The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
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CHAPTER III
LEADING CONCEPTIONS OF THE ELEMENTARY RELIGION—continued
II. —Naturism
The spirit of the naturistic school is quite different.In the first place, it is recruited in a different environment.The animists are, for the most part, ethnologists or anthropologists.The religions which they have studied are the crudest which humanity has ever known.Hence comes the extraordinary importance which they attribute to the souls of the dead, to spirits and to demons, and, in fact, to all spiritual beings of the second order: it is because these religions know hardly any of a higher order.[135] On the contrary, the theories which we are now going to describe are the work of scholars who have concerned themselves especially with the great civilizations of Europe and Asia.
Ever since the work of the Grimm brothers, who pointed out the interest that there is in comparing the different mythologies of the Indo-European peoples, scholars have been struck by the remarkable similarities which these present.Mythical personages were identified who, though having different names, symbolized the same ideas and fulfilled the same functions; even the names were frequently related, and it has been thought possible to establish the fact that they are not unconnected with one another.Such resemblances seemed to be explicable only by a common origin.Thus they were led to suppose that these conceptions, so varied in appearance, really came from one common source, of which they were only diversified forms, and which it was not impossible to discover.By the comparative method, they believed one should be able to go back, beyond these great religions, to a much more ancient system of ideas, and to the really primitive religion, from which the others were derived.
The discovery of the Vedas aided greatly in stimulating these ambitions.In the Vedas, scholars had a written text, whose antiquity was undoubtedly exaggerated at the moment of its discovery, but which is surely one of the most ancient which we have at our disposition in an Indo-European language. Here they were enabled to study, by the ordinary methods of philology, a literature as old as or older than Homer, and a religion which was believed more primitive than that of the ancient Germans. A document of such value was evidently destined to throw a new light upon the religious beginnings of humanity, and the science of religions could not fail to be revolutionized by it.
The conception which was thus born was so fully demanded by the state of the science and by the general march of ideas, that it appeared almost simultaneously in two different lands. In 1856, Max Müller exposed its principles in his Oxford Essays[136] Three years later appeared the work of Adalbert Kuhn on The Origin of Fire and the Drink of the Gods,[137] which was clearly inspired by the same spirit. When once set forth, the idea spread very rapidly in scientific circles. To the name of Kuhn is closely associated that of his brother-in-law Schwartz, whose work on The Origin of Mythology,[138] followed closely upon the preceding one. Steinthal and the whole German school of Völkerpsychologie attached themselves to the same movement. The theory was introduced into France in 1863 by M. Michel Bréal.[139] It met so little resistance that, according to an expression of Gruppe,[140] "a time came when, aside from certain classical philologists, to whom Vedic studies were unknown, all the mythologists had adopted the principles of Max Müller or Kuhn as their point of departure."[141] It is therefore important to see what they really are, and what they are worth.
Since no one has presented them in a more systematic form than Max Müller, it is upon his work that we shall base the description which follows.[142]
I
We have seen that the postulate at the basis of animism is that religion, at least in its origin, expresses no physical reality.But Max Müller commences with the contrary principle.For him, it is an axiom that religion reposes upon an experience, from which it draws all its authority."Religion," he says, "if it is to hold its place as a legitimate element of our consciousness, must, like all other knowledge, begin with sensuous experience."[143] Taking up the old empirical adage, "Nihil est in intellectu quod non ante fuerit in sensu," he applies it to religion and declares that there can be nothing in beliefs which was not first perceived.So here is a doctrine which seems to escape the grave objection which we raised against animism.From this point of view, it seems that religion ought to appear, not as a sort of vague and confused dreaming, but as a system of ideas and practices well founded in reality.
But which are these sensations which give birth to religious thought?That is the question which the study of the Vedas is supposed to aid in resolving.
The names of the gods are generally either common words, still employed, or else words formerly common, whose original sense it is possible to discover. Now both designate the principal phenomena of nature. Thus Agni, the name of one of the principal divinities of India, originally signified only the material fact of fire, such as it is ordinarily perceived by the senses and without any mythological addition. Even in the Vedas, it is still employed with this meaning; in any case, it is well shown that this signification was primitive by the fact that it is conserved in other Indo-European languages: the Latin ignis, the Lithuanian ugnis, the old Slav ogny are evidently closely related to Agni. Similarly, the relationship of the Sanskrit Dyaus, the Greek Zeus, the Latin Jovis and the Zio of High German is to-day uncontested. This proves that these different words designate one single and the same divinity, whom the different Indo-European peoples recognized as such before their separation. Now Dyaus signifies the bright sky. These and other similar facts tend to show that among these peoples the forms and forces of nature were the first objects to which the religious sentiment attached itself: they were the first things to be deified. Going one step farther in his generalization, Max Müller thought that he was prepared to conclude that the religious evolution of humanity in general had the same point of departure.
It is almost entirely by considerations of a psychological sort that he justifies these inferences.The varied spectacles which nature offers man seemed to him to fulfil all the conditions necessary for arousing religious ideas in the mind directly.In fact, he says, "at first sight, nothing seemed less natural than nature.Nature was the greatest surprise, a terror, a marvel, a standing miracle, and it was only on account of their permanence, constancy, and regular recurrence that certain features of that standing miracle were called natural, in the sense of foreseen, common, intelligible....It was that vast domain of surprise, of terror, of marvel, of miracle, the unknown, as distinguished from the known, or, as I like to express it, the infinite, as distinct from the finite, which supplied from the earliest times the impulse to religious thought and language."[144] In order to illustrate his idea, he applies it to a natural force which holds a rather large place in the Vedic religion, fire. He says, "if you can for a moment transfer yourselves to that early stage of life to which we must refer not only the origin, but likewise the early phases of Physical Religion, you can easily understand what an impression the first appearance of fire must have made on the human mind. Fire was not given as something permanent or eternal, like the sky, or the earth, or the water. In whatever way it first appeared, whether through lightning or through the friction of the branches of trees, or through the sparks of flints, it came and went, it had to be guarded, it brought destruction, but at the same time, it made life possible in winter, it served as a protection during the night, it became a weapon of defence and offence, and last, not least, it changed man from a devourer of raw flesh into an eater of cooked meat. At a later time it became the means of working metal, of making tools and weapons, it became an indispensable factor in all mechanical and artistic progress, and has remained so ever since. What should we be without fire even now?"[145] The same author says in another work that a man could not enter into relations with nature without taking account of its immensity, of its infiniteness. It surpasses him in every way. Beyond the distances which he perceives, there are others which extend without limits; each moment of time is preceded and followed by a time to which no limit can be assigned; the flowing river manifests an infinite force, since nothing can exhaust it.[146] There is no aspect of nature which is not fitted to awaken within us this overwhelming sensation of an infinity which surrounds us and dominates us.[147] It is from this sensation that religions are derived.[148]
However, they are there only in germ.[149] Religion really commences only at the moment when these natural forces are no longer represented in the mind in an abstract form. They must be transformed into personal agents, living and thinking beings, spiritual powers or gods; for it is to beings of this sort that the cult is generally addressed. We have seen that animism itself has been obliged to raise this question, and also how it has answered it: man seems to have a sort of native incapacity for distinguishing the animate from the inanimate and an irresistible tendency to conceive the second under the form of the first. Max Müller rejects any such solution.[150] According to him it is language which has brought about this metamorphosis, by the action which it exercises upon thought.
It is easily explained how men, being perplexed by the marvellous forces upon which they feel that they depend, have been led to reflect upon them, and how they have asked themselves what these forces are and have made an effort to substitute for the obscure sensation which they primitively had of them, a clearer idea and a better defined concept.But as our author very justly says,[151] this idea and concept are impossible without the word. Language is not merely the external covering of a thought; it also is its internal framework. It does not confine itself to expressing this thought after it has once been formed; it also aids in making it. However, its nature is of a different sort, so its laws are not those of thought. Then since it contributes to the elaboration of this latter, it cannot fail to do it violence to some extent, and to deform it. It is a deformation of this sort which is said to have created the special characteristic of religious thought.
Thinking consists in arranging our ideas, and consequently in classifying them.To think of fire, for example, is to put it into a certain category of things, in such a way as to be able to say that it is this or that, or this and not that.But classifying is also naming, for a general idea has no existence and reality except in and by the word which expresses it and which alone makes its individuality.Thus the language of a people always has an influence upon the manner in which new things, recently learned, are classified in the mind and are subsequently thought of; these new things are thus forced to adapt themselves to pre-existing forms. For this reason, the language which men spoke when they undertook to construct an elaborated representation of the universe marked the system of ideas which was then born with an indelible trace.
Nor are we without some knowledge of this language, at least in so far as the Indo-European peoples are concerned.Howsoever distant it may be from us, souvenirs of it remain in our actual languages which permit us to imagine what it was: these are the roots.These stems, from which are derived all the words which we employ and which are found at the basis of all the Indo-European languages, are regarded by Max Müller as so many echoes of the language which the corresponding peoples spoke before their separation, that is to say, at the very moment when this religion of nature, which is to be explained, was being formed.Now these roots present two remarkable characteristics, which, it is true, have as yet been observed only in this particular group of languages, but which our author believes to be present equally in the other linguistic families.[152]
In the first place, the roots are general; that is to say that they do not express particular things and individuals, but types, and even types of an extreme generality.They represent the most general themes of thought; one finds there, as though fixed and crystallized, those fundamental categories of the intellect which at every moment in history dominate the entire mental life, the arrangement of which philosophers have many times attempted to reconstruct.[153]
Secondly, the types to which they correspond are types of action, and not of objects.They translate the most general manners of acting which are to be observed among living beings and especially among men; they are such actions as striking, pushing, rubbing, lying down, getting up, pressing, mounting, descending, walking, etc. In other words, men generalized and named their principal ways of acting before generalizing and naming the phenomena of nature.[154]
Owing to their extreme generality, these words could easily be extended to all sorts of objects which they did not originally include; it is even this extreme suppleness which has permitted them to give birth to the numerous words which are derived from them.Then when men, turning towards things, undertook to name them, that they might be able to think about them, they applied these words to them, though they were in no way designed for them.But, owing to their origin, these were able to designate the forces of nature only by means of their manifestations which seemed the nearest to human actions: a thunderbolt was called something that tears up the soil or that spreads fire; the wind, something that sighs or whistles; the sun, something that throws golden arrows across space; a river, something that flows, etc. But since natural phenomena were thus compared to human acts, this something to which they were attached was necessarily conceived under the form of personal agents, more or less like men. It was only a metaphor, but it was taken literally; the error was inevitable, for science, which alone could dispel the illusion, did not yet exist. In a word, since language was made of human elements, translating human states, it could not be applied to nature without transforming it.[155] Even to-day, remarks M. Bréal, it forces us in a certain measure to represent things from this angle. "We do not express an idea, even one designating a simple quality, without giving it a gender, that is to say, a sex; we cannot speak of an object, even though it be considered in a most general fashion, without determining it by an article; every subject of a sentence is presented as an active being, every idea as an action, and every action, be it transitory or permanent, is limited in its duration by the tense in which we put the verb."[156] Our scientific training enables us to rectify the errors which language might thus suggest to us; but the influence of the word ought to be all-powerful when it has no check. Language thus superimposes upon the material world, such as it is revealed to our senses, a new world, composed wholly of spiritual beings which it has created out of nothing and which have been considered as the causes determining physical phenomena ever since.
But its action does not stop there.When words were once forged to represent these personalities which the popular imagination had placed behind things, a reaction affected these words themselves: they raised all sorts of questions, and it was to resolve these problems that myths were invented.It happened that one object received a plurality of names, corresponding to the plurality of aspects under which it was presented in experience; thus there are more than twenty words in the Vedas for the sky.Since these words were different, it was believed that they corresponded to so many distinct personalities.But at the same time, it was strongly felt that these same personalities had an air of relationship.To account for that, it was imagined that they formed a single family; genealogies, a civil condition and a history were invented for them.In other cases, different things were designated by the same term: to explain these homonyms, it was believed that the corresponding things were transformations of each other, and new fictions were invented to make these metamorphoses intelligible. Or again, a word which had ceased to be understood, was the origin of fables designed to give it a meaning. The creative work of language continued then, making constructions ever more and more complex, and then mythology came to endow each god with a biography, ever more and more extended and complete, the result of all of which was that the divine personalities, at first confounded with things, finally distinguished and determined themselves.
This is how the notion of the divine is said to have been constructed.As for the religion of ancestors, it was only a reflection of this other.[157] The idea of the soul is said to have been first formed for reasons somewhat analogous to those given by Tylor, except that according to Max Müller, they were designed to account for death, rather than for dreams.[158] Then, under the influence of diverse, partially accidental, circumstances,[159] the souls of men, being once disengaged from the body, were drawn little by little within the circle of divine beings, and were thus finally deified themselves. But this new cult was the product of only a secondary formation. This is proven by the fact that deified men have generally been imperfect gods or demi-gods, whom the people have always been able to distinguish from the genuine deities.[160]
II
This doctrine rests, in part, upon a certain number of linguistic postulates which have been and still are very much questioned.Some have contested the reality of many of the similarities which Max Müller claimed to have found between the names of the gods in the various European languages.The interpretation which he gave them has been especially doubted: it has been asked if these names, far from being the mark of a very primitive religion, are not the slow product, either of direct borrowings or of natural intercourse with others.[161] Also, it is no longer admitted that the roots once existed in an isolated state as autonomous realities, nor that they allow us to reconstruct, even hypothetically, the original language of the Indo-Europeans.[162] Finally, recent researches would tend to show that the Vedic divinities did not all have the exclusively naturistic character attributed to them by Max Müller and his school.[163] But we shall leave aside those questions, the discussion of which requires a special competence as a philologist, and address ourselves directly to the general principles of the system. It will be important here not to confound the naturistic theory with these controverted postulates; for this is held by numbers of scholars who do not make language play the predominating rôle attributed to it by Max Müller.
That men have an interest in knowing the world which surrounds them, and consequently that their reflection should have been applied to it at an early date, is something that everyone will readily admit.Co-operation with the things with which they were in immediate connection was so necessary for them that they could not fail to seek a knowledge of their nature.But if, as naturism pretends, it is of these reflections that religious thought was born, it is impossible to explain how it was able to survive the first attempts made, and the persistence with which it has maintained itself becomes unintelligible.If we have need of knowing the nature of things, it is in order to act upon them in an appropriate manner.But the conception of the universe given us by religion, especially in its early forms, is too greatly mutilated to lead to temporarily useful practices.Things become nothing less than living and thinking beings, minds or personalities like those which the religious imagination has made into the agents of cosmic phenomena.It is not by conceiving of them under this form or by treating them according to this conception that men could make them work for their ends.It is not by addressing prayers to them, by celebrating them in feasts and sacrifices, or by imposing upon themselves fasts and privations, that men can deter them from working harm or oblige them to serve their own designs.Such processes could succeed only very exceptionally and, so to speak, miraculously.If, then, religion's reason for existence was to give us a conception of the world which would guide us in our relations with it, it was in no condition to fulfil its function, and people would not have been slow to perceive it: failures, being infinitely more frequent than successes, would have quickly shown them that they were following a false route, and religion, shaken at each instant by these repeated contradictions, would not have been able to survive.
It is undeniably true that errors have been able to perpetuate themselves in history; but, except under a union of very exceptional circumstances, they can never perpetuate themselves thus unless they were true practically, that is to say, unless, without giving us a theoretically exact idea of the things with which they deal, they express well enough the manner in which they affect us, either for good or for bad.Under these circumstances, the actions which they determine have every chance of being, at least in a general way, the very ones which are proper, so it is easily explained how they have been able to survive the proofs of experience.[164] But an error and especially a system of errors which leads to, and can lead to nothing but mistaken and useless practices, has no chance of living. Now what is there in common between the rites with which the believer tries to act upon nature and the processes by which science has taught us to make use of it, and which we now know are the only efficacious ones? If that is what men demanded of religion, it is impossible to see how it could have maintained itself, unless clever tricks had prevented their seeing that it did not give them what they expected from it. It would be necessary to return again to the over simple explanations of the eighteenth century.[165]
Thus it is only in appearance that naturism escapes the objection which we recently raised against animism. It also makes religion a system of hallucinations, since it reduces it to an immense metaphor with no objective value. It is true that it gives religion a point of departure in reality, to wit, in the sensations which the phenomena of nature provoke in us; but by the bewitching action of language, this sensation is soon transformed into extravagant conceptions. Religious thought does not come in contact with reality, except to cover it at once with a thick veil which conceals its real forms: this veil is the tissue of fabulous beliefs which mythology brought forth. Thus the believer, like the delirious man, lives in a world peopled with beings and things which have only a verbal existence. Max Müller himself recognized this, for he regarded myths as the product of a disease of the intellect. At first, he attributed them to a disease of language, but since language and the intellect are inseparable for him, what is true of the one is true of the other. "When trying to explain the inmost nature of mythology," he says, "I called it a disease of Language rather than of Thought.... After I had fully explained in my Science of Thought that language and thought are inseparable, and that a disease of language is therefore the same thing as a disease of thought, no doubt ought to have remained as to what I meant. To represent the supreme God as committing every kind of crime, as being deceived by men, as being angry with his wife and violent with his children, is surely a proof of a disease, of an unusual condition of thought, or, to speak more clearly, of real madness."[166] And this argument is not valid merely against Max Müller and his theory, but against the very principle of naturism, in whatever way it may be applied. Whatever we may do, if religion has as its principal object the expression of the forces of nature, it is impossible to see in it anything more than a system of lying fictions, whose survival is incomprehensible.
Max Müller thought he escaped this objection, whose gravity he felt, by distinguishing radically between mythology and religion, and by putting the first outside the second.He claims the right of reserving the name of religion for only those beliefs which conform to the prescriptions of a sane moral system and a rational theology.The myths were parasitic growths which, under the influence of language, attached themselves upon these fundamental conceptions, and denatured them.Thus the belief in Zeus was religious in so far as the Greeks considered him the supreme God, father of humanity, protector of laws, avenger of crimes, etc.; but all that which concerned the biography of Zeus, his marriages and his adventures, was only mythology.[167]
But this distinction is arbitrary.It is true that mythology has an æsthetic interest as well as one for the history of religions; but it is one of the essential elements of the religious life, nevertheless.If the myth were withdrawn from religion, it would be necessary to withdraw the rite also; for the rites are generally addressed to definite personalities who have a name, a character, determined attributes and a history, and they vary according to the manner in which these personalities are conceived.The cult rendered to a divinity depends upon the character attributed to him; and it is the myth which determines this character.Very frequently, the rite is nothing more than the myth put in action; the Christian communion is inseparable from the myth of the Last Supper, from which it derives all its meaning.Then if all mythology is the result of a sort of verbal delirium, the question which we raised remains intact: the existence, and especially the persistence of the cult become inexplicable.It is hard to understand how men have continued to do certain things for centuries without any object.Moreover, it is not merely the peculiar traits of the divine personalities which are determined by mythology; the very idea that there are gods or spiritual beings set above the various departments of nature, in no matter what manner they may be represented, is essentially mythical.[168] Now if all that which appertains to the notion of gods conceived as cosmic agents is blotted out of the religions of the past, what remains? The idea of a divinity in itself, of a transcendental power upon which man depends and upon which he supports himself? But that is only an abstract and philosophic conception which has been fully realized in no historical religion; it is without interest for the science of religions.[169] We must therefore avoid distinguishing between religious beliefs, keeping some because they seem to us to be true and sane and rejecting others because they shock and disconcert us. All myths, even those which we find the most unreasonable, have been believed.[170] Men have believed in them no less firmly than in their own sensations; they have based their conduct upon them. In spite of appearances, it is therefore impossible that they should be without objective foundation.
However, it will be said that in whatever manner religions may be explained, it is certain that they are mistaken in regard to the real nature of things: science has proved it.The modes of action which they counsel or prescribe to men can therefore rarely have useful effects: it is not by lustrations that the sick are cured nor by sacrifices and chants that the crops are made to grow.Thus the objection which we have made to naturism would seem to be applicable to all possible systems of explanation.
Nevertheless, there is one which escapes it.Let us suppose that religion responds to quite another need than that of adapting ourselves to sensible objects: then it will not risk being weakened by the fact that it does not satisfy, or only badly satisfies, this need.If religious faith was not born to put man in harmony with the material world, the injuries which it has been able to do him in his struggle with the world do not touch it at its source, because it is fed from another.
If it is not for these reasons that a man comes to believe, he should continue to believe even when these reasons are contradicted by the facts.It is even conceivable that faith should be strong enough, not only to support these contradictions, but also even to deny them and to keep the believer from seeing their importance; this is what succeeds in rendering them inoffensive for religion.When the religious sentiment is active, it will not admit that religion can be in the wrong, and it readily suggests explanations which make it appear innocent; if the rite does not produce the desired results, this failure is imputed either to some fault of execution, or to the intervention of another, contrary deity.But for that, it is necessary that these religious ideas have their source in another sentiment than that betrayed by these deceptions of experience, or else whence could come their force of resistance?
III
But more than that, even if men had really had reasons for remaining obstinate, in spite of all their mistakes, in expressing cosmic phenomena in religious terms, it is also necessary that these be of a nature to suggest such an interpretation.Now when could they have gotten such a property?Here again we find ourselves in the presence of one of those postulates which pass as evident only because they have not been criticized.It is stated as an axiom that in the natural play of physical forces there is all that is needed to arouse within us the idea of the sacred; but when we closely examine the proofs of this proposition, which, by the way, are sufficiently brief, we find that they reduce to a prejudice.
They talk about the marvel which men should feel as they discover the world.But really, that which characterizes the life of nature is a regularity which approaches monotony.Every morning the sun mounts in the horizon, every evening it sets; every month the moon goes through the same cycle; the river flows in an uninterrupted manner in its bed; the same seasons periodically bring back the same sensations.To be sure, here and there an unexpected event sometimes happens: the sun is eclipsed, the moon is hidden behind clouds, the river overflows.But these momentary variations could only give birth to equally momentary impressions, the remembrance of which is gone after a little while; they could not serve as a basis for these stable and permanent systems of ideas and practices which constitute religions.Normally, the course of nature is uniform, and uniformity could never produce strong emotions.Representing the savage as filled with admiration before these marvels transports much more recent sentiments to the beginnings of history.He is much too accustomed to it to be greatly surprised by it.It requires culture and reflection to shake off this yoke of habit and to discover how marvellous this regularity itself is.Besides, as we have already remarked,[171] admiring an object is not enough to make it appear sacred to us, that is to say, to mark it with those characteristics which make all direct contact with it appear a sacrilege and a profanation. We misunderstand what the religious sentiment really is, if we confound it with every impression of admiration and surprise.
But, they say, even if it is not admiration, there is a certain impression which men cannot help feeling in the presence of nature.He cannot come in contact with it, without realizing that it is greater than he. It overwhelms him by its immensity. This sensation of an infinite space which surrounds him, of an infinite time which has preceded and will follow the present moment, and of forces infinitely superior to those of which he is master, cannot fail, as it seems, to awaken within him the idea that outside of him there exists an infinite power upon which he depends. And this idea enters as an essential element into our conception of the divine.
But let us bear in mind what the question is.We are trying to find out how men came to think that there are in reality two categories of things, radically heterogeneous and incomparable to each other.Now how could the spectacle of nature give rise to the idea of this duality?Nature is always and everywhere of the same sort.It matters little that it extends to infinity: beyond the extreme limit to which my eyes can reach, it is not different from what it is here.The space which I imagine beyond the horizon is still space, identical with that which I see.The time which flows without end is made up of moments identical with those which I have passed through.Extension, like duration, repeats itself indefinitely; if the portions which I touch have of themselves no sacred character, where did the others get theirs?The fact that I do not see them directly, is not enough to transform them.[172] A world of profane things may well be unlimited; but it remains a profane world. Do they say that the physical forces with which we come in contact exceed our own? Sacred forces are not to be distinguished from profane ones simply by their greater intensity, they are different; they have special qualities which the others do not have. Quite on the contrary, all the forces manifested in the universe are of the same nature, those that are within us just as those that are outside of us. And especially, there is no reason which could have allowed giving a sort of pre-eminent dignity to some in relation to others. Then if religion really was born because of the need of assigning causes to physical phenomena, the forces thus imagined would have been no more sacred than those conceived by the scientist to-day to account for the same facts.[173] This is as much as to say that there would have been no sacred beings and therefore no religion.
But even supposing that this sensation of being "overwhelmed" were really able to suggest religious ideas, it could not have produced this effect upon the primitive, for he does not have it.He is in no way conscious that cosmic forces are so superior to his own.Since science has not yet taught him modesty, he attributes to himself an empire over things which he really does not have, but the illusion of which is enough to prevent his feeling dominated by them.As we have already pointed out, he thinks that he can command the elements, release the winds, compel the rain to fall, or stop the sun, by a gesture, etc.[174] Religion itself contributes to giving him this security, for he believes that it arms him with extended powers over nature. His rites are, in part, means destined to aid him in imposing his will upon the world. Thus, far from being due to the sentiment which men should have of their littleness before the universe, religions are rather inspired by the contrary sentiment. Even the most elevated and idealistic have the effect of reassuring men in their struggle with things: they teach that faith is, of itself, able "to move mountains," that is to say, to dominate the forces of nature. How could they give rise to this confidence if they had had their origin in a sensation of feebleness and impotency?
Finally, if the objects of nature really became sacred because of their imposing forms or the forces which they manifest, then the sun, the moon, the sky, the mountains, the sea, the winds, in a word, the great cosmic powers, should have been the first to be raised to this dignity; for there are no others more fitted to appeal to the senses and the imagination.But as a matter of fact, they were divinized but slowly.The first beings to which the cult is addressed—the proof will be found in the chapters which follow—are humble vegetables and animals, in relation to which men could at least claim an equality: they are ducks, rabbits, kangaroos, lizards, worms, frogs, etc. Their objective qualities surely were not the origin of the religious sentiments which they inspired.
CHAPTER IV
TOTEMISM AS AN ELEMENTARY RELIGION
History of the Question.—Method of Treating it
Howsoever opposed their conclusions may seem to be, the two systems which we have just studied agree upon one essential point: they state the problem in identical terms. Both undertake to construct the idea of the divine out of the sensations aroused in us by certain natural phenomena, either physical or biological.For the animists it is dreams, for the naturists, certain cosmic phenomena, which served as the point of departure for religious evolution.But for both, it is in the nature, either of man or of the universe, that we must look for the germ of the grand opposition which separates the profane from the sacred.
But such an enterprise is impossible: it supposes a veritable creation ex nihiloA fact of common experience cannot give us the idea of something whose characteristic is to be outside the world of common experience.A man, as he appears to himself in his dreams, is only a man.Natural forces, as our senses perceive them, are only natural forces, howsoever great their intensity may be.Hence comes the common criticism which we address to both doctrines.In order to explain how these pretended data of religious thought have been able to take a sacred character which has no objective foundation, it would be necessary to admit that a whole world of delusive representations has superimposed itself upon the other, denatured it to the point of making it unrecognizable, and substituted a pure hallucination for reality.Here, it is the illusions of the dream which brought about this transfiguration; there, it is the brilliant and vain company of images evoked by the word.But in one case as in the other, it is necessary to regard religion as the product of a delirious imagination.
Thus one positive conclusion is arrived at as the result of this critical examination.Since neither man nor nature have of themselves a sacred character, they must get it from another source. Aside from the human individual and the physical world, there should be some other reality, in relation to which this variety of delirium which all religion is in a sense, has a significance and an objective value. In other words, beyond those which we have called animistic and naturistic, there should be another sort of cult, more fundamental and more primitive, of which the first are only derived forms or particular aspects.
In fact, this cult does exist: it is the one to which ethnologists have given the name of totemism.
I
It was only at the end of the eighteenth century that the word totem appeared in ethnographical literature.It is found for the first time in the book of an Indian interpreter, J.Long, which was published in London in 1791.[175] For nearly a half a century, totemism was known only as something exclusively American.[176] It was only in 1841 that Grey, in a passage which has remained celebrated,[177] pointed out the existence of wholly similar practices in Australia. From that time on, scholars began to realize that they were in the presence of a system of a certain generality.
But they saw there only an essentially archaic institution, an ethnographical curiosity, having no great interest for the historian. MacLennan was the first who undertook to attach totemism to the general history of humanity. In a series of articles in the Fortnightly Review,[178] he set himself to show that totemism was not only a religion, but one from which were derived a multitude of beliefs and practices which are found in much more advanced religious systems. He even went so far as to make it the source of all the animal-worshipping and plant-worshipping cults which are found among ancient peoples. Certainly this extension of totemism was abusive. The cults of animals and plants depend upon numerous causes which cannot be reduced to one, without the error of too great simplicity. But this error, by its very exaggerations, had at least the advantage, that it put into evidence the historical importance of totemism.
Students of American totemism had already known for a long time that this form of religion was most intimately united to a determined social organization, that its basis is the division of the social group into clans.[179] In 1877, in his Ancient Society,[180] Lewis H. Morgan undertook to make a study of it, to determine its distinctive characteristics, and at the same time to point out its generality among the Indian tribes of North and Central America. At nearly the same moment, and even following the direct suggestion of Morgan, Fison and Howitt[181] established the existence of the same social system in Australia, as well as its relations with totemism.
Under the influence of these directing ideas, observations could be made with better method.The researches which the American Bureau of Ethnology undertook, played an important part in the advance of these studies.[182] By 1887, the documents were sufficiently numerous and significant to make Frazer consider it time to unite them and present them to us in a systematic form. Such is the object of his little book Totemism,[183] where the system is studied both as a religion and as a legal institution. But this study was purely descriptive; no effort was made to explain totemism[184] or to understand its fundamental notions.
Robertson Smith is the first who undertook this work of elaboration.He realized more clearly than any of his predecessors how rich this crude and confused religion is in germs for the future.It is true that MacLennan had already connected it with the great religions of antiquity; but that was merely because he thought he had found here and there the cult of animals or plants.Now if we reduce totemism to a sort of animal or plant worship, we have seen only its most superficial aspect: we have even misunderstood its real nature.Going beyond the mere letter of the totemic beliefs, Smith set himself to find the fundamental principles upon which they depend. In his book upon Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia,[185] he had already pointed out that totemism supposes a likeness in nature, either natural or acquired, of men and animals (or plants). In his The Religion of the Semites,[186] he makes this same idea the first origin of the entire sacrificial system: it is to totemism that humanity owes the principle of the communion meal. It is true that the theory of Smith can now be shown one-sided; it is no longer adequate for the facts actually known; but for all that, it contains an ingenious theory and has exercised a most fertile influence upon the science of religions. The Golden Bough[187] of Frazer is inspired by these same ideas, for totemism, which MacLennan had attached to the religions of classical antiquity, and Smith to the religions of the Semitic peoples, is here connected to the European folk-lore. The schools of MacLennan and Morgan are thus united to that of Mannhardt.[188]
During this time, the American tradition continued to develop with an independence which it has kept up until very recent times.Three groups of societies were the special object of the researches which were concerned with totemism.These are, first, certain tribes of the North-west, the Tlinkit, the Haida, the Kwakiutl, the Salish and the Tsimshian; then, the great nation of the Sioux; and finally, the Pueblo Indians in the south-western part of the United States.The first were studied principally by Dall, Krause, Boas, Swanton, Hill Tout; the second by Dorsey; the last by Mindeleff, Mrs. Stevenson and Cushing.[189] But however rich the harvest of facts thus gathered in all parts of the country may have been, the documents at our disposal were still fragmentary. Though the American religions contain numerous traces of totemism, they have passed the stage of real totemism. On the other hand, observations in Australia had brought little more than scattered beliefs and isolated rites, initiation rituals and interdictions relative to totemism. It was with facts taken from all these sources that Frazer attempted to draw a picture of totemism in its entirety. Whatever may be the incontestable merit of the reconstruction undertaken in such circumstances, it could not help being incomplete and hypothetical. A totemic religion in complete action had not yet been observed.
It is only in very recent years that this serious deficiency has been repaired.Two observers of remarkable ability, Baldwin Spencer and F.J.Gillen, discovered[190] in the interior of the Australian continent a considerable number of tribes whose basis and unity was founded in totemic beliefs. The results of their observations have been published in two works, which have given a new life to the study of totemism. The first of these, The Native Tribes of Central Australia,[191] deals with the more central of these tribes, the Arunta, the Luritcha, and a little farther to the south, on the shores of Lake Eyre, the Urabunna. The second, which is entitled The Northern Tribes of Central Australia,[192] deals with the societies north of the Urabunna, occupying the territory between MacDonnell's Range and Carpenter Gulf. Among the principal of these we may mention the Unmatjera, the Kaitish, the Warramunga, the Worgaia, the Tjingilli, the Binbinga, the Walpari, the Gnanji and finally, on the very shores of the gulf, the Mara and the Anula.[193]
More recently, a German missionary, Carl Strehlow, who has also passed long years in these same Central Australian societies,[194] has commenced to publish his own observations on two of these tribes, the Aranda and the Loritja (the Arunta and Luritcha of Spencer and Gillen).[195] Having well mastered the language spoken by these peoples,[196] Strehlow has been able to bring us a large number of totemic myths and religious songs, which are given us, for the most part, in the original text. In spite of some differences of detail which are easily explained and whose importance has been greatly exaggerated,[197] we shall see that the observations of Strehlow, though completing, making more precise and sometimes even rectifying those of Spencer and Gillen, confirm them in all that is essential.
These discoveries have given rise to an abundant literature to which we shall have occasion to return.The works of Spencer and Gillen especially have exercised a considerable influence, not only because they were the oldest, but also because the facts were there presented in a systematic form, which was of a nature to give a direction to later studies,[198] and to stimulate speculation. Their results were commented upon, discussed and interpreted in all possible manners. At this same time, Howitt, whose fragmentary studies were scattered in a number of different publications,[199] undertook to do for the southern tribes what Spencer and Gillen had done for those of the centre. In his Native Tribes of South-East Australia,[200] he gives us a view of the social organization of the peoples who occupy Southern Australia, New South Wales, and a good part of Queensland. The progress thus realized suggested to Frazer the idea of completing his Totemism by a sort of compendium[201] where would be brought together all the important documents which are concerned either with the totemic religion or the family and matrimonial organization which, rightly or wrongly, is believed to be connected with this religion. The purpose of this book is not to give us a general and systematic view of totemism, but rather to put the materials necessary for a construction of this sort at the disposition of scholars.[202] The facts are here arranged in a strictly ethnographical and geographical order: each continent, and within the continent, each tribe or ethnic group is studied separately. Though so extended a study, where so many diverse peoples are successively passed in review, could hardly be equally thorough in all its parts, still it is a useful hand-book to consult, and one which can aid greatly in facilitating researches.
II
From this historical résumé it is clear that Australia is the most favourable field for the study of totemism, and therefore we shall make it the principal area of our observations.
In his Totemism, Frazer sought especially to collect all the traces of totemism which could be found in history or ethnography.He was thus led to include in his study societies the nature and degree of whose culture differs most widely: ancient Egypt,[203] Arabia and Greece,[204] and the southern Slavs[205] are found there, side by side with the tribes of Australia and America. This manner of procedure is not at all surprising for a disciple of the anthropological school. For this school does not seek to locate religions in the social environments of which they are a part,[206] and to differentiate them according to the different environments to which they are thus connected. But rather, as is indicated by the name which it has taken to itself, its purpose is to go beyond the national and historical differences to the universal and really human bases of the religious life. It is supposed that man has a religious nature of himself, in virtue of his own constitution, and independently of all social conditions, and they propose to study this.[207] For researches of this sort, all peoples can be called upon equally well. It is true that they prefer the more primitive peoples, because this fundamental nature is more apt to be unaltered here; but since it is found equally well among the most civilized peoples, it is but natural that they too should be called as witnesses. Consequently, all those who pass as being not too far removed from the origins, and who are confusedly lumped together under the rather imprecise rubric of savages, are put on the same plane and consulted indifferently.Since from this point of view, facts have an interest only in proportion to their generality, they consider themselves obliged to collect as large a number as possible of them; the circle of comparisons could not become too large.
Our method will not be such a one, for several reasons.
In the first place, for the sociologist as for the historian, social facts vary with the social system of which they form a part; they cannot be understood when detached from it.This is why two facts which come from two different societies cannot be profitably compared merely because they seem to resemble each other; it is necessary that these societies themselves resemble each other, that is to say, that they be only varieties of the same species.The comparative method would be impossible, if social types did not exist, and it cannot be usefully applied except within a single type.What errors have not been committed for having neglected this precept!It is thus that facts have been unduly connected with each other which, in spite of exterior resemblances, really have neither the same sense nor the same importance: the primitive democracy and that of to-day, the collectivism of inferior societies and actual socialistic tendencies, the monogamy which is frequent in Australian tribes and that sanctioned by our laws, etc. Even in the work of Frazer such confusions are found.It frequently happens that he assimilates simple rites of wild-animal-worship to practices that are really totemic, though the distance, sometimes very great, which separates the two social systems would exclude all idea of assimilation.Then if we do not wish to fall into these same errors, instead of scattering our researches over all the societies possible, we must concentrate them upon one clearly determined type.
It is even necessary that this concentration be as close as possible.One cannot usefully compare facts with which he is not perfectly well acquainted. But when he undertakes to include all sorts of societies and civilizations, one cannot know any of them with the necessary thoroughness; when he assembles facts from every country in order to compare them, he is obliged to take them hastily, without having either the means or the time to carefully criticize them. Tumultuous and summary comparisons result, which discredit the comparative method with many intelligent persons. It can give serious results only when it is applied to so limited a number of societies that each of them can be studied with sufficient precision. The essential thing is to choose those where investigations have the greatest chance to be fruitful.
Also, the value of the facts is much more important than their number.In our eyes, the question whether totemism has been more or less universal or not, is quite secondary.[208] If it interests us, it does so before all because in studying it we hope to discover relations of a nature to make us understand better what religion is. Now to establish these relations it is neither necessary nor always useful to heap up numerous experiences upon each other; it is much more important to have a few that are well studied and really significant. One single fact may make a law appear, where a multitude of imprecise and vague observations would only produce confusion. In every science, the scholar would be overwhelmed by the facts which present themselves to him, if he did not make a choice among them. It is necessary that he distinguish those which promise to be the most instructive, that he concentrate his attention upon these, and that he temporarily leave the others to one side.
That is why, with one reservation which will be indicated below, we propose to limit our research to Australian societies.They fulfil all the conditions which were just enumerated.They are perfectly homogeneous, for though it is possible to distinguish varieties among them, they all belong to one common type.This homogeneity is even so great that the forms of social organization are not only the same, but that they are even designated by identical or equivalent names in a multitude of tribes, sometimes very distant from each other.[209] Also, Australian totemism is the variety for which our documents are the most complete. Finally, that which we propose to study in this work is the most primitive and simple religion which it is possible to find. It is therefore natural that to discover it, we address ourselves to societies as slightly evolved as possible, for it is evidently there that we have the greatest chance of finding it and studying it well. Now there are no societies which present this characteristic to a higher degree than the Australian ones. Not only is their civilization most rudimentary—the house and even the hut are still unknown—but also their organization is the most primitive and simple which is actually known; it is that which we have elsewhere called organization on a basis of clans[210] In the next chapter, we shall have occasion to restate its essential traits.
However, though making Australia the principal field of our research, we think it best not to leave completely aside the societies where totemism was first discovered, that is to say, the Indian tribes of North America.
This extension of the field of comparison has nothing about it which is not legitimate.Undoubtedly these people are more advanced than those of Australia.Their civilization has become much more advanced: men there live in houses or under tents, and there are even fortified villages.The size of the society is much greater, and centralization, which is completely lacking in Australia, is beginning to appear there; we find vast confederations, such as that of the Iroquois, under one central authority.Sometimes a complicated system of differentiated classes arranged in a hierarchy is found.However, the essential lines of the social structure remain the same as those in Australia; it is always the organization on a basis of clans.Thus we are not in the presence of two different types, but of two varieties of a single type, which are still very close to each other.They represent two successive moments of a single evolution, so their homogeneousness is still great enough to permit comparisons.
Also, these comparisons may have their utility.Just because their civilization is more advanced than that of the Australians, certain phases of the social organization which is common to both can be studied more easily among the first than among the second.As long as men are still making their first steps in the art of expressing their thought, it is not easy for the observer to perceive that which moves them; for there is nothing to translate clearly that which passes in these obscure minds which have only a confused and ephemeral knowledge of themselves.For example, religious symbols then consist only in formless combinations of lines and colours, whose sense it is not easy to divine, as we shall see.There are many gestures and movements by which interior states express themselves; but being essentially ephemeral, they readily elude observation. That is why totemism was discovered earlier in America than in Australia; it was much more visible there, though it held relatively less place in the totality of the religious life. Also, wherever beliefs and institutions do not take a somewhat definite material form, they are more liable to change under the influence of the slightest circumstances, or to become wholly effaced from the memory. Thus the Australian clans frequently have something floating and Protean about them, while the corresponding organization in America has a greater stability and more clearly defined contours. Thus, though American totemism is further removed from its origins than that of Australia, still there are important characteristics of which it has better kept the memory.
In the second place, in order to understand an institution, it is frequently well to follow it into the advanced stages of its evolution;[211] for sometimes it is only when it is fully developed that its real signification appears with the greatest clearness. In this way also, American totemism, since it has a long history behind it, could serve to clarify certain aspects of Australian totemism.[212] At the same time, it will put us in a better condition to see how totemism is bound up with the forms which follow, and to mark its place in the general historical development of religion.
So in the discussions which follow, we shall not forbid ourselves the use of certain facts borrowed from the Indian societies of North America.But we are not going to study American totemism here;[213] such a study must be made directly and by itself, and cannot be mixed with the one which we are undertaking; it raises other problems and implies a wholly different set of special investigations. We shall have recourse to American facts merely in a supplementary way, and only when they seem to be able to make us understand Australian facts to advantage. It is these latter which constitute the real and immediate object of our researches.[214]
BOOK II
THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS
CHAPTER I
TOTEMIC BELIEFS
The Totem as Name and as Emblem
Owing to its nature, our study will include two parts.Since every religion is made up of intellectual conceptions and ritual practices, we must deal successively with the beliefs and rites which compose the totemic religion.These two elements of the religious life are too closely connected with each other to allow of any radical separation.In principle, the cult is derived from the beliefs, yet it reacts upon them; the myth is frequently modelled after the rite in order to account for it, especially when its sense is no longer apparent.On the other hand, there are beliefs which are clearly manifested only through the rites which express them.So these two parts of our analysis cannot fail to overlap.However, these two orders of facts are so different that it is indispensable to study them separately.And since it is impossible to understand anything about a religion while unacquainted with the ideas upon which it rests, we must seek to become acquainted with these latter first of all.
But it is not our intention to retrace all the speculations into which the religious thought, even of the Australians alone, has run.The things we wish to reach are the elementary notions at the basis of the religion, but there is no need of following them through all the development, sometimes very confused, which the mythological imagination of these peoples has given them.We shall make use of myths when they enable us to understand these fundamental ideas better, but we shall not make mythology itself the subject of our studies.In so far as this is a work of art, it does not fall within the jurisdiction of the simple science of religions.Also, the intellectual evolution from which it results is of too great a complexity to be studied indirectly and from a foreign point of view.It constitutes a very difficult problem which must be treated by itself, for itself and with a method peculiar to itself.
Among the beliefs upon which totemism rests, the most important are naturally those concerning the totem; it is with these that we must begin.
I
At the basis of nearly all the Australian tribes we find a group which holds a preponderating place in the collective life: this is the clan.Two essential traits characterize it.
In the first place, the individuals who compose it consider themselves united by a bond of kinship, but one which is of a very special nature.This relationship does not come from the fact that they have definite blood connections with one another; they are relatives from the mere fact that they have the same name.They are not fathers and mothers, sons or daughters, uncles or nephews of one another in the sense which we now give these words; yet they think of themselves as forming a single family, which is large or small according to the dimensions of the clan, merely because they are collectively designated by the same word.When we say that they regard themselves as a single family, we do so because they recognize duties towards each other which are identical with those which have always been incumbent upon kindred: such duties as aid, vengeance, mourning, the obligation not to marry among themselves, etc.
By this first characteristic, the clan does not differ from the Roman gens or the Greek γένος; for this relationship also came merely from the fact that all the members of the gens had the same name,[215] the nomen gentilicium. And in one sense, the gens is a clan; but it is a variety which should not be confounded with the Australian clan.[216] This latter is distinguished by the fact that its name is also the name of a determined species of material things with which it believes that it has very particular relations, the nature of which we shall presently describe; they are especially relations of kinship. The species of things which serves to designate the clan collectively is called its totemThe totem of the clan is also that of each of its members.
Each clan has its totem, which belongs to it alone; two different clans of the same tribe cannot have the same.In fact, one is a member of a clan merely because he has a certain name.All who bear this name are members of it for that very reason; in whatever manner they may be spread over the tribal territory, they all have the same relations of kinship with one another.[217] Consequently, two groups having the same totem can only be two sections of the same clan. Undoubtedly, it frequently happens that all of a clan does not reside in the same locality, but has representatives in several different places. However, this lack of a geographical basis does not cause its unity to be the less keenly felt.
In regard to the word totem, we may say that it is the one employed by the Ojibway, an Algonquin tribe, to designate the sort of thing whose name the clan bears.[218] Although this expression is not at all Australian,[219] and is found only in one single society in America, ethnographers have definitely adopted it, and use it to denote, in a general way, the system which we are describing. Schoolcraft was the first to extend the meaning of the word thus and to speak of a "totemic system."[220] This extension, of which there are examples enough in ethnography, is not without inconveniences. It is not normal for an institution of this importance to bear a chance name, taken from a strictly local dialect, and bringing to mind none of the distinctive characteristics of the thing it designates. But to-day this way of employing the word is so universally accepted that it would be an excess of purism to rise against this usage.[221]
In a very large proportion of the cases, the objects which serve as totems belong either to the animal or the vegetable kingdom, but especially to the former.Inanimate things are much more rarely employed.Out of more than 500 totemic names collected by Howitt among the tribes of south-eastern Australia, there are scarcely forty which are not the names of plants or animals; these are the clouds, rain, hail, frost, the moon, the sun, the wind, the autumn, the summer, the winter, certain stars, thunder, fire, smoke, water or the sea. It is noticeable how small a place is given to celestial bodies and, more generally, to the great cosmic phenomena, which were destined to so great a fortune in later religious development. Among all the clans of which Howitt speaks, there were only two which had the moon as totem,[222] two the sun,[223] three a star,[224] three the thunder,[225] two the lightning.[226] The rain is a single exception; it, on the contrary, is very frequent.[227]
These are the totems which can be spoken of as normal.But totemism has its abnormalities as well.It sometimes happens that the totem is not a whole object, but the part of an object.This fact appears rather rarely in Australia;[228] Howitt cites only one example.[229] However, it may well be that this is found with a certain frequency in the tribes where the totemic groups are excessively subdivided; it might be said that the totems had to break themselves up in order to be able to furnish names to these numerous divisions. This is what seems to have taken place among the Arunta and the Loritja. Strehlow has collected 442 totems in these two societies, of which many are not an animal species, but some particular organ of the animal of the species, such as the tail or stomach of an opossum, the fat of the kangaroo, etc.[230]
We have seen that normally the totem is not an individual, but a species or a variety: it is not such and such a kangaroo or crow, but the kangaroo or crow in general.Sometimes, however, it is a particular object.First of all, this is necessarily the case when the thing serving as totem is unique in its class, as the sun, the moon, such or such a constellation, etc. It also happens that clans take their names from certain geographical irregularities or depressions of the land, from a certain ant-hill, etc. It is true that we have only a small number of examples of this in Australia; but Strehlow does mention some.[231] But the very causes which have given rise to these abnormal totems show that they are of a relatively recent origin. In fact, what has made certain geographical features of the land become totems is that a mythical ancestor is supposed to have stopped there or to have performed some act of his legendary life there.[232] But at the same time, these ancestors are represented in the myths as themselves belonging to clans which had perfectly regular totems, that is to say, ones taken from the animal or vegetable kingdoms. Therefore, the totemic names thus commemorating the acts and performances of these heroes cannot be primitive; they belong to a form of totemism that is already derived and deviated. It is even permissible to ask if the meteorological totems have not a similar origin; for the sun, the moon and the stars are frequently identified with the ancestors of the mythological epoch.[233]
Sometimes, but no less exceptionally, it is an ancestor or a group of ancestors which serves as totem directly.In this case, the clan takes its name, not from a thing or a species of real things, but from a purely mythical being.Spencer and Gillen had already mentioned two or three totems of this sort.Among the Warramunga and among the Tjingilli there are clans which bear the name of an ancestor named Thaballa who seems to be gaiety incarnate.[234] Another Warramunga clan bears the name of a huge fabulous serpent named Wollunqua, from which the clan considers itself descended.[235] We owe other similar facts to Strehlow.[236] In any case, it is easy enough to see what probably took place. Under the influence of diverse causes and by the very development of mythological thought, the collective and impersonal totem became effaced before certain mythical personages who advanced to the first rank and became totems themselves.
Howsoever interesting these different irregularities may be, they contain nothing which forces us to modify our definition of a totem.They are not, as has sometimes been believed,[237] different varieties of totems which are more or less irreducible into each other or into the normal totem, such as we have defined it. They are merely secondary and sometimes even aberrant forms of a single notion which is much more general, and there is every ground for believing it the more primitive.
The manner in which the name is acquired is more important for the organization and recruiting of the clan than for religion; it belongs to the sociology of the family rather than to religious sociology.[238] So we shall confine ourselves to indicating summarily the most essential principles which regulate the matter.
In the different tribes, three different systems are in use.
In a great number, or it might even be said, in the greater number of the societies, the child takes the totem of its mother, by right of birth: this is what happens among the Dieri and the Urabunna of the centre of Southern Australia; the Wotjobaluk and the Gournditch-Mara of Victoria; the Kamilaroi, the Wiradjuri, the Wonghibon and the Euahlayi of New South Wales; and the Wakelbura, the Pitta-Pitta and the Kurnandaburi of Queensland, to mention only the most important names.In this case, owing to a law of exogamy, the mother is necessarily of a different totem from her husband, and on the other hand, as she lives in his community, the members of a single totem are necessarily dispersed in different localities according to the chances of their marriages.As a result, the totemic group lacks a territorial base.
Elsewhere the totem is transmitted in the paternal line.In this case, if the child remains with his father, the local group is largely made up of people belonging to a single totem; only the married women there represent foreign totems. In other words, each locality has its particular totem.Up until recent times, this scheme of organization was found in Australia only among the tribes where totemism was in decadence, such as the Narrinyeri, where the totem has almost no religious character at all any more.[239] It was therefore possible to believe that there was a close connection between the totemic system and descent in the uterine line. But Spencer and Gillen have observed, in the northern part of central Australia, a whole group of tribes where the totemic religion is still practised but where the transmission of the totem is in the paternal line: these are the Warramunga, the Quanji, the Umbia, the Binbinga, the Mara and the Anula.[240]
Finally, a third combination is the one observed among the Arunta and Loritja.Here the totem of the child is not necessarily either that of the mother or that of the father; it is that of a mythical ancestor who came, by processes which the observers recount in different ways,[241] and mysteriously fecundated the mother at the moment of conception. A special process makes it possible to learn which ancestor it was and to which totemic group he belonged.[242] But since it was only chance which determined that this ancestor happened to be near the mother, rather than another, the totem of the child is thus found to depend finally upon fortuitous circumstances.[243]
Outside of and above the totems of clans there are totems of phratries which, though not differing from the former in nature, must none the less be distinguished from them.
A phratry is a group of clans which are united to each other by particular bonds of fraternity.Ordinarily the Australian tribe is divided into two phratries between which the different clans are distributed.Of course there are some tribes where this organization has disappeared, but everything leads us to believe that it was once general.In any case, there are no tribes in Australia where the number of phratries is greater than two.
Now in nearly all the cases where the phratries have a name whose meaning has been established, this name is that of an animal; it would therefore seem that it is a totem. This has been well demonstrated in a recent work by A. Lang.[244] Thus, among the Gournditch (Victoria), the phratries are called Krokitch and Kaputch; the former of the words designates the white cockatoo and the latter the black cockatoo.[245] The same expressions are found again among the Buandik and the Wotjobaluk.[246] Among the Wurunjerri, the names employed are Bunjil and Waang, which designate the eagle-hawk and the crow.[247] The words Mukwara and Kilpara are used for the same purpose in a large number of tribes of New South Wales;[248] they designate the same birds.[249] It is also the eagle-hawk and the crow which have given their names to the two phratries of the Ngarigo and the Wolgal.[250] Among the Kuinmurbura, it is the white cockatoo and the crow.[251] Many other examples might be cited. Thus we are led to regard the phratry as an ancient clan which has been dismembered; the actual clans are the product of this dismemberment, and the solidarity which unites them is a souvenir of their primitive unity.[252] It is true that in certain tribes, the phratries no longer have special names, as it seems; in others where these names exist, their meaning is no longer known, even to the members. But there is nothing surprising in this. The phratries are certainly a primitive institution, for they are everywhere in a state of regression; their descendants the clans have passed to the first rank. So it is but natural that the names which they bore should have been effaced from memory little by little, when they were no longer understood; for they must belong to a very archaic language no longer in use. This is proved by the fact that in many cases where we know the animal whose name the phratry bears, the word designating this animal in the current language is very different from the one employed here.[253]
Between the totem of the phratry and the totems of the clans there exists a sort of relation of subordination.In fact, in principle each clan belongs to one and only one phratry; it is very exceptional that it has representatives in the other phratry.This is not met with at all except among certain central tribes, notably the Arunta;[254] also even where, owing to disturbing influences, overlappings of this sort have taken place, the great part of the clan is included entirely within one or the other of the two groups of the tribe; only a small minority is to be found in the other one.[255] As a rule then, the two phratries do not overlap each other; consequently, the list of totems which an individual may have is predetermined by the phratry to which he belongs. In other words, the phratry is like a species of which the clans are varieties. We shall presently see that this comparison is not purely metaphorical.
In addition to the phratries and clans, another secondary group is frequently met with in Australian societies, which is not without a certain individuality: these are the matrimonial classes.
By this name they designate certain subdivisions of the phratry, whose number varies with the tribe: there are sometimes two and sometimes four per phratry.[256] Their recruiting and operation are regulated by the two following principles. In the first place, each generation in a phratry belongs to different clans from the immediately preceding one. Thus, when there are only two classes per phratry, they necessarily alternate with each other every generation. The children make up the class of which their parents are not members; but grandchildren are of the same class as their grandparents. Thus, among the Kamilaroi, the Kupathin phratry has two classes, Ippai and Kumbo; the Dilby phratry, two others which are called Murri and Kubbi. As descent is in the uterine line, the child is in the phratry of its mother; if she is a Kupathin, the child will be one also. But if she is of the Ippai class, he will be a Kumbo; if the child is a girl, her children will again be in the Ippai class.
Likewise, the children of the women of the Murri class will be in the Kubbi class, and the children of the Kubbi women will be Murri again.When there are four classes per phratry, instead of two, the system is naturally more complex, but the principle is the same.The four classes form two couples of two classes each, and these two classes alternate with each other every generation in the manner just indicated.Secondly, the members of one class can in principle[257] marry into only one of the classes of the other phratry. The Ippai must marry into the Kubbi class and the Murri into the Kumbo class. It is because this organization profoundly affects matrimonial relations that we give the group the name of matrimonial class.
Now it may be asked whether these classes do not sometimes have totems like the phratries and clans.
This question is raised by the fact that in certain tribes of Queensland, each matrimonial class has dietetic restrictions that are peculiar to it.The individuals who compose it must abstain from eating the flesh of certain animals which the others may consume freely.[258] Are these animals not totems?
But dietetic restrictions are not the characteristic marks of totemism.The totem is a name first of all, and then, as we shall see, an emblem.Now in the societies of which we just spoke, there are no matrimonial classes which bear the name of an animal or plant, or which have an emblem.[259] Of course it is possible that these restrictions are indirectly derived from totemism. It might be supposed that the animals which these interdictions protect were once the totems of clans which have since disappeared, while the matrimonial classes remained. It is certain that they have a force of endurance which the clans do not have. Then these interdictions, deprived of their original field, may have spread themselves out over the entire class, since there were no other groups to which they could be attached. But it is clear that if this regulation was born of totemism, it represents only an enfeebled and denatured form of it.[260]
All that has been said of the totem in Australian societies is equally applicable to the Indian tribes of North America.The only difference is that among these latter, the totemic organization has a strictness of outline and a stability which are not found in Australia.The Australian clans are not only very numerous, but in a single tribe their number is almost unlimited.Observers cite some of them as examples, but without ever succeeding in giving us a complete list.This is because the list is never definitely terminated.The same process of dismemberment which broke up the original phratries and give birth to clans properly so-called still continues within these latter; as a result of this progressive crumbling, a clan frequently has only a very small effective force.[261] In America, on the contrary, the totemic system has better defined forms. Although the tribes there are considerably larger on the average, the clans are less numerous. A single tribe rarely has more than a dozen of them,[262] and frequently less; each of them is therefore a much more important group. But above all, their number is fixed; they know their exact number, and they it tell to us.[263]
This difference is due to the superiority of their social economy.From the moment when these tribes were observed for the first time, the social groups were strongly attached to the soil, and consequently better able to resist the decentralizing forces which assailed them.At the same time, the society had too keen a sentiment of its unity to remain unconscious of itself and of the parts out of which it was composed.The example of America thus enables us to explain even better the organization at the base of the clans.We would take a mistaken view, if we judged this only on the present conditions in Australia.In fact, it is in a state of change and dissolution there, which is not at all normal; it is much rather the product of a degeneration which we see, due both to the natural decay of time and the disorganizing effect of the whites.To be sure, it is hardly probable that the Australian clans ever had the dimensions and solid structure of the American ones.But there must have been a time when the distance between them was less considerable than it is to-day, for the American societies would never have succeeded in making so solid a structure if the clans had always been of so fluid and inconsistent a nature.
This greater stability has even enabled the archaic system of phratries to maintain itself in America with a clearness and a relief no longer to be found in Australia.We have just seen that in the latter continent the phratry is everywhere in a state of decadence; very frequently it is nothing more than an anonymous group; when it has a name, this is either no longer understood, or in any case, it cannot mean a great deal to the native, since it is borrowed from a foreign language, or from one no longer spoken.Thus we have been able to infer the existence of totems for phratries only from a few survivals, which, for the most part, are so slightly marked that they have escaped the attention of many observers.In certain parts of America, on the contrary, this institution has retained its primitive importance.The tribes of the North-west coast, the Tlinkit and the Haida especially, have now attained a relatively advanced civilization; yet they are divided into two phratries which are subdivided into a certain number of clans: the phratries of the Crow and the Wolf among the Tlinkit,[264] of the Eagle and the Crow among the Haida.[265] And this division is not merely nominal; it corresponds to an ever-existing state of tribal customs and is deeply marked with the tribal life. The moral distance separating the clans is very slight in comparison with that separating the phratries.[266] The name of each is not a word whose sense is forgotten or only vaguely known; it is a totem in the full sense of the term; they have all its essential attributes, such as will be described below.[267] Consequently, upon this point also, American tribes must not be neglected, for we can study the totems of phratries directly there, while Australia offers only obscure vestiges of them.
II
But the totem is not merely a name; it is an emblem, a veritable coat-of-arms whose analogies with the arms of heraldry have often been remarked.In speaking of the Australians, Grey says, "each family adopt an animal or vegetable as their crest and sign,"[268] and what Grey calls a family is incontestably a clan. Also Fison and Howitt say, "the Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, the badge of a group."[269] Schoolcraft says the same thing about the totems of the Indians of North America. "The totem is in fact a design which corresponds to the heraldic emblems of civilized nations, and each person is authorized to bear it as a proof of the identity of the family to which it belongs. This is proved by the real etymology of the word, which is derived from dodaim, which means village or the residence of a family group."[270] Thus when the Indians entered into relations with the Europeans and contracts were formed between them, it was with its totem that each clan sealed the treaties thus concluded.[271]
The nobles of the feudal period carved, engraved and designed in every way their coats-of-arms upon the walls of their castles, their arms, and every sort of object that belonged to them; the blacks of Australia and the Indians of North America do the same thing with their totems. The Indians who accompanied Samuel Hearne painted their totems on their shields before going into battle.[272] According to Charlevoix, in time of war, certain tribes of Indians had veritable ensigns, made of bits of bark fastened to the end of a pole, upon which the totems were represented.[273] Among the Tlinkit, when a conflict breaks out between two clans, the champions of the two hostile groups wear helmets over their heads, upon which are painted their respective totems.[274] Among the Iroquois, they put the skin of the animal which serves as totem upon each wigwam, as a mark of the clan.[275] According to another observer, the animal was stuffed and set up before the door.[276] Among the Wyandot, each clan has its own ornaments and its distinctive paintings.[277] Among the Omaha, and among the Sioux generally, the totem is painted on the tent.[278]
Wherever the society has become sedentary, where the tent is replaced by the house, and where the plastic arts are more fully developed, the totem is engraved upon the woodwork and upon the walls.This is what happens, for example, among the Haida, the Tsimshian, the Salish and the Tlinkit."A very particular ornament of the house, among the Tlinkit," says Krause, "is the totemic coat-of-arms." Animal forms, sometimes combined with human forms, are engraved upon the posts at the sides of the door of entry, which are as high as 15 yards; they are generally painted with very bright colours.[279] However, these totemic decorations are not very numerous in the Tlinkit village; they are found almost solely before the houses of the chiefs and rich men. They are much more frequent in the neighbouring tribe of the Haida; here there are always several for each house.[280] With its many sculptured posts arising on every hand, sometimes to a great height, a Haida village gives the impression of a sacred city, all bristling with belfries or little minarets.[281] Among the Salish, the totem is frequently represented upon the interior walls of the house.[282] Elsewhere, it is found upon the canoes, the utensils of every sort and the funeral piles.[283]
The preceding examples are taken exclusively from the Indians of North America.This is because sculpture, engravings and permanent figurations are not possible except where the technique of the plastic arts has reached a degree of perfection to which the Australian tribes have not yet attained.Consequently the totemic representations of the sort which we just mentioned are rarer and less apparent in Australia than in America.However, cases of them are cited.Among the Warramunga, at the end of the burial ceremonies, the bones of the dead man are interred, after they have been dried and reduced to powder; beside the place where they are deposited, a figure representing the totem is traced upon the ground.[284] Among the Mara and the Anula, the body is placed in a piece of hollow wood decorated with designs characteristic of the totem.[285] In New South Wales, Oxley found engravings upon the trees near the tomb where a native was buried[286] to which Brough Smyth attributes a totemic character. The natives of the Upper Darling carve totemic images upon their shields.[287] According to Collins, nearly all the utensils are covered with ornaments which probably have the same significance; figures of the same sort are found upon the rocks.[288] These totemic designs may even be more frequent than it seems, for, owing to reasons which will be discussed below, it is not always easy to see what their real meaning is.
These different facts give us an idea of the considerable place held by the totem in the social life of the primitives.However, up to the present, it has appeared to us as something relatively outside of the man, for it is only upon external things that we have seen it represented.But totemic images are not placed only upon the walls of their houses, the sides of their canoes, their arms, their utensils and their tombs; they are also found on the bodies of the men.They do not put their coat-of-arms merely upon the things which they possess, but they put it upon their persons; they imprint it upon their flesh, it becomes a part of them, and this world of representations is even by far the more important one.
In fact, it is a very general rule that the members of each clan seek to give themselves the external aspect of their totem.At certain religious festivals among the Tlinkit, the person who is to direct the ceremonies wears a garment which represents, either wholly or in part, the body of the animal whose name he bears.[289] These same usages are also found in all the North-West of America.[290] They are found again among the Minnitaree, when they go into combat,[291] and among the Indians of the Pueblos.[292] Elsewhere, when the totem is a bird, men wear the feathers of this bird on their heads.[293] Among the Iowa, each clan has a special fashion of cutting the hair. In the Eagle clan, two large tufts are arranged on the front of the head, while there is another one behind; in the Buffalo clan, they are arranged in the form of horns.[294] Among the Omaha, analogous arrangements are found: each clan has its own head-dress. In the Turtle clan, for example, the hair is all shaved off, except six bunches, two on each side of the head, one in front, and one behind, in such a way as to imitate the legs, the head and the tail of the animal.[295]
But it is more frequently upon the body itself that the totemic mark is stamped: for this is a way of representation within the capacity of even the least advanced societies.It has sometimes been asked whether the common rite of knocking out a young man's two upper teeth at the age of puberty does not have the object of reproducing the form of the totem.The fact is not established, but it is worth mentioning that the natives themselves sometimes explain the custom thus.For example, among the Arunta, the extraction of teeth is practised only in the clans of the rain and of water; now according to tradition, the object of this operation is to make their faces look like certain black clouds with light borders which are believed to announce the speedy arrival of rain, and which are therefore considered things of the same family.[296] This is a proof that the native himself is conscious that the object of these deformations is to give him, at least conventionally, the aspect of his totem. Among these same Arunta, in the course of the rites of sub-incision, certain gashes are cut upon the sisters and the future wife of the novice; scars result from these, whose form is also represented upon a certain sacred object of which we shall speak presently and which is called the churinga; as we shall see, the lines thus drawn upon the churinga are emblematic of the totem.[297] Among the Kaitish, the euro is believed to be closely connected with the rain;[298] the men of the rain clan wear little ear-rings made of euro teeth.[299] Among the Yerkla, during the initiation the young man is given a certain number of slashes which leave scars; the number and form of these varies with the totems.[300] An informer of Fison mentions the same fact in the tribes observed by him.[301] According to Howitt, a relationship of the same sort exists among the Dieri between certain arrangements of scars and the water totem.[302] Among the Indians of the North-West, it is a very general custom for them to tattoo themselves with the totem.[303]
But even if the tattooings which are made by mutilations or scars do not always have a totemic significance,[304] it is different with simple designs drawn upon the body: they are generally representations of the totem. It is true that the native does not carry them every day. When he is occupied with purely economic occupations, or when the small family groups scatter to hunt or fish, he does not bother with all this paraphernalia, which is quite complicated. But when the clans unite to live a common life and to assist at the religious ceremonies together, then he must adorn himself. As we shall see, each of the ceremonies concerns a particular totem, and in theory the rites which are connected with a totem can be performed only by the men of that totem. Now those who perform,[305] who take the part of officiants, and sometimes even those who assist as spectators, always have designs representing the totem on their bodies.[306] One of the principal rites of initiation, by which a young man enters into the religious life of the tribe, consists in painting the totemic symbol on his body.[307] It is true that among the Arunta the design thus traced does not always and necessarily represent the totem of the initiated;[308] but these are exceptions, due, undoubtedly, to the disturbed state of the totemic organization of this tribe.[309] Also, even among the Arunta, at the most solemn moment of the initiation, which is its crown and consecration, when the neophyte is allowed to enter the sanctuary where all the sacred objects belonging to the clan are preserved, an emblematic painting is placed upon him; this time, it is the totem of the young man which is thus represented.[310] The bonds which unite the individual to his totem are even so strong that in the tribes on the North-west coast of North America, the emblem of the clan is painted not only upon the living but also upon the dead: before a corpse is interred, they put the totemic mark upon it.[311]
III
These totemic decorations enable us to see that the totem is not merely a name and an emblem.It is in the course of the religious ceremonies that they are employed; they are a part of the liturgy; so while the totem is a collective label, it also has a religious character.In fact, it is in connection with it, that things are classified as sacred or profane.It is the very type of sacred thing.
The tribes of Central Australia, especially the Arunta, the Loritja, the Kaitish, the Unmatjera, and the Ilpirra,[312] make constant use of certain instruments in their rites which are called the churinga by the Arunta, according to Spencer and Gillen, or the tjurunga, according to Strehlow.[313] They are pieces of wood or bits of polished stone, of a great variety of forms, but generally oval or oblong.[314] Each totemic group has a more or less important collection of these. Upon each of these is engraved a design representing the totem of this same group.[315] A certain number of the churinga have a hole at one end, through which goes a thread made of human hair or that of an opossum. Those which are made of wood and are pierced in this way serve for exactly the same purposes as those instruments of the cult to which English ethnographers have given the name of "bull-roarers." By means of the thread by which they are suspended, they are whirled rapidly in the air in such a way as to produce a sort of humming identical with that made by the toys of this name still used by our children; this deafening noise has a ritual significance and accompanies all ceremonies of any importance. These sorts of churinga are real bull-roarers. But there are others which are not made of wood and are not pierced; consequently they cannot be employed in this way. Nevertheless, they inspire the same religious sentiments.
In fact, every churinga, for whatever purpose it may be employed, is counted among the eminently sacred things; there are none which surpass it in religious dignity. This is indicated even by the word which is used to designate them. It is not only a substantive but also an adjective meaning sacred. Also, among the several names which each Arunta has, there is one so sacred that it must not be revealed to a stranger; it is pronounced but rarely, and then in a low voice and a sort of mysterious murmur. Now this name is called the aritna churinga (aritna means name).[316] In general, the word churinga is used to designate all ritual acts; for example, ilia churinga signifies the cult of the emu.[317] Churinga, when used substantively, therefore designates the thing whose essential characteristic is sacredness. Profane persons, that is to say, women and young men not yet initiated into the religious life, may not touch or even see the churinga; they are only allowed to look at it from a distance, and even this is only on rare occasions.[318]
The churinga are piously kept in a special place, which the Arunta call the ertnatulunga[319] This is a cave or a sort of cavern hidden in a deserted place. The entrance is carefully closed by means of stones so cleverly placed that a stranger going past it could not suspect that the religious treasury of the clan was so near to him. The sacred character of the churinga is so great that it communicates itself to the locality where they are stored: the women and the uninitiated cannot approach it. It is only after their initiation is completely finished that the young men have access to it: there are some who are not esteemed worthy of this favour except after years of trial.[320] The religious nature radiates to a distance and communicates itself to all the surroundings: everything near by participates in this same nature and is therefore withdrawn from profane touch. Is one man pursued by another? If he succeeds in reaching the ertnatulunga, he is saved; he cannot be seized there.[321] Even a wounded animal which takes refuge there must be respected.[322] Quarrels are forbidden there. It is a place of peace, as is said in the Germanic societies; it is a sanctuary of the totemic group, it is a veritable place of asylum.
But the virtues of the churinga are not manifested merely by the way in which it keeps the profane at a distance.If it is thus isolated, it is because it is something of a high religious value whose loss would injure the group and the individuals severely.It has all sorts of marvellous properties: by contact it heals wounds, especially those resulting from circumcision;[323] it has the same power over sickness;[324] it is useful for making the beard grow;[325] it confers important powers over the totemic species, whose normal reproduction it ensures;[326] it gives men force, courage and perseverance, while, on the other hand, it depresses and weakens their enemies. This latter belief is so firmly rooted that when two combatants stand pitted against one another, if one sees that the other has brought churinga against him, he loses confidence and his defeat is certain.[327] Thus there is no ritual instrument which has a more important place in the religious ceremonies.[328] By means of various sorts of anointings, their powers are communicated either to the officiants or to the assistants; to bring this about, they are rubbed over the members and stomach of the faithful after being covered with grease;[329] or sometimes they are covered with a down which flies away and scatters itself in every direction when they are whirled; this a way of disseminating the virtues which are in them.[330]
But they are not useful merely to individuals; the fate of the clan as a whole is bound up with theirs.Their loss is a disaster; it is the greatest misfortune which can happen to the group.[331] Sometimes they leave the ertnatulunga, for example when they are loaned to other groups.[332] Then follows a veritable public mourning. For two weeks, the people of the totem weep and lament, covering their bodies with white clay just as they do when they have lost a relative.[333] And the churinga are not left at the free disposition of everybody; the ertnatulunga where they are kept is placed under the control of the chief of the group. It is true that each individual has special rights to some of them;[334] yet, though he is their proprietor in a sense, he cannot make use of them except with the consent and under the direction of the chief. It is a collective treasury; it is the sacred ark of the clan.[335] The devotion of which they are the object shows the high price that is attached to them. The respect with which they are handled is shown by the solemnity of the movements.[336] They are taken care of, they are greased, rubbed, polished, and when they are moved from one locality to another, it is in the midst of ceremonies which bear witness to the fact that this displacement is regarded as an act of the highest importance.[337]
Now in themselves, the churinga are objects of wood and stone like all others; they are distinguished from profane things of the same sort by only one particularity: this is that the totemic mark is drawn or engraved upon them.So it is this mark and this alone which gives them their sacred character.It is true that according to Spencer and Gillen, the churinga serve as the residence of an ancestor's soul and that it is the presence of this soul which confers these properties.[338] While declaring this interpretation inexact, Strehlow, in his turn, proposes another which does not differ materially from the other: he claims that the churinga are considered the image of the ancestor's body, or the body itself.[339] So, in any case, it would be sentiments inspired by the ancestor which fix themselves upon the material object, and convert it into a sort of fetish. But in the first place, both conceptions,—which, by the way, scarcely differ except in the letter of the myth,—have obviously been made up afterwards, to account for the sacred character of the churinga. In the constitution of these pieces of wood and bits of stone, and in their external appearance, there is nothing which predestines them to be considered the seat of an ancestral soul, or the image of his body. So if men have imagined this myth, it was in order to explain the religious respect which these things inspired in them, and the respect was not determined by the myth. This explanation, like so many mythological explanations, resolves the question only by repeating it in slightly different terms; for saying that the churinga is sacred and saying that it has such and such a relation with a sacred being, is merely to proclaim the same fact in two different ways; it is not accounting for them. Moreover, according to the avowal of Spencer and Gillen, there are some churinga among the Arunta which are made by the old men of the group, to the knowledge of and before the eyes of all;[340] these obviously do not come from the great ancestors. However, except for certain differences of degree, they have the same power as the others and are preserved in the same manner. Finally, there are whole tribes where the churinga is never associated with a spirit.[341] Its religious nature comes to it, then, from some other source, and whence could it come, if not from the totemic stamp which it bears? It is to this image, therefore, that the demonstrations of the rite are really addressed; it is this which sanctifies the object upon which it is carved.
Among the Arunta and the neighbouring tribes, there are two other liturgical instruments closely connected with the totem and the churinga itself, which ordinarily enters into their composition: they are the nurtunja and the waninga
The nurtunja,[342] which is found among the northern Arunta and their immediate neighbours,[343] is made up principally of a vertical support which is either a single lance, or several lances united into a bundle, or of a simple pole.[344] Bunches of grass are fastened all around it by means of belts or little cords made of hair. Above this, down is placed, arranged either in circles or in parallel lines which run from the top to the bottom of the support. The top is decorated with the plumes of an eagle-hawk. This is only the most general and typical form; in particular cases, it has all sorts of variations.[345]
The waninga, which is found only among the southern Arunta, the Urabunna and the Loritja, has no one unique model either.Reduced to its most essential elements, it too consists in a vertical support, formed by a long stick or by a lance several yards high, with sometimes one and sometimes two cross-pieces.[346] In the former case, it has the appearance of a cross. Cords made either of human hair or opossum or bandicoot fur diagonally cross the space included between the arms of the cross and the extremities of the central axis; as they are quite close to each other, they form a network in the form of a lozenge. When there are two cross-bars, these cords go from one to the other and from these to the top and bottom of the support. They are sometimes covered with a layer of down, thick enough to conceal the foundation. Thus the waninga has the appearance of a veritable flag.[347]
Now the nurtunja and the waninga, which figure in a multitude of important rites, are the object of a religious respect quite like that inspired by the churinga.The process of their manufacture and erection is conducted with the greatest solemnity.Fixed in the earth, or carried by an officiant, they mark the central point of the ceremony: it is about them that the dances take place and the rites are performed.In the course of the initiation, the novice is led to the foot of a nurtunja erected for the occasion. Someone says to him, "There is the nurtunja of your father; many young men have already been made by it." After that, the initiate must kiss the nurtunja.[348] By this kiss, he enters into relations with the religious principle which resides there; it is a veritable communion which should give the young man the force required to support the terrible operation of sub-incision.[349] The nurtunja also plays a considerable rôle in the mythology of these societies. The myths relate that in the fabulous times of the great ancestors, the territory of the tribe was overrun in every direction by companies composed exclusively of individuals of the same totem.[350] Each of these troops had a nurtunja with it. When it stopped to camp, before scattering to hunt, the members fixed their nurtunja in the ground, from the top of which their churinga was suspended.[351] That is equivalent to saying that they confided the most precious things they had to it. It was at the same time a sort of standard which served as a rallying-centre for the group. One cannot fail to be struck by the analogies between the nurtunja and the sacred post of the Omaha.[352]
Now its sacred character can come from only one cause: that is that it represents the totem materially.The vertical lines or rings of down which cover it, and even the cords of different colours which fasten the arms of the waninga to the central axis, are not arranged arbitrarily, according to the taste of the makers; they must conform to a type strictly determined by tradition which, in the minds of the natives, represents the totem.[353] Here we cannot ask, as we did in the case of the churinga, whether the veneration accorded to this instrument of the cult is not merely the reflex of that inspired by the ancestors; for it is a rule that each nurtunja and each waninga last only during the ceremony where they are used. They are made all over again every time that it is necessary, and when the rite is once accomplished, they are stripped of their ornaments and the elements out of which they are made are scattered.[354] They are nothing more than images—and temporary images at that—of the totem, and consequently it is on this ground, and on this ground alone, that they play a religious rôle.
So the churinga, the nurtunja and the waninga owe their religious nature solely to the fact that they bear the totemic emblem. It is the emblem that is sacred. It keeps this character, no matter where it may be represented. Sometimes it is painted upon rocks; these paintings are called churinga ilkinia, sacred drawings.[355] The decorations with which the officiants and assistants at the religious ceremonies adorn themselves have the same name: women and children may not see them.[356] In the course of certain rites, the totem is drawn upon the ground. The way in which this is done bears witness to the sentiments inspired by this design, and the high value attributed to it; it is traced upon a place that has been previously sprinkled, and saturated with human blood,[357] and we shall presently see that the blood is in itself a sacred liquid, serving for pious uses only. When the design has been made, the faithful remain seated on the ground before it, in an attitude of the purest devotion.[358] If we give the word a sense corresponding to the mentality of the primitive, we may say that they adore it. This enables us to understand how the totemic blazon has remained something very precious for the Indians of North America: it is always surrounded with a sort of religious halo.
But if we are seeking to understand how it comes that these totemic representations are so sacred, it is not without interest to see what they consist in.
Among the Indians of North America, they are painted, engraved or carved images which attempt to reproduce as faithfully as possible the external aspect of the totemic animal.The means employed are those which we use to-day in similar circumstances, except that they are generally cruder.But it is not the same in Australia, and it is in the Australian societies that we must seek the origin of these representations.Although the Australian may show himself sufficiently capable of imitating the forms of things in a rudimentary way,[359] sacred representations generally seem to show no ambitions in this line: they consist essentially in geometrical designs drawn upon the churinga, the nurtunga, rocks, the ground, or the human body. They are either straight or curved lines, painted in different ways,[360] and the whole having only a conventional meaning. The connection between the figure and the thing represented is so remote and indirect that it cannot be seen, except when it is pointed out. Only the members of the clan can say what meaning is attached to such and such combinations of lines.[361] Men and women are generally represented by semicircles, and animals by whole circles or spirals,[362] the tracks of men or animals by lines of points, etc. The meaning of the figures thus obtained is so arbitrary that a single design may have two different meanings for the men of two different totems, representing one animal here, and another animal or plant there. This is perhaps still more apparent with the nurtunja and waninga. Each of them represents a different totem. But the few and simple elements which enter into their composition do not allow a great variety of combinations. The result is that two nurtunja may have exactly the same appearance, and yet express two things as different as a gum tree and an emu.[363] When a nurtunja is made, it is given a meaning which it keeps during the whole ceremony, but which, in the last resort, is fixed by convention.
These facts prove that if the Australian is so strongly inclined to represent his totem, it is in order not to have a portrait of it before his eyes which would constantly renew the sensation of it; it is merely because he feels the need of representing the idea which he forms of it by means of material and external signs, no matter what these signs may be.We are not yet ready to attempt to understand what has thus caused the primitive to write his idea of his totem upon his person and upon different objects, but it is important to state at once the nature of the need which has given rise to these numerous representations.[364]
CHAPTER II
TOTEMIC BELIEFS—continued
The Totemic Animal and Man
But totemic images are not the only sacred things.There are real things which are also the object of rites, because of the relations which they have with the totem: before all others, are the beings of the totemic species and the members of the clan.
I
First of all, since the designs which represent the totem arouse religious sentiments, it is natural that the things whose aspect these designs reproduce should have this same property, at least to a certain degree.
For the most part, these are animals or plants.The profane function of vegetables and even of animals is ordinarily to serve as food; then the sacred character of the totemic animal or plant is shown by the fact that it is forbidden to eat them.It is true that since they are sacred things, they can enter into the composition of certain mystical repasts, and we shall see, in fact, that they sometimes serve as veritable sacraments; yet normally they cannot be used for everyday consumption.Whoever oversteps this rule, exposes himself to grave dangers.It is not that the group always intervenes to punish this infraction artificially; it is believed that the sacrilege produces death automatically.A redoubtable principle is held to reside in the totemic plant or animal, which cannot enter into the profane organism without disorganizing it or destroying it.[365] In certain tribes at least, only the old men are free from this prohibition;[366] we shall see the reason for this later.
However, if this prohibition is formal in a large number of tribes[367]—with certain exceptions which will be mentioned later—it is incontestable that it tends to weaken as the old totemic organization is disturbed.But the restrictions which remain even then prove that these attenuations are not admitted without difficulty.For example, when it is permitted to eat the plant or animal that serves as totem, it is not possible to do so freely; only a little bit may be taken at a time.To go beyond this amount is a ritual fault that has grave consequences.[368] Elsewhere, the prohibition remains intact for the parts that are regarded as the most precious, that is to say, as the most sacred; for example, the eggs or the fat.[369] In still other parts, consumption is not allowed except when the animal in question has not yet reached full maturity.[370] In this case, they undoubtedly think that its sacred character is not yet complete. So the barrier which isolates and protects the totemic being yields but slowly and with active resistance, which bears witness to what it must have been at first.
It is true that according to Spencer and Gillen these restrictions are not the remnants of what was once a rigorous prohibition now losing hold, but the beginnings of an interdiction which is only commencing to establish itself.These writers hold[371] that at first there was a complete liberty of consumption and that the limitations which were presently brought are relatively recent. They think they find the proof of their theory in the two following facts. In the first place, as we just said, there are solemn occasions when the members of the clan or their chief not only may, but must eat the totemic animal or plant. Moreover, the myths relate that the great ancestors, the founders of the clans, ate their totems regularly: now, it is said, these stories cannot be understood except as an echo of a time when the present prohibitions did not exist.
But the fact that in the course of certain solemn ceremonies a consumption of the totem, and a moderate one at that, is ritually required in no way implies that it was once an ordinary article of food.Quite on the contrary, the food that one eats at a mystical repast is essentially sacred, and consequently forbidden to the profane.As for the myths, a somewhat summary critical method is employed, if they are so readily given the value of historical documents. In general, their object is to interpret existing rites rather than to commemorate past events; they are an explanation of the present much more than a history. In this case, the traditions according to which the ancestors of the fabulous epoch ate their totem are in perfect accord with the beliefs and rites which are always in force. The old men and those who have attained a high religious dignity are freed from the restrictions under which ordinary men are placed:[372] they can eat the sacred thing because they are sacred themselves; this rule is in no way peculiar to totemism, but it is found in all the most diverse religions. Now the ancestral heroes were nearly gods. It is therefore still more natural that they should eat the sacred food;[373] but that is no reason why the same privilege should be awarded to the simple profane.[374]
However, it is neither certain nor even probable that the prohibition was ever absolute.It seems to have always been suspended in case of necessity, as, for example, when a man is famished and has nothing else with which to nourish himself.[375] A stronger reason for this is found when the totem is a form of nourishment which a man cannot do without. Thus there are a great many tribes where water is a totem; a strict prohibition is manifestly impossible in this case. However, even here, the privilege granted is submitted to certain restrictions which greatly limit its use and which show clearly that it goes against a recognized principle. Among the Kaitish and the Warramunga, a man of this totem is not allowed to drink water freely; he may not take it up himself; he may receive it only from the hands of a third party who must belong to the phratry of which he is not a member.[376] The complexity of this procedure and the embarrassment which results from it are still another proof that access to the sacred thing is not free. This same rule is applied in certain central tribes every time that the totem is eaten, whether from necessity or any other cause. It should also be added that when this formality is not possible, that is, when a man is alone or with members of his own phratry only, he may, on necessity, do without an intermediary. It is clear that the prohibition is susceptible of various moderations.
Nevertheless, it rests upon ideas so strongly ingrained in the mind that it frequently survives its original cause for being.We have seen that in all probability, the different clans of a phratry are only subdivisions of one original clan which has been dismembered.So there was a time when all the clans, being welded together, had the same totem; consequently, wherever the souvenir of this common origin is not completely effaced, each clan continues to feel itself united to the others and to consider that their totems are not completely foreign to it.For this reason an individual may not eat freely of the totems held by the different clans of the phratry of which he is a member; he may touch them only if the forbidden plant or animal is given him by a member of the other phratry.[377]
Another survival of the same sort is the one concerning the maternal totem.There are strong reasons for believing that at first, the totem was transmitted in the uterine line.Therefore, wherever descent in the paternal line has been introduced, this probably took place only after a long period, during which the opposite principle was applied and the child had the totem of his mother along with all the restrictions attached to it.Now in certain tribes where the child inherits the paternal totem to-day, some of the interdictions which originally protected the totem of his mother still survive: he cannot eat it freely.[378] In the present state of affairs, however, there is no longer anything corresponding to this prohibition.
To this prohibition of eating is frequently added that of killing the totem, or picking it, when it is a plant.[379] However, here also there are exceptions and tolerations. These are especially in the case of necessity, when the totem is a dangerous animal,[380] for example, or when the man has nothing to eat. There are even tribes where men are forbidden to hunt the animals whose names they bear, on their own accounts, but where they may kill them for others.[381] But the way in which this act is generally accomplished clearly indicates that it is something illicit. One excuses himself as though for a fault, and bears witness to the chagrin which he suffers and the repugnance which he feels,[382] while precautions are taken that the animal may suffer as little as possible.[383]
In addition to these fundamental interdictions, certain cases of a prohibition of contact between a man and his totem are cited.Thus among the Omaha, in the clan of the Elk, no one may touch any part of the body of a male elk; in the sub-clan of the Buffalo, no one is allowed to touch the head of this animal.[384] Among the Bechuana, no man dares to clothe himself in the skin of his totem.[385] But these cases are rare; and it is natural that they should be exceptional, for normally a man must wear the image of his totem or something which brings it to mind. The tattooings and the totemic costumes would not be possible if all contact were forbidden. It has also been remarked that this prohibition has not been found in Australia, but only in those societies where totemism has advanced far from its original form; it is therefore probably of late origin and due perhaps to the influence of ideas that are really not totemic at all.[386]
If we now compare these various interdictions with those whose object is the totemic emblem, contrarily to all that could be foreseen, it appears that these latter are more numerous, stricter, and more severely enforced than the former. The figures of all sorts which represent the totem are surrounded with a respect sensibly superior to that inspired by the very being whose form these figures reproduce. The churinga, the nurtunja and the waninga can never be handled by the women or the uninitiated, who are even allowed to catch glimpses of it only very exceptionally, and from a respectful distance. On the other hand, the plant or animal whose name the clan bears may be seen and touched by everybody. The churinga are preserved in a sort of temple, upon whose threshold all noises from the profane life must cease; it is the domain of sacred things. On the contrary, the totemic animals and plants live in the profane world and are mixed up with the common everyday life. Since the number and importance of the interdictions which isolate a sacred thing, and keep it apart, correspond to the degree of sacredness with which it is invested, we arrive at the remarkable conclusion that the images of totemic beings are more sacred than the beings themselvesAlso, in the ceremonies of the cult, it is the churinga and the nurtunja which have the most important place; the animal appears there only very exceptionally.In a certain rite, of which we shall have occasion to speak,[387] it serves as the substance for a religious repast, but it plays no active rôle. The Arunta dance around the nurtunja, and assemble before the image of their totem to adore it, but a similar demonstration is never made before the totemic being itself. If this latter were the primarily sacred object, it would be with it, the sacred animal or plant, that the young initiate would communicate when he is introduced into the religious life; but we have seen that on the contrary, the most solemn moment of the initiation is the one when the novice enters into the sanctuary of the churinga. It is with them and the nurtunja that he communicates. The representations of the totem are therefore more actively powerful than the totem itself.
II
We must now determine the place of man in the scheme of religious things.
By the force of a whole group of acquired habits and of language itself, we are inclined to consider the common man, the simple believer, as an essentially profane being.It may well happen that this conception is not literally true for any religion;[388] in any case, it is not applicable to totemism. Every member of the clan is invested with a sacred character which is not materially inferior to that which we just observed in the animal. This personal sacredness is due to the fact that the man believes that while he is a man in the usual sense of the word, he is also an animal or plant of the totemic species.
In fact, he bears its name; this identity of name is therefore supposed to imply an identity of nature.The first is not merely considered as an outward sign of the second; it supposes it logically.This is because the name, for a primitive, is not merely a word or a combination of sounds; it is a part of the being, and even something essential to it.A member of the Kangaroo clan calls himself a kangaroo; he is therefore, in one sense, an animal of this species."The totem of any man," say Spencer and Gillen, "is regarded as the same thing as himself; a native once said to us when we were discussing the matter with him, 'That one,' pointing to his photograph which we had taken, 'is the same thing as me: so is a kangaroo' (his totem)."[389] So each individual has a double nature: two beings coexist within him, a man and an animal.
In order to give a semblance of intelligibility to this duality, so strange for us, the primitive has invented myths which, it is true, explain nothing and only shift the difficulty, but which, by shifting it, seem at least to lessen the logical scandal.With slight variations of detail, all are constructed on the same plan: their object is to establish genealogical connections between the man and the totemic animal, making the one a relative of the other.By this common origin, which, by the way, is represented in various manners, they believe that they account for their common nature.The Narrinyeri, for example, have imagined that certain of the first men had the power of transforming themselves into beasts.[390] Other Australian societies place at the beginning of humanity either strange animals from which the men were descended in some unknown way,[391] or mixed beings, half-way between the two kingdoms,[392] or else unformed creatures, hardly representable, deprived of all determined organs, and even of all definite members, and the different parts of whose bodies were hardly outlined.[393] Mythical powers, sometimes conceived under the form of animals, then intervened and made men out of these ambiguous and innumerable beings which Spencer and Gillen say represent "stages in the transformation of animals and plants into human beings."[394] These transformations are represented to us under the form of violent and, as it were, surgical operations. It is under the blows of an axe or, if the operator is a bird, blows of the beak, that the human individual was carved out of this shapeless mass, his members separated from each other, his mouth opened and his nostrils pierced.[395] Analogous legends are found in America, except that owing to the more highly developed mentality of these peoples, the representations which they employ do not contain confusions so troublesome for the mind. Sometimes it is a legendary personage who, by an act of his power, metamorphosed the animal who gives its name to the clan into a man.[396] Sometimes the myth attempts to explain how, by a series of nearly natural events and a sort of spontaneous evolution, the animal transformed himself little by little, and finally took a human form.[397]
It is true that there are societies (the Haida, Tlinkit, Tsimshian) where it is no longer admitted that man was born of an animal or plant; but the idea of an affinity between the animals of the totemic species and the members of the clan has survived there nevertheless, and expresses itself in myths which, though differing from the preceding, still retain all that is essential in them.Here is one of the fundamental themes.The ancestor who gives his name to the clan is here represented as a human being, but who, in the course of various wanderings, has been led to live for a while among the fabulous animals of the very species which gave the clan its name.As the result of this intimate and prolonged connection, he became so like his new companions that when he returned to men, they no longer recognized him.He was therefore given the name of the animal which he resembled.It is from his stay in this mythical land that he brought back the totemic emblem, together with the powers and virtues believed to be attached to it.[398] Thus in this case, as in the others, men are believed to participate in the nature of the animal, though this participation may be conceived in slightly different forms.[399]
So man also has something sacred about him.Though diffused into the whole organism, this characteristic is especially apparent in certain privileged places. There are organs and tissues that are specially marked out: these are particularly the blood and the hair.
In the first place, human blood is so holy a thing that in the tribes of Central Australia, it frequently serves to consecrate the most respected instruments of the cult.For example, in certain cases, the nurtunja is regularly anointed from top to bottom with the blood of a man.[400] It is upon ground all saturated with blood that the men of the Emu, among the Arunta, trace their sacred images.[401] We shall presently see that streams of blood are poured upon the rocks which represent the totemic animals and plants.[402] There is no religious ceremony where blood does not have some part to play.[403] During the initiation, the adults open their veins and sprinkle the novice with their blood; and this blood is so sacred a thing that women may not be present while it is flowing; the sight of it is forbidden them, just as the sight of a churinga is.[404] The blood lost by a young initiate during the very violent operations he must undergo has very particular virtues: it is used in various ceremonies.[405] That which flows during the sub-incision is piously kept by the Arunta and buried in a place upon which they put a piece of wood warning passers-by of the sacredness of the spot; no woman should approach it.[406] The religious nature of blood also explains the equal importance, religiously, of the red ochre, which is very frequently employed in ceremonies; they rub the churinga with it and use it in ritual decorations.[407] This is due to the fact that because of its colour, it is regarded as something kindred to blood. Many deposits of red ochre which are found in the Arunta territory are even supposed to be the coagulated blood which certain heroines of the mythical period shed on to the soil.[408]
Hair has similar properties.The natives of the centre wear belts made of human hair, whose religious functions we have already pointed out: they are also used to wrap up certain instruments of the cult.[409] Does one man loan another one of his churinga? As a sign of acknowledgment, the second makes a present of hair to the first; these two sorts of things are therefore thought to be of the same order and of equivalent value.[410] So the operation of cutting the hair is a ritual act, accompanied by definite ceremonies: the individual operated upon must squat on the ground, with his face turned in the direction of the place where the fabulous ancestors from which the clan of his mother is believed to be descended, are thought to have camped.[411] For the same reason, as soon as a man is dead, they cut his hair off and put it away in some distant place, for neither women nor the non-initiated have the right of seeing it: it is here, far from profane eyes, that the belts are made.[412]
Other organic tissues might be mentioned which have similar properties, in varying degrees: such are the whiskers, the foreskin, the fat of the liver, etc.[413] But it is useless to multiply examples. Those already given are enough to prove that there is something in man which holds profane things at a distance and which possesses a religious power; in other words, the human organism conceals within its depths a sacred principle, which visibly comes to the surface in certain determined cases. This principle does not differ materially from that which causes the religious character of the totem. In fact, we have just seen that the different substances in which it incarnates itself especially enter into the ritual composition of the objects of the cult (nurtunja, totemic designs), or else are used in the anointings whose object is to renew the virtues either of the churinga or of the sacred rocks; they are things of the same species.
Sometimes the religious dignity which is inherent in each member of the clan on this account is not equal for all.Men possess it to a higher degree than women; in relation to them, women are like profane beings.[414] Thus, every time that there is an assembly, either of the totemic group or of the tribe, the men have a separate camp, distinct from that of the women, and into which these latter may not enter: they are separated off.[415] But there are also differences in the way in which men are marked with a religious character. The young men not yet initiated are wholly deprived of it, since they are not admitted to the ceremonies. It is among the old men that it reaches its greatest intensity. They are so very sacred that certain things forbidden to ordinary people are permissible for them: they may eat the totemic animal more freely and, as we have seen, there are even some tribes where they are freed from all dietetic restrictions.
So we must be careful not to consider totemism a sort of animal worship.The attitude of a man towards the animals or plants whose name he bears is not at all that of a believer towards his god, for he belongs to the sacred world himself.Their relations are rather those of two beings who are on the same level and of equal value.The most that can be said is that in certain cases, at least, the animal seems to occupy a slightly more elevated place in the hierarchy of sacred things.It is because of this that it is sometimes called the father or the grandfather of the men of the clan, which seems to show that they feel themselves in a state of moral dependence in regard to it.[416] But in other, and perhaps even more frequent cases, it happens that the expressions used denote rather a sentiment of equality. The totemic animal is called the friend or the elder brother of its human fellows.[417] Finally, the bonds which exist between them and it are much more like those which unite the members of a single family; the animals and the men are made of the same flesh, as the Buandik say.[418] On account of this kinship, men regard the animals of the totemic species as kindly associates upon whose aid they think they can rely. They call them to their aid[419] and they come, to direct their blows in the hunt and to give warning of whatever dangers there may be.[420] In return for this, men treat them with regard and are never cruel to them;[421] but these attentions in no way resemble a cult.
Men sometimes even appear to have a mysterious sort of property-right over their totems. The prohibition against killing and eating them is applied only to members of the clan, of course; it could not be extended to other persons without making life practically impossible.If, in a tribe like the Arunta, where there is such a host of different totems, it were forbidden to eat, not only the animal or plant whose name one bears, but also all the animals and all the plants which serve as totems to other clans, the sources of food would be reduced to nothing.Yet there are tribes where the consumption of the totemic plant or animal is not allowed without restrictions, even to foreigners.Among the Wakelbura, it must not take place in the presence of men of this totem.[422] In other places, their permission must be given. For example, among the Kaitish and the Unmatjera, whenever a man of the Emu totem happens to be in a place occupied by a grass-seed clan, and gathers some of these seed, before eating them he must go to the chief and say to him, "I have gathered these seeds in your country." To this the chief replies, "All right; you may eat them." But if the Emu man ate them before demanding permission, it is believed that he would fall sick and run the risk of dying.[423] There are even cases where the chief of the group must take a little of the food and eat it himself: it is a sort of payment which must be made.[424] For the same reason, the churinga gives the hunter a certain power over the corresponding animal: by rubbing his body with a Euro churinga, for example, a man acquires a greater chance of catching euros.[425] This is the proof that the fact of participating in the nature of a totemic being confers a sort of eminent right over this latter. Finally, there is one tribe in northern Queensland, the Karingbool, where the men of the totem are the only ones who have a right to kill the animal or, if the totem is a tree, to peel off its bark. Their aid is indispensable to all others who want to use the flesh of this animal or the wood of this tree for their own personal ends.[426] So they appear as proprietors, though it is quite evidently over a special sort of property, of which we find it hard to form an idea.
CHAPTER III
TOTEMIC BELIEFS—continued
The Cosmological System of Totemism and the Idea of Class
We are beginning to see that totemism is a much more complex religion than it first appeared to be.We have already distinguished three classes of things which it recognizes as sacred, in varying degrees: the totemic emblem, the animal or plant whose appearance this emblem reproduces, and the members of the clan.However, this list is not yet complete.In fact, a religion is not merely a collection of fragmentary beliefs in regard to special objects like those we have just been discussing.To a greater or less extent, all known religions have been systems of ideas which tend to embrace the universality of things, and to give us a complete representation of the world.If totemism is to be considered as a religion comparable to the others, it too should offer us a conception of the universe.As a matter of fact, it does satisfy this condition.
I
The fact that this aspect of totemism has generally been neglected is due to the too narrow notion of the clan which has been prevalent.Ordinarily it is regarded as a mere group of human beings.Being a simple subdivision of the tribe, it seems that like this, it is made up of nothing but men.But in reasoning thus, we substitute our European ideas for those which the primitive has of man and of society.For the Australian, things themselves, everything which is in the universe, are a part of the tribe; they are constituent elements of it and, so to speak, regular members of it; just like men, they have a determined place in the general scheme of organization of the society."The South Australian savage," says Fison, "looks upon the universe as the Great Tribe, to one of whose divisions he himself belongs; and all things, animate and inanimate, which belong to his class are parts of the body corporate whereof he himself is a part."[427] As a consequence of this principle, whenever the tribe is divided into two phratries, all known things are distributed between them. "All nature," says Palmer, in speaking of the Bellinger River tribe, "is also divided into class [phratry] names.... The sun and moon and stars are said ... to belong to classes [phratries] just as the blacks themselves."[428] The Port Mackay tribe in Queensland has two phratries with the names Yungaroo and Wootaroo, as do the neighbouring tribes. Now as Bridgmann says, "all things, animate and inanimate, are divided by these tribes into two classes, named Yungaroo and Wootaroo."[429] Nor does the classification stop here. The men of each phratry are distributed among a certain number of clans; likewise, the things attributed to each phratry are in their turn distributed among the clans of which the phratry is composed. A certain tree, for example, will be assigned to the Kangaroo clan, and to it alone; then, just like the human members of the clan, it will have the Kangaroo as totem; another will belong to the Snake clan; clouds will be placed under one totem, the sun under another, etc. All known things will thus be arranged in a sort of tableau or systematic classification embracing the whole of nature.
We have given a certain number of these classifications elsewhere;[430] at present we shall confine ourselves to repeating a few of these as examples. One of the best known of these is the one found in the Mount Gambier tribe. This tribe includes two phratries, named respectively the Kumite and the Kroki; each of these, in its turn, is subdivided into five clans. Now "everything in nature belongs to one or another of these ten clans";[431] Fison and Howitt say that they are all "included" within it. In fact, they are classified under these ten totems just like species in their respective classes. This is well shown by the following table based on information gathered by Curr and by Fison and Howitt.[432]