The efficacy of these rites is never doubted by the native: he is

convinced that they must produce the results he expects, with a sort of

necessity. If events deceive his hopes, he merely concludes that they

were counteracted by the sorcery of some hostile group. In any case, it

never enters his mind that a favourable result could be obtained by any

other means. If by chance the vegetation grows or the animals produce

before he has performed his Intichiuma, he supposes that another

Intichiuma has been celebrated under the ground by the ancestors and

that the living reap the benefits of this subterranean ceremony.[1128]

II

This is the first act of the celebration.

During the period immediately following, there are no regular

ceremonies. However, the religious life remains intense: this is

manifested especially by an aggravation of the system of interdicts. It

is as though the sacred character of the totem were reinforced: they do

not even dare to touch it. In ordinary times, the Arunta may eat the

animal or plant which serves as totem, provided they do so with

moderation, but on the morrow of the Intichiuma this right is suspended;

the alimentary interdiction is strict and without exceptions. They

believe that any violation of this interdict would result in

neutralizing the good effects of the rite and in preventing the increase

of the species. It is true that the men of other totems who happen to be

in the same locality are not submitted to the same prohibition. However,

their liberty is less than ordinary at this time. They may not consume

the totemic animal wherever they place, in the brush, for example; they

must bring it to camp, and it is there only that it may be cooked.[1129]

A final ceremony terminates this period of extraordinary interdictions

and definitely closes this long series of rites. It varies somewhat in

different clans, but the essential elements are the same everywhere.

Here are the two principal forms which it takes among the Arunta. One of

these is in connection with the witchetty grub, the other with the

kangaroo.

When the grubs have attained full maturity and appear in abundance, the

men of the totem, as well as others, collect as many of them as

possible; then they all bring those they have found back to camp and

cook them until they become hard and brittle. They are then preserved in

wooden vessels called _pitchi_. The harvest of grubs is possible only

during a very short time, for they appear only after the rain. When they

begin to be less numerous, the Alatunja summons everybody to the camp;

on his invitation, each one brings his supply. The others place theirs

before the men of that totem. The Alatunja takes one of these _pitchi_

and, with the aid of his companions, he grinds its contents between two

stones; after this, he eats a little of the powder thus obtained, his

assistants do the same, and what remains is given to the men of the

other clans, who may now dispose of it freely. They proceed in exactly

the same manner with the supply provided by the Alatunja. From now on,

the men and women of the totem may eat it, but only a little at a time;

if they went beyond the limits allowed, they would lose the powers

necessary to celebrate the Intichiuma and the species would not

reproduce. Yet, if they did not eat any at all, and especially if the

Alatunja ate none in the circumstances we have just described, they

would be overtaken by the same incapacity.

In the totemic group of the Kangaroo, which has its centre at Undiara,

certain characteristics of the ceremony are more clearly marked. After

the rites which we have described have been accomplished on the sacred

rock, the young men go and hunt the kangaroo, bringing their game back

to the camp. Here, the old men, with the Alatunja in their midst, eat a

little of the flesh of the animal, and anoint the bodies of those who

took part in the Intichiuma with its fat. The rest is divided up among

the men assembled. Next, the men of the totem decorate themselves with

totemic designs and the night is passed in songs commemorating the

exploits accomplished by men and animal kangaroos in the times of the

Alcheringa. The next day, the young men go hunting again in the forest

and bring back a larger number of kangaroos than the first time, and the

ceremonies of the day before recommence.[1130]

With variations of detail, the same rite is found in other Arunta

clans,[1131] among the Urabunna,[1132] the Kaitish,[1133] the

Unmatjera,[1134] and in the Encounter Bay Tribe.[1135] Everywhere, it is

made up of the same essential elements. A few specimens of the totemic

animal or plant are presented to the chief of the clan, who solemnly

eats them and who must eat them. If he did not fulfil this duty, he

would lose the power of celebrating the Intichiuma efficaciously, that

is to say, so as to recreate the species annually. Sometimes the ritual

consumption is followed by an unction made with the fat of the animal or

certain parts of the plant.[1136] This rite is generally repeated by the

men of the totem, or at least by the old men, and after it has been

accomplished, the exceptional interdictions are raised.

In the tribes located farther north, among the Warramunga and

neighbouring societies,[1137] this ceremony is no longer found. However,

traces are found which seem to indicate that there was a time when it

was known. It is true that the chief of the clan never eats the totem

ritually and obligatorily. But in certain cases, men who are not of the

totem whose Intichiuma has just been celebrated, must bring the animal

or plant to camp and offer it to the chief, asking him if he wants to

eat it. He refuses and adds, "I have made this for you; you may eat it

freely."[1138] So the custom of the presentation remains and the

question asked of the chief seems to date back to an epoch when the

ritual consumption was practised.[1139]

III

The interest of the system of rites which has just been described lies

in the fact that in them we find, in the most elementary form that is

actually known, all the essential principles of a great religious

institution which was destined to become one of the foundation stones of

the positive cult in the superior religions: this is the institution of

sacrifice.

We know what a revolution the work of Robertson Smith brought about in

the traditional theory of sacrifice.[1140] Before him, sacrifice was

regarded as a sort of tribute or homage, either obligatory or optional,

analogous to that which subjects owe to their princes. Robertson Smith

was the first to remark that this classic explanation did not account

for two essential characteristics of the rite. In the first place, it is

a repast: its substance is food. Secondly, it is a repast in which the

worshippers who offer it take part, along with the god to whom it is

offered. Certain parts of the victim are reserved for the divinity;

others are attributed to the sacrificers, who consume them; this is why

the Bible often speaks of the sacrifice as a repast in the presence of

Jahveh. Now in a multitude of societies, meals taken in common are

believed to create a bond of artificial kinship between those who assist

at them: In fact, relatives are people who are naturally made of the

same flesh and blood. But food is constantly remaking the substance of

the organism. So a common food may produce the same effects as a common

origin. According to Smith, sacrificial banquets have the object of

making the worshipper and his god communicate in the same flesh, in

order to form a bond of kinship between them. From this point of view,

sacrifice takes on a wholly new aspect. Its essential element is no

longer the act of renouncement which the word sacrifice ordinarily

expresses; before all, it is an act of alimentary communion.

Of course there are some reservations to be made in the details of this

way of explaining the efficacy of sacrificial banquets. This does not

result exclusively from the act of eating together. A man does not

sanctify himself merely by sitting down, in some way, at the same table

with a god, but especially by eating food at this ritual repast which

has a sacred character. It has been shown how a whole series of

preliminary operations, lustrations, unctions, prayers, etc., transform

the animal to be immolated into a sacred thing, whose sacredness is

subsequently transferred to the worshipper who eats it.[1141] But it is

true, none the less, that the alimentary communion is one of the

essential elements of the sacrifice. Now when we turn to the rite which

terminates the ceremonies of the Intichiuma, we find that it, too,

consists in an act of this sort. After the totemic animal has been

killed, the Alatunja and the old men solemnly eat it. So they

communicate with the sacred principle residing in it and they assimilate

it. The only difference we find here is that the animal is naturally

sacred while it ordinarily acquires this character artificially in the

course of the sacrifice.

Moreover, the object of this communion is manifest. Every member of a

totemic clan contains a mystic substance within him which is the

pre-eminent part of his being, for his soul is made out of it. From it

come whatever powers he has and his social position, for it is this

which makes him a person. So he has a vital interest in maintaining it

intact and in keeping it, as far as is possible, in a state of perpetual

youth. Unfortunately all forces, even the most spiritual, are used up in

the course of time if nothing comes to return to them the energy they

lose through the normal working of things; there is a necessity of the

first importance here which, as we shall see, is the real reason for the

positive cult. Therefore the men of a totem cannot retain their position

unless they periodically revivify the totemic principle which is in

them; and as they represent this principle in the form of a vegetable or

animal, it is to the corresponding animal or vegetable species that they

go to demand the supplementary forces needed to renew this and to

rejuvenate it. A man of the Kangaroo clan believes himself and feels

himself a kangaroo; it is by this quality that he defines himself; it is

this which marks his place in the society. In order to keep it, he takes

a little of the flesh of this same animal into his own body from time to

time. A small bit is enough, owing to the rule: _the part is equal to

the whole_.[1142]

If this operation is to produce all the desired effects, it may not take

place at no matter what moment. The most opportune time is when the new

generation has just reached its complete development, for this is also

the moment when the forces animating the totemic species attain their

maximum intensity. They have just been drawn with great difficulty from

those rich reservoirs of life, the sacred trees and rocks. Moreover, all

sorts of means have been employed to increase their intensity still

more; this is the use of the rites performed during the first part of

the Intichiuma. Also, by their very aspect, the firstfruits of the

harvest manifest the energy which they contain: here the totemic god

acclaims himself in all the glory of his youth. This is why the

firstfruits have always been regarded as a very sacred fruit, reserved

for very holy beings. So it is natural that the Australian uses it to

regenerate himself spiritually. Thus both the date and the circumstances

of the ceremonies are explained.

Perhaps some will be surprised that so sacred a food may be eaten by

ordinary profane persons. But in the first place, there is no positive

cult which does not face this contradiction. Every sacred being is

removed from profane touch by this very character with which it is

endowed; but, on the other hand, they would serve for nothing and have

no reason whatsoever for their existence if they could not come in

contact with these same worshippers who, on another ground, must remain

respectfully distant from them. At bottom, there is no positive rite

which does not constitute a veritable sacrilege, for a man cannot hold

commerce with the sacred beings without crossing the barrier which

should ordinarily keep them separate. But the important thing is that

the sacrilege should be accompanied with precautions which attenuate

it. Among those employed, the most usual one consists in arranging the

transition so as to introduce the worshipper slowly and gradually into

the circle of sacred things. When it has been broken and diluted in this

fashion, the sacrilege does not offend the religious conscience so

violently; it is not regarded as a sacrilege and so vanishes. This is

what happens in the case now before us. The effect of the whole series

of rites which has preceded the moment when the totem is solemnly eaten

has been to sanctify those who took an active part in them. They

constitute an essentially religious period, through which no one could

go without a transformation of his religious state. The fasts, the

contact with sacred rocks, the churinga,[1143] the totemic decorations,

etc., have gradually conferred upon him a character which he did not

have before and which enables him to approach, without a shocking and

dangerous profanation, this desirable and redoubtable food which is

forbidden him in ordinary times.[1144]

If the act by which a sacred being is first immolated and then eaten by

those who adore it may be called a sacrifice, the rite of which we have

just been speaking has a right to this same name. Moreover, its

significance is well shown by the striking analogies it presents with so

many practices met with in a large number of agrarian cults. It is a

very general rule that even among peoples who have attained a high

degree of civilization, the firstfruits of the harvest are used in the

ritual repasts, of which the pascal feast is the best known

example.[1145] On the other hand, as the agrarian rites are at the very

basis of the most advanced forms of the cult, we see that the Intichiuma

of the Australian societies is closer to us than one might imagine from

its apparent crudeness.

By an intuition of genius, Smith had an intuition of all this, though he

was not acquainted with the facts. By a series of ingenious

deductions--which need not be reproduced here, for their interest is now

only historical[1146]--he thought that he could establish the fact that

at the beginning the animal immolated in the sacrifice must have been

regarded as quasi-divine and as a close relative of those who immolated

it: now these characteristics are just the ones with which the totemic

species is defined. Smith even went so far as to suppose that totemism

must have known and practised a rite wholly similar to the one we have

been studying; he was even inclined to see the original source of the

whole sacrificial institution in a sacrifice of this sort.[1147]

Sacrifice was not founded to create a bond of artificial kinship between

a man and his gods, but to maintain and renew the natural kinship which

primitively united them. Here, as elsewhere, the artifice was born only

to imitate nature. But in the book of Smith this hypothesis was

presented as scarcely more than a theory which the then known facts

supported very imperfectly. The rare cases of totemic sacrifice which he

cites in support of his theory do not have the significance he

attributed to them; the animals which figure in them are not real

totems.[1148] But to-day we are able to state that on at least one point

the demonstration is made: in fact, we have just seen that in an

important number of societies the totemic sacrifice, such as Smith

conceived it, is or has been practised. Of course, we have no proof that

this practice is necessarily inherent to totemism or that it is the germ

out of which all the other types of sacrifices have developed. But if

the universality of the rite is hypothetical, its existence is no longer

to be contested. Hereafter it is to be regarded as established that the

most mystical form of the alimentary communion is found even in the most

rudimentary cults known to-day.

IV

But on another point the new facts at our disposal invalidate the

theories of Smith.

According to him, the communion was not only an essential element of the

sacrifice, but at the beginning, at least, it was the unique element.

Not only is one mistaken when he reduces sacrifice to nothing more than

a tribute or offering, but the very idea of an offering was originally

absent from it; this intervened only at a late period and under the

influence of external circumstances; so instead of being able to aid us

in understanding it, it has rather masked the real nature of the ritual

mechanism. In fact, Smith claimed to find in the very notion of oblation

an absurdity so revolting that it could never have been the fundamental

reason for so great an institution. One of the most important functions

incumbent upon the divinity is to assure to men that food which is

necessary for life; so it seems impossible that the sacrifice, in its

turn, should consist in a presentation of food to the divinity. It even

seems self-contradictory that the gods should expect their food from a

man, when it is from them that he gets his. Why should they have need of

his aid in order to deduct beforehand their just share of the things

which he receives from their hands? From these considerations Smith

concluded that the idea of a sacrifice-offering could have been born

only in the great religions, where the gods, removed from the things

with which they were primitively confused, were thought of as sorts of

kings and the eminent proprietors of the earth and its products. From

this moment onwards, the sacrifice was associated with the tribute which

subjects paid to their prince, as a price of the rights which were

conceded to them. But this new interpretation was really an alteration

and even a corruption of the primitive conception. For "the idea of

property materializes all that it touches"; by introducing itself into

the sacrifice, it denatured it and made it into a sort of bargain

between the man and the divinity.[1149]

But the facts which we have described overthrow this argumentation.

These rites are certainly among the most primitive that have ever been

observed. No determined mythical personality appears in them; there is

no question of gods or spirits that are properly so called; it is only

vaguely anonymous and impersonal forces which they put into action. Yet

the reasoning which they suppose is exactly the one that Smith declared

impossible because of its absurdity.

Let us return to the first act of the Intichiuma, to the rites destined

to assure the fecundity of the animal or vegetable species which serves

the clan as totem. This species is the pre-eminently sacred thing; in it

is incarnated that which we have been able to call, by metaphor, the

totemic divinity. Yet we have seen that to perpetuate itself it has need

of the aid of men. It is they who dispense the life of the new

generation each year; without them, it would never be born. If they

stopped celebrating the Intichiuma, the sacred beings would disappear

from the face of the earth. So in one sense, it is from men that they

get their existence; yet in another way, it is from them that men get

theirs; for after they have once arrived at maturity, it is from them

that men acquire the force needed to support and repair their spiritual

beings. Thus we are able to say that men make their gods, or, at least,

make them live; but at the same time, it is from them that they live

themselves. So they are regularly guilty of the circle which, according

to Smith, is implied in the very idea of a sacrificial tribute: they

give to the sacred beings a little of what they receive from them, and

they receive from them all that they give.

But there is still more to be said: the oblations which he is thus

forced to make every year do not differ in nature from those which are

made later in the rites properly called sacrifices. If the sacrificer

immolates an animal, it is in order that the living principles within it

may be disengaged from the organism and go to nourish the divinity.

Likewise, the grains of dust which the Australian detaches from the

sacred rock are so many sacred principles which he scatters into space,

so that they may go to animate the totemic species and assure its

renewal. The gesture with which this scattering is made is also that

which normally accompanies offerings. In certain cases, the resemblance

between the two rites may be followed even to the details of the

movements effected. We have seen that in order to have rain the Kaitish

pour water over the sacred stone; among certain peoples, the priest

pours water over the altar, with the same end in view.[1150] The

effusions of blood which are usual in a certain number of Intichiuma are

veritable oblations. Just as the Arunta or Dieri sprinkle the sacred

rock or the totemic design with blood, so it frequently happens that in

the more advanced cults, the blood of the sacrificed victim or of the

worshipper himself is spilt before or upon the altar.[1151] In these

cases, it is given to the gods, of whom it is the preferred food; in

Australia, it is given to the sacred species. So we have no ground for

saying that the idea of oblation is a late product of civilization.

A document which we owe to Strehlow puts this kinship of the Intichiuma

and the sacrifice clearly into evidence. This is a hymn which

accompanies the Intichiuma of the Kangaroo; the ceremony is described at

the same time that its expected effects are announced. A morsel of

kangaroo fat has been placed by the chief upon a support made of

branches. The text says that this fat makes the fat of the kangaroos

increase.[1152] This time, they do not confine themselves to sprinkling

sacred dust or human blood about; the animal itself is immolated, or

sacrificed as one might say, placed upon a sort of altar, and offered to

the species, whose life it should maintain.

Now we see the sense in which we may say that the Intichiuma contains

the germs of the sacrificial system. In the form which it takes when

fully constituted, a sacrifice is composed of two essential elements: an

act of communion and an act of oblation. The worshipper communes with

his god by taking in a sacred food, and at the same time he makes an

offering to this god. We find these two acts in the Intichiuma, as we

have described it. The only difference is that in the ordinary

sacrifice[1153] they are made simultaneously or else follow one another

immediately, while in the Australian ceremony they are separated. In the

former case, they are parts of one undivided rite; here, they take place

at different times, and may even be separated by a rather long interval.

But, at bottom, the mechanism is the same. Taken as a whole, the

Intichiuma is a sacrifice, but one whose parts are not yet articulated

and organized.

The relating of these two ceremonies has the double advantage of

enabling us to understand better the nature of the Intichiuma and that

of sacrifice.

We understand the Intichiuma better. In fact, the conception of Frazer,

which made it a simple magic operation[1154] with no religious character

at all, is now seen to be unsupportable. One cannot dream of excluding

from religion a rite which is the forerunner of so great a religious

institution.

But we also understand what the sacrifice itself is better. In the first

place, the equal importance of the two elements entering into it is now

established. If the Australian makes offerings to his sacred beings,

there is no reason for supposing that the idea of oblation was foreign

to the primitive organization of the sacrificial institution and later

upset its natural arrangement. The theory of Smith must be revised on

this point.[1155] Of course the sacrifice is partially a communion; but

it is also, and no less essentially, a gift and an act of renouncement.

It always presupposes that the worshipper gives some of his substance or

his goods to his gods. Every attempt to deduce one of these elements

from the other is hopeless. Perhaps the oblation is even more permanent

than the communion.[1156]

In the second place, it ordinarily seems as though the sacrifice, and

especially the sacrificial oblation, could only be addressed to personal

beings. But the oblations which we have met with in Australia imply no

notion of this sort. In other words, the sacrifice is independent of the

varying forms in which the religious forces are conceived; it is founded

upon more profound reasons, which we shall seek presently.

In any case, it is clear that the act of offering naturally arouses in

the mind the idea of a moral subject, whom this offering is destined to

please. The ritual acts which we have described become more

intelligible when it is believed that they are addressed to persons. So

the practices of the Intichiuma, while actually putting only impersonal

forces into play, prepare the way for a different conception.[1157] Of

course they were not sufficient to form the idea of mythical

personalities by themselves, but when this idea had once been formed,

the very nature of these rites made it enter into the cult; thus, taking

a more direct interest in action and life, it also acquired a greater

reality. So we are even able to believe that the cult favoured, in a

secondary manner, no doubt, but nevertheless one which is worthy of

attention, the personification of the religious forces.

V

But we still have to explain the contradiction in which Robertson Smith

saw an inadmissible logical scandal.

If the sacred beings always manifested their powers in a perfectly equal

manner, it would appear inconceivable that men should dream of offering

them services, for we cannot see what need they could have of them. But

in the first place, in so far as they are confused with things, and in

so far as they are regarded as principles of the cosmic life, they are

themselves submitted to the rhythm of this life. Now this goes in

oscillations in contrary directions, which succeed one another according

to a determined law. Sometimes it is affirmed in all its glory;

sometimes it weakens to such an extent that one may ask himself whether

it is not going to fade away. Vegetation dies every year; will it be

reborn? Animal species tend to become extinguished by the effect of

natural and violent death; will they be renewed at such a time and in

such a way as is proper? Above all, the rain is capricious; there are

long periods during which it seems to have disappeared for ever. These

periodical variations of nature bear witness to the fact that at the

corresponding periods, the sacred beings upon whom the plants, animals,

rain, etc., depend are themselves passing through grave crises; so they,

too, have their periods of giving way. But men could not regard these

spectacles as indifferent spectators. If he is to live, the universal

life must continue, and consequently the gods must not die. So he seeks

to sustain and aid them; for this, he puts at their service whatever

forces he has at his disposition, and mobilizes them for this purpose.

The blood flowing in his veins has fecundating virtues; he pours it

forth. From the sacred rocks possessed by his clan he takes those germs

of life which lie dormant there, and scatters them into space. In a

word, he makes oblations.

The external and physical crises, moreover, duplicate internal and

mental crises which tend toward the same result. Sacred beings exist

only when they are represented as such in the mind. When we cease to

believe in them, it is as though they did not exist. Even those which

have a material form and are given by sensible experience, depend upon

the thought of the worshippers who adore them; for the sacred character

which makes them objects of the cult is not given by their natural

constitution; it is added to them by belief. The kangaroo is only an

animal like all others; yet, for the men of the Kangaroo, it contains

within it a principle which puts it outside the company of others, and

this principle exists only in the minds of those who believe in

it.[1158] If these sacred beings, when once conceived, are to have no

need of men to continue, it would be necessary that the representations

expressing them always remain the same. But this stability is

impossible. In fact, it is in the communal life that they are formed,

and this communal life is essentially intermittent. So they necessarily

partake of this same intermittency. They attain their greatest intensity

at the moment when the men are assembled together and are in immediate

relations with one another, when they all partake of the same idea and

the same sentiment. But when the assembly has broken up and each man has

returned to his own peculiar life, they progressively lose their

original energy. Being covered over little by little by the rising flood

of daily experiences, they would soon fall into the unconscious, if we

did not find some means of calling them back into consciousness and

revivifying them. If we think of them less forcefully, they amount to

less for us and we count less upon them; they exist to a lesser degree.

So here we have another point of view, from which the services of men

are necessary to them. This second reason for their existence is even

more important than the first, for it exists all the time. The

intermittency of the physical life can affect religious beliefs only

when religions are not yet detached from their cosmic basis. The

intermittency of the social life, on the other hand, is inevitable; even

the most idealistic religions cannot escape it.

Moreover, it is owing to this state of dependency upon the thought of

men, in which the gods find themselves, that the former are able to

believe in the efficacy of their assistance. The only way of renewing

the collective representations which relate to sacred beings is to

retemper them in the very source of the religious life, that is to say,

in the assembled groups. Now the emotions aroused by these periodical

crises through which external things pass induce the men who witness

them to assemble, to see what should be done about it. But by the very

fact of uniting, they are mutually comforted; they find a remedy because

they seek it together. The common faith becomes reanimated quite

naturally in the heart of this reconstituted group; if is born again

because it again finds those very conditions in which it was born in the

first place. After it has been restored, it easily triumphs over all the

private doubts which may have arisen in individual minds. The image of

the sacred things regains power enough to resist the internal or

external causes which tended to weaken it. In spite of their apparent

failure, men can no longer believe that the gods will die, because they

feel them living in their own hearts. The means employed to succour

them, howsoever crude these may be, cannot appear vain, for everything

goes on as if they were really effective. Men are more confident because

they feel themselves stronger; and they really are stronger, because

forces which were languishing are now reawakened in the consciousness.

So we must be careful not to believe, along with Smith, that the cult

was founded solely for the benefit of men and that the gods have nothing

to do with it: they have no less need of it than their worshippers. Of

course men would be unable to live without gods, but, on the other hand,

the gods would die if their cult were not rendered. This does not have

the sole object of making profane subjects communicate with sacred

beings, but it also keeps these latter alive and is perpetually remaking

and regenerating them. Of course it is not the material oblations which

bring about this regeneration by their own virtues; it is the mental

states which these actions, though vain in themselves, accompany or

reawaken. The real reason for the existence of the cults, even of those

which are the most materialistic in appearance, is not to be sought in

the acts which they prescribe, but in the internal and moral

regeneration which these acts aid in bringing about. The things which

the worshipper really gives his gods are not the foods which he places

upon the altars, nor the blood which he lets flow from his veins: it is

his thought. Nevertheless, it is true that there is an exchange of

services, which are mutually demanded, between the divinity and its

worshippers. The rule _do ut des_, by which the principle of sacrifice

has sometimes been defined, is not a late invention of utilitarian

theorists: it only expresses in an explicit way the very mechanism of

the sacrificial system and, more generally, of the whole positive cult.

So the circle pointed out by Smith is very real; but it contains nothing

humiliating for the reason. It comes from the fact that the sacred

beings, though superior to men, can live only in the human

consciousness.

But this circle will appear still more natural to us, and we shall

understand its meaning and the reason for its existence still better if,

carrying our analysis still farther and substituting for the religious

symbols the realities which they represent, we investigate how these

behave in the rite. If, as we have attempted to establish, the sacred

principle is nothing more nor less than society transfigured and

personified, it should be possible to interpret the ritual in lay and

social terms. And, as a matter of fact, social life, just like the

ritual, moves in a circle. On the one hand, the individual gets from

society the best part of himself, all that gives him a distinct

character and a special place among other beings, his intellectual and

moral culture. If we should withdraw from men their language, sciences,

arts and moral beliefs, they would drop to the rank of animals. So the

characteristic attributes of human nature come from society. But, on the

other hand, society exists and lives only in and through individuals. If

the idea of society were extinguished in individual minds and the

beliefs, traditions and aspirations of the group were no longer felt and

shared by the individuals, society would die. We can say of it what we

just said of the divinity: it is real only in so far as it has a place

in human consciousnesses, and this place is whatever one we may give it.

We now see the real reason why the gods cannot do without their

worshippers any more than these can do without their gods; it is because

society, of which the gods are only a symbolic expression, cannot do

without individuals any more than these can do without society.

Here we touch the solid rock upon which all the cults are built and

which has caused their persistence ever since human societies have

existed. When we see what religious rites consist of and towards what

they seem to tend, we demand with astonishment how men have been able to

imagine them, and especially how they can remain so faithfully attached

to them. Whence could the illusion have come that with a few grains of

sand thrown to the wind, or a few drops of blood shed upon a rock or the

stone of an altar, it is possible to maintain the life of an animal

species or of a god? We have undoubtedly made a step in advance towards

the solution of this problem when we have discovered, behind these

outward and apparently unreasonable movements, a mental mechanism which

gives them a meaning and a moral significance. But we are in no way

assured that this mechanism itself does not consist in a simple play of

hallucinatory images. We have pointed out the psychological process

which leads the believers to imagine that the rite causes the spiritual

forces of which they have need to be reborn about them; but it does not

follow from the fact that this belief is psychologically explicable that

it has any objective value. If we are to see in the efficacy attributed

to the rites anything more than the product of a chronic delirium with

which humanity has abused itself, we must show that the effect of the

cult really is to recreate periodically a moral being upon which we

depend as it depends upon us. Now this being does exist: it is society.

Howsoever little importance the religious ceremonies may have, they put

the group into action; the groups assemble to celebrate them. So their

first effect is to bring individuals together, to multiply the relations

between them and to make them more intimate with one another. By this

very fact, the contents of their consciousnesses is changed. On ordinary

days, it is utilitarian and individual avocations which take the greater

part of the attention. Every one attends to his own personal business;

for most men, this primarily consists in satisfying the exigencies of

material life, and the principal incentive to economic activity has

always been private interest. Of course social sentiments could never be

totally absent. We remain in relations with others; the habits, ideas

and tendencies which education has impressed upon us and which

ordinarily preside over our relations with others, continue to make

their action felt. But they are constantly combated and held in check by

the antagonistic tendencies aroused and supported by the necessities of

the daily struggle. They resist more or less successfully, according to

their intrinsic energy: but this energy is not renewed. They live upon

their past, and consequently they would be used up in the course of

time, if nothing returned to them a little of the force that they lose

through these incessant conflicts and frictions. When the Australians,

scattered in little groups, spend their time in hunting and fishing,

they lose sight of what concerns their clan or tribe: their only thought

is to catch as much game as possible. On feast days, on the contrary,

these preoccupations are necessarily eclipsed; being essentially

profane, they are excluded from these sacred periods. At this time,

their thoughts are centred upon their common beliefs, their common

traditions, the memory of their great ancestors, the collective ideal

of which they are the incarnation; in a word, upon social things. Even

the material interests which these great religious ceremonies are

designed to satisfy concern the public order and are therefore social.

Society as a whole is interested that the harvest be abundant, that the

rain fall at the right time and not excessively, that the animals

reproduce regularly. So it is society that is in the foreground of every

consciousness; It dominates and directs all conduct; this is equivalent

to saying that it is more living and active, and consequently more real,

than in profane times. So men do not deceive themselves when they feel

at this time that there is something outside of them which is born

again, that there are forces which are reanimated and a life which

reawakens. This renewal is in no way imaginary and the individuals

themselves profit from it. For the spark of a social being which each

bears within him necessarily participates in this collective renovation.

The individual soul is regenerated too, by being dipped again in the

source from which its life comes; consequently it feels itself stronger,

more fully master of itself, less dependent upon physical necessities.

We know that the positive cult naturally tends to take periodic forms;

this is one of its distinctive features. Of course there are rites which

men celebrate occasionally, in connection with passing situations. But

these episodic practices are always merely accessory, and in the

religions studied in this book, they are almost exceptional. The

essential constituent of the cult is the cycle of feasts which return

regularly at determined epochs. We are now able to understand whence

this tendency towards periodicity comes; the rhythm which the religious

life follows only expresses the rhythm of the social life, and results

from it. Society is able to revivify the sentiment it has of itself only

by assembling. But it cannot be assembled all the time. The exigencies

of life do not allow it to remain in congregation indefinitely; so it

scatters, to assemble anew when it again feels the need of this. It is

to these necessary alternations that the regular alternations of sacred

and profane times correspond. Since the apparent object, at least, of

the cult was at first to regularize the course of natural phenomena, the

rhythm of the cosmic life has put its mark on the rhythm of the ritual

life. This is why the feasts have long been associated with the seasons;

we have seen this characteristic already in the Intichiuma of Australia.

But the seasons have only furnished the outer frame-work for this

organization, and not the principle upon which it rests; for even the

cults which aim at exclusively spiritual ends have remained periodical.

So this periodicity must be due to other causes. Since the seasonal

changes are critical periods for nature, they are a natural occasion for

assembling, and consequently for religious ceremonies. But other events

can and have successfully fulfilled this function of occasional cause.

However, it must be recognized that this frame-work, though purely

external, has given proof of a singular resistive force, for traces of

it are found even in the religions which are the most fully detached

from all physical bases. Many Christian celebrations are founded, with

no break of continuity, on the pastoral and agrarian feasts of the

ancient Hebrews, although in themselves they are neither pastoral nor

agrarian.

Moreover, this rhythm is capable of varying in different societies.

Where the period of dispersion is long, and the dispersion itself is

extreme, the period of congregation, in its turn, is very prolonged, and

produces veritable debauches of collective and religions life. Feasts

succeed one another for weeks or even for months, while the ritual life

sometimes attains to a sort of frenzy. This is what happens among the

Australian tribes and many of the tribes of North-western America.[1159]

Elsewhere, on the contrary, these two phases of the social life succeed

one another after shorter intervals, and then the contrast between them

is less marked. The more societies develop, the less they seem to allow

of too great intermittences.

CHAPTER III

THE POSITIVE CULT--_continued_

II.--_Imitative Rites and the Principle of Causality_

But the processes which we have just been describing are not the only

ones employed to assure the fecundity of the totemic species. There are

others which serve for the same end, whether they accompany the

preceding ones or replace them.

I

In the very ceremonies which we have been describing, in addition to the

oblations, whether bloody or otherwise, there are other rites which are

frequently celebrated, whose object is to complete the former ones and

to consolidate their effects. They consist in movements and cries whose

object is to imitate the different attitudes and aspects of the animal

whose reproduction is desired; therefore, we shall call them

_imitative_.

Thus the Intichiuma of the Witchetty grub among the Arunta includes more

than the rites performed upon the sacred rocks, of which we have already

spoken. When these are finished, the men set out to return to camp; but

when they still are about a mile away, they halt and all decorate

themselves ritually; after this, the march is resumed. The decorations

with which they thus adorn themselves announce that an important

ceremony is going to take place. And, in fact, while the company was

absent, one of the old men who had been left to guard the camp had built

a shelter out of branches, called _Umbana_, which represented the

chrysalis out of which the insect comes. All of those who had taken part

in the previous ceremonies assemble near the spot where this

construction has been raised; then they advance slowly, stopping from

time to time, until they reach the _Umbana_, which they enter. At once

all the men who do not belong to the phratry of the Witchetty grub

totem, and who assist at the scene, though from a distance, lie down on

the ground, with their faces against the earth; they must remain in this

position without moving until they are allowed to get up again.

Meanwhile, a chant arises from the interior of the Umbana, which

describes the different phases through which the animal passes in the

course of its development, and the myths of which the sacred rocks are

the subject. When this hymn ceases, the Alatunja glides out of the

_Umbana_, though remaining in a squatting position, and advances slowly

over the ground before him; he is followed by all his companions who

reproduce gestures whose evident object is to represent the insect as it

leaves the chrysalis. Also, a hymn which is heard at just this moment

and which is like an oral commentary on the rite, consists in a

description of the movements made by the insect at this stage of its

development.[1160]

Another Intichiuma,[1161] celebrated in connection with another kind of

grub, the _unchalka_[1162] grub, has this character still more clearly.

The actors of this rite decorate themselves with designs representing

the _unchalka_ bush upon which this grub lives at the beginning of its

existence. Then they cover a buckler with concentric circles of down,

representing another kind of bush upon which the insect lays its eggs

when it has become adult. When all these preparations are finished, they

all sit down on the ground in a semicircle facing the principal

officiant. He alternately bends his body double by leaning towards the

ground and then rises on his knees; at the same time, he shakes his

stretched-out arms, which is a way of representing the wings of the

insect. From time to time, he leans over the buckler, imitating the way

in which the butterfly flies over the trees where it lays its eggs. When

this ceremony is finished, another commences at a different spot, to

which they go in silence. This time they use two bucklers. Upon one the

tracks of the grub are represented by zigzag lines; upon the other,

concentric circles of uneven dimensions represent the eggs of the insect

and the seed of the Eremophile bush, upon which it is nourished. As in

the former ceremony, they all sit down in silence while the officiant

acts, representing the movements of the animal when leaving its

chrysalis and taking its first flight.

Spencer and Gillen also point out certain analogous facts among the

Arunta, though these are of a minor importance: in the Intichiuma of the

Emu, for example, at a certain moment the actors try to reproduce by

their attitude the air and aspect of this bird;[1163] in the Intichiuma

of water, the men of the totem utter the characteristic cry of the

plover, a cry which is naturally associated in the mind with the rainy

season.[1164] But in all, the examples of imitative rites which these

two explorers have noted are rather few in number. However, it is

certain that their relative silence on this point is due either to their

not having observed the Intichiuma sufficiently or else to their having

neglected this side of the ceremonies; Schulze, on the other hand, has

been struck by the essentially imitative nature of the Arunta rites.

"The sacred corrobbori," he says, "are generally ceremonies representing

animals": he calls them _animal tjurunga_[1165] and his testimony is now

confirmed by the documents collected by Strehlow. The examples given by

this latter author are so numerous that it is impossible to cite them

all: there are scarcely any ceremonies in which some imitating gesture

is not pointed out. According to the nature of the animals whose feast

is celebrated, they jump after the manner of kangaroos, or imitate the

movements they make in eating, the flight of winged ants, the

characteristic noise of the bat, the cry of the wild turkey, the hissing

of the snake, the croaking of the frog, etc.[1166] When the totem is a

plant, they make the gesture of plucking it,[1167] or eating it,[1168]

etc.

Among the Warramunga, the Intichiuma generally takes a special form,

which we shall describe in the next chapter and which differs from those

which we have studied up to the present. However, there is one typical

case of a purely imitative Intichiuma among this people; it is that of

the black cockatoo. The ceremony described by Spencer and Gillen

commenced at ten o'clock in the evening. All night long the chief of the

clan imitated the cry of the bird with a disheartening monotony. He

stopped only when he had come to the end of his force, and then his son

replaced him; then he commenced again as soon as he felt a little

refreshed. These exhausting exercises continued until morning without

interruption.[1169]

Living beings are not the only ones which they try to imitate. In a

large number of tribes, the Intichiuma of rain consists essentially in

imitative rites. One of the most simple of these is that celebrated

among the Arabunna. The chief of the clan is seated on the ground, all

covered with white down and holding a lance in his hands. He shakes

himself, undoubtedly in order to detach from his body the down which is

fixed there and which represents clouds when scattered about in the air.

Thus he imitates the men-clouds of the Alcheringa who, according to the

legend, had the habit of ascending to heaven and forming clouds there,

from which the rain then fell. In a word, the object of the whole rite

is to represent the formation and ascension of clouds, the bringers of

rain.[1170]

The ceremony is much more complicated among the Kaitish. We have already

spoken of one of the means employed: the officiant pours water over the

sacred stones and himself. But the action of this sort of oblation is

reinforced by other rites. The rainbow is considered to have a close

connection with rain: they say that it is its son and that it is always

urged to appear to make the rain stop. To make the rain fall, it is

therefore necessary that it should not appear; they believe that this

result can be obtained in the following manner. A design representing a

rainbow is made upon a buckler. They carry this buckler to camp, taking

care to keep it hidden from all eyes. They are convinced that by making

this image of the rainbow invisible, they keep the rainbow itself from

appearing. Meanwhile, the chief of the clan, having beside him a

_pitchi_ full of water, throws in all directions flakes of down which

represent clouds. Repeated imitations of the cry of the plover complete

this ceremony, which seems to have an especial gravity; for as long as

it lasts, all those who participate in it, either as actors or

assistants, may have no relations whatsoever with their wives; they may

not even speak to them.[1171]

The processes of figuration are different among the Dieri. Rain is not

represented by water, but by blood, which the men cause to flow from

their veins on to the assistants.[1172] At the same time they throw

handfuls of white down about, which represent clouds. A hut has been

constructed previously, in which they now place two large stones

representing piles of clouds, a sign of rain. After they have been left

there for a little while, they are carried a little distance away and

placed as high as possible in the loftiest tree to be found; this is a

way of making the clouds mount into the sky. Powdered gypsum is then

thrown into a water-hole, for when he sees this, the rain spirit soon

makes the clouds appear. Finally all the men, young and old, assemble

around the hut and with heads lowered, they charge upon it; they rush

violently through it, repeating the operation several times, until

nothing remains of the whole construction except the supporting posts.

Then they fall upon these and shake and pull at them until the whole

thing has tumbled down. The operation consisting in running through the

hut is supposed to represent clouds bursting; the tumbling down of the

construction, the fall of rain.[1173]

In the north-western tribes studied by Clement,[1174] which occupy the

district included between the Fontescue and Fitzroy rivers, certain

ceremonies are celebrated whose object is exactly the same as that of

the Intichiuma of the Arunta, and which seem to be, for the most part,

essentially imitative.

These peoples give the name _tarlow_ to certain piles of stones which

are evidently sacred, for, as we shall see, they are the object of

important rites. Every animal, every plant, and in fact, every totem or

sub-totem,[1175] is represented by a _tarlow_ which a special clan[1176]

guards. The analogy between these _tarlow_ and the sacred rocks of the

Arunta is easily seen.

When kangaroos, for example, become rare, the chief of the clan to which

the _tarlow_ of the kangaroo belongs goes to it with a certain number of

companions. Here various rites are performed, the chief of which consist

in jumping around the _tarlow_ as kangaroos jump, in drinking as they

drink and, in a word, in imitating all their most characteristic

movements. The weapons used in hunting the animal have an important part

in these rites. They brandish them, throw them against the stones, etc.

When they are concerned for emus, they go to the _tarlow_ of the emu,

and walk and run as these birds do. The skill which the natives show in

these imitations is, as it appears, really remarkable.

Other _tarlow_ are consecrated to plants, such as the cereals. In this

case, they imitate the actions of threshing and grinding the grain.

Since in ordinary life it is the women who are normally charged with

these tasks, it is also they who perform the rite, in the midst of songs

and dances.

II

All these rites belong to the same type. The principle upon which they

rest is one of those at the basis of what is commonly and incorrectly

called sympathetic[1177] magic.

These principles are ordinarily reduced to two.[1178]

The first may be stated thus: _anything touching an object also touches

everything which has any relation of proximity or unity whatsoever with

this object_. Thus, whatever affects the part also affects the whole;

any action exercised over an individual is transmitted to his

neighbours, relatives and all those to whom he is united in any way. All

these cases are simple applications of the law of contagion, which we

have already studied. A condition or a good or bad quality are

communicated contagiously from one subject to another who has some

connection with the former.

The second principle is ordinarily summed up in the formula: _like

produces like_. The representation of a being or condition produces this

being or condition. This is the maxim which brings about the rites which

we have just been describing, and it is in them that we can best observe

its characteristics. The classical example of the magic charm, which is

ordinarily given as the typical application of this same precept, is

much less significant. The charm is, to a large extent, a simple

phenomenon of transfer. The idea of the image is associated in the mind

with that of the model; consequently the effects of an action performed

upon a statue are transmitted contagiously to the person whose traits it

reproduces. The function of the image is for its original what that of a

part is for the whole: it is an agent of transmission. Therefore men

think that they can obtain the same result by burning the hair of the

person whom they wish to injure: the only difference between these two

sorts of operations is that in one, the communication is made through

similarity, while in the other it is by means of contiguity. It is

different with the rites which concern us. They suppose not only the

displacement of a given condition or quality, which passes from one

object into the other, but also the creation of something entirely new.

The mere act of representing the animal gives birth to this animal and

creates it; by imitating the sound of wind or falling water, they cause

clouds to form, rain to fall, etc. Of course resemblance plays an

important part in each case, but not at all the same one. In a charm, it

only gives a special direction to the action exercised; it directs in a

certain way an action not originating in it. In the rites of which we

have just been speaking, it acts by itself and is directly efficacious.

So, in contradiction to the usual definitions, the real difference

between the two principles of the so-called sympathetic magic and the

corresponding practices is not that it is contiguity acts in one case

and resemblance in the other, but that in the former there is a simple

contagious communication, while there is production and creation in the

latter.[1179]

The explanation of imitative rites therefore implies the explanation of

the second of these principles, and reciprocally.

We shall not tarry long to discuss the explanation proposed by the

anthropological school, and especially by Tylor and Frazer. Just as in

their attempts to account for the contagiousness of a sacred character,

they invoke the association of ideas. "Hom[oe]opathic magic," says

Frazer, who prefers this expression to imitative magic, "is founded on

the association of ideas by similarity; contagious magic is founded on

the association of ideas by contiguity. Hom[oe]opathic magic commits the

mistake of assuming that things which resemble each other are the

same."[1180] But this is a misunderstanding of the special nature of the

practices under discussion. On the one hand, the formula of Frazer may

be applied with some fitness to the case of charms;[1181] here, in fact,

two distinct things are associated with each other, owing to their

partial resemblance: these are the image and the model which it

represents more or less systematically. But in the imitative rites,

which we have just been observing, the image alone is given; as for the

model, it does not exist, for the new generation of the totemic species

is as yet only a hope and even an uncertain hope at that. So there could

be no question of association, whether correct or not; there is a real

creation, and we cannot see how the association of ideas could possibly

lead to a belief in this creation. How could the mere act of

representing the movements of an animal bring about the certitude that

this animal will be born, and born in abundance?

The general properties of human nature cannot explain such special

practices. So instead of considering the principle upon which they rest

in its general and abstract form, let us replace it in the environment

of which it is a part and where we have been observing it, and let us

connect it with the system of ideas and sentiments which the above rites

put into practice, and then we shall be better able to perceive the

causes from which it results.

The men who assemble on the occasion of these rites believe that they

are really animals or plants of the species whose name they bear. They

feel within them an animal or vegetable nature, and in their eyes, this

is what constitutes whatever is the most essential and the most

excellent in them. So when they assemble, their first movement ought to

be to show each other this quality which they attribute to themselves

and by which they are defined. The totem is their rallying sign; for

this reason, as we have seen, they design it upon their bodies; but it

is no less natural that they should seek to resemble it in their

gestures, their cries, their attitude. Since they are emus or kangaroos,

they comport themselves like the animals of the same name. By this

means, they mutually show one another that they are all members of the

same moral community and they become conscious of the kinship uniting

them. The rite does not limit itself to expressing this kinship; it

makes it or remakes it. For it exists only in so far as it is believed

in, and the effect of all these collective demonstrations is to support

the beliefs upon which they are founded. Therefore, these leaps, these

cries and these movements of every sort, though bizarre and grotesque in

appearance, really have a profound and human meaning. The Australian

seeks to resemble his totem just as the faithful in more advanced

religions seek to resemble their God. For the one as for the other, this

is a means of communicating with the sacred being, that is to say, with

the collective ideal which this latter symbolizes. This is an early form

of the [Greek: homoiôsis tô theô].

However, as this first reason is connected with the most specialized

portions of the totemic beliefs, the principle by which like produces

like should not have survived totemism, if this had been the only one in

operation. Now there is probably no religion in which rites derived from

it are not found. So another reason must co-operate with this first one.

And, in fact, the ceremonies where we have seen it applied do not merely

have the very general object which we have just mentioned, howsoever

essential this may be; they also aim at a more immediate and more

conscious end, which is the assurance of the reproduction of the totemic

species. The idea of this necessary reproduction haunts the minds of the

worshippers: upon it the forces of their attention and will are

concentrated. Now a single preoccupation cannot possess a group of men

to this point without being externalized in a material form. Since all

think of the animal or plant to whose destinies the clan is united, it

is inevitable that this common thought should not be manifested

outwardly by gestures,[1182] and those naturally designated for this

office are those which represent this animal or plant in one of its most

characteristic attitudes; there are no other movements so close to the

idea filling every mind, for these are an immediate and almost automatic

translation of it. So they make themselves imitate the animal; they cry

like it, they jump like it; they reproduce the scenes in which they make

daily use of the plant. All these ways of representation are just so

many means of ostensibly showing the end towards which all minds are

directed, of telling the thing which they wish to realize, of calling it

up and of evoking it. And this need belongs to no one time, nor does it

depend upon the beliefs of any special religion; it is essentially

human. This is why, even in religions very far removed from those we

have been studying, the worshippers, when assembled to ask their gods

for some event which they ardently desire, are forced to figure it. Of

course, the word is also a way of expressing it; but the gesture is no

less natural; it bursts out from the organism just as spontaneously; it

even precedes the word, or, in any case, accompanies it.

But if we can thus understand how the gestures acquired a place in the

ceremony, we still must explain the efficacy attributed to them. If the

Australian repeats them regularly each new season, it is because he

believes them essential to the success of the rite. Where could he have

gotten the idea that by imitating an animal, one causes it to reproduce?

So manifest an error seems hardly intelligible so long as we see in the

rite only the material end towards which it seems to aim. But we know

that in addition to the effect which it is thought to have on the

totemic species, it also exercises a profound influence over the souls

of the worshippers who take part in it. They take away with them a

feeling of well-being, whose causes they cannot clearly see, but which

is well founded. They feel that the ceremony is good for them; and, as a

matter of fact, they reforge their moral nature in it. How could this

sort of well-being fail to give them a feeling that the rite has

succeeded, that it has been what it set out to be, and that it has

attained the ends at which it was aimed? As the only end which was

consciously sought was the reproduction of the totemic species, this

seems to be assured by the means employed, the efficacy of which is thus

proven. Thus it comes about that men attribute creative virtues to their

gestures, which in themselves are vain. The moral efficacy of the rite,

which is real, leads to the belief in its physical efficacy, which is

imaginary; that of the whole, to the belief in that of each part by

itself. The truly useful effects produced by the whole ceremony are like

an experimental justification of the elementary practices out of which

it is made, though in reality, all these practices are in no way

indispensable to its success. A certain proof, moreover, that they do

not act by themselves is that they may be replaced by others, of a very

different nature, without any modification of the final result. It

appears that there are Intichiuma which include only oblations, with no

imitative rites; others are purely imitative, and include no oblations.

However, both are believed to have the same efficacy. So if a price is

attached to these various man[oe]uvres, it is not because of their

intrinsic value, but because they are a part of a complex rite, whose

utility as a whole is realized.

We are able to understand this state of mind all the easier because we

can still observe it about us. Especially among the most cultivated

peoples and environments, we frequently meet with believers who, though

having doubts as to the special efficacy attributed by dogma to each

rite considered separately, still continue to participate in the cult.

They are not sure that the details of the prescribed observances are

rationally justifiable; but they feel that it would be impossible to

free oneself of them without falling into a moral confusion before which

they recoil. The very fact that in them the faith has lost its

intellectual foundations throws into eminence the profound reasons upon

which they rest. This is why the easy criticisms to which an unduly

simple rationalism has sometimes submitted ritual prescriptions

generally leave the believer indifferent: it is because the true

justification of religious practices does not lie in the apparent ends

which they pursue, but rather in the invisible action which they

exercise over the mind and in the way in which they affect our mental

status. Likewise, when preachers undertake to convince, they devote much

less attention to establishing directly and by methodical proofs the

truth of any particular proposition or the utility of such and such an

observance, than to awakening or reawakening the sentiment of the moral

comfort attained by the regular celebration of the cult. Thus they

create a predisposition to belief, which precedes proofs, which leads

the mind to overlook the insufficiency of the logical reasons, and which

thus prepares it for the proposition whose acceptance is desired. This

favourable prejudice, this impulse towards believing, is just what

constitutes faith; and it is faith which makes the authority of the

rites, according to the believer, whoever he may be, Christian or

Australian. The only superiority of the former is that he better

accounts for the psychological process from which his faith results; he

knows that "it is faith that saves."

It is because faith has this origin that it is, in a sense, "impermeable

to experience."[1183] If the intermittent failures of the Intichiuma do

not shake the confidence of the Australian in his rite, it is because

he holds with all the strength of his soul to these practices in which

he periodically recreates himself; he could not deny their principle

without causing an upheaval of his own being, which resists. But

howsoever great this force of resistance may be, it cannot radically

distinguish religious mentality from the other forms of human mentality,

even those which are the most habitually opposed to it. In this

connection, that of a scholar differs from the preceding only in degree.

When a scientific law has the authority of numerous and varied

experiments, it is against all method to renounce it too quickly upon

the discovery of a fact which seems to contradict it. It is still

necessary to make sure that the fact does not allow of a single

interpretation, and that it is impossible to account for it, without

abandoning the proposition which it seems to invalidate. Now the

Australian does not proceed otherwise when he attributes the failure of

the Intichiuma to some sorcery, or the abundance of a premature crop to

a mystic Intichiuma celebrated in the beyond. He has all the more reason

for not doubting his rite on the belief in a contrary fact, since its

value is, or seems to be, established by a larger number of harmonizing

facts. In the first place, the moral efficacy of the ceremony is real

and is felt directly by all who participate in it; there is a constantly

renewed experience in it, whose importance no contradictory experience

can diminish. Also, the physical efficacy itself is not unable to find

an at least apparent confirmation in the data of objective observation.

As a matter of fact, the totemic species normally does reproduce

regularly; so in the great majority of cases, everything happens just as

if the ritual gestures really did produce the effects expected of them.

Failures are the exception. As the rites, and especially those which are

periodical, demand nothing more of nature than that it follow its

ordinary course, it is not surprising that it should generally have the

air of obeying them. So if the believer shows himself indocile to

certain lessons of experience, he does so because of other experiences

which seem more demonstrative. The scholar does not do otherwise; only

he introduces more method.

So magic is not, as Frazer has held,[1184] an original fact, of which

religion is only a derived form. Quite on the contrary, it was under the

influence of religious ideas that the precepts upon which the art of the

magician is based were established, and it was only through a secondary

extension that they were applied to purely lay relations. Since all the

forces of the universe have been conceived on the model of the sacred

forces, the contagiousness inherent in the second was extended to the

first, and men have believed that all the properties of a body could be

transmitted contagiously. Likewise, when the principle according to

which like produces like had been established, in order to satisfy

certain religious needs, it detached itself from its ritual origins to

become, through a sort of spontaneous generalization, a law of

nature.[1185] But in order to understand these fundamental axioms of

magic, they must be replaced in the religious atmosphere in which they

arose and which alone enables us to account for them. When we regard

them as the work of isolated individuals or solitary magicians, we ask

how they could ever have occurred to the mind of man, for nothing in

experience could either suggest or verify them; and especially we do not

explain how so deceiving an art has been able to impose itself for so

long a time in the confidence of men. But this problem disappears when

we realize that the faith inspired by magic is only a particular case of

religious faith in general, and that it is itself the product, at least

indirectly, of a collective effervescence. This is as much as to say

that the use of the expression sympathetic magic to designate the system

of rites which we have just been speaking is not very exact. There are

sympathetic rites, but they are not peculiar to magic; not only are they

to be found in religion, but it was from religion that magic received

them. So we only risk confusion when, by the name we give them, we have

the air of making them something which is specifically magic.

The results of our analysis thus attach themselves to and confirm those

attained by MM. Hubert and Mauss when they studied magic directly.[1186]

They have shown that this is nothing more nor less than crude industry

based on incomplete science. Behind the mechanisms, purely laical in

appearance, which are used by the magician, they point out a background

of religious conceptions and a whole world of forces, the idea of which

has been taken by magic from religion. We are now able to understand how

it comes that magic is so full of religious elements: it is because it

was born of religion.

III

But the principle which has just been set forth does not merely have a

function in the ritual; it is of direct interest for the theory of

knowledge. In fact, it is a concrete statement of the law of causality

and, in all probability, one of the most primitive statements of it

which has ever existed. A full conception of the causal relation is

implied in the power thus attributed to the like to produce the like;

and this conception dominates primitive thought, for it is the basis

both of the practices of the cult and the technique of the magician. So

the origins of the precept upon which the imitative rites depend are

able to clarify those of the principle of causality. The genesis of one

should aid us in understanding the genesis of the other. Now we have

shown how the former is a product of social causes: it was elaborated by

groups having collective ends in view, and it translates collective

sentiments. So we may assume that the same is true for the second.

In fact, an analysis of the principle of causality is sufficient to

assure us that the diverse elements of which it is composed really did

have this origin.

The first thing which is implied in the notion of the causal relation is

the idea of efficacy, of productive power, of active force. By cause we

ordinarily mean something capable of producing a certain change. The

cause is the force before it has shown the power which is in it; the

effect is this same power, only actualized. Men have always thought of

causality in dynamic terms. Of course certain philosophers had refused

all objective value to this conception; they see in it only an arbitrary

construction of the imagination, which corresponds to nothing in the

things themselves. But, at present, we have no need of asking whether it

is founded in reality or not; it is enough for us to state that it

exists and that it constitutes and always has constituted an element of

ordinary mentality; and this is recognized even by those who criticize

it. Our immediate purpose is to seek, not what it may be worth

logically, but how it is to be explained.

Now it depends upon social causes. Our analysis of facts has already

enabled us to see that the prototype of the idea of force was the mana,

wakan, orenda, the totemic principle or any of the various names given

to collective force objectified and projected into things.[1187] The

first power which men have thought of as such seems to have been that

exercised by humanity over its members. Thus reason confirms the results

of observation; in fact, it is even possible to show why this notion of

power, efficacy or active force could not have come from any other

source.

In the first place, it is evident and recognized by all that it could

not be furnished to us by external experience. Our senses only enable

us to perceive phenomena which coexist or which follow one another, but

nothing perceived by them could give us the idea of this determining and

compelling action which is characteristic of what we call a power or

force. They can touch only realized and known conditions, each separate

from the others; the internal process uniting these conditions escapes

them. Nothing that we learn could possibly suggest to us the idea of

what an influence or efficaciousness is. It is for this very reason that

the philosophers of empiricism have regarded these different conceptions

as so many mythological aberrations. But even supposing that they all

are hallucinations, it is still necessary to show how they originated.

If external experience counts for nothing in the origin of these ideas,

and it is equally inadmissible that they were given us ready-made, one

might suppose that they come from internal experience. In fact, the

notion of force obviously includes many spiritual elements which could

only have been taken from our psychic life.

Some have believed that the act by which our will brings a deliberation

to a close, restrains our impulses and commands our organism, might have

served as the model of this construction. In willing, it is said, we

perceive ourselves directly as a power in action. So when this idea had

once occurred to men, it seems that they only had to extend it to things

to establish the conception of force.

As long as the animist theory passed as a demonstrated truth, this

explanation was able to appear to be confirmed by history. If the forces

with which human thought primitively populated the world really had been

spirits, that is to say, personal and conscious beings more or less

similar to men, it was actually possible to believe that our individual

experience was enough to furnish us with the constituent elements of the

notion of force. But we know that the first forces which men imagined

were, on the contrary, anonymous, vague and diffused powers which

resemble cosmic forces in their impersonality, and which are therefore

most sharply contrasted with the eminently personal power, the human

will. So it is impossible that they should have been conceived in its

image.

Moreover, there is one essential characteristic of the impersonal forces

which would be inexplicable under this hypothesis: this is their

communicability. The forces of nature have always been thought of as

capable of passing from one object to another, of mixing, combining and

transforming themselves into one another. It is even this property which

gives them their value as an explanation, for it is through this that

effects can be connected with their causes without a break of

continuity. Now the self has just the opposite characteristic: it is

incommunicable. It cannot change its material substratum or spread from

one to another; it spreads out in metaphor only. So the way in which it

decides and executes its decisions could never have suggested the idea

of an energy which communicates itself and which can even confound

itself with others and, through these combinations and mixings, give

rise to new effects.

Therefore, the idea of force, as implied in the conception of the causal

relation, must present a double character. In the first place, it can

come only from our internal experience; the only forces which we can

directly learn about are necessarily moral forces. But, at the same

time, they must be impersonal, for the notion of an impersonal power was

the first to be constituted. Now the only ones which satisfy these two

conditions are those coming from life together: they are collective

forces. In fact, these are, on the one hand, entirely psychical; they

are made up exclusively of objectified ideas and sentiments. But, on the

other hand, they are impersonal by definition, for they are the product

of a co-operation. Being the work of all, they are not the possession of

anybody in particular. They are so slightly attached to the

personalities of the subjects in whom they reside that they are never

fixed there. Just as they enter them from without, they are also always

ready to leave them. Of themselves, they tend to spread further and

further and to invade ever new domains: we know that there are none more

contagious, and consequently more communicable. Of course physical

forces have the same property, but we cannot know this directly; we

cannot even become acquainted with them as such, for they are outside

us. When I throw myself against an obstacle, I have a sensation of

hindrance and trouble; but the force causing this sensation is not in

me, but in the obstacle, and is consequently outside the circle of my

perception. We perceive its effects, but we cannot reach the cause

itself. It is otherwise with social forces: they are a part of our

internal life, as we know, more than the products of their action; we

see them acting. The force isolating the sacred being and holding

profane beings at a distance is not really in this being; it lives in

the minds of the believers. So they perceive it at the very moment when

it is acting upon their wills, to inhibit certain movements or command

others. In a word, this constraining and necessitating action, which

escapes us when coming from an external object, is readily perceptible

here because everything is inside us. Of course we do not always

interpret it in an adequate manner, but at least we cannot fail to be

conscious of it.

Moreover, the idea of force bears the mark of its origin in an apparent

way. In fact, it implies the idea of power which, in its turn, does not

come without those of ascendancy, mastership and domination, and their

corollaries, dependence and subordination; now the relations expressed

by all these ideas are eminently social. It is society which classifies

beings into superiors and inferiors, into commanding masters and obeying

servants; it is society which confers upon the former the singular

property which makes the command efficacious and which makes _power_. So

everything tends to prove that the first powers of which the human mind

had any idea were those which societies have established in organizing

themselves: it is in their image that the powers of the physical world

have been conceived. Also, men have never succeeded in imagining

themselves as forces mistress over the bodies in which they reside,

except by introducing concepts taken from social life. In fact, these

must be distinguished from their physical doubles and must be attributed

a dignity superior to that of these latter; in a word, they must think

of themselves as souls. As a matter of fact, men have always given the

form of souls to the forces which they believe that they are. But we

know that the soul is quite another thing from a name given to the

abstract faculty of moving, thinking and feeling; before all, it is a

religious principle, a particular aspect of the collective force. In

fine, a man feels that he has a soul, and consequently a force, because

he is a social being. Though an animal moves its members just as we do,

and though it has the same power as we over its muscles, nothing

authorizes us to suppose that it is conscious of itself as an active and

efficacious cause. This is because it does not have, or, to speak more

exactly, does not attribute to itself a soul. But if it does not

attribute a soul to itself, it is because it does not participate in a

social life comparable to that of men. Among animals, there is nothing

resembling a civilization.[1188]

But the notion of force is not all of the principle of causality. This

consists in a judgment stating that every force develops in a definite

manner, and that the state in which it is at each particular moment of

its existence predetermines the next state. The former is called cause,

the latter, effect, and the causal judgment affirms the existence of a

necessary connection between these two moments for every force. The mind

posits this connection before having any proofs of it, under the empire

of a sort of constraint from which it cannot free itself; it postulates

it, as they say, _a priori_.

Empiricism has never succeeded in accounting for this apriorism and

necessity. Philosophers of this school have never been able to explain

how an association of ideas, reinforced by habit, could produce more

than an expectation or a stronger or weaker predisposition on the part

of ideas to appear in a determined order. But the principle of causality

has quite another character. It is not merely an imminent tendency of

our thought to take certain forms; it is an external norm, superior to

the flow of our representations, which it dominates and rules

imperatively. It is invested with an authority which binds the mind and

surpasses it, which is as much as to say that the mind is not its

artisan. In this connection, it is useless to substitute hereditary

habit for individual habit, for habit does not change its nature by

lasting longer than one man's life; it is merely stronger. An instinct

is not a rule.

The rites which we have been studying allow us to catch a glimpse of

another source of this authority, which, up to the present, has scarcely

been suspected. Let us bear in mind how the law of causality, which the

imitative rites put into practice, was born. Being filled with one

single preoccupation, the group assembles: if the species whose name it

bears does not reproduce, it is a matter of concern to the whole clan.

The common sentiment thus animating all the members is outwardly

expressed by certain gestures, which are always the same in the same

circumstances, and after the ceremony has been performed, it happens,

for the reasons set forth, that the desired result seems obtained. So an

association arises between the idea of this result and that of the

gestures preceding it; and this association does not vary from one

subject to another; it is the same for all the participators in the

rite, since it is the product of a collective experience. However, if no

other factor intervened, it would produce only a collective expectation;

after the imitative gestures had been accomplished, everybody would

await the subsequent appearance of the desired event, with more or less

confidence; an imperative rule of thought could never be established by

this. But since a social interest of the greatest importance is at

stake, society cannot allow things to follow their own course at the

whim of circumstances; it intervenes actively in such a way as to

regulate their march in conformity with its needs. So it demands that

this ceremony, which it cannot do without, be repeated every time that

it is necessary, and consequently, that the movements, a condition of

its success, be executed regularly: it imposes them as an obligation.

Now they imply a certain definite state of mind which, in return,

participates in this same obligatory character. To prescribe that one

must imitate an animal or plant to make them reproduce, is equivalent to

stating it as an axiom which is above all doubt, that like produces

like. Opinion cannot allow men to deny this principle in theory without

also allowing them to violate it in their conduct. So society imposes

it, along with the practices which are derived from it, and thus the

ritual precept is doubled by a logical precept which is only the

intellectual aspect of the former. The authority of each is derived from

the same source: society. The respect which this inspires is

communicated to the ways of thought to which it attaches a value, just

as much as to ways of action. So a man cannot set aside either the ones

or the others without hurling himself against public opinion. This is

why the former require the adherence of the intelligence before

examination, just as the latter require the submission of the will.

From this example, we can show once more how the sociological theory of

the idea of causality, and of the categories in general, sets aside the

classical doctrines on the question, while conciliating them. Together

with apriorism, it maintains the prejudicial and necessary character of

the causal relation; but it does not limit itself to affirming this; it

accounts for it, yet without making it vanish under the pretext of

explaining it, as empiricism does. On the other hand, there is no

question of denying the part due to individual experience. There can be

no doubt that by himself, the individual observes the regular succession

of phenomena and thus acquires a certain _feeling_ of regularity. But

this feeling is not the _category_ of causality. The former is

individual, subjective, incommunicable; we make it ourselves, out of our

own personal observations. The second is the work of the group, and is

given to us ready-made. It is a frame-work in which our empirical

ascertainments arrange themselves and which enables us to think of them,

that is to say, to see them from a point of view which makes it possible

for us to understand one another in regard to them. Of course, if this

frame can be applied to the contents, that shows that it is not out of

relation with the matter which it contains; but it is not to be confused

with this. It surpasses it and dominates it. This is because it is of a

different origin. It is not a mere summary of individual experiences;

before all else, it is made to fulfil the exigencies of life in common.

In fine, the error of empiricism has been to regard the causal bond as

merely an intellectual construction of speculative thought and the

product of a more or less methodical generalization. Now, by itself,

pure speculation can give birth only to provisional, hypothetical and

more or less plausible views, but ones which must always be regarded

with suspicion, for we can never be sure that some new observation in

the future will not invalidate them. An axiom which the mind accepts and

must accept, without control and without reservation, could never come

from this source. Only the necessities of action, and especially of

collective action, can and must express themselves in categorical

formulæ, which are peremptory and short, and admit of no contradiction,

for collective movements are possible only on condition of being in

concert and, therefore, regulated and definite. They do not allow of any

fumbling, the source of anarchy; by themselves, they tend towards an

organization which, when once established, imposes itself upon

individuals. And as action cannot go beyond intelligence, it frequently

happens that the latter is drawn into the same way and accepts without

discussion the theoretical postulates demanded by action. The

imperatives of thought are probably only another side of the imperatives

of action.

It is to be borne in mind, moreover, that we have never dreamed of

offering the preceding observations as a complete theory of the concept

of causality. The question is too complex to be resolved thus. The

principle of causality has been understood differently in different

times and places; in a single society, it varies with the social

environment and the kingdoms of nature to which it is applied.[1189] So

it would be impossible to determine with sufficient precision the causes

and conditions upon which it depends, after a consideration of only one

of the forms which it has presented during the course of history. The

views which we have set forth should be regarded as mere indications,

which must be controlled and completed. However, as the causal law which

we have been considering is certainly one of the most primitive which

exists, and as it has played a considerable part in the development of

human thought and industry, it is a privileged experiment, so we may

presume that the remarks of which it has been the occasion may be

generalized to a certain degree.

CHAPTER IV

THE POSITIVE CULT--_continued_

III.--_Representative or Commemorative Rites_

The explanation which we have given of the positive rites of which we

have been speaking in the two preceding chapters attributes to them a

significance which is, above all, moral and social. The physical

efficaciousness assigned to them by the believer is the product of an

interpretation which conceals the essential reason for their existence:

it is because they serve to remake individuals and groups morally that

they are believed to have a power over things. But even if this

hypothesis has enabled us to account for the facts, we cannot say that

it has been demonstrated directly; at first view, it even seems to

conciliate itself rather badly with the nature of the ritual mechanisms

which we have analysed. Whether they consist in oblations or imitative

acts, the gestures composing them have purely material ends in view;

they have, or seem to have, the sole object of making the totemic

species reproduce. Under these circumstances, is it not surprising that

their real function should be to serve moral ends?

It is true that their physical function may have been exaggerated by

Spencer and Gillen, even in the cases where it is the most

incontestable. According to these authors, each clan celebrates its

Intichiuma for the purpose of assuring a useful food to the other clans,

and the whole cult consists in a sort of economic co-operation of the

different totemic groups; each works for the others. But according to

Strehlow, this conception of Australian totemism is wholly foreign to

the native mind. "If," he says, "the members of one totemic group set

themselves to multiplying the animals or plants of the consecrated

species, and seem to work for their companions of other totems, we must

be careful not to regard this collaboration as the fundamental principle

of Arunta or Loritja totemism. The blacks themselves have never told me

that this was the object of their ceremonies. Of course, when I

suggested and explained the idea to them, they understood it and

acquiesced. But I should not be blamed for having some distrust of

replies gained in this fashion." Strehlow also remarks that this way of

interpreting the rite is contradicted by the fact that the totemic

animals and plants are not all edible or useful; some are good for

nothing; some are even dangerous. So the ceremonies which concern them

could not have any such end in view.[1190] "When some one asks the

natives what the determining reason for these ceremonies is," concludes

our author, "they are unanimous in replying: 'It is because our

ancestors arranged things thus. This is why we do thus and not

differently.'"[1191] But in saying that the rite is observed because it

comes from the ancestors, it is admitted that its authority is

confounded with the authority of tradition, which is a social affair of

the first order. Men celebrate it to remain faithful to the past, to

keep for the group its normal physiognomy, and not because of the

physical effects which it may produce. Thus, the way in which the

believers themselves explain them show the profound reasons upon which

the rites proceed.

But there are cases when this aspect of the ceremonies is immediately

apparent.

I

These may be observed the best among the Warramunga.[1192]

Among this people, each clan is thought to be descended from a single

ancestor who, after having been born in some determined spot, passed his

terrestrial existence in travelling over the country in every direction.

It is he who, in the course of his voyages, gave to the land the form

which it now has; it is he who made the mountains and plains, the

water-holes and streams, etc. At the same time, he sowed upon his route

living germs which were disengaged from his body and, after many

successive reincarnations, became the actual members of the clan. Now

the ceremony of the Warramunga which corresponds exactly to the

Intichiuma of the Arunta, has the object of commemorating and

representing the mythical history of this ancestor. There is no

question of oblations or, except in one single case,[1193] of imitative

practices. The rite consists solely in recollecting the past and, in a

way, making it present by means of a veritable dramatic representation.

This word is the more exact because in this ceremony, the officiant is

in no way considered an incarnation of the ancestor, whom he represents;

he is an actor playing a rôle.

As an example, let us describe the Intichiuma of the Black Snake, as

Spencer and Gillen observed it.[1194]

An initial ceremony does not seem to refer to the past; at least the

description of it which is given us gives no authorization for

interpreting it in this sense. It consists in running and leaping on the

part of two officiants,[1195] who are decorated with designs

representing the black snake. When they finally fall exhausted on the

ground, the assistants gently pass their hands over the emblematic

designs with which the backs of the two actors are covered. They say

that this act pleases the black snake. It is only afterwards that the

series of commemorative ceremonies commences.

They put into action the mythical history of the ancestor Thalaualla,

from the moment he emerged from the ground up to his definite return

thither. They follow him through all his voyages. The myth says that in

each of the localities where he sojourned, he celebrated totemic

ceremonies; they now repeat them in the same order in which they are

supposed to have taken place originally. The movement which is acted the

most frequently consists in twisting the entire body about rhythmically

and violently; this is because the ancestor did the same thing to make

the germs of life which were in him come out. The actors have their

bodies covered with down, which is detached and flies away during these

movements; this is a way of representing the flight of these mystic

germs and their dispersion into space.

It will be remembered that among the Arunta, the scene of the ceremony

is determined by the ritual: it is the spot where the sacred rocks,

trees and water-holes are found, and the worshippers must go there to

celebrate the cult. Among the Warramunga, on the contrary, the

ceremonial ground is arbitrarily chosen according to convenience. It is

a conventional scene. However, the original scene of the events whose

reproduction constitutes the theme of the rite is itself represented by

means of designs. Sometimes these designs are made upon the very bodies

of the actors. For example, a small circle coloured red, painted on the

back and stomach, represents a water-hole.[1196] In other cases, the

image is traced on the soil. Upon a ground previously soaked and covered

with red ochre, they draw curved lines, made up of a series of white

points, which symbolize a stream or a mountain. This is a beginning of

decoration.

In addition to the properly religious ceremonies which the ancestor is

believed to have celebrated long ago, they also represent simple

episodes of his career, either epic or comic. Thus, at a given moment,

while three actors are on the scene, occupied in an important rite,

another one hides behind a bunch of trees situated at some distance. A

packet of down is attached about his neck which represents a _wallaby_.

As soon as the principal ceremony is finished, an old man traces a line

upon the ground which is directed towards the spot where the fourth

actor is hidden. The others march behind him, with eyes lowered and

fixed upon this line, as though following a trail. When they discover

the man, they assume a stupefied air and one of them beats him with a

club. This represents an incident in the life of the great black snake.

One day, his son went hunting, caught a _wallaby_ and ate it without

giving his father any. The latter followed his tracks, surprised him and

forced him to disgorge; it is to this that the beating at the end of the

representation alludes.[1197]

We shall not relate here all the mythical events which are represented

successively. The preceding examples are sufficient to show the

character of these ceremonies: they are dramas, but of a particular

variety; they act, or at least they are believed to act, upon the course

of nature. When the commemoration of Thalaualla is terminated, the

Warramunga are convinced that black snakes cannot fail to increase and

multiply. So these dramas are rites, and even rites which, by the nature

of their efficacy, are comparable on every point to those which

constitute the Intichiuma of the Arunta.

Therefore each is able to clarify the other. It is even more legitimate

to compare them than if there were no break of continuity between them.

Not only is the end pursued identical in each case, but the most

characteristic part of the Warramunga ritual is found in germ in the

other. In fact, the Intichiuma, as the Arunta generally perform it,

contains within it a sort of implicit commemoration. The places where it

is celebrated are necessarily those which the ancestor made illustrious.

The roads over which the worshippers pass in the course of their pious

pilgrimages are those which the heroes of the Alcheringa traversed; the

places where they stop to proceed with the rites are those where their

fathers sojourned themselves, where they vanished into the ground, etc.

So everything brings their memory to the minds of the assistants.

Moreover, to the manual rites they frequently add hymns relating the

exploits of their ancestors.[1198] If, instead of being told, these

stories are acted, and if, in this new form, they develop in such a way

as to become an essential part of the ceremony, then we have the

ceremony of the Warramunga. But even more can be said, for on one side,

the Arunta Intichiuma is already a sort of representation. The officiant

is one with the ancestor from whom he is descended and whom he

reincarnates.[1199] The gestures he makes are those which this ancestor

made in the same circumstances. Speaking exactly, of course he does not

play the part of the ancestral personage as an actor might do it; he is

this personage himself. But it is true, notwithstanding, that, in one

sense, it is the hero who occupies the scene. In order to accentuate the

representative character of the rite, it would be sufficient for the

duality of the ancestor and the officiant to become more marked; this is

just what happens among the Warramunga.[1200] Even among the Arunta, at

least one Intichiuma is mentioned in which certain persons are charged

with representing ancestors with whom they have no relationship of

mythical descent, and in which there is consequently a proper dramatic

representation: this is the Intichiuma of the Emu.[1201] It seems that

in this case, also, contrarily to the general rule among this people,

the theatre of the ceremony is artificially arranged.[1202]

It does not follow from the fact that, in spite of the differences

separating them, these two varieties of ceremony thus have an air of

kinship, as it were, that there is a definite relation of succession

between them, and that one is a transformation of the other. It may very

well be that the resemblances pointed out come from the fact that the

two sprang from the same source, that is, from the same original

ceremony, of which they are only divergent forms: we shall even see that

this hypothesis is the most probable one. But even without taking sides

on this question, what has already been said is enough to show that they

are rites of the same nature. So we may be allowed to compare them, and

to use the one to enable us to understand the other better.

Now the peculiar thing in the ceremonies of the Warramunga of which we

have been speaking, is that not a gesture is made whose object is to aid

or to provoke directly the increase of the totemic species.[1203] If we

analyse the movements made, as well as the words spoken, we generally

find nothing which betrays any intention of this sort. Everything is in

representations whose only object can be to render the mythical past of

the clan present to the mind. But the mythology of a group is the system

of beliefs common to this group. The traditions whose memory it

perpetuates express the way in which society represents man and the

world; it is a moral system and a cosmology as well as a history. So the

rite serves and can serve only to sustain the vitality of these beliefs,

to keep them from being effaced from memory and, in sum, to revivify the

most essential elements of the collective consciousness. Through it, the

group periodically renews the sentiment which it has of itself and of

its unity; at the same time, individuals are strengthened in their

social natures. The glorious souvenirs which are made to live again

before their eyes, and with which they feel that they have a kinship,

give them a feeling of strength and confidence: a man is surer of his

faith when he sees to how distant a past it goes back and what great

things it has inspired. This is the characteristic of the ceremony which

makes it instructive. Its tendency is to act entirely upon the mind and

upon it alone. So if men believe nevertheless that it acts upon things

and that it assures the prosperity of the species, this can be only as a

reaction to the moral action which it exercises and which is obviously

the only one which is real. Thus the hypothesis which we have proposed

is verified by a significant experiment, and this verification is the

more convincing because, as we have shown, there is no difference in

nature between the ritual system of the Warramunga and that of the

Arunta. The one only makes more evident what we had already conjectured

from the other.

II

But there are ceremonies in which this representative and idealistic

character is still more accentuated.

In those of which we have been speaking, the dramatic representation did

not exist for itself; it was only a means having a very material end in

view, namely, the reproduction of the totemic species. But there are

others which do not differ materially from the preceding ones, but from

which, nevertheless, all preoccupations of this sort are absent. The

past is here represented for the mere sake of representing it and fixing

it more firmly in the mind, while no determined action over nature is

expected of the rite. At least, the physical effects sometimes imputed

to it are wholly secondary and have no relation with the liturgical

importance attributed to it.

This is the case notably with the ceremonies which the Warramunga

celebrate in honour of the snake Wollunqua.[1204]

As we have already said, the Wollunqua is a totem of a very especial

sort. It is not an animal or vegetable species, but a unique being:

there is only one Wollunqua. Moreover, this being is purely mythical.

The natives represent it as a colossal snake whose length is such that

when it rises on its tail its head is lost in the clouds. It resides,

they believe, in a water-hole called Thapauerlu, which is hidden in the

bottom of a solitary valley. But if it differs in certain ways from the

ordinary totems, it has all their distinctive characteristics

nevertheless. It serves as the collective name and emblem of a whole

group of individuals who regard it as their common ancestor, while the

relations which they sustain with this mythical beast are identical with

those which the members of other totems believe that they sustain with

the founders of their respective clans. In the Alcheringa[1205] times,

the Wollunqua traversed the country in every direction. In the different

localities where it stopped, it scattered "spirit-children," the

spiritual principles which still serve as the souls of the living of

to-day. The Wollunqua is even considered as a sort of pre-eminent totem.

The Warramunga are divided into two phratries, called Uluuru and

Kingilli. Nearly all the totems of the former are snakes of different

kinds. Now they are all believed to be descended from the Wollunqua;

they say that it was their grandfather.[1206] From this, we can catch a

glimpse of how the myth of the Wollunqua probably arose. In order to

explain the presence of so many similar totems in the same phratry, they

imagined that all were derived from one and the same totem; it was

necessary to give it a gigantic form so that in its very appearance it

might conform to the considerable rôle assigned to it in the history of

the tribe.

Now the Wollunqua is the object of ceremonies not differing in nature

from those which we have already studied: they are representations in

which are portrayed the principal events of its fabulous life. They show

it coming out of the ground and passing from one locality to another;

they represent different episodes in its voyages, etc. Spencer and

Gillen assisted at fifteen ceremonies of this sort which took place

between the 27th of July and the 23rd of August, all being linked

together in a determined order, in such a way as to form a veritable

cycle.[1207] In the details of the rites constituting it, this long

celebration is therefore indistinct from the ordinary Intichiuma of the

Warramunga, as is recognized by the authors who have described it to

us.[1208] But, on the other hand, it is an Intichiuma which could not

have the object of assuring the fecundity of an animal or vegetable

species, for the Wollunqua is a species all by itself and does not

reproduce. It exists, and the natives do not seem to feel that it has

need of a cult to preserve it in its existence. These ceremonies not

only seem to lack the efficacy of the classic Intichiuma, but it even

seems as though they have no material efficacy of any sort. The

Wollunqua is not a divinity set over a special order of natural

phenomena, so they expect no definite service from him in exchange for

the cult. Of course they say that if the ritual prescriptions are badly

observed, the Wollunqua becomes angry, leaves his retreat and comes to

punish his worshippers for their negligence; and inversely, when

everything passes regularly, they are led to believe that they will be

fortunate and that some happy event will take place; but it is quite

evident that these possible sanctions are an after-thought to explain

the rite. After the ceremony had been established, it seemed natural

that it should serve for something, and that the omission of the

prescribed observances should therefore expose one to grave dangers. But

it was not established to forestall these mythical dangers or to assure

particular advantages. The natives, moreover, have only the very haziest

ideas of them. When the whole ceremony is completed, the old men

announce that if the Wollunqua is pleased, he will send rain. But it is

not to have rain that they go through with the celebration.[1209] They

celebrate it because their ancestors did, because they are attached to

it as to a highly respected tradition and because they leave it with a

feeling of moral well-being. Other considerations have only a

complimentary part; they may serve to strengthen the worshippers in the

attitude prescribed by the rite, but they are not the reason for the

existence of this attitude.

So we have here a whole group of ceremonies whose sole purpose is to

awaken certain ideas and sentiments, to attach the present to the past

or the individual to the group. Not only are they unable to serve useful

ends, but the worshippers themselves demand none. This is still another

proof that the psychical state in which the assembled group happens to

be constitutes the only solid and stable basis of what we may call the

ritual mentality. The beliefs which attribute such or such a physical

efficaciousness to the rites are wholly accessory and contingent, for

they may be lacking without causing any alteration in the essentials of

the rite. Thus the ceremonies of the Wollunqua show even better than the

preceding ones the fundamental function of the positive cult.

If we have insisted especially upon these solemnities, it is because of

their exceptional importance. But there are others with exactly the same

character. Thus, the Warramunga have a totem "of the laughing boy."

Spencer and Gillen say that the clan bearing this name has the same

organization as the other totemic groups. Like them, it has its sacred

places (_mungai_) where the founder-ancestor celebrated ceremonies in

the fabulous times, and where he left behind him spirit-children who

became the men of the clan; the rites connected with this totem are

indistinguishable from those relating to the animal or vegetable

totems.[1210] Yet it is evident that they could not have any physical

efficaciousness. They consist in a series of four ceremonies which

repeat one another more or less, but which are intended only to amuse

and to provoke laughter by laughter, in fine, to maintain the gaiety and

good-humour which the group has as its speciality.[1211]

We find more than one totem among the Arunta themselves which has no

other Intichiuma. We have seen that among this people, the

irregularities and depressions of the land, which mark the places where

some ancestor sojourned, sometimes serve as totems.[1212] Ceremonies are

attached to these totems which are manifestly incapable of physical

effects of any sort. They can consist only in representations whose

object is to commemorate the past, and they can aim at no end beyond

this commemoration.[1213]

While they enable us to understand the nature of the cult better, these

ritual representations also put into evidence an important element of

religion: this is the recreative and esthetic element.

We have already had occasion to show that they are closely akin to

dramatic representations.[1214] This kinship appears with still greater

clarity in the latter ceremonies of which we have spoken. Not only do

they employ the same processes as the real drama, but they also pursue

an end of the same sort: being foreign to all utilitarian ends, they

make men forget the real world and transport them into another where

their imagination is more at ease; they distract. They sometimes even go

so far as to have the outward appearance of a recreation: the assistants

may be seen laughing and amusing themselves openly.[1215]

Representative rites and collective recreations are even so close to one

another that men pass from one sort to the other without any break of

continuity. The characteristic feature of the properly religious

ceremonies is that they must be celebrated on a consecrated ground, from

which women and non-initiated persons are excluded.[1216] But there are

others in which this religious character is somewhat effaced, though it

has not disappeared completely. They take place outside the ceremonial

ground, which proves that they are already laicized to a certain degree;

but profane persons, women and children, are not yet admitted to them.

So they are on the boundary between the two domains. They generally deal

with legendary personages, but ones having no regular place in the

frame-work of the totemic religion. They are spirits, more generally

malevolent ones, having relations with the magicians rather than the

ordinary believers, and sorts of bugbears, in whom men do not believe

with the same degree of seriousness and firmness of conviction as in the

proper totemic beings and things.[1217] As the bonds by which the events

and personages represented are attached to the history of the tribe

relax, these take on a proportionately more unreal appearance, while the

corresponding ceremonies change in nature. Thus men enter into the

domain of pure fancy, and pass from the commemorative rite to the

ordinary corrobbori, a simple public merry-making, which has nothing

religious about it and in which all may take part indifferently. Perhaps

some of these representations, whose sole object now is to distract, are

ancient rites, whose character has been changed. In fact, the

distinction between these two sorts of ceremonies is so variable that it

is impossible to state with precision to which of the two kinds they

belong.[1218]

It is a well-known fact that games and the principal forms of art seem

to have been born of religion and that for a long time they retained a

religious character.[1219] We now see what the reasons for this are: it

is because the cult, though aimed primarily at other ends, has also been

a sort of recreation for men. Religion has not played this rôle by

hazard or owing to a happy chance, but through a necessity of its

nature. Though, as we have established, religious thought is something

very different from a system of fictions, still the realities to which

it corresponds express themselves religiously only when religion

transfigures them. Between society as it is objectively and the sacred

things which express it symbolically, the distance is considerable. It

has been necessary that the impressions really felt by men, which served

as the original matter of this construction, should be interpreted,

elaborated and transformed until they became unrecognizable. So the

world of religious things is a partially imaginary world, though only in

its outward form, and one which therefore lends itself more readily to

the free creations of the mind. Also, since the intellectual forces

which serve to make it are intense and tumultuous, the unique task of

expressing the real with the aid of appropriate symbols is not enough to

occupy them. A surplus generally remains available which seeks to employ

itself in supplementary and superfluous works of luxury, that is to say,

in works of art. There are practices as well as beliefs of this sort.

The state of effervescence in which the assembled worshippers find

themselves must be translated outwardly by exuberant movements which are

not easily subjected to too carefully defined ends. In part, they escape

aimlessly, they spread themselves for the mere pleasure of so doing, and

they take delight in all sorts of games. Besides, in so far as the

beings to whom the cult is addressed are imaginary, they are not able to

contain and regulate this exuberance; the pressure of tangible and

resisting realities is required to confine activities to exact and

economical forms. Therefore one exposes oneself to grave

misunderstandings if, in explaining rites, he believes that each gesture

has a precise object and a definite reason for its existence. There are

some which serve nothing; they merely answer the need felt by

worshippers for action, motion, gesticulation. They are to be seen

jumping, whirling, dancing, crying and singing, though it may not always

be possible to give a meaning to all this agitation.

Therefore religion would not be itself if it did not give some place to

the free combinations of thought and activity, to play, to art, to all

that recreates the spirit that has been fatigued by the too great

slavishness of daily work: the very same causes which called it into

existence make it a necessity. Art is not merely an external ornament

with which the cult has adorned itself in order to dissimulate certain

of its features which may be too austere and too rude; but rather, in

itself, the cult is something æsthetic. Owing to the well-known

connection which mythology has with poetry, some have wished to exclude

the former from religion;[1220] the truth is that there is a poetry

inherent in all religion. The representative rites which have just been

studied make this aspect of the religious life manifest; but there are

scarcely any rites which do not present it to some degree.

One would certainly commit the gravest error if he saw only this one

aspect of religion, or if he even exaggerated its importance. When a

rite serves only to distract, it is no longer a rite. The moral forces

expressed by religious symbols are real forces with which we must reckon

and with which we cannot do what we will. Even when the cult aims at

producing no physical effects, but limits itself to acting on the mind,

its action is in quite a different way from that of a pure work of art.

The representations which it seeks to awaken and maintain in our minds

are not vain images which correspond to nothing in reality, and which we

call up aimlessly for the mere satisfaction of seeing them appear and

combine before our eyes. They are as necessary for the well working of

our moral life as our food is for the maintenance of our physical life,

for it is through them that the group affirms and maintains itself, and

we know the point to which this is indispensable for the individual. So

a rite is something different from a game; it is a part of the serious

life. But if its unreal and imaginary element is not essential,

nevertheless it plays a part which is by no means negligible. It has its

share in the feeling of comfort which the worshipper draws from the rite

performed; for recreation is one of the forms of the moral remaking

which is the principal object of the positive rite. After we have

acquitted ourselves of our ritual duties, we enter into the profane life

with increased courage and ardour, not only because we come into

relations with a superior source of energy, but also because our forces

have been reinvigorated by living, for a few moments, in a life that is

less strained, and freer and easier. Hence religion acquires a charm

which is not among the slightest of its attractions.

This is why the very idea of a religious ceremony of some importance

awakens the idea of a feast. Inversely, every feast, even when it has

purely lay origins, has certain characteristics of the religious

ceremony, for in every case its effect is to bring men together, to put

the masses into movement and thus to excite a state of effervescence,

and sometimes even of delirium, which is not without a certain kinship

with the religious state. A man is carried outside himself and diverted

from his ordinary occupation and preoccupations. Thus the same

manifestations are to be observed in each case: cries, songs, music,

violent movements, dances, the search for exciteants which raise the

vital level, etc. It has frequently been remarked that popular feasts

lead to excesses, and cause men to lose sight of the distinction

separating the licit from the illicit;[1221] there are also religious

ceremonies which make it almost necessary to violate the rules which are

ordinarily the most respected.[1222] Of course this does not mean that

there is no way to distinguish these two forms of public activity. The

simple merry-making, the profane corrobbori, has no serious object,

while, as a whole, a ritual ceremony always has an important end. Still

it is to be remembered that there is perhaps no merry-making in which

the serious life does not have some echo. The difference consists rather

in the unequal proportions in which the two elements are combined.

III

A more general fact confirms the views which precede.

In their first book, Spencer and Gillen presented the Intichiuma as a

perfectly definite ritual entity: they spoke of it as though it were an

operation destined exclusively for the assurance of the reproduction of

the totemic species, and it seemed as though it ought to lose all

meaning, if this unique function were set aside. But in their _Northern

Tribes of Central Australia_, the same authors use a different language,

though perhaps without noticing it. They recognize that these same

ceremonies may take place either in the regular Intichiuma or in the

initiation rites.[1223] So they serve equally in the making of animals

or plants of the totemic species, or in conferring upon novices the

qualities necessary to make them regular members of the men's

society.[1224] From this point of view, the Intichiuma takes on a new

aspect. It is no longer a distinct ritual mechanism, resting upon

principles of its own, but a particular application of more general

ceremonies which may be utilized for very different ends. For this

reason, in their later work, before speaking of the Intichiuma and the

initiation they consecrate a special chapter to the totemic ceremonies

in general, making abstraction of the diverse forms which they may take,

according to the ends for which they are employed.[1225]

This fundamental indetermination of the totemic ceremonies was only

indicated by Spencer and Gillen, and rather indirectly at that; but it

has now been confirmed by Strehlow in more explicit terms. "When they

lead the young novices through the different feasts of the initiation,"

he says, "they perform before them a series of ceremonies which, though

reproducing, even in their most characteristic details, the rites of the

regular cult (viz. _the rites which Spencer and Gillen call the

Intichiuma_), do not have, nevertheless, the end of multiplying the

corresponding totem and causing it to prosper."[1226] It is the same

ceremony which serves in the two cases; the name alone is not the same.

When its special object is the reproduction of the species, they call it

_mbatjalkatiuma_ and it is only when it is a part of the process of

initiation that they give it the name Intichiuma.[1227]

Moreover, these two sorts of ceremonies are distinguished from one

another among the Arunta by certain secondary characteristics. Though

the structure of the rite is the same in both cases, still we know that

the effusions of blood and, more generally, the oblations characteristic

of the Arunta Intichiuma are not found in the initiation ceremonies.

Moreover, among this same people, the Intichiuma takes place at

a spot regularly fixed by tradition, to which men must make a

pilgrimage, while the scene of the initiation ceremonies is purely

conventional.[1228] But when the Intichiuma consists in a simple

dramatic representation, as is the case among the Warramunga, the lack

of distinction between the two rites is complete. In the one as in the

other, they commemorate the past, they put the myth into action, they

play--and one cannot play in two materially different ways. So,

according to the circumstances, one and the same ceremony serves two

distinct functions.[1229]

It may even lend itself to other uses. We know that as blood is a sacred

thing, women must not see it flow. Yet it happens sometimes that a

quarrel breaks out in their presence and ends in the shedding of blood.

Thus an infraction of the ritual is committed. Among the Arunta, the man

whose blood flowed first must, to atone for this fault, "celebrate a

ceremony connected with the totem either of his father or of his

mother";[1230] this ceremony has a special name, _Alua uparilima_, which

means the washing away of blood. But in itself, it does not differ from

those celebrated at the time of the initiation or in the Intichiuma: it

represents an event of ancestral history. So it may serve equally to

initiate, to act upon the totemic species or to expiate a sacrilege. We

shall see that a totemic ceremony may also take the place of a funeral

rite.[1231]

MM. Hubert and Mauss have already pointed out a functional ambiguity of

this same sort in the case of sacrifice, and more especially, in that of

Hindu sacrifice.[1232] They have shown how the sacrifice of communion,

that of expiation, that of a vow and that of a contract are only

variations of one and the same mechanism. We now see that the fact is

much more primitive, and in no way limited to the institution of

sacrifice. Perhaps no rite exists which does not present a similar

indetermination. The mass serves for marriages as for burials; it

redeems the faults of the dead and wins the favours of the deity for the

living, etc. Fasting is an expiation and a penance; but it is also a

preparation for communion; it even confers positive virtues. This

ambiguity shows that the real function of a rite does not consist in the

particular and definite effects which it seems to aim at and by which it

is ordinarily characterized, but rather in a general action which,

though always and everywhere the same, is nevertheless capable of taking

on different forms according to the circumstances. Now this is just what

is demanded by the theory which we have proposed. If the real function

of the cult is to awaken within the worshippers a certain state of soul,

composed of moral force and confidence, and if the various effects

imputed to the rites are due only to a secondary and variable

determination of this fundamental state, it is not surprising if a

single rite, while keeping the same composition and structure, seems to

produce various effects. For the mental dispositions, the excitation of

which is its permanent function, remain the same in every case; they

depend upon the fact that the group is assembled, and not upon the

special reasons for which it is assembled. But, on the other hand, they

are interpreted differently according to the circumstances to which they

are applied. Is it a physical result which they wish to obtain? The

confidence they feel convinces them that the desired result is or will

be obtained by the means employed. Has some one committed a fault for

which he wishes to atone? The same state of moral assurance will lead

him to attribute expiatory virtues to these same ritual gestures. Thus,

the apparent efficacy will seem to change while the real efficacy

remains invariable, and the rite will seem to fulfil various functions

though in fact it has only one, which is always the same.

Inversely, just as a single rite may serve many ends, so many rites may

produce the same effect and mutually replace one another. To assure the

reproduction of the totemic species, one may have recourse equally to

oblations, to imitative practices or to commemorative representations.

This aptitude of rites for substituting themselves for one another

proves once more both their plasticity and the extreme generality of the

useful action which they exercise. The essential thing is that men are

assembled, that sentiments are felt in common and expressed in common

acts; but the particular nature of these sentiments and acts is

something relatively secondary and contingent. To become conscious of

itself, the group does not need to perform certain acts in preference to

all others. The necessary thing is that it partakes of the same thought

and the same action; the visible forms in which this communion takes

place matter but little. Of course, these external forms do not come by

chance; they have their reasons; but these reasons do not touch the

essential part of the cult.