ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS--_end_
_Origin of the Idea of the Totemic Principle or Mana_
The proposition established in the preceding chapter determines the
terms in which the problem of the origins of totemism should be posed.
Since totemism is everywhere dominated by the idea of a quasi-divine
principle, imminent in certain categories of men and things and thought
of under the form of an animal or vegetable, the explanation of this
religion is essentially the explanation of this belief; to arrive at
this, we must seek to learn how men have been led to construct this idea
and out of what materials they have constructed it.
I
It is obviously not out of the sensations which the things serving as
totems are able to arouse in the mind; we have shown that these things
are frequently insignificant. The lizard, the caterpillar, the rat, the
ant, the frog, the turkey, the bream-fish, the plum-tree, the cockatoo,
etc., to cite only those names which appear frequently in the lists of
Australian totems, are not of a nature to produce upon men these great
and strong impressions which in a way resemble religious emotions and
which impress a sacred character upon the objects they create. It is
true that this is not the case with the stars and the great atmospheric
phenomena, which have, on the contrary, all that is necessary to strike
the imagination forcibly; but as a matter of fact, these serve only very
exceptionally as totems. It is even probable that they were very slow in
taking this office.[676] So it is not the intrinsic nature of the thing
whose name the clan bears that marked it out to become the object of a
cult. Also, if the sentiments which it inspired were really the
determining cause of the totemic rites and beliefs, it would be the
pre-eminently sacred thing; the animals or plants employed as totems
would play an eminent part in the religious life. But we know that the
centre of the cult is actually elsewhere. It is the figurative
representations of this plant or animal and the totemic emblems and
symbols of every sort, which have the greatest sanctity; so it is in
them that is found the source of that religious nature, of which the
real objects represented by these emblems receive only a reflection.
Thus the totem is before all a symbol, a material expression of
something else.[677] But of what?
From the analysis to which we have been giving our attention, it is
evident that it expresses and symbolizes two different sorts of things.
In the first place, it is the outward and visible form of what we have
called the totemic principle or god. But it is also the symbol of the
determined society called the clan. It is its flag; it is the sign by
which each clan distinguishes itself from the others, the visible mark
of its personality, a mark borne by everything which is a part of the
clan under any title whatsoever, men, beasts or things. So if it is at
once the symbol of the god and of the society, is that not because the
god and the society are only one? How could the emblem of the group have
been able to become the figure of this quasi-divinity, if the group and
the divinity were two distinct realities? The god of the clan, the
totemic principle, can therefore be nothing else than the clan itself,
personified and represented to the imagination under the visible form of
the animal or vegetable which serves as totem.
But how has this apotheosis been possible, and how did it happen to take
place in this fashion?
II
In a general way, it is unquestionable that a society has all that is
necessary to arouse the sensation of the divine in minds, merely by the
power that it has over them; for to its members it is what a god is to
his worshippers. In fact, a god is, first of all, a being whom men think
of as superior to themselves, and upon whom they feel that they depend.
Whether it be a conscious personality, such as Zeus or Jahveh, or merely
abstract forces such as those in play in totemism, the worshipper, in
the one case as in the other, believes himself held to certain manners
of acting which are imposed upon him by the nature of the sacred
principle with which he feels that he is in communion. Now society also
gives us the sensation of a perpetual dependence. Since it has a nature
which is peculiar to itself and different from our individual nature, it
pursues ends which are likewise special to it; but, as it cannot attain
them except through our intermediacy, it imperiously demands our aid. It
requires that, forgetful of our own interests, we make ourselves its
servitors, and it submits us to every sort of inconvenience, privation
and sacrifice, without which social life would be impossible. It is
because of this that at every instant we are obliged to submit ourselves
to rules of conduct and of thought which we have neither made nor
desired, and which are sometimes even contrary to our most fundamental
inclinations and instincts.
Even if society were unable to obtain these concessions and sacrifices
from us except by a material constraint, it might awaken in us only the
idea of a physical force to which we must give way of necessity, instead
of that of a moral power such as religions adore. But as a matter of
fact, the empire which it holds over consciences is due much less to the
physical supremacy of which it has the privilege than to the moral
authority with which it is invested. If we yield to its orders, it is
not merely because it is strong enough to triumph over our resistance;
it is primarily because it is the object of a venerable respect.
We say that an object, whether individual or collective, inspires
respect when the representation expressing it in the mind is gifted with
such a force that it automatically causes or inhibits actions, _without
regard for any consideration relative to their useful or injurious
effects_. When we obey somebody because of the moral authority which we
recognize in him, we follow out his opinions, not because they seem
wise, but because a certain sort of physical energy is imminent in the
idea that we form of this person, which conquers our will and inclines
it in the indicated direction. Respect is the emotion which we
experience when we feel this interior and wholly spiritual pressure
operating upon us. Then we are not determined by the advantages or
inconveniences of the attitude which is prescribed or recommended to us;
it is by the way in which we represent to ourselves the person
recommending or prescribing it. This is why commands generally take a
short, peremptory form leaving no place for hesitation; it is because,
in so far as it is a command and goes by its own force, it excludes all
idea of deliberation or calculation; it gets its efficacy from the
intensity of the mental state in which it is placed. It is this
intensity which creates what is called a moral ascendancy.
Now the ways of action to which society is strongly enough attached to
impose them upon its members, are, by that very fact, marked with a
distinctive sign provocative of respect. Since they are elaborated in
common, the vigour with which they have been thought of by each
particular mind is retained in all the other minds, and reciprocally.
The representations which express them within each of us have an
intensity which no purely private states of consciousness could ever
attain; for they have the strength of the innumerable individual
representations which have served to form each of them. It is society
who speaks through the mouths of those who affirm them in our presence;
it is society whom we hear in hearing them; and the voice of all has an
accent which that of one alone could never have.[678] The very violence
with which society reacts, by way of blame or material suppression,
against every attempted dissidence, contributes to strengthening its
empire by manifesting the common conviction through this burst of
ardour.[679] In a word, when something is the object of such a state of
opinion, the representation which each individual has of it gains a
power of action from its origins and the conditions in which it was
born, which even those feel who do not submit themselves to it. It tends
to repel the representations which contradict it, and it keeps them at a
distance; on the other hand, it commands those acts which will realize
it, and it does so, not by a material coercion or by the perspective of
something of this sort, but by the simple radiation of the mental energy
which it contains. It has an efficacy coming solely from its psychical
properties, and it is by just this sign that moral authority is
recognized. So opinion, primarily a social thing, is a source of
authority, and it might even be asked whether all authority is not the
daughter of opinion.[680] It may be objected that science is often the
antagonist of opinion, whose errors it combats and rectifies. But it
cannot succeed in this task if it does not have sufficient authority,
and it can obtain this authority only from opinion itself. If a people
did not have faith in science, all the scientific demonstrations in the
world would be without any influence whatsoever over their minds. Even
to-day, if science happened to resist a very strong current of public
opinion, it would risk losing its credit there.[681]
Since it is in spiritual ways that social pressure exercises itself, it
could not fail to give men the idea that outside themselves there exist
one or several powers, both moral and, at the same time, efficacious,
upon which they depend. They must think of these powers, at least in
part, as outside themselves, for these address them in a tone of command
and sometimes even order them to do violence to their most natural
inclinations. It is undoubtedly true that if they were able to see that
these influences which they feel emanate from society, then the
mythological system of interpretations would never be born. But social
action follows ways that are too circuitous and obscure, and employs
psychical mechanisms that are too complex to allow the ordinary observer
to see whence it comes. As long as scientific analysis does not come to
teach it to them, men know well that they are acted upon, but they do
not know by whom. So they must invent by themselves the idea of these
powers with which they feel themselves in connection, and from that, we
are able to catch a glimpse of the way by which they were led to
represent them under forms that are really foreign to their nature and
to transfigure them by thought.
But a god is not merely an authority upon whom we depend; it is a force
upon which our strength relies. The man who has obeyed his god and who,
for this reason, believes the god is with him, approaches the world with
confidence and with the feeling of an increased energy. Likewise, social
action does not confine itself to demanding sacrifices, privations and
efforts from us. For the collective force is not entirely outside of us;
it does not act upon us wholly from without; but rather, since society
cannot exist except in and through individual consciousnesses,[682] this
force must also penetrate us and organize itself within us; it thus
becomes an integral part of our being and by that very fact this is
elevated and magnified.
There are occasions when this strengthening and vivifying action of
society is especially apparent. In the midst of an assembly animated by
a common passion, we become susceptible of acts and sentiments of which
we are incapable when reduced to our own forces; and when the assembly
is dissolved and when, finding ourselves alone again, we fall back to
our ordinary level, we are then able to measure the height to which we
have been raised above ourselves. History abounds in examples of this
sort. It is enough to think of the night of the Fourth of August, 1789,
when an assembly was suddenly led to an act of sacrifice and abnegation
which each of its members had refused the day before, and at which they
were all surprised the day after.[683] This is why all parties,
political, economic or confessional, are careful to have periodical
reunions where their members may revivify their common faith by
manifesting it in common. To strengthen those sentiments which, if left
to themselves, would soon weaken, it is sufficient to bring those who
hold them together and to put them into closer and more active relations
with one another. This is the explanation of the particular attitude of
a man speaking to a crowd, at least if he has succeeded in entering into
communion with it. His language has a grandiloquence that would be
ridiculous in ordinary circumstances; his gestures show a certain
domination; his very thought is impatient of all rules, and easily falls
into all sorts of excesses. It is because he feels within him an
abnormal over-supply of force which overflows and tries to burst out
from him; sometimes he even has the feeling that he is dominated by a
moral force which is greater than he and of which he is only the
interpreter. It is by this trait that we are able to recognize what has
often been called the demon of oratorical inspiration. Now this
exceptional increase of force is something very real; it comes to him
from the very group which he addresses. The sentiments provoked by his
words come back to him, but enlarged and amplified, and to this degree
they strengthen his own sentiment. The passionate energies he arouses
re-echo within him and quicken his vital tone. It is no longer a simple
individual who speaks; it is a group incarnate and personified.
Beside these passing and intermittent states, there are other more
durable ones, where this strengthening influence of society makes itself
felt with greater consequences and frequently even with greater
brilliancy. There are periods in history when, under the influence of
some great collective shock, social interactions have become much more
frequent and active. Men look for each other and assemble together more
than ever. That general effervescence results which is characteristic of
revolutionary or creative epochs. Now this greater activity results in
a general stimulation of individual forces. Men see more and differently
now than in normal times. Changes are not merely of shades and degrees;
men become different. The passions moving them are of such an intensity
that they cannot be satisfied except by violent and unrestrained
actions, actions of superhuman heroism or of bloody barbarism. This is
what explains the Crusades,[684] for example, or many of the scenes,
either sublime or savage, of the French Revolution.[685] Under the
influence of the general exaltation, we see the most mediocre and
inoffensive bourgeois become either a hero or a butcher.[686] And so
clearly are all these mental processes the ones that are also at the
root of religion that the individuals themselves have often pictured the
pressure before which they thus gave way in a distinctly religious form.
The Crusaders believed that they felt God present in the midst of them,
enjoining them to go to the conquest of the Holy Land; Joan of Arc
believed that she obeyed celestial voices.[687]
But it is not only in exceptional circumstances that this stimulating
action of society makes itself felt; there is not, so to speak, a moment
in our lives when some current of energy does not come to us from
without. The man who has done his duty finds, in the manifestations of
every sort expressing the sympathy, esteem or affection which his
fellows have for him, a feeling of comfort, of which he does not
ordinarily take account, but which sustains him, none the less. The
sentiments which society has for him raise the sentiments which he has
for himself. Because he is in moral harmony with his comrades, he has
more confidence, courage and boldness in action, just like the believer
who thinks that he feels the regard of his god turned graciously towards
him. It thus produces, as it were, a perpetual sustenance for our moral
nature. Since this varies with a multitude of external circumstances, as
our relations with the groups about us are more or less active and as
these groups themselves vary, we cannot fail to feel that this moral
support depends upon an external cause; but we do not perceive where
this cause is nor what it is. So we ordinarily think of it under the
form of a moral power which, though immanent in us, represents within us
something not ourselves: this is the moral conscience, of which, by the
way, men have never made even a slightly distinct representation except
by the aid of religious symbols.
In addition to these free forces which are constantly coming to renew
our own, there are others which are fixed in the methods and traditions
which we employ. We speak a language that we did not make; we use
instruments that we did not invent; we invoke rights that we did not
found; a treasury of knowledge is transmitted to each generation that it
did not gather itself, etc. It is to society that we owe these varied
benefits of civilization, and if we do not ordinarily see the source
from which we get them, we at least know that they are not our own work.
Now it is these things that give man his own place among things; a man
is a man only because he is civilized. So he could not escape the
feeling that outside of him there are active causes from which he gets
the characteristic attributes of his nature and which, as benevolent
powers, assist him, protect him and assure him of a privileged fate. And
of course he must attribute to these powers a dignity corresponding to
the great value of the good things he attributes to them.[688]
Thus the environment in which we live seems to us to be peopled with
forces that are at once imperious and helpful, august and gracious, and
with which we have relations. Since they exercise over us a pressure of
which we are conscious, we are forced to localize them outside
ourselves, just as we do for the objective causes of our sensations. But
the sentiments which they inspire in us differ in nature from those
which we have for simple visible objects. As long as these latter are
reduced to their empirical characteristics as shown in ordinary
experience, and as long as the religious imagination has not
metamorphosed them, we entertain for them no feeling which resembles
respect, and they contain within them nothing that is able to raise us
outside ourselves. Therefore, the representations which express them
appear to us to be very different from those aroused in us by collective
influences. The two form two distinct and separate mental states in our
consciousness, just as do the two forms of life to which they
correspond. Consequently, we get the impression that we are in relations
with two distinct sorts of reality and that a sharply drawn line of
demarcation separates them from each other: on the one hand is the world
of profane things, on the other, that of sacred things.
Also, in the present day just as much as in the past, we see society
constantly creating sacred things out of ordinary ones. If it happens
to fall in love with a man and if it thinks it has found in him the
principal aspirations that move it, as well as the means of satisfying
them, this man will be raised above the others and, as it were, deified.
Opinion will invest him with a majesty exactly analogous to that
protecting the gods. This is what has happened to so many sovereigns in
whom their age had faith: if they were not made gods, they were at least
regarded as direct representatives of the deity. And the fact that it is
society alone which is the author of these varieties of apotheosis, is
evident since it frequently chances to consecrate men thus who have no
right to it from their own merit. The simple deference inspired by men
invested with high social functions is not different in nature from
religious respect. It is expressed by the same movements: a man keeps at
a distance from a high personage; he approaches him only with
precautions; in conversing with him, he uses other gestures and language
than those used with ordinary mortals. The sentiment felt on these
occasions is so closely related to the religious sentiment that many
peoples have confounded the two. In order to explain the consideration
accorded to princes, nobles and political chiefs, a sacred character has
been attributed to them. In Melanesia and Polynesia, for example, it is
said that an influential man has _mana_, and that his influence is due
to this _mana_.[689] However, it is evident that his situation is due
solely to the importance attributed to him by public opinion. Thus the
moral power conferred by opinion and that with which sacred beings are
invested are at bottom of a single origin and made up of the same
elements. That is why a single word is able to designate the two.
In addition to men, society also consecrates things, especially ideas.
If a belief is unanimously shared by a people, then, for the reason
which we pointed out above, it is forbidden to touch it, that is to say,
to deny it or to contest it. Now the prohibition of criticism is an
interdiction like the others and proves the presence of something
sacred. Even to-day, howsoever great may be the liberty which we accord
to others, a man who should totally deny progress or ridicule the human
ideal to which modern societies are attached, would produce the effect
of a sacrilege. There is at least one principle which those the most
devoted to the free examination of everything tend to place above
discussion and to regard as untouchable, that is to say, as sacred: this
is the very principle of free examination.
This aptitude of society for setting itself up as a god or for creating
gods was never more apparent than during the first years of the French
Revolution. At this time, in fact, under the influence of the general
enthusiasm, things purely laïcal by nature were transformed by public
opinion into sacred things: these were the Fatherland, Liberty,
Reason.[690] A religion tended to become established which had its
dogmas,[691] symbols,[692] altars[693] and feasts.[694] It was to these
spontaneous aspirations that the cult of Reason and the Supreme Being
attempted to give a sort of official satisfaction. It is true that this
religious renovation had only an ephemeral duration. But that was
because the patriotic enthusiasm which at first transported the masses
soon relaxed.[695] The cause being gone, the effect could not remain.
But this experiment, though short-lived, keeps all its sociological
interest. It remains true that in one determined case we have seen
society and its essential ideas become, directly and with no
transfiguration of any sort, the object of a veritable cult.
All these facts allow us to catch glimpses of how the clan was able to
awaken within its members the idea that outside of them there exist
forces which dominate them and at the same time sustain them, that is to
say in fine, religious forces: it is because there is no society with
which the primitive is more directly and closely connected. The bonds
uniting him to the tribe are much more lax and more feebly felt.
Although this is not at all strange or foreign to him, it is with the
people of his own clan that he has the greatest number of things in
common; it is the action of this group that he feels the most directly;
so it is this also which, in preference to all others, should express
itself in religious symbols.
But this first explanation has been too general, for it is applicable to
every sort of society indifferently, and consequently to every sort of
religion. Let us attempt to determine exactly what form this collective
action takes in the clan and how it arouses the sensation of sacredness
there. For there is no place where it is more easily observable or more
apparent in its results.
III
The life of the Australian societies passes alternately through two
distinct phases.[696] Sometimes the population is broken up into little
groups who wander about independently of one another, in their various
occupations; each family lives by itself, hunting and fishing, and in a
word, trying to procure its indispensable food by all the means in its
power. Sometimes, on the contrary, the population concentrates and
gathers at determined points for a length of time varying from several
days to several months. This concentration takes place when a clan or a
part of the tribe[697] is summoned to the gathering, and on this
occasion they celebrate a religious ceremony, or else hold what is
called a corrobbori[698] in the usual ethnological language.
These two phases are contrasted with each other in the sharpest way. In
the first, economic activity is the preponderating one, and it is
generally of a very mediocre intensity. Gathering the grains or herbs
that are necessary for food, or hunting and fishing are not occupations
to awaken very lively passions.[699] The dispersed condition in which
the society finds itself results in making its life uniform, languishing
and dull.[700] But when a corrobbori takes place, everything changes.
Since the emotional and passional faculties of the primitive are only
imperfectly placed under the control of his reason and will, he easily
loses control of himself. Any event of some importance puts him quite
outside himself. Does he receive good news? There are at once transports
of enthusiasm. In the contrary conditions, he is to be seen running here
and there like a madman, giving himself up to all sorts of immoderate
movements, crying, shrieking, rolling in the dust, throwing it in every
direction, biting himself, brandishing his arms in a furious manner,
etc.[701] The very fact of the concentration acts as an exceptionally
powerful stimulant. When they are once come together, a sort of
electricity is formed by their collecting which quickly transports them
to an extraordinary degree of exaltation. Every sentiment expressed
finds a place without resistance in all the minds, which are very open
to outside impressions; each re-echoes the others, and is re-echoed by
the others. The initial impulse thus proceeds, growing as it goes, as an
avalanche grows in its advance. And as such active passions so free from
all control could not fail to burst out, on every side one sees nothing
but violent gestures, cries, veritable howls, and deafening noises of
every sort, which aid in intensifying still more the state of mind which
they manifest. And since a collective sentiment cannot express itself
collectively except on the condition of observing a certain order
permitting co-operation and movements in unison, these gestures and
cries naturally tend to become rhythmic and regular; hence come songs
and dances. But in taking a more regular form, they lose nothing of
their natural violence; a regulated tumult remains tumult. The human
voice is not sufficient for the task; it is reinforced by means of
artificial processes: boomerangs are beaten against each other;
bull-roarers are whirled. It is probable that these instruments, the use
of which is so general in the Australian religious ceremonies, are used
primarily to express in a more adequate fashion the agitation felt. But
while they express it, they also strengthen it. This effervescence often
reaches such a point that it causes unheard-of actions. The passions
released are of such an impetuosity that they can be restrained by
nothing. They are so far removed from their ordinary conditions of life,
and they are so thoroughly conscious of it, that they feel that they
must set themselves outside of and above their ordinary morals. The
sexes unite contrarily to the rules governing sexual relations. Men
exchange wives with each other. Sometimes even incestuous unions, which
in normal times are thought abominable and are severely punished, are
now contracted openly and with impunity.[702] If we add to all this that
the ceremonies generally take place at night in a darkness pierced here
and there by the light of fires, we can easily imagine what effect such
scenes ought to produce on the minds of those who participate. They
produce such a violent super-excitation of the whole physical and mental
life that it cannot be supported very long: the actor taking the
principal part finally falls exhausted on the ground.[703]
To illustrate and make specific this necessarily schematic picture, let
us describe certain scenes taken from Spencer and Gillen.
One of the most important religious ceremonies among the Warramunga is
the one concerning the snake Wollunqua. It consists in a series of
ceremonies lasting through several days. On the fourth day comes the
following scene.
According to the ceremonial used among the Warramunga, representatives
of the two phratries take part, one as officiants, the other as
preparers and assistants. Only the members of the Uluuru phratry are
qualified to celebrate the rite, but the members of the Kingilli phratry
must decorate the actors, make ready the place and the instruments, and
play the part of an audience. In this capacity, they were charged with
making a sort of mound in advance out of wet sand, upon which a design
is marked with red down which represents the snake Wollunqua. The real
ceremony only commenced after nightfall. Towards ten or eleven o'clock,
the Uluuru and Kingilli men arrived on the ground, sat down on the mound
and commenced to sing. Everyone was evidently very excited. A little
later in the evening, the Uluuru brought up their wives and gave them
over to the Kingilli,[704] who had intercourse with them. Then the
recently initiated young men were brought in and the whole ceremony was
explained to them in detail, and until three o'clock in the morning
singing went on without a pause. Then followed a scene of the wildest
excitement. While fires were lighted on all sides, making the whiteness
of the gum-trees stand out sharply against the surrounding darkness, the
Uluuru knelt down one behind another beside the mound, then rising from
the ground they went around it, with a movement in unison, their two
hands resting upon their thighs, then a little farther on they knelt
down again, and so on. At the same time they swayed their bodies, now to
the right and now to the left, while uttering at each movement a
piercing cry, a veritable yell, "_Yrrsh! Yrrsh! Yrrsh!_" In the meantime
the Kingilli, in a state of great excitement, clanged their boomerangs
and their chief was even more agitated than his companions. When the
procession of the Uluuru had twice gone around the mound, quitting the
kneeling position, they sat down and commenced to sing again; at moments
the singing died away, then suddenly took up again. When day commenced
to dawn, all leaped to their feet; the fires that had gone out were
relighted and the Uluuru, urged on by the Kingilli, attacked the mound
furiously with boomerangs, lances and clubs; in a few minutes it was
torn to pieces. The fires died away and profound silence reigned
again.[705]
A still more violent scene at which these same observers assisted was in
connection with the fire ceremonies among the Warramunga.
Commencing at nightfall, all sorts of processions, dances and songs had
taken place by torchlight; the general effervescence was constantly
increasing. At a given moment, twelve assistants each took a great
lighted torch in their hands, and one of them holding his like a
bayonet, charged into a group of natives. Blows were warded off with
clubs and spears. A general mêlée followed. The men leaped and pranced
about, uttering savage yells all the time; the burning torches
continually came crashing down on the heads and bodies of the men,
scattering lighted sparks in every direction. "The smoke, the blazing
torches, the showers of sparks falling in all directions and the masses
of dancing, yelling men," say Spencer and Gillen, "formed altogether a
genuinely wild and savage scene of which it is impossible to convey any
adequate idea in words."[706]
One can readily conceive how, when arrived at this state of exaltation,
a man does not recognize himself any longer. Feeling himself dominated
and carried away by some sort of an external power which makes him think
and act differently than in normal times, he naturally has the
impression of being himself no longer. It seems to him that he has
become a new being: the decorations he puts on and the masks that cover
his face figure materially in this interior transformation, and to a
still greater extent, they aid in determining its nature. And as at the
same time all his companions feel themselves transformed in the same way
and express this sentiment by their cries, their gestures and their
general attitude, everything is just as though he really were
transported into a special world, entirely different from the one where
he ordinarily lives, and into an environment filled with exceptionally
intense forces that take hold of him and metamorphose him. How could
such experiences as these, especially when they are repeated every day.
for weeks, fail to leave in him the conviction that there really exist
two heterogeneous and mutually incomparable worlds? One is that where
his daily life drags wearily along; but he cannot penetrate into the
other without at once entering into relations with extraordinary powers
that excite him to the point of frenzy. The first is the profane world,
the second, that of sacred things.
So it is in the midst of these effervescent social environments and out
of this effervescence itself that the religious idea seems to be born.
The theory that this is really its origin is confirmed by the fact that
in Australia the really religious activity is almost entirely confined
to the moments when these assemblies are held. To be sure, there is no
people among whom the great solemnities of the cult are not more or less
periodic; but in the more advanced societies, there is not, so to speak,
a day when some prayer or offering is not addressed to the gods and some
ritual act is not performed. But in Australia, on the contrary, apart
from the celebrations of the clan and tribe, the time is nearly all
filled with lay and profane occupations. Of course there are
prohibitions that should be and are preserved even during these periods
of temporal activity; it is never permissible to kill or eat freely of
the totemic animal, at least in those parts where the interdiction has
retained its original vigour; but almost no positive rites are then
celebrated, and there are no ceremonies of any importance. These take
place only in the midst of assembled groups. The religious life of the
Australian passes through successive phases of complete lull and of
super-excitation, and social life oscillates in the same rhythm. This
puts clearly into evidence the bond uniting them to one another, but
among the peoples called civilized, the relative continuity of the two
blurs their relations. It might even be asked whether the violence of
this contrast was not necessary to disengage the feeling of sacredness
in its first form. By concentrating itself almost entirely in certain
determined moments, the collective life has been able to attain its
greatest intensity and efficacy, and consequently to give men a more
active sentiment of the double existence they lead and of the double
nature in which they participate.
But this explanation is still incomplete. We have shown how the clan, by
the manner in which it acts upon its members, awakens within them the
idea of external forces which dominate them and exalt them; but we must
still demand how it happens that these forces are thought of under the
form of totems, that is to say, in the shape of an animal or plant.
It is because this animal or plant has given its name to the clan and
serves it as emblem. In fact, it is a well-known law that the sentiments
aroused in us by something spontaneously attach themselves to the symbol
which represents them. For us, black is a sign of mourning; it also
suggests sad impressions and ideas. This transference of sentiments
comes simply from the fact that the idea of a thing and the idea of its
symbol are closely united in our minds; the result is that the emotions
provoked by the one extend contagiously to the other. But this
contagion, which takes place in every case to a certain degree, is much
more complete and more marked when the symbol is something simple,
definite and easily representable, while the thing itself, owing to its
dimensions, the number of its parts and the complexity of their
arrangement, is difficult to hold in the mind. For we are unable to
consider an abstract entity, which we can represent only laboriously and
confusedly, the source of the strong sentiments which we feel. We cannot
explain them to ourselves except by connecting them to some concrete
object of whose reality we are vividly aware. Then if the thing itself
does not fulfil this condition, it cannot serve as the accepted basis of
the sentiments felt, even though it may be what really aroused them.
Then some sign takes its place; it is to this that we connect the
emotions it excites. It is this which is loved, feared, respected; it is
to this that we are grateful; it is for this that we sacrifice
ourselves. The soldier who dies for his flag, dies for his country; but
as a matter of fact, in his own consciousness, it is the flag that has
the first place. It sometimes happens that this even directly determines
action. Whether one isolated standard remains in the hands of the enemy
or not does not determine the fate of the country, yet the soldier
allows himself to be killed to regain it. He loses sight of the fact
that the flag is only a sign, and that it has no value in itself, but
only brings to mind the reality that it represents; it is treated as if
it were this reality itself.
Now the totem is the flag of the clan. It is therefore natural that the
impressions aroused by the clan in individual minds--impressions of
dependence and of increased vitality--should fix themselves to the idea
of the totem rather than that of the clan: for the clan is too complex a
reality to be represented clearly in all its complex unity by such
rudimentary intelligences. More than that, the primitive does not even
see that these impressions come to him from the group. He does not know
that the coming together of a number of men associated in the same life
results in disengaging new energies, which transform each of them. All
that he knows is that he is raised above himself and that he sees a
different life from the one he ordinarily leads. However, he must
connect these sensations to some external object as their cause. Now
what does he see about him? On every side those things which appeal to
his senses and strike his imagination are the numerous images of the
totem. They are the waninga and the nurtunja, which are symbols of the
sacred being. They are churinga and bull-roarers, upon which are
generally carved combinations of lines having the same significance.
They are the decorations covering the different parts of his body,
which are totemic marks. How could this image, repeated everywhere and
in all sorts of forms, fail to stand out with exceptional relief in his
mind? Placed thus in the centre of the scene, it becomes representative.
The sentiments experienced fix themselves upon it, for it is the only
concrete object upon which they can fix themselves. It continues to
bring them to mind and to evoke them even after the assembly has
dissolved, for it survives the assembly, being carved upon the
instruments of the cult, upon the sides of rocks, upon bucklers, etc. By
it, the emotions experienced are perpetually sustained and revived.
Everything happens just as if they inspired them directly. It is still
more natural to attribute them to it for, since they are common to the
group, they can be associated only with something that is equally common
to all. Now the totemic emblem is the only thing satisfying this
condition. By definition, it is common to all. During the ceremony, it
is the centre of all regards. While generations change, it remains the
same; it is the permanent element of the social life. So it is from it
that those mysterious forces seem to emanate with which men feel that
they are related, and thus they have been led to represent these forces
under the form of the animate or inanimate being whose name the clan
bears.
When this point is once established, we are in a position to understand
all that is essential in the totemic beliefs.
Since religious force is nothing other than the collective and anonymous
force of the clan, and since this can be represented in the mind only in
the form of the totem, the totemic emblem is like the visible body of
the god. Therefore, it is from it that those kindly or dreadful actions
seem to emanate, which the cult seeks to provoke or prevent;
consequently, it is to it that the cult is addressed. This is the
explanation of why it holds the first place in the series of sacred
things.
But the clan, like every other sort of society, can live only in and
through the individual consciousnesses that compose it. So if religious
force, in so far as it is conceived as incorporated in the totemic
emblem, appears to be outside of the individuals and to be endowed with
a sort of transcendence over them, it, like the clan of which it is the
symbol, can be realized only in and through them; in this sense, it is
imminent in them and they necessarily represent it as such. They feel it
present and active within them, for, it is this which raises them to a
superior life. This is why men have believed that they contain within
them a principle comparable to the one residing in the totem, and
consequently, why they have attributed a sacred character to themselves,
but one less marked than that of the emblem. It is because the emblem
is the pre-eminent source of the religious life; the man participates in
it only indirectly, as he is well aware; he takes into account the fact
that the force that transports him into the world of sacred things is
not inherent in him, but comes to him from the outside.
But for still another reason, the animals or vegetables of the totemic
species should have the same character, and even to a higher degree. If
the totemic principle is nothing else than the clan, it is the clan
thought of under the material form of the totemic emblem; now this form
is also that of the concrete beings whose name the clan bears. Owing to
this resemblance, they could not fail to evoke sentiments analogous to
those aroused by the emblem itself. Since the latter is the object of a
religious respect, they too should inspire respect of the same sort and
appear to be sacred. Having external forms so nearly identical, it would
be impossible for the native not to attribute to them forces of the same
nature. It is therefore forbidden to kill or eat the totemic animal,
since its flesh is believed to have the positive virtues resulting from
the rites; it is because it resembles the emblem of the clan, that is to
say, it is in its own image. And since the animal naturally resembles
the emblem more than the man does, it is placed on a superior rank in
the hierarchy of sacred things. Between these two beings there is
undoubtedly a close relationship, for they both partake of the same
essence: both incarnate something of the totemic principle. However,
since the principle itself is conceived under an animal form, the animal
seems to incarnate it more fully than the man. Therefore, if men
consider it and treat it as a brother, it is at least as an elder
brother.[707]
But even if the totemic principle has its preferred seat in a determined
species of animal or vegetable, it cannot remain localized there. A
sacred character is to a high degree contagious;[708] it therefore
spreads out from the totemic being to everything that is closely or
remotely connected with it. The religious sentiments inspired by the
animal are communicated to the substances upon which it is nourished and
which serve to make or remake its flesh and blood, to the things that
resemble it, and to the different beings with which it has constant
relations. Thus, little by little, sub-totems are attached to the totems
and from the cosmological systems expressed by the primitive
classifications. At last, the whole world is divided up among the
totemic principles of each tribe.
We are now able to explain the origin of the ambiguity of religious
forces as they appear in history, and how they are physical as well as
human, moral as well as material. They are moral powers because they are
made up entirely of the impressions this moral being, the group, arouses
in those other moral beings, its individual members; they do not
translate the manner in which physical things affect our senses, but the
way in which the collective consciousness acts upon individual
consciousnesses. Their authority is only one form of the moral
ascendancy of society over its members. But, on the other hand, since
they are conceived of under material forms, they could not fail to be
regarded as closely related to material things.[709] Therefore they
dominate the two worlds. Their residence is in men, but at the same time
they are the vital principles of things. They animate minds and
discipline them, but it is also they who make plants grow and animals
reproduce. It is this double nature which has enabled religion to be
like the womb from which come all the leading germs of human
civilization. Since it has been made to embrace all of reality, the
physical world as well as the moral one, the forces that move bodies as
well as those that move minds have been conceived in a religious form.
That is how the most diverse methods and practices, both those that make
possible the continuation of the moral life (law, morals, beaux-arts)
and those serving the material life (the natural, technical and
practical sciences), are either directly or indirectly derived from
religion.[710]
IV
The first religious conceptions have often been attributed to feelings
of weakness and dependence, of fear and anguish which seized men when
they came into contact with the world. Being the victims of nightmares
of which they were themselves the creators, they believed themselves
surrounded by hostile and redoubtable powers which their rites sought to
appease. We have now shown that the first religions were of a wholly
different origin. The famous formula _Primus in orbe deos fecit timor_
is in no way justified by the facts. The primitive does not regard his
gods as foreigners, enemies or thoroughly and necessarily malevolent
beings whose favours he must acquire at any price; quite on the
contrary, they are rather friends, kindred or natural protectors for
him. Are these not the names he gives to the beings of the totemic
species? The power to which the cult is addressed is not represented as
soaring high above him and overwhelming him by its superiority; on the
contrary, it is very near to him and confers upon him very useful powers
which he could never acquire by himself. Perhaps the deity has never
been nearer to men than at this period of history, when it is present in
the things filling their immediate environment and is, in part, imminent
in himself. In fine, the sentiments at the root of totemism are those of
happy confidence rather than of terror and compression. If we set aside
the funeral rites--the sober side of every religion--we find the totemic
cult celebrated in the midst of songs, dances and dramatic
representations. As we shall see, cruel expiations are relatively rare;
even the painful and obligatory mutilations of the initiations are not
of this character. The terrible and jealous gods appear but slowly in
the religious evolution. This is because primitive societies are not
those huge Leviathans which overwhelm a man by the enormity of their
power and place him under a severe discipline;[711] he gives himself up
to them spontaneously and without resistance. As the social soul is then
made up of only a small number of ideas and sentiments, it easily
becomes wholly incarnate in each individual consciousness. The
individual carries it all inside of him; it is a part of him and
consequently, when he gives himself up to the impulses inspired by it,
he does not feel that he is giving way before compulsion, but that he is
going where his nature calls him.[712]
This way of understanding the origins of religious thought escapes the
objections raised against the most accredited classical theories.
We have seen how the naturists and animists pretend to construct the
idea of sacred beings out of the sensations evoked in us by different
phenomena of the physical or biological order, and we have shown how
this enterprise is impossible and even self-contradictory. Nothing is
worth nothing. The impressions produced in us by the physical world can,
by definition, contain nothing that surpasses this world. Out of the
visible, only the visible can be made; out of that which is heard, we
cannot make something not heard. Then to explain how the idea of
sacredness has been able to take form under these conditions, the
majority of the theorists have been obliged to admit that men have
superimposed upon reality, such as it is given by observation, an unreal
world, constructed entirely out of the fantastic images which agitate
his mind during a dream, or else out of the frequently monstrous
aberrations produced by the mythological imagination under the
bewitching but deceiving influence of language. But it remained
incomprehensible that humanity should have remained obstinate in these
errors through the ages, for experience should have very quickly proven
them false.
But from our point of view, these difficulties disappear. Religion
ceases to be an inexplicable hallucination and takes a foothold in
reality. In fact, we can say that the believer is not deceived when he
believes in the existence of a moral power upon which he depends and
from which he receives all that is best in himself: this power exists,
it is society. When the Australian is carried outside himself and feels
a new life flowing within him whose intensity surprises him, he is not
the dupe of an illusion; this exaltation is real and is really the
effect of forces outside of and superior to the individual. It is true
that he is wrong in thinking that this increase of vitality is the work
of a power in the form of some animal or plant. But this error is merely
in regard to the letter of the symbol by which this being is represented
to the mind and the external appearance which the imagination has given
it, and not in regard to the fact of its existence. Behind these figures
and metaphors, be they gross or refined, there is a concrete and living
reality. Thus religion acquires a meaning and a reasonableness that the
most intransigent rationalist cannot misunderstand. Its primary object
is not to give men a representation of the physical world; for if that
were its essential task, we could not understand how it has been able to
survive, for, on this side, it is scarcely more than a fabric of errors.
Before all, it is a system of ideas with which the individuals represent
to themselves the society of which they are members, and the obscure but
intimate relations which they have with it. This is its primary
function; and though metaphorical and symbolic, this representation is
not unfaithful. Quite on the contrary, it translates everything
essential in the relations which are to be explained: for it is an
eternal truth that outside of us there exists something greater than us,
with which we enter into communion.
That is why we can rest assured in advance that the practices of the
cult, whatever they may be, are something more than movements without
importance and gestures without efficacy. By the mere fact that their
apparent function is to strengthen the bonds attaching the believer to
his god, they at the same time really strengthen the bonds attaching the
individual to the society of which he is a member, since the god is only
a figurative expression of the society. We are even able to understand
how the fundamental truth thus contained in religion has been able to
compensate for the secondary errors which it almost necessarily implies,
and how believers have consequently been restrained from tearing
themselves off from it, in spite of the misunderstandings which must
result from these errors. It is undeniably true that the recipes which
it recommends that men use to act upon things are generally found to be
ineffective. But these checks can have no profound influence, for they
do not touch religion in its fundamentals.[713]
However, it may be objected that even according to this hypothesis,
religion remains the object of a certain delirium. What other name can
we give to that state when, after a collective effervescence, men
believe themselves transported into an entirely different world from the
one they have before their eyes?
It is certainly true that religious life cannot attain a certain degree
of intensity without implying a psychical exaltation not far removed
from delirium. That is why the prophets, the founders of religions, the
great saints, in a word, the men whose religious consciousness is
exceptionally sensitive, very frequently give signs of an excessive
nervousness that is even pathological: these physiological defects
predestined them to great religious rôles. The ritual use of
intoxicating liquors is to be explained in the same way.[714] Of course
this does not mean that an ardent religious faith is necessarily the
fruit of the drunkenness and mental derangement which accompany it; but
as experience soon informed people of the similarities between the
mentality of a delirious person and that of a seer, they sought to open
a way to the second by artificially exciting the first. But if, for this
reason, it may be said that religion is not without a certain delirium,
it must be added that this delirium, if it has the causes which we have
attributed to it, _is well-founded_. The images out of which it is made
are not pure illusions like those the naturists and animists put at the
basis of religion; they correspond to something in reality. Of course it
is only natural that the moral forces they express should be unable to
affect the human mind powerfully without pulling it outside itself and
without plunging it into a state that may be called _ecstatic_, provided
that the word be taken in its etymological sense ([Greek: ekstasis]);
but it does not follow that they are imaginary. Quite on the contrary,
the mental agitation they cause bears witness to their reality. It is
merely one more proof that a very intense social life always does a sort
of violence to the organism, as well as to the individual consciousness,
which interferes with its normal functioning. Therefore it can last only
a limited length of time.[715]
Moreover, if we give the name delirious to every state in which the mind
adds to the immediate data given by the senses and projects its own
sentiments and feelings into things, then nearly every collective
representation is in a sense delirious; religious beliefs are only one
particular case of a very general law. Our whole social environment
seems to us to be filled with forces which really exist only in our own
minds. We know what the flag is for the soldier; in itself, it is only a
piece of cloth. Human blood is only an organic liquid, but even to-day
we cannot see it flowing without feeling a violent emotion which its
physico-chemical properties cannot explain. From the physical point of
view, a man is nothing more than a system of cells, or from the mental
point of view, than a system of representations; in either case, he
differs only in degree from animals. Yet society conceives him, and
obliges us to conceive him, as invested with a character _sui generis_
that isolates him, holds at a distance all rash encroachments and, in a
word, imposes respect. This dignity which puts him into a class by
himself appears to us as one of his distinctive attributes, although we
can find nothing in the empirical nature of man which justifies it. A
cancelled postage stamp may be worth a fortune; but surely this value is
in no way implied in its natural properties. In a sense, our
representation of the external world is undoubtedly a mere fabric of
hallucinations, for the odours, tastes and colours that we put into
bodies are not really there, or at least, they are not such as we
perceive them. However, our olfactory, gustatory and visual sensations
continue to correspond to certain objective states of the things
represented; they express in their way the properties, either of
material particles or of ether waves, which certainly have their origin
in the bodies which we perceive as fragrant, sapid or coloured. But
collective representations very frequently attribute to the things to
which they are attached qualities which do not exist under any form or
to any degree. Out of the commonest object, they can make a most
powerful sacred being.
Yet the powers which are thus conferred, though purely ideal, act as
though they were real; they determine the conduct of men with the same
degree of necessity as physical forces. The Arunta who has been rubbed
with his churinga feels himself stronger; he is stronger. If he has
eaten the flesh of an animal which, though perfectly healthy, is
forbidden to him, he will feel himself sick, and may die of it. Surely
the soldier who falls while defending his flag does not believe that he
sacrifices himself for a bit of cloth. This is all because social
thought, owing to the imperative authority that is in it, has an
efficacy that individual thought could never have; by the power which it
has over our minds, it can make us see things in whatever light it
pleases; it adds to reality or deducts from it according to the
circumstances. Thus there is one division of nature where the formula of
idealism is applicable almost to the letter: this is the social kingdom.
Here more than anywhere else, the idea is the reality. Even in this
case, of course, idealism is not true without modification. We can never
escape the duality of our nature and free ourselves completely from
physical necessities: in order to express our own ideas to ourselves, it
is necessary, as has been shown above, that we fix them upon material
things which symbolize them. But here the part of matter is reduced to a
minimum. The object serving as support for the idea is not much in
comparison with the ideal superstructure, beneath which it disappears,
and also, it counts for nothing in the superstructure. This is what that
pseudo-delirium consists in, which we find at the bottom of so many
collective representations: it is only a form of this essential
idealism.[716] So it is not properly called a delirium, for the ideas
thus objectified are well founded, not in the nature of the material
things upon which they settle themselves, but in the nature of society.
We are now able to understand how the totemic principle, and in
general, every religious force, comes to be outside of the object in
which it resides.[717] It is because the idea of it is in no way made up
of the impressions directly produced by this thing upon our senses or
minds. Religious force is only the sentiment inspired by the group in
its members, but projected outside of the consciousnesses that
experience them, and objectified. To be objectified, they are fixed upon
some object which thus becomes sacred; but any object might fulfil this
function. In principle, there are none whose nature predestines them to
it to the exclusion of all others; but also there are none that are
necessarily impossible.[718] Everything depends upon the circumstances
which lead the sentiment creating religious ideas to establish itself
here or there, upon this point or upon that one. Therefore, the sacred
character assumed by an object is not implied in the intrinsic
properties of this latter: _it is added to them_. The world of religious
things is not one particular aspect of empirical nature; _it is
superimposed upon it_.
This conception of the religious, finally, allows us to explain an
important principle found at the bottom of a multitude of myths and
rites, and which may be stated thus: when a sacred thing is subdivided,
each of its parts remains equal to the thing itself. In other words, as
far as religious thought is concerned, the part is equal to the whole;
it has the same powers, the same efficacy. The debris of a relic has the
same virtue as a relic in good condition. The smallest drop of blood
contains the same active principle as the whole thing. The soul, as we
shall see, may be broken up into nearly as many pieces as there are
organs or tissues in the organism; each of these partial souls is worth
a whole soul. This conception would be inexplicable if the sacredness of
something were due to the constituent properties of the thing itself;
for in that case, it should vary with this thing, increasing and
decreasing with it. But if the virtues it is believed to possess are not
intrinsic in it, and if they come from certain sentiments which it
brings to mind and symbolizes, though these originate outside of it,
then, since it has no need of determined dimensions to play this rôle of
reminder, it will have the same value whether it is entire or not. Since
the part makes us think of the whole, it evokes the same sentiments as
the whole. A mere fragment of the flag represents the fatherland just as
well as the flag itself: so it is sacred in the same way and to the same
degree.[719]
V
But if this theory of totemism has enabled us to explain the most
characteristic beliefs of this religion, it rests upon a fact not yet
explained. When the idea of the totem, the emblem of the clan, is given,
all the rest follows; but we must still investigate how this idea has
been formed. This is a double question and may be subdivided as follows:
What has led the clan to choose an emblem? and why have these emblems
been borrowed from the animal and vegetable worlds, and particularly
from the former?
That an emblem is useful as a rallying-centre for any sort of a group it
is superfluous to point out. By expressing the social unity in a
material form, it makes this more obvious to all, and for that very
reason the use of emblematic symbols must have spread quickly when once
thought of. But more than that, this idea should spontaneously arise out
of the conditions of common life; for the emblem is not merely a
convenient process for clarifying the sentiment society has of itself:
it also serves to create this sentiment; it is one of its constituent
elements.
In fact, if left to themselves, individual consciousnesses are closed to
each other; they can communicate only by means of signs which express
their internal states. If the communication established between them is
to become a real communion, that is to say, a fusion of all particular
sentiments into one common sentiment, the signs expressing them must
themselves be fused into one single and unique resultant. It is the
appearance of this that informs individuals that they are in harmony and
makes them conscious of their moral unity. It is by uttering the same
cry, pronouncing the same word, or performing the same gesture in regard
to some object that they become and feel themselves to be in unison. It
is true that individual representations also cause reactions in the
organism that are not without importance; however, they can be thought
of apart from these physical reactions which accompany them or follow
them, but which do not constitute them. But it is quite another matter
with collective representations. They presuppose that minds act and
react upon one another; they are the product of these actions and
reactions which are themselves possible only through material
intermediaries. These latter do not confine themselves to revealing the
mental state with which they are associated; they aid in creating it.
Individual minds cannot come in contact and communicate with each other
except by coming out of themselves; but they cannot do this except by
movements. So it is the homogeneity of these movements that gives the
group consciousness of itself and consequently makes it exist. When
this homogeneity is once established and these movements have once taken
a stereotyped form, they serve to symbolize the corresponding
representations. But they symbolize them only because they have aided in
forming them.
Moreover, without symbols, social sentiments could have only a
precarious existence. Though very strong as long as men are together and
influence each other reciprocally, they exist only in the form of
recollections after the assembly has ended, and when left to themselves,
these become feebler and feebler; for since the group is now no longer
present and active, individual temperaments easily regain the upper
hand. The violent passions which may have been released in the heart of
a crowd fall away and are extinguished when this is dissolved, and men
ask themselves with astonishment how they could ever have been so
carried away from their normal character. But if the movements by which
these sentiments are expressed are connected with something that
endures, the sentiments themselves become more durable. These other
things are constantly bringing them to mind and arousing them; it is as
though the cause which excited them in the first place continued to act.
Thus these systems of emblems, which are necessary if society is to
become conscious of itself, are no less indispensable for assuring the
continuation of this consciousness.
So we must refrain from regarding these symbols as simple artifices, as
sorts of labels attached to representations already made, in order to
make them more manageable: they are an integral part of them. Even the
fact that collective sentiments are thus attached to things completely
foreign to them is not purely conventional: it illustrates under a
conventional form a real characteristic of social facts, that is, their
transcendence over individual minds. In fact, it is known that social
phenomena are born, not in individuals, but in the group. Whatever part
we may take in their origin, each of us receives them from without.[720]
So when we represent them to ourselves as emanating from a material
object, we do not completely misunderstand their nature. Of course they
do not come from the specific thing to which we connect them, but
nevertheless, it is true that their origin is outside of us. If the
moral force sustaining the believer does not come from the idol he
adores or the emblem he venerates, still it is from outside of him, as
he is well aware. The objectivity of its symbol only translates its
externalness.
Thus social life, in all its aspects and in every period of its history,
is made possible only by a vast symbolism. The material emblems and
figurative representations with which we are more especially concerned
in our present study, are one form of this; but there are many others.
Collective sentiments can just as well become incarnate in persons or
formulæ: some formulæ are flags, while there are persons, either real or
mythical, who are symbols. But there is one sort of emblem which should
make an early appearance without reflection or calculation: this is
tattooing. Indeed, well-known facts demonstrate that it is produced
almost automatically in certain conditions. When men of an inferior
culture are associated in a common life, they are frequently led, by an
instinctive tendency, as it were, to paint or cut upon the body, images
that bear witness to their common existence. According to a text of
Procopius, the early Christians printed on their skin the name of Christ
or the sign of the cross;[721] for a long time, the groups of pilgrims
going to Palestine were also tattooed on the arm or wrist with designs
representing the cross or the monogram of Christ.[722] This same usage
is also reported among the pilgrims going to certain holy places in
Italy.[723] A curious case of spontaneous tattooing is given by
Lombroso: twenty young men in an Italian college, when on the point of
separating, decorated themselves with tattoos recording, in various
ways, the years they had spent together.[724] The same fact has
frequently been observed among the soldiers in the same barracks, the
sailors in the same boat, or the prisoners in the same jail.[725] It
will be understood that especially where methods are still rudimentary,
tattooing should be the most direct and expressive means by which the
communion of minds can be affirmed. The best way of proving to one's
self and to others that one is a member of a certain group is to place a
distinctive mark on the body. The proof that this is the reason for the
existence of the totemic image is the fact, which we have already
mentioned, that it does not seek to reproduce the aspect of the thing it
is supposed to represent. It is made up of lines and points to which a
wholly conventional significance is attributed.[726] Its object is not
to represent or bring to mind a determined object, but to bear witness
to the fact that a certain number of individuals participate in the same
moral life.
Moreover, the clan is a society which is less able than any other to do
without an emblem or symbol, for there is almost no other so lacking in
consistency. The clan cannot be defined by its chief, for if central
authority is not lacking, it is at least uncertain and unstable.[727]
Nor can it be defined by the territory it occupies, for the population,
being nomad,[728] is not closely attached to any special locality. Also,
owing to the exogamic law, husband and wife must be of different totems;
so wherever the totem is transmitted in the maternal line--and this
system of filiation is still the most general one[729]--the children are
of a different clan from their father, though living near to him.
Therefore we find representatives of a number of different clans in each
family, and still more in each locality. The unity of the group is
visible, therefore, only in the collective name borne by all the
members, and in the equally collective emblem reproducing the object
designated by this name. A clan is essentially a reunion of individuals
who bear the same name and rally around the same sign. Take away the
name and the sign which materializes it, and the clan is no longer
representable. Since the group is possible only on this condition, both
the institution of the emblem and the part it takes in the life of the
group are thus explained.
It remains to ask why these names and emblems were taken almost
exclusively from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, but especially from
the former.
It seems probable to us that the emblem has played a more important part
than the name. In any case, the written sign still holds a more central
place in the life of the clan to-day than does the spoken sign. Now the
basis of an emblematic image can be found only in something susceptible
of being represented by a design. On the other hand, these things had to
be those with which the men of the clan were the most immediately and
habitually coming in contact. Animals fulfilled this condition to a
pre-eminent degree. For these nations of hunters and fishers, the animal
constituted an essential element of the economic environment. In this
connection plants had only a secondary place for they can hold only a
secondary place as food as long as they are not cultivated. Moreover,
the animal is more closely associated with the life of men than the
plant is, if only because of the natural kinship uniting these two to
each other. On the other hand, the sun, moon and stars are too far away,
they give the effect of belonging to another world.[730] Also, as long
as the constellations were not distinguished and classified, the starry
vault did not offer a sufficient diversity of clearly differentiated
things to be able to mark all the clans and sub-clans of a tribe; but,
on the contrary, the variety of the flora, and especially of the fauna,
was almost inexhaustible. Therefore celestial bodies, in spite of their
brilliancy and the sharp impression they make upon the senses, were
unfitted for the rôle of totems, while animals and plants seemed
predestined to it.
Ah observation of Strehlow even allows us to state precisely the way in
which these emblems were probably chosen. He says that he has noticed
that the totemic centres are generally situated near a mountain, spring
or gorge where the animals serving as totems to the group gather in
abundance, and he cites a certain number of examples of this fact.[731]
Now these totemic centres are surely the consecrated places where the
meetings of the clan are held. So it seems as though each group had
taken as its insignia the animal or plant that was the commonest in the
vicinity of the place where it had the habit of meeting.[732]
VI
This conception of totemism will give us the explanation of a very
curious trait of human mentality which, even though more marked formerly
than to-day, has not yet disappeared and which, in any case, has been of
considerable importance in the history of human thought. It will furnish
still another occasion for showing how logical evolution is closely
connected with religious evolution and how it, like this latter, depends
upon social conditions.[733]
If there is one truth which appears to be absolutely certain to-day, it
is that beings differing not only in their outward appearance but also
in their most essential properties, such as minerals, plants, animals
and men, cannot be considered equivalent and interchangeable. Long
usage, which scientific culture has still more firmly embedded in our
minds, has taught us to establish barriers between the kingdoms, whose
existence transformism itself does not deny; for though this admits that
life may have arisen from non-living matter and men from animals, still,
it does not fail to recognize the fact that living beings, once formed,
are different from minerals, and men different from animals. Within each
kingdom the same barriers separate the different classes: we cannot
conceive of one mineral having the same distinctive characteristics as
another, or of one animal species having those of another species. But
these distinctions, which seem so natural to us, are in no way
primitive. In the beginning, all the kingdoms are confounded with each
other. Rocks have a sex; they have the power of begetting; the sun, moon
and stars are men or women who feel and express human sentiments, while
men, on the contrary, are thought of as animals or plants. This state of
confusion is found at the basis of all mythologies. Hence comes the
ambiguous character of the beings portrayed in the mythologies; they can
be classified in no definite group, for they participate at the same
time in the most opposed groups. It is also readily admitted that they
can go from one into another; and for a long time men believed that they
were able to explain the origin of things by these transmutations.
That the anthropomorphic instinct, with which the animists have endowed
primitive men, cannot explain their mental condition is shown by the
nature of the confusions of which they are guilty. In fact, these do not
come from the fact that men have immoderately extended the human kingdom
to the point of making all the others enter into it, but from the fact
that they confound the most disparate kingdoms. They have not conceived
the world in their own image any more than they have conceived
themselves in the world's image: they have done both at the same time.
Into the idea they have formed of things, they have undoubtedly made
human elements enter; but into the idea they have formed of themselves,
they have made enter elements coming from things.
Yet there is nothing in experience which could suggest these connections
and confusions. As far as the observation of the senses is able to go,
everything is different and disconnected. Nowhere do we really see
beings mixing their natures and metamorphosing themselves into each
other. It is therefore necessary that some exceptionally powerful cause
should have intervened to transfigure reality in such a way as to make
it appear under an aspect that is not really its own.
It is religion that was the agent of this transfiguration; it is
religious beliefs that have substituted for the world, as it is
perceived by the senses, another different one. This is well shown by
the case of totemism. The fundamental thing in this religion is that the
men of the clan and the different beings whose form the totemic emblems
reproduce pass as being made of the same essence. Now when this belief
was once admitted, the bridge between the different kingdoms was already
built. The man was represented as a sort of animal or plant; the plants
and animals were thought of as the relatives of men, or rather, all
these beings, so different for the senses, were thought of as
participating in a single nature. So this remarkable aptitude for
confusing things that seem to be obviously distinct comes from the fact
that the first forces with which the human intellect has peopled the
world were elaborated by religion. Since these were made up of elements
taken from the different kingdoms, men conceived a principle common to
the most heterogeneous things, which thus became endowed with a sole and
single essence.
But we also know that these religious conceptions are the result of
determined social causes. Since the clan cannot exist without a name and
an emblem, and since this emblem is always before the eyes of men, it is
upon this, and the objects whose image it is, that the sentiments which
society arouses in its members are fixed. Men were thus compelled to
represent the collective force, whose action they felt, in the form of
the thing serving as flag to the group. Therefore, in the idea of this
force were mixed up the most different kingdoms; in one sense, it was
essentially human, since it was made up of human ideas and sentiments;
but at the same time, it could not fail to appear as closely related to
the animate or inanimate beings who gave it its outward form. Moreover,
the cause whose action we observe here is not peculiar to totemism;
there is no society where it is not active. In a general way, a
collective sentiment can become conscious of itself only by being fixed
upon some material object;[734] but by this very fact, it participates
in the nature of this object, and reciprocally, the object participates
in its nature. So it was social necessity which brought about the fusion
of notions appearing distinct at first, and social life has facilitated
this fusion by the great mental effervescences it determines.[735] This
is one more proof that logical understanding is a function of society,
for it takes the forms and attitudes that this latter presses upon it.
It is true that this logic is disconcerting for us. Yet we must be
careful not to depreciate it: howsoever crude it may appear to us, it
has been an aid of the greatest importance in the intellectual evolution
of humanity. In fact, it is through it that the first explanation of the
world has been made possible. Of course the mental habits it implies
prevented men from seeing reality as their senses show it to them; but
as they show it, it has the grave inconvenience of allowing of no
explanation. For to explain is to attach things to each other and to
establish relations between them which make them appear to us as
functions of each other and as vibrating sympathetically according to an
internal law founded in their nature. But sensations, which see nothing
except from the outside, could never make them disclose these relations
and internal bonds; the intellect alone can create the notion of them.
When I learn that A regularly precedes B, my knowledge is increased by a
new fact; but my intelligence is not at all satisfied with a statement
which does not show its reason. I commence to _understand_ only if it is
possible for me to conceive B in a way that makes it appear to me as
something that is not foreign to A, and as united to A by some relation
of kinship. The great service that religions have rendered to thought is
that they have constructed a first representation of what these
relations of kinship between things may be. In the circumstances under
which it was attempted, the enterprise could obviously attain only
precarious results. But then, does it ever attain any that are definite,
and is it not always necessary to reconsider them? And also, it is less
important to succeed than to try. The essential thing was not to leave
the mind enslaved to visible appearances, but to teach it to dominate
them and to connect what the senses separated; for from the moment when
men have an idea that there are internal connections between things,
science and philosophy become possible. Religion opened up the way for
them. But if it has been able to play this part, it is only because it
is a social affair. In order to make a law for the impressions of the
senses and to substitute a new way of representing reality for them,
thought of a new sort had to be founded: this is collective thought. If
this alone has had this efficacy, it is because of the fact that to
create a world of ideals through which the world of experienced
realities would appear transfigured, a super-excitation of the
intellectual forces was necessary, which is possible only in and through
society.
So it is far from true that this mentality has no connection with ours.
Our logic was born of this logic. The explanations of contemporary
science are surer of being objective because they are more methodical
and because they rest on more carefully controlled observations, but
they do not differ in nature from those which satisfy primitive thought.
To-day, as formerly, to explain is to show how one thing participates in
one or several others. It has been said that the participations of this
sort implied by the mythologies violate the principle of contradiction
and that they are by that opposed to those implied by scientific
explanations.[736] Is not the statement that a man is a kangaroo or the
sun a bird, equal to identifying the two with each other? But our manner
of thought is not different when we say of heat that it is a movement,
or of light that it is a vibration of the ether, etc. Every time that we
unite heterogeneous terms by an internal bond, we forcibly identify
contraries. Of course the terms we unite are not those which the
Australian brings together; we choose them according to different
criteria and for different reasons; but the processes by which the mind
puts them in connection do not differ essentially.
It is true that if primitive thought had that sort of general and
systematic indifference to contradictions which has been attributed to
it,[737] it would be in open contradiction on this point with modern
thought, which is always careful to remain consistent with itself. But
we do not believe that it is possible to characterize the mentality of
inferior societies by a single and exclusive inclination for
indistinction. If the primitive confounds things which we distinguish,
he also distinguishes things which we connect together, and he even
conceives these distinctions in the form of sharp and clear-cut
oppositions. Between two things which are classified in two different
phratries, there is not only separation, but even antagonism.[738] For
this reason, the same Australian who confounds the sun and the white
cockatoo, opposes this latter to the black cockatoo as to its contrary.
The two seem to him to belong to two separate classes between which
there is nothing in common. A still more marked opposition is that
existing between sacred things and profane things. They repel and
contradict each other with so much force that the mind refuses to think
of them at the same time. They mutually expel each other from the
consciousness.
Thus between the logic of religious thought and that of scientific
thought there is no abyss. The two are made up of the same elements,
though inequally and differently developed. The special characteristic
of the former seems to be its natural taste for immoderate confusions as
well as sharp contrasts. It is voluntarily excessive in each direction.
When it connects, it confounds; when it distinguishes, it opposes. It
knows no shades and measures, it seeks extremes; it consequently employs
logical mechanisms with a certain awkwardness, but it ignores none of
them.