret or sacred. It is applied both to the object and to the quality it possesses" (_Nat. Tr._, p. 648, s.v. churinga). This is almost a definition of mana. Sometimes Spencer and Gillen even use this word to designate religious power or force in a general way. While describing a ceremony among the Kaitish, they say that the officiant is "_full of churinga_," that is to say, they continue, of the "magic power emanating from the objects called churinga." Yet it does not seem that the notion of churinga has the same clarity and precision as that of the mana in Melanesia or of the wakan among the Sioux.

[655] Yet we shall see below (this book, ch. viii and ix) that totemism is not foreign to all ideas of a mythical personality. But we shall show that these conceptions are the product of secondary formations: far from being the basis of the beliefs we have just analysed, they are derived from them.

[656] _Loc. cit._, p. 38.

[657] _Rep. Peabody Museum_, III, p. 276, n. (quoted by Dorsey, _XIth Rep._, p. 435).

[658] See above, p. 35.

[659] In the expressions such as [Greek: Zeus yei] or _Ceres succiditur_, it is shown that this conception survived in Greece as well as in Rome. In his _Götternamen_, Usener has clearly shown that the primitive gods of Greece and Rome were impersonal forces thought of only in terms of their attributes.

[660] _Définition du phénomène religieux_, in _Année Sociol._, II, pp. 14-16.

[661] _Preanimistic Religion_, in _Folk-Lore_, 1900, pp. 162-182.

[662] _Ibid._, p. 179. In a more recent work, _The Conception of Mana_ (in _Transactions of the Third International Congress for the History of Religions_, II, pp. 54 ff.), Marrett tends to subordinate still further the animistic conception of mana, but his thought on this point remains hesitating and very reserved.

[663] _Ibid._, p. 168.

[664] This return of preanimism to naturism is still more marked in Clodd, _Preanimistic Stages of Religion_ (_Trans. Third Inter. Congress for the H. of Rel._, I, p. 33).

[665] _Théorie générale de la Magie_, in _Année Sociol._, VII, pp. 108 ff.

[666] _Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst_, in _Globus_, 1904, Vol. LXXXVI, pp. 321, 355, 376, 389; 1905, Vol. LXXXVII, pp. 333, 347, 380, 394, 413.

[667] _Globus_, LXXXVII, p. 381.

[668] He clearly opposes them to all influences of a profane nature (_Globus_, LXXXVI, p. 379a).

[669] It is found even in the recent theories of Frazer. For if this scholar denies to totemism all religious character, in order to make it a sort of magic, it is just because the forces which the totemic cult puts into play are impersonal like those employed by the magician. So Frazer recognizes the fundamental fact which we have just established. But he draws different conclusions because he recognizes religion only where there are mythical personalities.

[670] However, we do not take this word in the same sense as Preuss and Marrett. According to them, there was a time in religious evolution when men knew neither souls nor spirits: a _preanimistic_ phase. But this hypothesis is very questionable: we shall discuss this point below (Bk. II, ch. viii and ix).

[671] On this same question, see an article of Alessandro Bruno, _Sui fenomeni magico-religiosi della communità primitive_, in _Rivista italiana di Sociologia_, XII Year, Fasc. IV-V, pp. 568 ff., and an unpublished communication made by W. Bogoras to the XIV Congress of the Americanists, held at Stuttgart in 1904. This communication is analysed by Preuss in the _Globus_, LXXXVI, p. 201.

[672] "All things," says Miss Fletcher, "are filled with a common principle of life," _Smiths. Rep. for 1897_, p. 579.

[673] Hewitt, in _American Anthropologist_, 1902, p. 36.

[674] _The Melanesians_, pp. 118-120.

[675] _Ibid._, p. 119.

[676] See above, p. 103.

[677] Pickler, in the little work above mentioned, had already expressed, in a slightly dialectical manner, the sentiment that this is what the totem essentially is.

[678] See our _Division du travail social_, 3rd ed., pp. 64 ff.

[679] _Ibid._, p. 76.

[680] This is the case at least with all moral authority recognized as such by the group as a whole.

[681] We hope that this analysis and those which follow will put an end to an inexact interpretation of our thought, from which more than one misunderstanding has resulted. Since we have made constraint the _outward sign_ by which social facts can be the most easily recognized and distinguished from the facts of individual psychology, it has been assumed that according to our opinion, physical constraint is the essential thing for social life. As a matter of fact, we have never considered it more than the material and apparent expression of an interior and profound fact which is wholly ideal: this is _moral authority_. The problem of sociology--if we can speak of _a_ sociological problem--consists in seeking, among the different forms of external constraint, the different sorts of moral authority corresponding to them and in discovering the causes which have determined these latter. The particular question which we are treating in this present work has as its principal object, the discovery of the form under which that particular variety of moral authority which is inherent in all that is religious has been born, and out of what elements it is made. It will be seen presently that even if we do make social pressure one of the distinctive characteristics of sociological phenomena, we do not mean to say that it is the only one. We shall show another aspect of the collective life, nearly opposite to the preceding one, but none the less real (see p. 212).

[682] Of course this does not mean to say that the collective consciousness does not have distinctive characteristics of its own (on this point, see _Représentations individuelles et représentations collectives_, in _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_, 1898, pp. 273 ff.).

[683] This is proved by the length and passionate character of the debates where a legal form was given to the resolutions made in a moment of collective enthusiasm. In the clergy as in the nobility, more than one person called this celebrated night the dupe's night, or, with Rivarol, the St. Bartholomew of the estates (see Stoll, _Suggestion und Hypnotismus in der Völkerpsychologie_, 2nd ed., p. 618, n. 2).

[684] See Stoll, _op. cit._, pp. 353 ff.

[685] _Ibid._, pp. 619, 635.

[686] _Ibid._, pp. 622 ff.

[687] The emotions of fear and sorrow are able to develop similarly and to become intensified under these same conditions. As we shall see, they correspond to quite another aspect of the religious life (Bk. III, ch. v).

[688] This is the other aspect of society which, while being imperative, appears at the same time to be good and gracious. It dominates us and assists us. If we have defined the social fact by the first of these characteristics rather than the second, it is because it is more readily observable, for it is translated into outward and visible signs; but we have never thought of denying the second (see our _Règles de la Méthode Sociologique_, preface to the second edition, p. xx, n. 1).

[689] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 50, 103, 120. It is also generally thought that in the Polynesian languages, the word _mana_ primitively had the sense of authority (see Tregear, _Maori Comparative Dictionary_, s.v.).

[690] See Albert Mathiez, _Les origines des cultes révolutionnaires_ (1789-1792).

[691] _Ibid._, p. 24.

[692] _Ibid._, pp. 29, 32.

[693] _Ibid._, p. 30.

[694] _Ibid._, p. 46.

[695] See Mathiez, _La Théophilanthropie et la Culte décadaire_, p. 36.

[696] See Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 33.

[697] There are even ceremonies, for example, those which take place in connection with the initiation, to which members of foreign tribes are invited. A whole system of messages and messengers is organized for these convocations, without which the great solemnities could not take place (see Howitt, _Notes on Australian Message-Sticks and Messengers_, in _J.A.I._, 1889; _Nat. Tr._, pp. 83, 678-691; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 159; _Nor. Tr._, p. 551).

[698] The corrobbori is distinguished from the real religious ceremonies by the fact that it is open to women and uninitiated persons. But if these two sorts of collective manifestations are to be distinguished, they are, none the less, closely related. We shall have occasion elsewhere to come back to this relationship and to explain it.

[699] Except, of course, in the case of the great bush-beating hunts.

[700] "The peaceful monotony of this part of his life," say Spencer and Gillen (_Nor. Tr._, p. 33).

[701] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 683. He is speaking of the demonstrations which take place when an ambassador sent to a group of foreigners returns to camp with news of a favourable result. Cf. Brough Smyth, I, p. 138; Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 222.

[702] See Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 96 f.; _Nor. Tr._, p. 137; Brough Smyth, II, p. 319.--This ritual promiscuity is found especially in the initiation ceremonies (Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 267, 381; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 657), and in the totemic ceremonies (_Nor. Tr._, pp. 214, 298, 237). In these latter, the ordinary exogamic rules are violated. Sometimes among the Arunta, unions between father and daughter, mother and son, and brothers and sisters (that is in every case, relationship by blood) remain forbidden (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 96 f.).

[703] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 535, 545. This is extremely common.

[704] These women were Kingilli themselves, so these unions violated the exogamic rules.

[705] _Nor. Tr._, p. 237.

[706] _Nor. Tr._, p. 391. Other examples of this collective effervescence during the religious ceremonies will be found in _Nat. Tr._, pp. 244-246, 365-366, 374, 509-510 (this latter in connection with a funeral rite). Cf. _Nor. Tr._, pp. 213, 351.

[707] Thus we see that this fraternity is the logical consequence of totemism, rather than its basis. Men have not imagined their duties towards the animals of the totemic species because they regarded them as kindred, but have imagined the kinship to explain the nature of the beliefs and rites of which they were the object. The animal was considered a relative of the man because it was a sacred being like the man, but it was not treated as a sacred being because it was regarded as a relative.

[708] See below, Bk. III, ch i, § 3.

[709] At the bottom of this conception there is a well-founded and persistent sentiment. Modern science also tends more and more to admit that the duality of man and nature does not exclude their unity, and that physical and moral forces, though distinct, are closely related. We undoubtedly have a different conception of this unity and relationship than the primitive, but beneath these different symbols, the truth affirmed by the two is the same.

[710] We say that this derivation is sometimes indirect on account of the industrial methods which, in a large number of cases, seem to be derived from religion through the intermediacy of magic (see Hubert and Mauss, _Théorie générale de la Magie_, _Année Sociol._, VII, pp. 144 ff.); for, as we believe, magic forces are only a special form of religious forces. We shall have occasion to return to this point several times.

[711] At least after he is once adult and fully initiated, for the initiation rites, introducing the young man to the social life, are a severe discipline in themselves.

[712] Upon this particular aspect of primitive societies, see our _Division du travail social_, 3rd ed., pp. 123, 149, 173 ff.

[713] We provisionally limit ourselves to this general indication: we shall return to this idea and give more explicit proof, when we speak of the rites (Bk. III).

[714] On this point, see Achelis, _Die Ekstase_, Berlin, 1902, especially ch. i.

[715] Cf. Mauss, _Essai sur les variations saisonnières des sociétés eskimos_, in _Année Sociol._, IX, p. 127.

[716] Thus we see how erroneous those theories are which, like the geographical materialism of Ratzel (see especially his _Politische Geographie_), seek to derive all social life from its material foundation (either economic or territorial). They commit an error precisely similar to the one committed by Maudsley in individual psychology. Just as this latter reduced all the psychical life of the individual to a mere epiphenomenon of his physiological basis, they seek to reduce the whole psychical life of the group to its physical basis. But they forget that ideas are realities and forces, and that collective representations are forces even more powerful and active than individual representations. On this point, see our _Représentations individuelles et représentations collectives_, in the _Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale_, May, 1898.

[717] See above, pp. 188 and 194.

[718] Even the _excreta_ have a religious character. See Preuss, _Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst_, especially ch. ii, entitled _Der Zauber der Defäkation_ (_Globus_, LXXXVI, pp. 325 ff.).

[719] This principle has passed from religion into magic: it is the _totem ex parte_ of the alchemists.

[720] On this point see _Règles de la méthode sociologique_, pp. 5 ff.

[721] Procopius of Gaza, _Commentarii in Isaiam_, 496.

[722] See Thévenot, _Voyage au Levant_, Paris, 1689, p. 638. The fact was still round in 1862.

[723] Lacassagne, _Les Tatouages_, p. 10.

[724] Lombroso, _L'homme criminel_, I, p. 292.

[725] Lombroso, _ibid._, I, pp. 268, 285, 291 f.; Lacassagne, _op. cit._, p. 97.

[726] See above, p. 127.

[727] For the authority of the chiefs, see Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 10; _Nor. Tr._, p. 25; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 295 ff.

[728] At least in Australia. In America, the population is more generally sedentary; but the American clan represents a relatively advanced form of organization.

[729] To make sure of this, it is sufficient to look at the chart arranged by Thomas, _Kinship and Marriage in Australia_, p. 40. To appreciate this chart properly, it should be remembered that the author has extended, for a reason unknown to us, the system of totemic filiation in the paternal line clear to the western coast of Australia, though we have almost no information about the tribes of this region, which is, moreover, largely a desert.

[730] The stars are often regarded, even by the Australians, as the land of souls and mythical personages, as will be established in the next chapter: that means that they pass as being a very different world from that of the living.

[731] _Op. cit._, I, p. 4. Cf. Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 243.

[732] Of course it is to be understood that, as we have already pointed out (see above, p. 155), this choice was not made without a more or less formal agreement between the groups that each should take a different emblem from its neighbours.

[733] The mental state studied in this paragraph is identical to the one called by Lévy-Bruhl the law of participation (_Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures_, pp. 76 ff.). The following pages were written when this work appeared and we publish them without change; we confine ourselves to adding certain explanations showing in what we differ from M. Lévy-Bruhl in our understanding of the facts.

[734] See above, p. 230.

[735] Another cause has contributed much to this fusion; this is the extreme contagiousness of religious forces. They seize upon every object within their reach, whatever it may be. Thus a single religious force may animate the most diverse things which, by that very fact, become closely connected and classified within a single group. We shall return again to this contagiousness, when we shall show that it comes from the social origins of the idea of sacredness (Bk. III, ch. i, _in fine_).

[736] Lévy-Bruhl, _op. cit._, pp. 77 ff.

[737] _Ibid._, p. 79.

[738] See above, p. 146.

[739] This is the case with the Gnanji; see _Nor. Tr._, pp. 170, 546; cf. a similar case in Brough Smyth, II, p. 269.

[740] _Australian Aborigines_, p. 51.

[741] There certainly was a time when the Gnanji women had souls, for a large number of women's souls still exist to-day. However, they never reincarnate themselves; since in this tribe the soul animating a new-born child is an old reincarnated soul, it follows from the fact that women's souls do not reincarnate themselves, that women cannot have a soul. Moreover, it is possible to explain whence this absence of reincarnation comes. Filiation among the Gnanji, after having been uterine, is now in the paternal line: a mother no longer transmits her totem to her child. So the woman no longer has any descendants to perpetuate her; she is the _finis familiæ suæ_. To explain this situation, there are only two possible hypotheses; either women have no souls, or else they are destroyed after death. The Gnanji have adopted the former of these two explanations; certain peoples of Queensland have preferred the latter (see Roth, _Superstition, Magic and Medicine_, in _N. Queensland Ethnog._, No. 5, § 68).

[742] "The children below four or five years of age have neither soul nor future life," says Dawson. But the fact he thus relates is merely the absence of funeral rites for young children. We shall see the real meaning of this below.

[743] Dawson, p. 51; Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 35; Eylmann, p. 188.

[744] _Nor. Tr._, p. 542; Schürmann, _The Aboriginal Tribes of Port Lincoln_, in Woods, p. 235.

[745] This is the expression used by Dawson, p. 50.

[746] Strehlow, I, p. 15, n. 1; Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 246; this is the theme of the myth of the vampire.

[747] Strehlow, I, p. 15; Schulze, p. 244; Dawson, p. 51. It is true that it is sometimes said that souls have nothing corporeal; according to certain testimony collected by Eylmann (p. 188), they are _ohne Fleisch und Blut_. But these radical negations leave us sceptical. The fact that offerings are not made to the souls of the dead in no way implies, as Roth thinks (_Superstition, Magic_, etc., § 65), that they do not eat.

[748] Roth, _ibid._, § 65; _Nor. Tr._, p. 530. It sometimes happens that the soul emits odours (Roth, _ibid._, § 68).

[749] Roth, _ibid._, § 67; Dawson, p. 51.

[750] Roth, _ibid._, § 65.

[751] Schürmann, _Aborig. Tr. of Port Lincoln_, in Woods, p. 235.

[752] Parker, _The Euahlayi_, pp. 29, 35; Roth, _ibid._, §§ 65, 67, 68.

[753] Roth, _ibid._, § 65; Strehlow, I, p. 15.

[754] Strehlow, I, p. 14, n. 1.

[755] Frazer, _On Certain Burial Customs, as Illustrative of the Primitive Theory of the Soul_, in _J.A.I._, XV, p. 66.

[756] This is the case with the Kaitish and the Unmatjera; see _Nor. Tr._, p. 506; and _Nat. Tr._, p. 512.

[757] Roth, _ibid._, §§ 65, 66, 67, 68.

[758] Roth, _ibid._, § 68; this says that when someone faints after a loss of blood, it is because the soul is gone. Cf. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 38.

[759] Parker, _The Euahlayi_, pp. 29, 35; Roth, _ibid._, § 65.

[760] Strehlow, I, pp. 12, 14. In these passages he speaks of evil spirits which kill little children and eat their souls, livers and fat, or else their souls, livers and kidneys. The fact that the soul is thus put on the same plane as the different viscera and tissues and is made a food like them shows the close connection it has with them. Cf. Schulze, p. 245.

[761] For example, among the peoples on the Pennefather River (Roth, _ibid._, § 68), there is a name for the soul residing in the heart (_Ngai_), another for the one in the placenta (_Cho-i_), and a third for the one which is confounded with the breath (_Wanji_). Among the Euahlayi, there are three or even four souls (Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 35).

[762] See the description of the _Urpmilchima_ rite among the Arunta (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 503 ff.).

[763] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 497 and 508.

[764] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 547, 548.

[765] _Ibid._, pp. 506, 527 ff.

[766] Meyer, _The Encounter Bay Tribe_, in Woods, p. 198.

[767] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 551, 463; _Nat. Tr._, p. 553.

[768] _Nor. Tr._, p. 540.

[769] Among the Arunta and Loritja, for example (Strehlow, I, p. 15, n. 2; II, p. 77). During life, the soul is called _gumna_, and _ltana_ after death. The _ltana_ of Strehlow is identical with the _ulthana_ of Spencer and Gillen (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 514 ff.). The same is true of the tribes on the Bloomfield River (Roth, _Superstition_, etc., §66).

[770] Eylmann, p. 188.

[771] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 524, 491, 496.

[772] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 542, 504.

[773] Mathews, _Ethnol. Notes on the Aboriginal Tribes of N.S. Wales and Victoria_, in _Journal and Proc. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 287.

[774] Strehlow, I, pp. 15 ff. Thus, according to Strehlow, the dead live in an island in the Arunta theory, but according to Spencer and Gillen, in a subterranean place. It is probable that the two myths coexist and are not the only ones. We shall see that even a third has been found. On this conception of an island of the dead, see Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 498; Schürmann, _Aborig. Tr. of Port Lincoln_, in Woods, p. 235; Eylmann, p. 189.

[775] Schulze, p. 244.

[776] Dawson, p. 51.

[777] In these same tribes evident traces of a more ancient myth will be found, according to which the dead live in a subterranean place (Dawson, _ibid._).

[778] Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, pp. 18 f.; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 473; Strehlow, I, p. 16.

[779] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 498.

[780] Strehlow, I, p. 16; Eylmann, p. 189; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 473.

[781] These are the spirits of the ancestors of a special clan, the clan of a certain poisonous gland (_Giftdrüsenmänner_).

[782] Sometimes the work of the missionaries is evident. Dawson speaks of a real hell opposed to paradise; but he too tends to regard this as a European importation.

[783] Dorsey, _XIth Rep._, pp. 419-420, 422, 485. Cf. Marillier, _La survivance de l'âme et l'idée de justice chez les peuples non-civilisés_, _Rapport de l'Ecole des Hautes Études_, 1893.

[784] They may be doubled temporarily, as we shall see in the next chapter: but these duplications add nothing to the number of the souls capable of reincarnation.

[785] Strehlow, I, p. 2.

[786] _Nat. Tr._, p. 73, n. 1

[787] On this set of conceptions, see _Nat. Tr._, pp. 119, 123-127, 387 ff.; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 145-174. Among the Gnanji, it is not necessarily near the oknanikilla that the conception takes place. But they believe that each couple is accompanied in its wanderings over the continent by a swarm of souls of the husband's totem. When the time comes, one of these souls enters the body of the wife and fertilizes it, wherever she may be (_Nor. Tr._, p. 169).

[788] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 512 f.; cf. ch. x and xi.

[789] _Nat. Tr._, p. 119.

[790] Among the Kaitish (_Nor. Tr._, p. 154) and the Urabunna (_Nor. Tr._, p. 146).

[791] This is the case among the Warramunga and the related tribes, the Walpari, Wulmala, Worgaia, Tjingilli (_Nor. Tr._, p. 161), and also the Umbaia and the Gnanji (_ibid._, p. 170).

[792] Strehlow, I, pp. 15-16. For the Loritja, see Strehlow, p. 7.

[793] Strehlow even goes so far as to say that sexual relations are not even thought to be a necessary condition or sort of preparation for conception (II, p. 52, n. 7). It is true that he adds a few lines below that the old men know perfectly well the connection which unites sexual intercourse and generation, and that as far as animals are concerned, the children themselves know it. This lessens the value of his first assertion a little.

[794] In general, we employ the terminology of Spencer and Gillen rather than that of Strehlow because it is now consecrated by long usage.

[795] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 124, 513.

[796] I, p. 5. _Ngarra_ means eternal, according to Strehlow. Among the Loritja, only rocks fulfil this function.

[797] Strehlow translates it by _Kinderkeime_ (children-germs). It is not true that Spencer and Gillen have ignored the myth of the _ratapa_ and the customs connected with it. They explicitly mention it in _Nat. Tr._, pp. 336 ff. and 552. They noticed, at different points of the Arunta territory, the existence of rocks called _Erathipa_ from which the _spirit children_, or the children's souls, disengage themselves, to enter the bodies of women and fertilize them. According to Spencer and Gillen, _Erathipa_ means child, though, as they add, it is rarely used in this sense in ordinary conversation (_ibid._, p. 338).

[798] The Arunta are divided into four or eight matrimonial classes. The class of a child is determined by that of his father; inversely, that of the latter may be deduced from the former (see Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 70 ff.; Strehlow, I, pp. 6 ff.). It remains to be seen how the ratapa has a matrimonial class; we shall return to this point again.

[799] Strehlow, II, p. 52. It happens sometimes, though rarely, that disputes arise over the nature of the child's totem. Strehlow cites such a case (II, p. 53).

[800] This is the same word as the _namatwinna_ found in Spencer and Gillen (_Nat. Tr._, p. 541).

[801] Strehlow, II, p. 53.

[802] Strehlow, II, p. 56.

[803] Mathews attributes a similar theory of conception to the Tjingilli (_alias_ Chingalee) (_Proc. Roy. Geogr. Trans. and Soc. Queensland_, XXII (1907), pp. 75-76).

[804] It sometimes happens that the ancestor who is believed to have thrown the namatuna shows himself to the woman in the form of an animal or a man; this is one more proof of the affinity of the ancestral soul for a material form.

[805] Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 237.

[806] This results from the fact that the ratapa can incarnate itself only in the body of a woman belonging to the same matrimonial class as the mother of the mythical ancestor. So we cannot understand how Strehlow could say (I, p. 42, _Anmerkung_) that, except in one case, the myths do not attribute determined matrimonial classes to the Alcheringa ancestors. His own theory of conception proves the contrary (cf. II, pp. 53 ff.).

[807] Strehlow, II, p. 58.

[808] The difference between the two versions becomes still smaller and is reduced to almost nothing, if we observe that, when Spencer and Gillen tell us that the ancestral soul is incarnated in the woman, the expressions they use are not to be taken literally. It is not the whole soul which comes to fertilize the mother, but only an emanation from this soul. In fact, according to their own statement, a soul equal or even superior in power to the one that is incarnated continues to live in the nanja tree or rock (see _Nat. Tr._, p. 514); we shall have occasion to come back to this point again (cf. below, p. 275).

[809] II, pp. 76, 81. According to Spencer and Gillen, the churinga is not the soul of the ancestor, but the object in which his soul resides. At bottom, these two mythological interpretations are identical, and it is easy to see how one has been able to pass into the other: the body is the place where the soul resides.

[810] Strehlow, I, p. 4.

[811] Strehlow, I, pp. 53 f. In these stories, the ancestor begins by introducing himself into the body of the woman and causing there the troubles characteristic of pregnancy. Then he goes out, and only then does he leave his namatuna.

[812] Strehlow, II, p. 76.

[813] _Ibid._, p. 81. This is the word for word translation of the terms employed, as Strehlow gives them: _Dies du Körper bist; dies du der nämliche._ In the myth, a civilizing hero, Mangarkunjerkunja, says as he presents to each man the churinga of his ancestor: "You are born of this churinga" (_ibid._, p. 76).

[814] Strehlow, II, p. 76.

[815] Strehlow, _ibid._

[816] At bottom, the only real difference between Strehlow and Spencer and Gillen is the following one. For these latter, the soul of the individual, after death, returns to the nanja tree, where it is again confounded with the ancestor's soul (_Nat. Tr._, p. 513); for Strehlow, it goes to the isle of the dead, where it is finally annihilated. In neither myth does it survive individually. We are not going to seek the cause of this divergence. It is possible that there has been an error of observation on the part of Spencer and Gillen, who do not speak of the isle of the dead. It is also possible that the myth is not the same among the eastern Arunta, whom Spencer and Gillen observed particularly, as in the other parts of the tribe.

[817] Strehlow, II, p. 51.

[818] _Ibid._, II, p. 56.

[819] _Ibid._, I, pp. 3-4.

[820] _Ibid._, II, p. 61.

[821] See above, p. 183.

[822] Strehlow, II, p. 57; I, p. 2.

[823] Strehlow, II, p. 57.

[824] Roth, _Superstition, Magic_, etc., § 74.

[825] In other words, the totemic species is made up of the group of ancestors and the mythological species much more than of the regular animal or vegetable species.

[826] See above, p. 254.

[827] Strehlow, II, p. 76.

[828] Strehlow, _ibid._

[829] Strehlow, II, pp. 57, 60, 61. Strehlow calls the list of totems the list of ratapa.

[830] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 475 ff.

[831] _The Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie Tribe of Australian Aborigines_, in Curr, II, p. 47.

[832] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 482.

[833] _Ibid._, p. 487.

[834] Taplin, _Folk-Lore, Customs, Manners, etc., of the South Australian Aborig._, p. 88.

[835] The clan of each ancestor has its special camp underground; this camp is the miyur.

[836] Mathews, in _Jour. of Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 293. He points out the same belief among other tribes of Victoria (_ibid._, p. 197).

[837] Mathews, _ibid._, p. 349.

[838] J. Bishop, _Die Niol-Niol_, in _Anthropos_, III, p. 35.

[839] Roth, _Superstition_, etc., § 68; cf. § 69a, gives a similar case from among the natives on the Proserpine River. To simplify the description, we have left aside the complications due to differences of sex. The souls of daughters are made out of the choi of their mother, though these share with their brothers the ngai of their father. This peculiarity, coming perhaps from two systems of filiation which have been in use successively, has nothing to do with the principle of the perpetuity of the soul.

[840] _Ibid._, p. 16.

[841] _Die Tlinkit-Indianer_, p. 282.

[842] Swanton, _Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida_, pp. 117 ff.

[843] Boas, _Sixth Rep. of the Comm. on the N.W. Tribes of Canada_, p. 59.

[844] Lafitau, _M[oe]urs des sauvages Amériquains_, II, p. 434; Petitot, _Monographie des Dénè-Dindjié_, p. 59.

[845] See above, pp. 134 ff.

[846] See above, p. 137.

[847] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 147; cf. _ibid._, p. 769.

[848] Strehlow (I, p. 15, n. 2) and Schulze (_loc. cit._, p. 246) speak of the soul, as Howitt here speaks of the totem, as leaving the body to go to eat another soul. Likewise, as we have seen above, the altjira or maternal totem shows itself in dreams, just as a soul or spirit does.

[849] Fison and Howitt, _Kurnai and Kamilaroi_, p. 280.

[850] _Globus_, Vol. CXI, p. 289. In spite of the objections of Leonhardi, Strehlow maintains his affirmations on this point (see Strehlow, III, p. xi). Leonhardi finds a contradiction between this assertion and the theory according to which the ratapa emanate from trees, rocks or churinga. But the totemic animal incarnates the totem just as much as the nanja-tree or rock does, so they may fulfil the same function. The two things are mythological equivalents.

[851] _Notes on the West Coastal Tribes of the Northern Territory of S. Australia_, in _Trans. of the Roy. Soc. of S. Aust._, XXXI (1907), p. 4. Cf. _Man_, 1909, No. 86.

[852] Among the Wakelbura, where, according to Curr and Howitt, each matrimonial class has its own totems, the animal shows the class (see Curr, III, p. 28); among the Buandik, it reveals the clan (Mrs. James S. Smith, _The Buandik Tribes of S. Australian Aborigines_, p, 128). Cf. Howitt, _On Some Australian Beliefs_, in _J.A.I._, XIII, p. 191; XIV, p. 362; Thomas, _An American View of Totemism_, in _Man_, 1902, No. 85; Mathews, _Journ. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, pp. 347-348; Brough Smyth, I, p. 110; _Nor. Tr._, p. 513.

[853] Roth, _Superstition_, etc., § 83. This is probably a form of sexual totemism.

[854] Prinz zu Wied, _Reise in das innere Nord-Amerika_, II, p. 190.

[855] K. von den Steinen, _Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Bräsiliens_, 1894, pp. 511, 512.

[856] See Frazer, _Golden Bough_^2, I, pp. 250, 253, 256, 257, 258.

[857] _Third Rep._, pp. 229, 233.

[858] _Indian Tribes_, IV, p. 86.

[859] For example, among the Batta of Sumatra (see _Golden Bough_^2, III, p. 420), in Melanesia (Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 178), in the Malay Archipelago (Tylor, _Remarks on Totemism_, in _J.A.I._, New Series, I, p. 147). It is to be remarked that the cases where the soul clearly presents itself after death in an animal form all come from the societies where totemism is more or less perverted. This is because the idea of the soul is necessarily ambiguous wherever the totemic beliefs are relatively pure, for totemism implies that it participate in the two kingdoms at the same time. So it cannot become either one or the other exclusively, but takes one aspect or the other, according to the circumstances. As totemism develops, this ambiguity becomes less necessary, while at the same time, spirits more actively demand attention. Then the marked affinities of the soul for the animal kingdom are manifested, especially after it is freed from the human body.

[860] See above, p. 170. On the generality of the doctrine of metempsychosis, see Tylor, II, pp. 8 ff.

[861] Even if we believe that religious and moral representations constitute the essential elements of the idea of the soul, still we do not mean to say that they are the only ones. Around this central nucleus are grouped other states of consciousness having this same character, though to a slighter degree. This is the case with all the superior forms of the intellectual life, owing to the special price and dignity attributed to them by society. When we devote our lives to science or art, we feel that we are moving in a circle of things that are above bodily sensations, as we shall have occasion to show more precisely in our conclusion. This is why the highest functions of the intelligence have always been considered specific manifestations of the soul. But they would probably not have been enough to establish the idea of it.

[862] F. Tregear, _The Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary_, pp. 203-205.

[863] This is the thesis of Preuss in his articles in the _Globus_ which we have cited several times. It seems that M. Lévy-Bruhl also tends towards this conception (see his _Fonctions mentales_, etc., pp. 92-93).

[864] On this point, see our _Suicide_, pp. 233 ff.

[865] It may be objected perhaps that unity is the characteristic of the personality, while the soul has always been conceived as multiple, and as capable of dividing and subdividing itself almost to infinity. But we know to-day that the unity of the person is also made up of parts and that it, too, is capable of dividing and decomposing. Yet the notion of personality does not vanish because of the fact that we no longer think of it as a metaphysical and indivisible atom. It is the same with the popular conceptions of personality which find their expression in the idea of the soul. These show that men have always felt that the human personality does not have that absolute unity attributed to it by certain metaphysicians.

[866] For all this, we do not deny the importance of the individual factor: this is explained from our point of view just as easily as its contrary. If the essential element of the personality is the social part of us, on the other hand there can be no social life unless distinct individuals are associated, and this is richer the more numerous and different from each other they are. So the individual factor is a condition of the impersonal factor. And the contrary is no less true, for society itself is an important source of individual differences (see our _Division du travail social_, 3rd. ed., pp. 267 ff.).

[867] Roth, _Superstition, Magic_, etc., §§ 65, 68; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 514, 516.

[868] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 521, 515; Dawson, _Austral. Aborig._, p. 58; Roth, _op. cit._, § 67.

[869] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 517.

[870] Strehlow, II, p. 76 and n. 1; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 514, 516.

[871] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 513.

[872] On this question, see Negrioli, _Dei Genii presso i Romani_; the articles _Daimon_ and _Genius_ in the _Dict. of Antiq._; Preller, _Romische Mythologie_, II, pp. 195 ff.

[873] Negrioli, _ibid._, p. 4.

[874] _Ibid._, p. 8.

[875] _Ibid._, p. 7.

[876] _Ibid._, p. 11. Cf. Samter, _Der Ursprung der Larencultus_, in _Archiv f. Religions-wissenschaft_, 1907, pp. 368-393.

[877] Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 237.

[878] Strehlow, I, p. 5. Cf. Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 133; Gason, in Curr, II, p. 69.

[879] See the case of a Mura-mura who is considered the spirit of certain hot springs, in Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 482.

[880] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 313 f.; Mathews, _Journ. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 351. Among the Dieri there is also a Mura-mura whose function is to produce rain (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 798 f.).

[881] Roth. _Superstition_, etc., § 67. Cf. Dawson, p. 59.

[882] Strehlow, I, pp. 2 ff.

[883] See above, p. 249.

[884] _Nor. Tr._, ch. vii.

[885] Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 277.

[886] Strehlow, I, p. 5.

[887] It is true that some nanja-trees and rocks are not situated around the ertnatulunga; they are scattered over different parts of the tribal territory. It is said that these are places where an isolated ancestor disappeared into the ground, lost a member, let some blood flow, or lost a churinga which was transformed into a tree or rock. But these totemic sites have only a secondary importance; Strehlow calls them _kleinere Totemplätze_ (I, pp. 4-5). So it may be that they have taken this character only by analogy with the principal totemic centres. The trees and rocks which, for some reason or other, remind one of those found in the neighbourhood of an ertnatulunga, inspire analogous sentiments, so the myth which was formed in regard to the latter was extended to the former.

[888] _Nat. Tr._, p. 139.

[889] Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 21. The tree serving for this use is generally one of those figuring among the sub-totems of the individual. As a reason for this choice, they say that as it is of the same family as the individual, it should be better disposed to giving him aid (_ibid._, p. 29).

[890] _Ibid._, p. 36.

[891] Strehlow, II, p. 81.

[892] Parker, _op. cit._, p. 21.

[893] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 249-253.

[894] Turner, _Samoa_, p. 17.

[895] These are the very words used by Codrington (p. 251).

[896] This close connection between the soul, the guardian genius and the moral conscience of the individual is especially apparent among certain peoples of Indonesia. "One of the seven souls of the Tobabatak is buried with the placenta; though preferring to live in this place, it may leave it to warn the individual or to manifest its approbation when he does well. So in one sense, it plays the rôle of a moral conscience. However, its communications are not confined to the domain of moral facts. It is called the younger brother of the soul, as the placenta is called the younger brother of the child.... In war, it inspires the man with courage to march against the enemy" (Warneck, _Der bataksche Ahnen und Geistercult_, in _Allg. Missionszeitschrift_, Berlin, 1904. p. 10. Cf. Kruijt, _Het Animisme in den indischen Archipel_, p. 25).

[897] It still remains to be investigated how it comes that after a certain moment in evolution, this duplication of the soul was made in the form of an individual totem rather than of a protecting ancestor. Perhaps this question has an ethnological rather than a sociological interest. However, the manner in which this substitution was probably effected may be represented as follows.

The individual totem commenced by playing a merely complimentary rôle. Those individuals who wished to acquire powers superior to those possessed by everybody, did not and could not content themselves with the mere protection of the ancestor; so they began to look for another assistant of the same sort. Thus it comes about that among the Euahlayi, the magicians are the only ones who have or who can procure individual totems. As each one has a collective totem in addition, he finds himself having many souls. But there is nothing surprising in this plurality of souls: it is the condition of a superior power.

But when collective totemism once begins to lose ground, and when the conception of the protecting ancestor consequently begins to grow dim in the mind, another method must be found for representing the double nature of the soul, which is still felt. The resulting idea was that, outside of the individual soul, there was another, charged with watching over the first one. Since this protecting power was no longer demonstrated by the very fact of birth, men found it natural to employ, for its discovery, means analogous to those used by magicians to enter into communion with the forces of whose aid they thus assured themselves.

[898] For example, see Strehlow, II, p. 82.

[899] Wyatt, _Adelaide and Encounter Bay Tribes_, in Woods, p. 168.

[900] Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, pp. 62 f.; Roth, _Superstition_, etc., § 116; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 356, 358; Strehlow, pp. 11-12.

[901] Strehlow, I, pp. 13-14; Dawson, p. 49.

[902] Strehlow, I, pp. 11-14; Eylmann, pp. 182, 185; Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 211; Schürmann, _The Aborig. Tr. of Port Lincoln_, in Woods, p. 239.

[903] Eylmann, p. 182.

[904] Mathews, _Journ. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 345; Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, p. 467; Strehlow, I, p. 11.

[905] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 390-391. Strehlow calls these evil spirits _Erintja_; but this word is evidently equivalent to Oruncha. Yet there is a difference in the ways the two are presented to us. According to Spencer and Gillen, the Oruncha are malicious rather than evil; they even say (p. 328) that the Arunta know no necessarily evil spirits. On the contrary, the regular business of Strehlow's Erintja is to do evil. Judging from certain myths given by Spencer and Gillen (_Nat. Tr._, p. 390), they seem to have touched up the figures of the Oruncha a little: these were originally ogres (_ibid._, p. 331).

[906] Roth, _Superstition_, etc., § 115; Eylmann, p. 190.

[907] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 390 f.

[908] _Ibid._, p. 551.

[909] _Ibid._, pp. 326 f.

[910] Strehlow, I, p. 14. When there are twins, the first one is believed to have been conceived in this manner.

[911] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 327.

[912] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 358, 381, 385; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 334; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 501, 530.

[913] As the magician can either cause or cure sickness, we sometimes find, besides these magical spirits whose function is to do evil, others who forestall or neutralize the evil influence of the former. Cases of this sort will be found in _Nor. Tr._, pp. 501-502. The fact that the latter are magic just as much as the former is well shown by the fact that the two have the same name, among the Arunta. So they are different aspects of a single magic power.

[914] Strehlow, I, p. 9. Putiaputia is not the only personage of this sort of whom the Arunta myths speak: certain portions of the tribe give a different name to the hero to whom the same invention is ascribed. We must not forget that the extent of the territory occupied by the Arunta prevents their mythology from being completely homogeneous.

[915] Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 493.

[916] _Ibid._, p. 498.

[917] _Ibid._, pp. 498 f.

[918] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 135.

[919] _Ibid._, pp. 476 ff.

[920] Strehlow, I, pp. 6-8. The work of Mangarkunjerkunja must be taken up again later among other heroes; for, according to a belief that is not confined to the Arunta, a time came when men forgot the teaching of their first initiators and became corrupt.

[921] This is the case, for example, of Atnatu (Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 153) and the Witurna (_Nor. Tr._, p. 498), If Tendun did not establish these rites, it is he who is charged with the direction of their celebration (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 670).

[922] _Nor. Tr._, p. 499.

[923] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 493; _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 197 and 247; Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 492.

[924] For example, see _Nor. Tr._, p. 499.

[925] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 338, 347, 499.

[926] It is true that Spencer and Gillen maintain that these mythical beings play no moral rôle (_Nor. Tr._, p. 493); but this is because they give too narrow a meaning to the word. Religious duties are duties: so the fact of looking after the manner in which these are observed concerns morals, especially because all morals have a religious character at this period.

[927] The fact was observed as early as 1845 by Eyre, _Journals_, etc., II, p. 362, and, before Eyre, by Henderson, _Observations on the Colonies of N.S. Wales and Van Diemen's Land_, p. 147.

[928] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 488-508.

[929] Among the Kulin, Wotjobaluk and Woëworung (Victoria).

[930] Among the Yuin, Ngarrigo and Wolgal (New South Wales).

[931] Among the Kamilaroi and Euahlayi (northern part of New South Wales); and more to the centre, in the same province, among the Wonghibon and the Wiradjuri.

[932] Among the Wiimbaio and the tribes on the lower Murray (Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, p. 137; Brough Smyth, I, pp. 423, n., 431).

[933] Among the tribes on the Herbert River (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 498).

[934] Among the Kurnai.

[935] Taplin, p. 55; Eylmann, p. 182.

[936] It is undoubtedly to this supreme Mura-mura that Gason makes allusion in the passage already cited (Curr, II, p. 55).

[937] _Nat. Tr._, p. 246.

[938] Between Baiame, Bunjil and Daramulun on the one hand, and Altjira on the other, there is the difference that the latter is completely foreign to all that concerns humanity; he did not make man and does not concern himself with what they do. The Arunta have neither love nor fear for him. But when this conception is carefully observed and analysed, it is hard to admit that it is primitive; for if the Altjira plays no rôle, explains nothing, serves for nothing, what made the Arunta imagine him? Perhaps it is necessary to consider him as a sort of Baiame who has lost his former prestige, as an ancient god whose memory is fading away. Perhaps, also, Strehlow has badly interpreted the testimony he has gathered. According to Eylmann, who, it is to be admitted, is neither a very competent nor a very sure observer, Altjira made men (_op. cit._, p. 134). Moreover, among the Loritja, the corresponding personage, Tukura, is believed to celebrate the initiation ceremonies himself.

[939] For Bunjil, see Brough Smyth, I, p. 417; for Baiame, see Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, p. 136; for Daramulun, see Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 495.

[940] On the composition of Bunjil's family, for example, see Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 128, 129, 489, 491; Brough Smyth, I, pp. 417, 423; for Baiame's, see L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, pp. 7, 66, 103; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 502, 585, 407; for Nurunderi's, Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, pp. 57 f. Of course, there are all sorts of variations in the ways in which the families of these great gods are conceived. The personage who is a brother here, is a son there. The number and names of the wives vary with the locality.

[941] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 128.

[942] Brough Smyth, I, pp. 430, 431.

[943] _Ibid._, I, p. 432, n.

[944] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 498, 538; Mathews, _Jour. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 343; Ridley, p. 136.

[945] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 538; Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, pp. 57-58.

[946] L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 8.

[947] Brough Smyth, I, p. 424.

[948] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 492.

[949] According to certain myths, he made men but not women; this is related of Bunjil. But then, the origin of women is attributed to his son-brother, Pallyan (Brough Smyth, I, pp. 417 and 423).

[950] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 489, 492; Mathews, _Journ. of the Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 340.

[951] L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 7; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 630.

[952] Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, p. 136; L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 114.

[953] L. Parker, _More Austr. Leg. Tales_, pp. 84-89, 90-91.

[954] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 495, 498, 543, 563, 564; Brough Smyth, I, p. 429; L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, pp. 79.

[955] Ridley, p. 137.

[956] L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, pp. 90-91.

[957] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 495; Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, p. 58.

[958] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 538, 543, 553, 555, 556; Mathews, _loc. cit._, p. 318; L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, pp. 6, 79, 80.

[959] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 498, 528.

[960] Howitt, _ibid._, p. 493; L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 76.

[961] L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 76; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 493, 612.

[962] Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, p. 153; L. Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 67; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 585; Mathews, _loc. cit._, p. 343. In opposition to Baiame, Daramulun is sometimes presented as a necessarily evil spirit (L. Parker, _loc. cit._; Ridley, in Brough Smyth, II, p. 285).

[963] _J.A.I._, XXI, pp. 292 ff.

[964] _The Making of Religion_, pp. 187-293.

[965] Lang, _ibid._, p. 331. The author confines himself to stating that the hypothesis of St. Paul does not appear to him "the most unsatisfactory."

[966] The thesis of Lang has been taken up again by Father Schmidt in the _Anthropos_ (1908-1909). Replying to Sydney Hartland, who had criticized Lang's theory in an article entitled _The "High Gods" of Australia_, in _Folk-Lore_ (Vol. IX, pp. 290 ff.), Father Schmidt undertook to show that Baiame, Bunjil, etc., are eternal gods, creators, omnipotent, omniscient and guardians of the moral order. We are not going to enter into this discussion, which seems to have neither interest nor importance. If these different adjectives are given a relative sense, in harmony with the Australian mind, we are quite ready to accept them, and have even used them ourselves. From this point of view, omnipotent means having more power than the other sacred beings; omniscient, seeing things that escape the vulgar and even the greatest magicians; guardian of the moral order, one causing the rules of Australian morality to be respected, howsoever much these may differ from our own. But if they want to give these words meanings which only a spiritualistic Christian could attach to them, it seems useless to discuss an opinion so contrary to the principles of the historical method.

[967] On this question, see N. W. Thomas, _Baiame and Bell-bird--A Note on Australian Religion_, in _Man_, 1905, No. 28. Cf. Lang, _Magic and Religion_, p. 25. Waitz had already upheld the original character of this conception in his _Anthropologie d. Naturvölker_, pp. 796-798.

[968] Dawson, p. 49; Meyer, _Encounter Bay Tribe_, in Woods, pp. 205, 206; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 481, 491, 492, 494; Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, p. 136.

[969] Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, pp. 55-56.

[970] L. Parker, _More Austr. Leg. Tales_, p. 94.

[971] Brough Smyth, I, pp. 425-427.

[972] Taplin, _ibid._, p. 60.

[973] Taplin, _ibid._, p. 61.

[974] "The world was created by beings called Nuralie; these beings, who had already long existed, had the forms of crows or of eagle-hawks" (Brough Smyth, I, pp. 423-424).

[975] "Bayamee," says Mrs. Parker, "is for the Euahlayi what the Alcheringa is for the Arunta" (_The Euahlayi_, p. 6).

[976] See above, pp. 257 f.

[977] In another myth, reported by Spencer and Gillen, a wholly analogous rôle is filled by two personages living in heaven, named Ungambikula (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 388 ff.).

[978] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 493.

[979] Parker, _The Euahlayi_, pp. 62-66, 67. This is because the great god is connected with the bull-roarer, which is identified with the thunder; for the roaring of this ritual instrument is connected with the rolling of thunder.

[980] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 135. The word meaning totem is written _thundung_ by Howitt.

[981] Strehlow, I, pp. 1-2 and II, p. 59. It will be remembered that, among the Arunta, the maternal totem was quite probably the real totem at first.

[982] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 555.

[983] _Ibid._, pp. 546, 560.

[984] Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, pp. 136, 156. He is represented in this form during the initiation rites of the Kamilaroi. According to another legend, he is a black swan (L. Parker, _More Aust. Leg. Tales_, p. 94).

[985] Strehlow, I, p. 1.

[986] Brough Smyth, I, pp. 423-424.

[987] _Nat. Tr._, p. 492.

[988] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 128.

[989] Brough Smyth, I, pp. 417-423.

[990] See above, p. 108.

[991] There are phratries bearing the names Kilpara (crow) and Mukwara. This is the explanation of the myth itself, which is reported by Brough Smyth (I, pp. 423-424).

[992] Brough Smyth, I, pp. 425-427. Cf. Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 486. In this case, Karween is identified with the blue heron.

[993] Brough Smyth, I, p. 423.

[994] Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, p. 136; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 585; Mathews, _J. of R. S. of N.S. Wales_, XXVIII (1894), p. 111.

[995] See above, p. 145. Cf. Father Schmidt, _The Origin of the Idea of God_, in _Anthropos_, 1909.

[996] _Op. cit._, p. 7. Among these same people, the principal wife of Baiame is also represented as the mother of all the totems, without belonging to any totem herself (_ibid._, pp. 7, 79).

[997] See Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 511 f., 513, 602 ff.; Mathews, _J. of R.S. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 270. They invite to these feasts not only the tribes with whom a regular _connubium_ is established, but also those with whom there are quarrels to be arranged; the vendetta, half-ceremonial and half-serious, take place on these occasions.

[998] See above, p. 155.

[999] There is one form of ritual especially which we leave completely aside; this is the oral ritual which must be studied in a special volume of the _Collection de l'Année Sociologique_.

[1000] See the article _Taboo_ in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, written by Frazer.

[1001] Facts prove the reality of this inconvenience. There is no lack of writers who, putting their trust in the word, have believed that the institution thus designated was peculiar to primitive peoples in general, or even to the Polynesians (see Réville, _Religion des peuples primitifs_, II, p. 55; Richard, _La Femme dans l'histoire_, p. 435).

[1002] See above, p. 43.

[1003] This is not saying that there is a radical break of continuity between the religious and the magic interdictions: on the contrary, it is one whose true nature is not decided. There are interdicts of folk-lore of which it is hard to say whether they are religious or magic. But their distinction is necessary, for we believe that the magic interdicts cannot be understood except as a function of the religious ones.

[1004] See above, p. 149.

[1005] Many of the interdictions between sacred things can be traced back, we think, to those between the sacred and the profane. This is the case with the interdicts of age or rank. For example, in Australia, there are sacred foods which are reserved for the initiated. But these foods are not all sacred to the same degree; there is a hierarchy among them. Nor are the initiated all equal. They do not enjoy all their religious rights from the first, but only enter step by step into the domain of religious things. They must pass through a whole series of ranks which are conferred upon them one after another, after special trials and ceremonies; it requires months and sometimes even years to reach the highest rank. Now special foods are assigned to each of these ranks; the men of the lower ranks may not touch the foods which rightfully belong to the men of the superior ones (see Mathews, _Ethnol. Notes_, etc., _loc. cit._ pp. 262 ff.; Parker, _The Euahlayi_, p. 23; Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, pp. 611 ff.; _Nat. Tr._, pp. 470 ff.). So the more sacred repels the less sacred; but this is because the second is profane in relation to the first. In fine, all the interdictions arrange themselves in two classes: the interdictions between the sacred and the profane and the purely sacred and the impurely sacred.

[1006] See above, p. 137.

[1007] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 463.

[1008] _Nat. Tr._, p. 538; _Nor. Tr._, p. 640.

[1009] _Nor. Tr._, p. 531.

[1010] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 518 f.; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 449.

[1011] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 498; Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 231.

[1012] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 499.

[1013] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 451.

[1014] If the alimentary interdictions which concern the totemic plant or vegetable are the most important, they are far from being the only ones. We have seen that there are foods which are forbidden to the non-initiated because they are sacred; now very different causes may confer this character. For example, as we shall presently see, the birds which are seen on the tops of trees are reputed to be sacred, because they are neighbours to the great god who lives in heaven. Thus, it is possible that for different reasons the flesh of certain animals has been specially reserved for the old men and that consequently it has seemed to partake of the sacred character recognized in these latter.

[1015] See Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 7.

[1016] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 674.--There is one interdiction of contact of which we say nothing because it is very hard to determine its exact nature: this is sexual contact. There are religious periods when a man cannot have commerce with a woman (_Nor. Tr._, pp. 293, 295; _Nat. Tr._, p. 397). Is this because the woman is profane or because the sexual act is dreaded? This question cannot be decided in passing. We set it aside along with all that concerns conjugal and sexual rites. It is too closely connected with the problems of marriage and the family to be separated from them.

[1017] _Nat. Tr._, p. 134; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 354.

[1018] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 624.

[1019] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 572.

[1020] _Ibid._, p. 661.

[1021] _Nat. Tr._, p. 386; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 655, 665.

[1022] Among the Wiimbaio (Howitt, _ibid._, p. 451).

[1023] Howitt, _ibid._, pp. 624, 661, 663, 667; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 221, 382 ff.; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 335, 344, 353, 369.

[1024] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 221, 262, 288, 303, 378, 380.

[1025] _Ibid._, p. 302.

[1026] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 581.

[1027] _Nor. Tr._, p. 227.

[1028] See above, p. 288.

[1029] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 498; _Nor. Tr._, p. 526; Taplin, _Narrinyeri_, p. 19.

[1030] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 466, 469 ff.

[1031] Wyatt, _Adelaide and Encounter Bay Tribes_, in Woods, p. 165.

[1032] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 470.

[1033] _Ibid._, p. 657; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 139; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 580 ff.

[1034] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 537.

[1035] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 544, 597, 614, 620.

[1036] For example, the hair belt which he ordinarily wears (Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 171).

[1037] _Ibid._, p. 624 ff.

[1038] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 556.

[1039] _Ibid._, p. 587.

[1040] This act takes on a sacred character, it is true, when the elements eaten are sacred. But in itself, the act is so very profane that eating a sacred food always constitutes a profanation. The profanation may be permitted or even ordered, but, as we shall see below, only on condition that rites attenuating or expiating it precede or accompany it. The existence of these rites shows that, by itself, the sacred thing should not be eaten.

[1041] _Nor. Tr._, p. 263.

[1042] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 171.

[1043] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 674. Perhaps the rule against talking during the great religious solemnities is due to the same cause. Men speak, and especially in a high voice, during ordinary life; then, in the religious life they ought to keep still or talk in a low voice. This same consideration is not foreign to the alimentary interdictions (see above, p. 128).

[1044] _Nor. Tr._, p. 33.

[1045] Since there is a sacred principle, the soul, within each man, from the very first, the individual is surrounded by interdicts, the original form of the moral interdicts which isolate and protect the human person to-day. Thus the corpse of his victim is considered dangerous for a murderer (Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 492), and is taboo for him. Now the interdicts having this origin are frequently used by individuals as a means of withdrawing certain things from common use and thus establishing a property right over them. "When a man goes away from the camp, leaving his arms and food there," says Roth, speaking of the tribes on the Palmer River (North Queensland), "if he urinates near the objects he leaves, they become _tami_ (equivalent to taboo) and he may be sure of finding them intact on his return" (_North Queensland Ethnography_, in _Records of the Australian Museum_, Vol. VII, No. 2, p. 75). This is because the urine, like the blood, is believed to contain some of the sacred force which is personal to the individual. So it keeps strangers at a distance. For the same reasons, the spoken word may also serve as a vehicle for these same influences; that is how it becomes possible to prevent access to an object by a mere verbal declaration. This power of making interdicts varies with different individuals; it is greater as their character is more sacred. Men have this privilege almost to the exclusion of women (Roth cites one single case of a taboo imposed by women); it is at its maximum with the chiefs and old men, who use it to monopolize whatever things they find it convenient to (Roth, _ibid._, p. 77). Thus the religious interdict becomes a right of property and an administrative rule.

[1046] See below, this book, ch. ii.

[1047] See above, p. 10.

[1048] See above, p. 219.

[1049] See Hubert and Mauss, _Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice_, in _Mélanges d'histoire des religions_, pp. 22 ff.

[1050] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 560, 657, 659, 661. Even the shadow of a woman must not fall upon him (_ibid._, p. 633). Whatever he has touched must not be touched by a woman (_ibid._, p. 621).

[1051] _Ibid._, pp. 561, 563, 670 f.; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 223; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 340, 342.

[1052] The word Jeraeil, for example, among the Kurnai, or Kuringal among the Yuin and Wolgal (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 518, 617).

[1053] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 348.

[1054] Howitt, p. 561.

[1055] Howitt, pp. 633, 538, 560.

[1056] _Ibid._, p. 674; Parker, _Euahlayi_, p. 75.

[1057] Ridley, _Kamilaroi_, p. 154.

[1058] Howitt, p. 563.

[1059] _Ibid._, p. 611.

[1060] _Ibid._, pp. 549, 674.

[1061] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 580, 596, 604, 668, 670; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 223, 351.

[1062] Howitt, p. 557.

[1063] _Ibid_., p. 604; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 351.

[1064] Howitt, p. 611.

[1065] Howitt, p. 589.

[1066] One may compare these ascetic practices with those used at the initiation of a magician. Just like the young neophyte, the apprentice magician is submitted to a multitude of interdictions, the observation of which contributes to his acquisition of his specific powers (see _L'Origine des pouvoirs magiques_, in Hubert and Mauss, _Mélanges d'histoire des religions_, pp. 171, 173, 176). The same is true for the husband and wife on the day before and the day after the wedding (taboos of the betrothed and newly married); this is because marriage also implies a grave change of condition. We limit ourselves to mentioning these facts summarily, without stopping over them; for the first concern magic, which is not our subject, and the second have to do with that system of juridico-religious rules which relates to the commerce of the sexes, the study of which will be possible only in conjunction with the other precepts of primitive conjugal morality.

[1067] It is true that Preuss interprets these facts by saying that suffering is a way of increasing a man's magic force (_die menschliche Zauberkraft_); from this expression, one might believe that suffering is a magic rite, not a religious one. But as we have already pointed out, Preuss gives the name magic, without great precision, to all anonymous and impersonal forces, whether they belong to magic or religion. Of course, there are tortures which are used to make magicians; but many of those which we have described are a part of the real religious ceremonies, and, consequently, it is the religious state of the individuals which they modify.

[1068] Preuss, _Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst_, in _Globus_, LXXXVIII, pp. 309-400. Under this same rubric Preuss classes a great number of incongruous rites, for example, effusions of blood which act in virtue of the positive qualities attributed to blood and not because of the suffering which they imply. We retain only those in which suffering is an essential element of the rite and the cause of its efficacy.

[1069] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 331 f.

[1070] _Ibid._, p. 335. A similar practice will be found among the Dieri (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 658 ff.).

[1071] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 214 ff.--From this example we see that the rites of initiation sometimes have all the characteristics of hazing. In fact, hazing is a real social institution which arises spontaneously every time that two groups, inequal in their moral and social situation, come into intimate contact. In this case, the one considering itself superior to the other resists the intrusion of the new-comers; it reacts against them is such a way as to make them aware of the superiority it feels. This reaction, which is produced automatically and which takes the form of more or less grave cruelties quite naturally, is also destined to shape the individuals for their new existence and assimilate them into their new environment. So it is a sort of initiation. Thus it is explained how the initiation, on its side, takes the form of hazing. It is because the group of old men is superior in religious and moral dignity to that of the young men, and yet the first must assimilate the second. So all the conditions for hazing are given.

[1072] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 372.

[1073] _Ibid._, p. 335.

[1074] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 675.

[1075] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 569, 604.

[1076] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 251; _Nor. Tr._, 341, 352.

[1077] Among the Warramunga, the operation must be made by persons favoured with beautiful hair.

[1078] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 675; this concerns the tribes on the lower Darling.

[1079] Eylmann, _op. cit._, p. 212.

[1080] _Ibid._

[1081] References on this question will be found in our memoir on _La Prohibition de l'incest et ses origines_ (_Année Sociol._, I, pp. 1 ff.), and Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_, pp. 37 ff.

[1082] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 133.

[1083] See above, p. 121.

[1084] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 134 f.; Strehlow, I, p. 78.

[1085] Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, pp. 167, 299.

[1086] In addition to the ascetic rites of which we have spoken, there are some positive ones whose object is to charge, or, as Howitt says, to saturate the initiate with religiousness (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 535). It is true that instead of religiousness, Howitt speaks of magic powers, but as we know, for the majority of the ethnologists, this word merely signifies religious virtues of an impersonal nature.

[1087] Howitt, _ibid._, pp. 674 f.

[1088] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 454. Cf. Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 561.

[1089] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 557.

[1090] _Ibid._, p. 560.

[1091] See above, pp. 303, 306. Cf. Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 498; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 506, 507, 518 f., 526; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 449, 461, 469; Mathews, in _J. of R.S. of N.S. Wales_, XXXVIII, p. 274; Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 231; Wyatt, _Adelaide and Encounter Bay Tribes_, in Woods, pp. 165, 198.

[1092] _Australian Aborigines_, p. 42.

[1093] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 470-471.

[1094] On this question, see Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, pp. 152 ff., 446, 481; Frazer, art. _Taboo_ in _Encyc. Brit._, Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religions_, pp. 59 f.; Crawley, _Mystic Rose_, ch. ii-ix; Van Gennep, _Tabou et Totemisme à Madagascar_, ch. iii.

[1095] See references above, p. 128, n. 1. Cf. _Nor. Tr._, pp. 323, 324; _Nat. Tr._, p. 168; Taplin, _The Narrinyeri_, p. 16; Roth, _North Queensland Ethnography_. Bull. 10, _Records of Austral. Museum_, VII, p. 76.

[1096] It is to be remembered that when it is a religious interdict that has been violated, these sanctions are not the only ones; there is also a real punishment or a stigma of opinion.

[1097] See Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religions_, pp. 67-68. We say nothing of the recent, and slightly explicit, theory of Crawley (_Mystic Rose_, ch. iv-vii), according to which the contagiousness of taboos is due to a false interpretation of the phenomena of contagion. It is arbitrary. As Jevons very truly says in the passage to which we refer, the contagious character of sacredness is affirmed _a priori_, and not on a faith in badly interpreted experiences.

[1098] See above, p. 229.

[1099] See above, p. 194.

[1100] See above, p. 190.

[1101] This has been well demonstrated by Preuss in his articles in the _Globus_.

[1102] It is true that this contagiousness is not peculiar to religious forces; those belonging to magic have the same property; yet it is evident that they do not correspond to objectified social sentiments. It is because magic forces have been conceived on the model of religious forces. We shall come back to this point again (see p. 361).

[1103] See above, p. 235.

[1104] Strehlow, I, p. 4.

[1105] Of course the word designating these celebrations changes with the tribes. The Urabunna call them _Pitjinta_ (_Nor. Tr._, p. 284); the Warramunga _Thalaminta_ (_ibid._, p. 297), etc.

[1106] Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 243; Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 169 f.

[1107] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 170 ff.

[1108] Of course the women are under the same obligation.

[1109] The apmara is the only thing which he brought from the camp.

[1110] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 185-186.

[1111] _Nor. Tr._, p. 288.

[1112] _Ibid._

[1113] _Nor. Tr._, p. 312.

[1114] _Ibid._

[1115] We shall see below that these clans are much more numerous than Spencer and Gillen say.

[1116] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 184-185.

[1117] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 438, 461, 464; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 596 ff.

[1118] _Nat. Tr._, p. 201.

[1119] _Ibid._, p. 206. We use the words of Spencer and Gillen, and with them, we say that "spirits or spirit parts of kangaroo" are disengaged from the rocks. Strehlow (III, p. 7) contests the exactness of this expression. According to him, the rite makes real kangaroos, with living bodies, appear. But this dispute is without interest, just as the one about the notion of the _ratapa_ was (see above, p. 252). The kangaroo germs thus escaping from the rock are not visible, so they are not made out of the same substance as the kangaroos which we see. This is all that Spencer and Gillen mean to say. It is quite certain, moreover, that they are not pure spirits such as a Christian might conceive. Like human souls, they have a material form.

[1120] _Nat. Tr._, p. 181.

[1121] A tribe on the east of Lake Eyre.

[1122] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 287 f.

[1123] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 798. Cf. Howitt, _Legends of the Dieri and Kindred Tribes of Central Australia_, in _J.A.I._, XXIV, pp. 124 ff. Howitt believes that the ceremony is performed by the men of the totem, but is not prepared to say so definitely.

[1124] _Nor. Tr._, p. 295.

[1125] _Ibid._, p. 314.

[1126] _Ibid._, pp. 296 f.

[1127] _Nat. Tr._, p. 170.

[1128] _Ibid._, p. 519.--The analysis of the rites which have just been studied is based solely on the observations of Spencer and Gillen. Since this chapter was written, Strehlow has published the third fascicule of his work, which deals with the positive cult and especially the Intichiuma, or, as he says, the rites of the _mbatjalkatiuma_. But we have found nothing in this publication which obliges us to modify the preceding description or even to complete it with important additions. The most interesting thing taught by Strehlow on this subject is that the effusions and oblations of blood are much more frequent than one would suspect from the account of Spencer and Gillen (see Strehlow, III, pp. 13, 14, 19, 29, 39, 43, 46, 56, 67, 80, 89).

Moreover, the information given by Strehlow in regard to the cult must be taken carefully, for he was not a witness of the rites he describes; he confined himself to collecting oral testimony, which is generally rather summary (see fasc. III, Preface of Leonhardi, p. v). It may even be asked if he has not confused the totemic ceremonies of initiation with those which he calls _mbatjalkatiuma_, to an excessive degree. Of course, he has made a praiseworthy attempt to distinguish them and has made two of their distinctive characteristics very evident. In the first place, the Intichiuma always takes place at a sacred spot to which the souvenir of some ancestor is attached, while the initiation ceremonies may be celebrated anywhere. Secondly, the oblations of blood are special to the Intichiuma, which proves that they are close to the heart of the ritual (III, p. 7). But in the description which he gives us of the rites, we find facts belonging indifferently to each species of ceremony. In fact, in what he describes under the name mbatjalkatiuma, the young men generally take an important part (for example, see pp. 11, 13, etc.), which is characteristic of the initiation. Also, it seems as though the place of the rite is arbitrary, for the actors construct their scene artificially. They dig a hole into which they go; he seldom makes any allusion to sacred trees or rocks and their ritual rôle.

[1129] _Nat. Tr._, p. 203. Cf. Meyer, _The Encounter Bay Tribe_, in Woods, p. 187.

[1130] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 204.

[1131] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 205-207.

[1132] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 286 f.

[1133] _Ibid._, p. 294.

[1134] _Ibid._, p. 296.

[1135] Meyer, _in_ Woods, p. 187.

[1136] We have already cited one case; others will be found in Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 208; _Nor. Tr._, p. 286.

[1137] The Walpari, Wulmala, Tjingilli, Umbaia.

[1138] _Nor. Tr._, p. 318.

[1139] For the second part of the ceremony as for the first, we have followed Spencer and Gillen. On this subject, the recent fascicule of Strehlow only confirms the observations of his predecessors, at least on all essential points. He recognizes that after the first ceremony (two months afterwards, he says, p. 13), the chief of the clan eats the totemic animal or plant ritually and that after this he raises the interdicts; he calls this operation _die Freigabe des Totems zum allgemeinen Gebrauch_ (III, p. 7). He even tells us that this operation is important enough to have a special word for it in the Arunta language. He adds, it is true, that this ritual consummation is not the only one, but that the chiefs and old men sometimes eat the sacred plant or animal before the first ceremony and that the performer of the rite does so after the celebration. The fact is not improbable; these consummations are means employed by the officiants or assistants to acquire virtues which they acquire; it is not surprising if they are numerous. It does not invalidate the account of Spencer and Gillen at all, for the rite upon which they insist, and not without reason, is the _Freigabe des Totems_.

On only two points does Strehlow contest the allegations of Spencer and Gillen. In the first place, he declares that the ritual consumption does not take place in every case. This cannot be doubted, for there are some animals and plants which are not edible. But still, the rite is very frequent; Strehlow himself cites numerous examples (pp. 13, 14, 19, 23, 33, 36, 50, 59, 67, 68, 71, 75, 80, 84, 89, 93). Secondly, we have seen that according to Spencer and Gillen, if the chief does not eat the totemic animal or plant, he will lose his powers. Strehlow assures us that the testimony of natives does not confirm this assertion. But this question seems to us to be quite secondary. The assured fact is that the ritual consumption is required, so it must be thought useful or necessary. Now, like every communion, it can only serve to confer needed virtues upon the person communicating. It does not follow from the fact that the natives, or some of them, have forgotten this function of the rite, that it is not real. Is it necessary to repeat that worshippers are generally ignorant of the real reasons for their practices?

[1140] See _The Religion of the Semites_, Lectures vi-xi, and the article _Sacrifice_ in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (Ninth Edition).

[1141] See Hubert and Mauss, _Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice_, in _Mélanges d'histoire des religions_, pp. 40 ff.

[1142] See the explanation of this rule, above, p. 229.

[1143] See Strehlow, III, p. 3.

[1144] We must not forget that among the Arunta it is not completely forbidden to eat the totemic animal.

[1145] See other facts in Frazer, _Golden Bough_, pp. 348 ff.

[1146] _The Religion of the Semites_, pp. 275 ff.

[1147] _The Religion of the Semites_, pp. 318-319.

[1148] On this point, see Hubert and Mauss, _Mélanges d'histoire des religions_, preface, p. v ff.

[1149] _The Religion of the Semites_, pp. 390 ff.

[1150] Smith cites some cases himself in _The Rel. of the Semites_, p. 231.

[1151] For example, see Exodus xxix. 10-14; Leviticus ix. 8-11; it is their own blood which the priests of Baal pour over the altar (1 Kings xviii. 28).

[1152] Strehlow, III, p. 12, verse 7.

[1153] At least when it is complete: in certain cases, it may be reduced to one of its elements.

[1154] Strehlow says that the natives "regard these ceremonies as a sort of divine service, just as a Christian regards the exercises of his religion" (III, p. 9).

[1155] It should be asked, for example, whether the effusions of blood and the offerings of hair which Smith regards as acts of communion are not real oblations (see Smith,_ op_. _cit._, pp. 320 ff.).

[1156] The expiatory rites, of which we shall speak more fully in the fifth chapter of this same book, are almost exclusively oblations. They are communions only secondarily.

[1157] This is why we frequently speak of the ceremonies as if they were addressed to living personalities (see, for example, texts by Krichauff and Kemp, in Eylmann, p. 202).

[1158] In a philosophical sense, the same is true of everything, for nothing exists except in representation. But as we have shown (p. 227), this proposition is doubly true for religious forces, for there is nothing in the constitution of things which corresponds to sacredness.

[1159] See Mauss, _Essai sur les variations saisonnières des sociétés Eskimos_, in _Année Sociol._, IX, pp. 96 ff.

[1160] _Nat. Tr._, p. 176.

[1161] _Nor. Tr._, p. 179. It is true that Spencer and Gillen do not say expressly that this is an Intichiuma. But the context allow of no doubt on this point.

[1162] In the index of totem names, Spencer and Gillen write _Untjalka_ (_Nor. Tr._, p. 772).

[1163] _Nat. Tr._, p. 182.

[1164] _Nat. Tr._, p. 193.

[1165] Schulze, _loc. cit._, p. 221; cf. p. 243.

[1166] Strehlow, III, pp. 11, 31, 36, 37, 68, 72, 84.

[1167] _Ibid._, p. 100.

[1168] _Ibid._, pp. 81, 100, 112, 115.

[1169] _Nor. Tr._, p. 310.

[1170] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 285-286. Perhaps the object of these movements of the lance is to pierce the clouds.

[1171] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 294-296. It is curious that, on the contrary, the Anula regard the rainbow as productive of rain (_ibid._, p. 314).

[1172] The same process is employed among the Arunta (Strehlow, III, p. 132). Of course we may ask if this effusion of blood is not an oblation designed to win the powers which produce rain. However, Gason says distinctly that this is a way of imitating the water which falls.

[1173] Gason, _The Dieri Tribe_, in Curr, II, pp. 66-68. Howitt (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 798-800) mentions other rites of the Dieri for obtaining rain.

[1174] _Ethnological Notes on the Western Australian Aborigines_, in _Internationales Archiv. f. Ethnographie_, XVI, pp. 6-7. Cf. Withnal, _Marriage Rites and Relationship_ in _Man_, 1903, p. 42.

[1175] We presume that sub-totems may have _tarlow_, for, according to Clement, certain clans have several totems.

[1176] Clement says a tribal family.

[1177] We shall explain below (p. 362) why this is incorrect.

[1178] On this classification, see Frazer, _Lectures on the Early History of Kingship_, pp. 37 ff.; Hubert and Mauss, _Théorie générale de la Magie_, pp. 61 ff.

[1179] We say nothing of what has been called the law of opposition, for, as MM. Hubert and Mauss have shown, a contrary produces its opposite only through the intermediacy of a similar (_Théorie générale de la Magie_, p. 70).

[1180] _Lectures on the History of Kingship_, p. 39.

[1181] It is applicable in the sense that there is really an association of the statue and the person encharmed. But it is true that this association is the simple product of an association of ideas by similarity. The true determining cause of the phenomenon is the contagiousness peculiar to religious forces, as we have shown.

[1182] For the causes determining this outward manifestation, see above, pp. 230 ff.

[1183] M. Lévy-Bruhl, _Les Fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures_, pp. 61-68.

[1184] _Golden Bough_^2, I, pp. 69-75.

[1185] We do not wish to say that there was ever a time when religion existed without magic. Probably as religion took form, certain of its principles were extended to non-religious relations, and it was thus supplemented by a more or less developed magic. But if these two systems of ideas and practices do not correspond to distinct historical phases, they have a relation of definite derivation between them. This is all we have sought to establish.

[1186] _Loc. cit._, pp. 108 ff.

[1187] See above, pp. 203 f.

[1188] Of course animal societies do exist. However, the word does not have exactly the same sense when applied to men and to animals. The institution is a characteristic fact of human societies; but animals have no institutions.

[1189] The conception of cause is not the same for a scholar and for a man with no scientific culture. Also, many of our contemporaries understand the principle of causality differently, as they apply it to social facts and to physico-chemical facts. In the social order, men frequently exhibit a conception of causality singularly like that which was at the basis of magic for a long time. One might even ask if a physicist and a biologist represent the causal relation in the same fashion.

[1190] Of course these ceremonies are not followed by an alimentary communion. According to Strehlow, they have another name, at least when they concern non-edible plants: they are called, not mbatjalkatiuma, but _knujilelama_ (Strehlow, III, p. 96).

[1191] Strehlow, III, p. 8.

[1192] The Warramunga are not the only ones among whom the Intichiuma takes the form of a dramatic representation. It is also found among the Tjingilli, the Umbaia, the Wulmala, the Walpari and even the Kaitish, though in certain of its features the ritual of these latter resembles that of the Arunta (_Nor. Tr._, p. 291, 309, 311, 317). If we take the Warramunga as a type, it is because they have been studied the best by Spencer and Gillen.

[1193] This is the case with the Intichiuma of the black cockatoo (see above, p. 353).

[1194] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 300 ff.

[1195] One of these two actors does not belong to the Black Snake clan, but to that of the Crow. This is because the Crow is supposed to be an "associate" of the Black Snake: in other words, it is a sub-totem.

[1196] _Nor. Tr._, p. 302.

[1197] _Ibid._, p. 305.

[1198] See Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 188; Strehlow, III, p. 5.

[1199] Strehlow himself recognizes this: "The totemic ancestor and his descendant, who represents him (_der Darsteller_) are presented as one in these sacred hymns." (III, p. 6). As this incontestable fact contradicts the theory according to which ancestral souls do not reincarnate themselves, Strehlow adds, it is true, in a note, that "in the course of the ceremony there is no real incarnation of the ancestor in the person who represents him." If Strehlow wishes to say that the incarnation does not take place on the occasion of the ceremony, then nothing is more certain. But if he means that there is no incarnation at all, we do not understand how the officiant and the ancestor can be confounded.

[1200] Perhaps this difference is partially due to the fact that among the Warramunga each clan is thought to be descended from one single ancestor about whom the legendary history of the clan centres. This is the ancestor whom the rite commemorates; now the officiant need not be descended from him. One might even ask if these mythical chiefs, who are sorts of demigods, are submitted to reincarnation.

[1201] In this Intichiuma, three assistants represent ancestors "of a considerable antiquity"; they play a real part (_Nat. Tr._, pp. 181-182). It is true that Spencer and Gillen add that these are ancestors posterior to the Alcheringa. Nevertheless, mythical personages are represented in the course of the rite.

[1202] Sacred rocks and water-holes are not mentioned. The centre of the ceremony is the image of an emu drawn on the ground, which can be made anywhere.

[1203] We do not mean to say that all the ceremonies of the Warramunga are of this type. The example of the white cockatoo, of which we spoke above, proves that there are exceptions.

[1204] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 226 ff. On this same subject, cf. certain passages of Eylmann which evidently refer to the same mythical being (_Die Eingeborenen_, etc., p. 185). Strehlow also mentions a mythical snake among the Arunta (_Kulaia_, water-snake) which may not differ greatly from the Wollunqua (Strehlow, I, p. 78; cf. II, p. 71, where the Kulaia is found in a list of totems).

[1205] We use the Arunta words, in order not to complicate our terminology; the Warramunga call this mythical period Wingara.

[1206] "It is not easy to express in words what is in reality rather a vague feeling amongst the natives, but after carefully watching the different series of ceremonies, we were impressed with the feeling that the Wollunqua represented to the native mind the idea of a dominant totem" (_Nor. Tr._, p. 248).

[1207] One of the most solemn of these ceremonies is the one which we have had occasion to describe above (p. 217), in the course of which an image of the Wollunqua is designed on a sort of hillock which is then torn to pieces in the midst of a general effervescence.

[1208] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 227, 248.

[1209] Here are the terms of Spencer and Gillen in the only passage in which they speak of a possible connection between the Wollunqua and rain. A few days after the rite about the hillock, "the old men say that they have heard Wollunqua speak, that he was satisfied with what had passed and that he was going to send rain. The reason for this prophecy was that they, as well as ourselves, had heard thunder rolling at a distance." To such a slight extent is the production of rain the immediate object of the ceremony that they did not attribute it to Wollunqua until several days later, and then after accidental circumstances. Another fact shows how vague the ideas of the natives are on this point. A few lines below, thunder is spoken of as a sign, not of the Wollunqua's satisfaction, but of its discontent. In spite of these prognostics, continue our authors, "the rain did not fall. But some days later, they heard the thunder rolling in the distance again. The old men said that the Wollunqua was grumbling because he was not contented" with the way in which the rite had been celebrated. Thus a single phenomenon, the noise of thunder, is sometimes interpreted as a sign of a favouring disposition, and sometimes as a mark of evil intentions.

However, there is one detail of the ritual which, if we accept the explanation of it proposed by Spencer and Gillen, is directly efficient. According to them, the destruction of the hillock was intended to frighten the Wollunqua and to prevent it, by magic constraint, from leaving its retreat. But this interpretation seems very doubtful to us. In fact, in the very case of which we were speaking, where it was announced that the Wollunqua was dissatisfied, this dissatisfaction was attributed to the fact that they had neglected to take away the debris of the hillock. So this removal is demanded by the Wollunqua itself, and in no way intended to intimidate it and exercise a coercive influence over it. This is probably merely one case of a more general rule which is in force among the Warramunga: the instruments of the cult must be destroyed after each ceremony. Thus the ritual ornamentations with which the officiants are decorated are violently torn off from them when the rite is terminated (_Nor. Tr._, p. 205).

[1210] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 207-208.

[1211] _Ibid._, p. 210.

[1212] See, in the list of totems drawn up by Strehlow, Nos. 432-442 (II, p. 72).

[1213] See Strehlow, III, p, 8. Among the Arunta there is also a totem _Worra_ which greatly resembles the "laughing boy" totem of Warramunga (_ibid._, and III, p. 124). _Worra_ means young men. The object of the ceremony is to make the young men take more pleasure in the game _labara_ (for this game, see Strehlow, I, p. 55, n. 1).

[1214] See above, p. 373.

[1215] A case of this sort will be found in _Nor. Tr._, p. 204.

[1216] _Nat. Tr._, p. 118 and n. 2, pp. 618 ff.; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 716 ff. There are some sacred ceremonies from which women are not wholly excluded (see, for example, _Nor. Tr._, pp. 375 ff.); but this is exceptional.

[1217] See _Nat. Tr._, pp. 329 ff.; _Nor. Tr._, pp. 210 ff.

[1218] This is the case, for example, with the corrobbori of the Molonga among the Pitta-Pitta of Queensland and the neighbouring tribes (see Roth, _Ethnog. Studies among the N.W. Central Queensland Aborigines_, pp. 120 ff.).--References for the ordinary corrobbori will be found in Stirling, _Rep. of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia_, Part IV, p. 72, and in Roth, _op. cit._, pp. 117 ff.

[1219] On this question see the excellent work of Culin, _Games of the North American Indians (XXIVth Rep. of the Bureau of Am. Ethnol._).

[1220] See above, p. 81.

[1221] Especially in sexual matters. In the ordinary corrobbori, sexual licence is frequent (see Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 96-97, and _Nor. Tr._, pp. 136-137). On sexual licence in popular feasts in general, see Hagelstrange, _Süddeutsches Bauernleben im Mittelalter_, pp. 221 ff.

[1222] Thus the exogamic rules must be violated in the course of certain religious ceremonies (see above, p. 216, n. 1). A precise ritual meaning probably could not be found for these excesses. It is merely a mechanical consequence of the state of super-excitation provoked by the ceremony. It is an example of rites having no definite object themselves, but which are mere discharges of energy (see above, p. 381). The native does not assign them a definite end either; he merely says that if these licences are not committed, the rite will not produce its effects; the ceremony will fail.

[1223] Here are the very words used by Spencer and Gillen: "They (the ceremonies connected with the totems) are often, though by no means always, associated with the performance of the ceremonies attendant upon initiation of young men, or are connected with the Intichiuma" (_Nor. Tr._, p. 178).

[1224] We leave aside the question of what this character consists in. It is a problem which would lead us into a very long and technical development and which must therefore be treated by itself. Moreover, it does not concern the propositions established in this present work.

[1225] This is