+531+. Such organizations are of two sorts, one mainly political or

governmental, the other mainly religious. The best examples of the first

sort are found in Melanesia, Polynesia, and West Africa. The clan

government by the old men, of which a simple form exists in Central

Australia, has passed into, or is represented by, a society of men that

undertakes to maintain order, exact contributions, and provide

amusements for the people. The Dukduk of the Bismarck Archipelago,[882]

the Egbo of Old Calabar, and the Ogboni of Yoruba,[883] to take

prominent examples, are police associations that have managed to get

complete control of their respective communities and have naturally

become instruments of oppression and fraud. They have elaborate

ceremonies of initiation, are terrible to women and uninitiated males,

and religion usually enters only casually and subordinately into their

activities, chiefly in the form of magical ceremonies. A partial

exception, in regard to this last point, occurs in the case of the Areoi

society of Tahiti, which, as it is the best-organized society in

Polynesia, is also the most tyrannical, and the broadest in its scope;

its members enjoy not only a large share of the good things of this

life, but also the most desirable positions in the future life.[884]

+532+. On the other hand, the North American voluntary societies are

mainly concerned with the presentation of religious ideas by the

dramatization of myths, and by demanding for membership some sort of

religious experience. How far such societies existed in the Eastern

tribes it is not possible to say. Among these tribes, as among the Skidi

Pawnee, the Navahos, and other groups of the Middle West, the control of

religion has largely passed into the hands of priests--an advance in

religious organization. Where ceremonies are conducted by societies,

membership in these is often conditioned on the adoption of a personal

divine patron by every member.

+533+. This adoption of a _guardian spirit_ by the individual is the

most definite early divergence from the totemistic clan organization. An

intermediate stage is represented by the sex-patrons of Southeast

Australia,[885] who embody a declaration of independence by the women.

In this region, moreover, among the Kurnai, not only shamans but all

other men have each his special "brother" and protector.[886] Naturally,

where the family, in distinction from the clan, is the social unit,

family protectors arise. The Koryaks of Northeastern Asia have a

guardian spirit for every family and also for every person.[887] A

curious feature of Dahomi religion is the importance that is attached to

the family ghost as protector, the ghost, that is, of a former member of

the family, ordinarily its head; he has a shrine, and becomes

practically an inferior deity. Still more remarkable is the worship that

the West African native, both on the Gold Coast and on the Slave Coast

(communities with well-developed systems of royal government), offers to

his own indwelling spirit;[888] the man's birthday is sacred to the

spirit and is commenced with a sacrifice.[889] In Samoa a guardian

spirit (conceived of as incarnate in some animal) is selected for a

child at its birth.[890] Some such custom is said to exist among the

Eskimo of the Yukon district in Alaska; a guardian animal is selected

by a boy when he arrives at the age of puberty, or it is selected for

him in his early childhood by his parents.[891]

+534+. While these examples indicate a tendency toward the adoption of

individual patrons, and may suggest that the custom is, or was, more

widespread than now appears, it is among the North American Redmen that

this sort of individualism is best developed and most effective socially

and religiously.[892] There are traces of it in the Eastern tribes; but

it is in its Western form that it is best known--it is explicit among

the Western Algonkins and the Siouan tribes, and on the Northwest

Pacific Coast. Most men, though not all, seek and obtain a guardian

spirit (usually represented by an animal) which shall protect from

injury and bestow prowess in war, success in love, and all other goods

of life. The spirit is, as a rule, independent of the clan totem--is

found, indeed, in nontotemic tribes; it is often identical with the

eponymous animal of some religious society. It is sometimes inherited,

but rarely--the essence of the institution is that the guardian shall be

sought and found. The preparation for the quest is by fasting; the

revelation of the guardian comes in a dream or a vision, or by some

strong impression made otherwise on the mind.

+535+. Among the Siouan Indians there are religious societies, each of

which bears the name of some animal and has a ritual composed of chants

and songs which, it is often claimed, have been received in a

supernatural manner.[893] The youth who aspires to become a member of

one of these societies goes off alone to the forest, and there, fasting

and meditating, waits for the vision of the sign. This comes usually in

the form of an animal, and the youth enters the society whose

distinguishing mark this animal is. First, however, he must travel until

he meets the animal he saw, when he must slay it and preserve the whole

or a part of it. This trophy is the sign of his vision and is the most

sacred thing he can possess, marking as it does his personal relation to

the supernatural being who has appeared to him.

+536+. A similar ceremony is found among the Kwakiutl in Northwestern

America.[894] The novice is supposed to stay some time with the

supernatural being who is the protector of his society. From this

interview he returns in a state of ecstasy, and is brought to a normal

state by the songs and dances and magical performances of the shaman;

but before he is permitted to take part in the ordinary pursuits of life

he must undergo a ceremonial purification. In these tribes, as is

remarked above, the totemic groups have been replaced by clans, and in

the winter ceremonial these clans (according to one report) are again

replaced by the secret societies, whose function is political only in

the sense that its members form a part of the aristocracy. Recently

societies of women have been established--a fact that illustrates the

divergence of the new system from the old.

+537+. The details of initiation or of acquisition of the guardian

spirit vary (for example, it is not always required that the youth kill

his patron animal), but in all cases there is recognition of the

emotional independence of the individual, and there is involved a

certain largeness of religious experience in the modern sense of the

term. The demand for the supernatural friend represents a germinal

desire for intimate personal relations with the divine world; and,

though the particular form that embodied the conception has given way

before more refined ideas, the conception itself has survived in higher

religions in the choice of patron saints.[895]

+538+. _Political conditions._ Political organization, in unifying a

community under the control of a central authority, tends to efface

local self-governing groups. This process is visible in the increased

power of Melanesian chiefs, in the royal governments of Polynesia and

Western and Eastern Africa, and in the inchoate constitutional

federations of Eastern North America. In all these cases the simple clan

system is reduced to small proportions, and totemism loses its social

significance. The way in which the functions of totemic groups are thus

modified appears plainly in such governmental systems as that of the

East African Baganda (in which heads of clans have become officers of

the king's household)[896] and the Iroquois Confederation (in which the

tribes act through their representatives in a national Council or

Parliament).

+539+. _Religious conditions._ The personal guardian spirit and the

totem, when it assumes this character, sometimes receive worship--they

are treated as gods. But their rôle as divinities is of an inferior

nature, and it does not last long. Deities proper came into existence as

embodiments of the sense of an extrahuman government of the world by

anthropomorphic beings; they are direct products of the constructive

imagination.[897] When the true gods appear the totemic and individual

half-gods disappear. We find that totemism is feeble in proportion as

theistic systems have taken shape, and that where personal guardians are

prominent there are no well-defined gods. In Central Australia there is

only a vague, inactive form that may be called divine; a more definite

conception is found in Southeastern Australia, where the strictness of

totemism is relaxed. Melanesia and Polynesia show an increased

definiteness of theistic figures. Northwestern North America is, in

comparison with the East, undeveloped in this regard. Similar relations

between totemism and theism appear in India and South America. In a

certain number of cases the facts suggest that the former system has

been superseded by the latter.

+540+. Cults of the totem and of individual guardian spirits are to be

distinguished from certain other forms of worship with which they have

points of connection. The West African fetish is the abode of a tutelary

spirit, and finally is absorbed by local gods; it arises, however, from

belief in the sacredness and power of inanimate things, and is without

the sense of identity with the spirit that characterizes the North

American relation. The family sacred symbols that are worshiped in some

places[898] are really family gods (whether or not they were originally

totems), developed, probably, under Brahmanic influence. The worship of

a tutelary spirit has sometimes coalesced with that of an ancestor, but

this is doubtless due to the collocation of two distinct cults; at a

certain stage an ancestor is naturally regarded as friend and protector.

The general potency termed "mana" is not to be connected particularly

with any one cult; it represents a conception that probably underlies

all ancient forms of worship.

+541+. It thus appears that several lines of social progress have proved

unfavorable to totemism, and to these movements it has generally

succumbed. Its home has been, and is, in isolated hunting communities;

agriculture and social intercourse have been fatal to it as to all early

forms of society based on a belief in kinship with nonhuman natural

objects.

+542+. It remains to mention the principal theories of the origin of

totemism that are or have been held, and to ask what part it has played

in the history of religion.

+543+. _Theories of the origin of totemism._ These may conveniently be

divided into such as refer the origin to individual action, and such as

refer it to the action of clans.

+544+. _Individualistic theories._ Among the earliest of theories were

those that explained the totemic constitution as due to a confusion in

the minds of savages between names and things. Individuals or families

might be named after animals, plants, and other objects, and these, it

was supposed, might come to be regarded as intimately associated with

human persons, and might be looked on with affection or reverence and

even worshiped.[899] Or, more definitely, it was held that, the origin

of such names being forgotten, reverence for the ancestors led to

reverence for the things after which they were named and identification

with them--a man whose ancestor was called "the Tiger" would think of

himself as descended from a tiger and as being of the tiger stock.[900]

It is now generally recognized, however, that the origin of so

widespread and influential a system of organization as totemism cannot

be referred to a mere misunderstanding of nicknames; and whether such

misunderstanding was general or natural in early times is open to doubt.

+545+. It sometimes happens that a man (generally a chief) announces

that after death he will take the form of this or that animal or plant,

and this procedure, it has been supposed, would found a totemic

family--his descendants would revere the object in question as the

embodiment of the spirit of the ancestor, would take its name, and, when

it was edible, would refrain from eating it.[901] It is true that the

belief was, and is, not uncommon among savages that a deceased person

might take the form of some natural object; but the reported cases are

rare in which a man deliberately enjoins on his descendants reverence

for such an object with the result that a quasi-totemic group

arises.[902] This custom is not frequent enough to account for totemism.

+546+. A theory suggested by the fact that many clans perform magical

ceremonies (for the purpose of increasing the supply of food) is that,

when the magical apparatus of some body of persons consisted of parts of

an animal, the animal would become sacred, a magical society might be

formed by an individual magician, and thus a totemic magic-working clan

might be created. For this hypothesis there is no support except in the

fact that changes in clan life are sometimes brought about by the old

men; but such changes are modifications of existing usages, not new

creations. The power of a savage man of genius may be admitted, but to

account for the known totemic communities we should have to suppose a

vast number of such men, in different parts of the world, all working in

the same direction and reaching substantially the same results.

+547+. The belief that a man might deposit his soul in an animal or a

plant or some other object is found in West Africa, North America, and

probably elsewhere. As such objects would, as a rule, not be killed

(and every individual of a group would be thus respected), it has been

supposed that, when various persons deposited their souls in the same

object, a totemic body would come into existence.[903] This view would

account for totemic reverence and for the sense of kinship, but the

objection to it is that in most totemic organizations the belief in

question has not been certified.

+548+. The "conceptional" theory refers the origin of totemism to the

belief, found among certain peoples, that conception is produced by the

entrance into the mother's womb of some object (animal, plant, or other)

with which the child is identified.[904] In Central Australia it is held

that what passes into the woman is a spirit child which has a certain

object for its totem; but in this case the previous existence of the

totem is assumed. In certain islands (Mota and Motlav) of the Banks

group, however, there exists, it is said, the belief that a child is the

object from which the mother received some influence at conception or at

some other period of pregnancy--the child resembles the object, and may

not eat it if it is edible.[905] The persons thus identified with a

given object would, if united, constitute a group totemic in the

respects that they believe themselves to be one with the object in

question and refrain from eating it.[906] The totemic object is

selected, in the case of every child, by the fancy of the mother, and

is, therefore, not inherited; totemic groups, thus, would be found

distributed through the larger groups (phratries or tribes), and might

also gradually coalesce and form local groups. If the belief in this

origin of birth (identity of the child with some object) were found to

be widespread, and generally effective as the ground of early social

organization, it would furnish a satisfactory explanation of totemistic

beginnings. But in point of fact it has so far been found, in full form,

only in a small region in Melanesia, and its history in this region is

not known; back of it may lie some other system of organization. And in

this region clan totemism is lacking or faint. Further testimony is

needed before it can be accepted as the solution of the problem of

totemic origins.[907]

+549+. A similar remark must be made in reference to theories based on

the belief that the souls of the dead are incarnate in animals and

plants. Such a belief is a natural outgrowth from the conception of the

identity of nature of human beings and animals, and it occurs in so many

parts of the world (Oceania, Africa, America) that it might naturally be

regarded as having been at one time universal, though it is not now

found everywhere. Reverence for an ancestor might be, and sometimes is,

transferred to the object in which he is supposed to be incarnate; from

this object a man holds himself to be descended, and he refrains from

eating or injuring it.[908] This view, a combination of reverence for

ancestors and reverence for animals and plants, thus supplies two

features of totemistic organization, but proof is lacking that it is the

basis of this organization. If it be the determining consideration in

some cases, there are many cases in which its influence is not apparent.

There are myths tracing the totemism of clans to ancestors having animal

forms, but these myths are relatively late savage philosophical

explanations of existing institutions.

+550+. The relation of the individual patron and guardian to the clan

totem has been variously defined. Such a patron, it is sometimes held

(obtained by a dream or a vision), descends from the original possessor

to his children (or, in a matrilineal system, to his sister's children),

and thus becomes the patron (the totem) of a family or kin; and a larger

group, formed by the union of several kins, may similarly have its

protecting spirit. Cases in which descent is through the mother here

make a difficulty--a man's guardian spirit would not then be inherited.

Granting that the personal patron of a shaman or of an ordinary man may

be inherited, such inheritance appears to be of rare occurrence, and

there is no trustworthy evidence that it ever leads to the formation of

a totemic clan.

+551+. It is true there is a resemblance between a man's relation to his

clan totem and his relation to his personal guardian--in both cases the

sacred object is revered and spared. It is sometimes the case also (as,

for example, among the Australian Arunta) that the totem comes through

an individual (the mother) and is not transmissible, and yet endogamous

clans arise by the union of persons having the same totem. But here the

resemblance ceases--the Arunta child's totem is determined for him

before his birth, but a man chooses his personal guardian for himself,

and joins others having the same guardian, not in a clan but in a secret

society. Furthermore, the institution of the personal guardian is very

rare except in North America, and there flourishes in inverse proportion

to the strength of clan life proper.

+552+. On the supposition of the primitive predominance of the rule of

descent through the mother individualistic theories of the origin of

totemism, with one exception, are out of the question--the totem is

first chosen by a man, but children would have the totem not of the

father but of the mother. The exception is the conceptional theory, in

which the totem is determined by the mother--especially the Mota (Banks

Islands) form, in which the choice of a sacred object by the woman is

unlimited. In a small community a certain number of women would,

however, choose the same object, and thus totemic groups would arise.

This scheme of organization, though not open to the objection mentioned

above, is geographically limited.

+553+. _Theories based on clan action._ Here the starting-point is the

clan, which is supposed to have come into existence somehow; it is not

essential to determine precisely the method of its origination, though

the question of method is sometimes included in the discussion of a

theory. The clan finds itself confronted by various natural objects with

which, it believes, it must form helpful relations; or some sort of

relation is forced on it by the conditions of life. The question is how

a human group came to enter into the totemic relation.

+554+. The simplest answer is that the primitive clan deliberately chose

among all associated objects some one to be its particular friend or its

special associate,[909] naturally valued and respected this object,

refrained from eating it when it was edible, took its name, came to

regard it as ancestor, and created myths explanatory of these

conceptions. This general theory has assumed various forms, but the

objection usually made to its central supposition is that such

deliberate choice is out of keeping with the known methods of early

societies. Though a certain amount of reflection must be assumed for

primitive men (the lower animals, indeed, show reflection), it is held

that so elaborate a system as totemism, like other institutions, must

have been the product of accidental experiences, developed through a

long period of time. Something more definite, it is said, is required in

order to account for the details of the system--all that can be safely

assumed is that early man, constantly on the alert to better his

condition, took advantage of every situation to strengthen himself by

taking precautions against enemies or by securing the aid of surrounding

objects, human and nonhuman.

+555+. The totem is supposed by some to have been originally merely the

mark or badge by which a human group distinguished itself from

neighboring groups. In hunting expeditions and migrations such a mark

would be necessary or, at any rate, useful.[910] More generally, it was

natural for a clan to have a name for itself, as it had names for its

individual members and for other objects. It might take its name from an

associated animal or plant or heavenly body or from a place. The badge

and the name once adopted, other totemic features would follow. Such

badges are common in Northwestern America, and are found elsewhere, and

the term 'totem' has been explained by natives as meaning 'badge.' But

this explanation is late, and the employment of the sacred object as

badge is not widely diffused. When it gives a clan its name it is, of

course, a distinguishing mark, but this does not show that such

distinction was in all cases its original function. Nor would the badge

come into use till the name had been fixed.

+556+. The view just mentioned does not attempt to explain how a

particular name came to be attached to a clan. This lack is supplied by

the theory that a clan was named by its neighbors after the kind of food

on which it chiefly subsisted.[911] The objection to this theory is that

no group of men is known to confine itself to one article of

food--savages eat whatever they can find--and moreover contiguous groups

would feed on the same kinds of food. A view not open to this objection

is that names of clans, also given from without, expressed fancied

resemblances of the persons named to animals and other objects, or

peculiarities of person or speech, or were derived from the place of

abode.[912]

+557+. It is obviously true that human groups have names derived from

objects with which they are somehow specially connected; in the lists of

clan-names in Oceania, Africa, India, America, animal names predominate,

but many are taken from plants, and some from inanimate objects;[913]

when groups become settled they are sometimes called after their places

of abode. The other supposition in these "name theories"--that the names

are given from without--is less certain. There are examples of such

naming by outsiders--nicknames, sometimes respectful, sometimes

derisive.[914] But the known cases are not numerous enough to establish

a general rule--the origin of names of clans and tribes is largely

involved in obscurity.[915] There is no improbability in either theory

of the method of naming, native or foreign--both modes may have existed,

one in one region, one in another, and one group may at different times

have been called by different names.

+558+. "Coöperative" theories suppose that a number of groups united

for economic purposes, to each being assigned the duty of increasing by

magical means the supply of a particular sort of food or other

necessity, and procuring a portion for the general store.[916] Such

coöperation, however, assumes too great a capacity of organization to be

primitive. It is hardly found outside of Central Australia, in which

region there are indications of a long period of social

development.[917]

+559+. The theory that the totem is a god, immanent in the clan,

incarnate in every member of the clan, a divine ancestor, the center of

the clan's religion,[918] is contradicted by the actual relation between

a clan and its totem: the latter is cherished as a kinsman and friend,

but not worshiped as a god.[919]

+560+. _Summing-up on the origin of totemism._ This brief survey of

proposed theories of the origin of totemism is sufficient to show the

complexity of the problem. Not one of the hypotheses just mentioned is

universally accepted, and no one of them appears to account

satisfactorily for all the known facts. Some of them are based obviously

on data derived from limited areas. Australian usage suggested the

coöperative theory, and Australia and Melanesia the conceptional theory.

The identification of totemism with ancestor-worship comes from South

Africa; its connection with the belief in transmigration is due to

Indonesia; its derivation from the individual guardian is based on a

North American institution; and North America probably suggested the

badge theory also. It may be frankly confessed that in the present state

of knowledge all theories are guesses.

+561+. As there are communities in which it is probable or possible that

totemism has never existed, so it is conceivable that it has been

developed in different ways in different places. Considering the variety

of circumstances in primitive life, it would not be strange if human

groups found themselves impelled to take various paths in their

attempts at effective organization. The starting-point being reverence

for animals and other objects of nature, and belief in their kinship

with men, one human group may have been led by some accidental

experience to regard some nonhuman group or object as its ally. In

another case a name, adopted by a group of its own accord or given it

from without, may have induced such an alliance. Individuals may have

imposed their guardian animals or plants on communities. A badge, chosen

for convenience, may have been the beginning of a totemic organization.

In these and other ways a group of men may have come to form intimate

relations with a nonhuman group or other object.

+562+. This fundamental relation having been established (with aversion

to eating or injuring the sacred object), various usages would attach

themselves to it in accordance with general laws of social development.

In many cases a rule of exogamy, for the better regulation of marriage,

would be adopted. When tribes, consisting each of several clans, came

into existence, a coöperative economic system would sometimes arise:

magical methods of producing results, common in early stages of life,

would be so organized that to every clan would be assigned the duty of

producing a supply of some sort of food. Following the general tendency

to genealogical construction, the belief in kinship with the sacred

object would lead a clan to imagine an ancestor of the same kind, animal

or animal-human or plant or rock, and myths explaining the origin would

be devised. Various other usages and ideas would coalesce with those

belonging to totemism proper: belief in the superhuman power of nonhuman

things, including the conception of mana; the belief that every newborn

child is the reincarnation of an ancestor; recognition of omens from the

movements of such things; belief in the magical power of names;

reverence for ancestors--a natural feeling, in itself independent of the

totemic conception; totems regarded as creators; the employment of

totemic animals as emissaries to the supernatural Powers. Thus the

resultant social system would be a congeries of beliefs and usages, and

in such a system, when it appears, the totemic element must be

distinguished from its attachments, which must be referred each to its

appropriate source.

+563+. _Function of totemism in the development of society._ The service

of totemism to society lies in the aid it has given to the friendly

association of men in groups. Common social feeling, the perception of

the advantage to be gained by combination in the quest for food and for

defense against human enemies, originated the formation of groups.

Totemism strengthened union by increasing the sense of brotherhood in

the clan and facilitating the cöoperation that is a condition of social

progress. This sort of service was rendered in early times by all

systems in which social relations were connected with relations to

animals and other natural objects; but totemism made a special appeal to

the emotions and gave all the members of a human group one and the same

object of devotion about which sentiments of loyalty and brotherhood

could crystallize. It is a crude, initial political form that has given

way to more definite forms.

+564+. It cannot be said that totemism has contributed to _economic_

progress except in so far as every stable organization may be favorable

to general progress. It has been claimed that it effected the

domestication of animals and plants.[920] In support of this claim it is

urged that, apart from reverence for these objects, there is nothing in

savage ideas and customs that could lead to domestication. Early man,

seeking food, would try all accessible animals and plants--but why, it

is asked, should he desire to keep them as attachments to his home and

cultivate them for his own use? Would his purpose be amusement? But,

though savages sometimes have animals as pets, the custom is not

general, and such pets are freely killed. Could the motive be utility?

The answer is that savages have neither the ability to perceive the

advantage, for food and labor, that would accrue from domestication, nor

knowledge of the fact that seeds must be kept, in order to secure a

crop, from one year to another, nor the self-restraint to practice

present abstinence for the sake of future good.

+565+. On the other hand, it is said, semireligious reverence for

animals preserves them from injury, they lose their fear of man, and

those that are domesticable become tame and are appropriated and used by

men; and sacred plants are retained from one year to another for ritual

purposes, and their seeds produce a succession of crops. Totem animals

are not eaten--a pastoral people does not eat its cattle, it keeps them

for their milk. In a word, animals, it is held, are not tamed by man of

set purpose, but grow tame when not molested, and those that are edible

or capable of rendering service are gradually domesticated; and

similarly, through religious use of plants, the possibility of

cultivating certain plants becomes known.

+566+. This argument rests on the assumption of the universal mental

incapacity of early men--a subject admittedly obscure. Certainly they

appear to be quite lacking in knowledge and reflection in some regards;

yet they sometimes show remarkable skill in hunting (so, for example,

the African Pygmies), and they have created remarkable languages. But,

if we leave the question of intellectual capacity aside, there are facts

that seem to throw doubt on the totemic origin of domestication. In the

first place, the conditions under which reverence for a totemic animal

may make it tame do not appear to have existed in totemic society. For

such taming it is necessary that the animal be perfectly safe within a

considerable area. But this is not possible where a group of men is

composed of various clans, a given animal being spared by one clan but

freely hunted and killed by all the other clans[921]--a state of things

that was presumably universal.

+567+. Further, it is difficult to discover any historical connection

between the actual cases of domestication of animals and reverence for

these as totems. It is unfortunate for the decision of this question

that in the two principal totemic centers, Australia and North America,

there are very few native domesticable animals--only one (a species of

dog) in Australia, and two (dog and bison) in North America. The history

of the dog in North America, however, is suggestive: it has been

domesticated by totemic Redmen for hunting purposes and by nontotemic

Eskimo for drawing sledges--that is, its economic use seems to be

independent of totemic considerations. Other cases of divergence between

employment of animals and their position as totems have been cited in

Uganda, for example;[922] but civilization is relatively far advanced in

Uganda, and in such cases we cannot infer original conditions from

existing customs.

+568+. It may fairly be surmised that observation in some cases led to

the domestic use of animals. The value of the milk of cattle, goats, and

mares as food may have been suggested to men who were acquainted with

the life of these animals; and valuing them for their milk, their owners

would abstain from eating them except under pressure of hunger or for

ceremonial purposes. Such a procedure does not seem to be beyond the

capacities of very simple communities. Chance may have suggested the

function of seeds in the growth of plants, and, agriculture once entered

on, the labor of animals would gradually be utilized. So far as regards

artistic representations, these are found everywhere, and their

occurrence on totemic poles (as, for example, among the Haidas of Queen

Charlotte Islands) cannot be regarded as a special product of totemism.

+569+. Considering the obscurity of the subject, it is doubtless wise to

refrain from offering a universal theory of the origin of domestication

of animals and plants. All that is here contended for is that the large

rôle sometimes assigned to totemism in this regard is not supported by

the facts now known to us. Future investigations may bring with them new

constructions of early history.

+570+. _Relation of totemism to religion._ As the beginnings of totemism

are obscure it is not possible to say exactly what a man's attitude

toward his totem was in the earliest period. But, when the totemic

relation became a definite feature of social organization, the feeling

was that the totem was in the nature of a clansman, of the same blood as

the human group, and entitled to all the respect and affection with

which men regarded their clan-brethren. The sentiment, in this point of

view, was sacred in the sense in which this term may be used of the

feeling existing between persons of the same human group; it involved a

certain sense of obligation toward fellow members--to respect their

rights and to defend them against enemies was an imperative duty.

+571+. Totemic clanship, however, differed from ordinary human clanship

in that the nonhuman clan-brother was regarded as a specially powerful

being, endowed with the superhuman qualities with which all animals and

plants and certain other objects were credited. Regard for the totem

was, thus, part of the regard paid to nonhuman objects in general, only

emotionalized and intensified by the belief that the nonhuman group was

in a peculiar way allied to the human group. There was not only

unwillingness to injure the totem--there was fear that one would suffer

by such an act. The totem, it was believed, was able in its turn to

inflict injury; and this belief added an element of awe to the feeling

with which it was regarded.

+572+. In another respect, also, the totem shared the powers of other

nonhuman objects--it could aid its friends. The expectation of totemic

aid is, however, vague in the earlier stages of organization, that is,

in communities in which totemism proper is well-defined--it appears to

amount to little more than a feeling that things will go well if respect

is paid to the totem. In cases where there is more definite aid there is

always the question whether the aid is afforded by the totem in its

specific character of clan-brother or merely in its character of

nonhuman powerful thing. Omens, for example, are given by all natural

objects; when an object of this sort happens to be a totem, it is not

clear that its capacity of omen-giving belongs to it simply as totem.

+573+. There is similar uncertainty in the case of the Queensland

practice, when a man, on lying down at any time or rising in the

morning, whispers the name of the animal after which he is called or the

name of the animal belonging to his group-division, in the belief that

it will give him success in his affairs;[923] here the animal is not a

clan totem, and the evidence does not show that it has come from such a

totem--it may be a sacred animal that has somehow been brought into

special connection with the man or with his group. Personal guardians

that confer magical powers on a man do not here come into consideration.

+574+. The relation between totemism and the practice of magic appears

to be essentially one of coexistence in a community. The two belong to

the same stage of culture and the same order of ideas; but the fact that

each is found without the other shows that neither is dependent on the

other. Naturally they are sometimes combined, as sometimes happens in

North America and particularly in Central Australia (where every totemic

clan is charged with certain magical ceremonies); yet this close

alliance is rare. Magical practice rests on a conception of man's

relation to nature that is distinct from the conception of kinship

between a human clan and a nonhuman species or individual object.

+575+. Secret societies sometimes perform magical ceremonies; but such

societies are not totemic--either they have risen above the totemic

point of view, or they have sprung from ideas and usages that are

independent of totemism proper.[924]

+576+. It is difficult to find a clear case of the offering of religious

worship to a totem as totem. There are the ceremonies performed by the

Australian Warramunga for the purpose of propitiating or coercing the

terrible water snake Wollunqua.[925] This creature is a totem, but a

totem of unique character--a fabulous animal, never visible, a creation

of the imagination; the totem proper is a visible object whose relations

with human beings are friendly, the Wollunqua is savage in nature and

often hostile to men. He appears to be of the nature of a god, but an

undomesticated one--a demon, adopted by a tribe as totem, or identified

with a previously existing totem. The situation is an exceptional one

and cannot be regarded as evidence of general totemic worship.

+577+. The question whether a totem ever develops into a god is a part

of the general question whether a sacred animal ever becomes a god.[926]

The complications of early ideas and customs and the paucity of data

for the formative period of early religion make an answer to these

questions difficult. As far as regards the evolution of the totem into a

true divine figure the evidence is not decisive. The identification of

heroes or gods with animals, their transformations into animals, and

their incarnations in animal forms may, indeed, suggest such an

evolution. Thus, in the island of Yam (between Australia and New Guinea)

two brothers, Sigai and Maiau, have their shrines, in which they are

represented by a shark figure and a crocodile figure respectively, and

to them food is presented, songs are sung, dances are danced and prayers

are offered. Other heroes, Kwoiam (a totem-bringer), Sida (an introducer

of the arts of life), Yadzebub (a warrior), and some unnamed are revered

in islands of Torres Straits.[927] In the Rewa district in Fiji every

village, it is said, has a deity, and these deities have the power of

turning into animals, which are then not eaten--that is, it may be

supposed, the god is a developed totem.[928] In the Wakelbura tribe of

Southeast Australia the totem animal is spoken of as "father," a title

frequently given to clan gods. Household gods are considered to be

incarnate in animals and other objects in some of the Caroline Islands,

in Tonga and Tikopia, and in Samoa, and in these islands, except Samoa,

the people are supposed to have descended from the animals in question.

Similar ideas seem not to exist in the Americas or in Africa; in India

the influence of Hindu cults has largely effaced or greatly modified

non-Aryan usages so that their original form cannot generally be

determined.[929]

+578+. The cases just mentioned are susceptible of other explanations

than that of an evolution from totem to god. The history of the cult of

heroes in Yam and other Torres Straits islands is obscure, but from

known facts the indications are that the hero figures have arisen

independently of the totem figures and have been, by a natural process,

identified with these.[930] The peculiarity of the Rewa deities is that

they assume animal forms at will, and such animals, not being eaten, are

held to be totems. Whether totems or not they are sacred and might

easily be identified with gods who stood alongside of them; an obvious

explanation of this identity would be that the god assumed the form of

the animal.[931] A similar explanation may be given of incarnations of

gods in animals--a metamorphosis is a temporary incarnation. The Samoan

Moso is incarnate in half a dozen different objects, and some deities

are incarnate in men. As for the title "father," it belongs of course to

the object from which a clan is supposed to be descended.

+579+. The sacramental eating of the totem, where such a custom exists,

involves a certain identity of nature of totem and clan god, but the two

are regarded as distinct--their distinctness is, indeed, a necessary

condition of the sacrificial efficacy of the totem as a means of

placating the deity.[932]

+580+. Our review seems, thus, to lead to the conclusion that there is

no good ground for the opinion that a totem has ever grown into a god.

The question, belonging, as it does, to a period for which we have no

contemporary records, must be admitted to be difficult, and answers to

it must be of the nature of hypotheses; but gods and spirits appear to

have taken shape through processes of thought different from those that

lie at the basis of totemism.[933]

TABOO

+581+. So far we have been considering the growth of the simpler

religious ideas and the parallel development of a quasi-religious social

organization. The ethical development is no less important than the

religious and the political, with which it has always been closely

connected. Ethical ideas and customs are in their origin independent of

religion. Religion deals with the relation between human beings and

supernatural Powers; ethics has to do with the relation between man and

man.[934]

+582+. Thus, the necessity for the protection of life and property

(including wives and children) has produced certain rules of conduct,

which are at first handed on orally and maintained by custom, and

gradually are formulated in written codes. The protection of the tribal

life is secured by the tribal leaders as representatives of society. The

protection of individual interests is at first in the hands of the

individuals concerned, but always under the sanction of society. The

murderer, the thief, and the adulterer are dealt with by the person

injured or by his clan or family, in accordance with generally

recognized regulations. As social life becomes more elaborate, such

regulations become more numerous and more discriminating; every new

ethical rule springs from the necessity of providing for some new social

situation. In all communities the tendency is toward taking the

protection of interests out of the hands of the individual and

committing it to the community; this course is held to be for the

advantage of society.[935]

+583+. As men are constituted, to account for the growth of moral

customs we need to assume only social life; practically all our

requirements that refer to the relations between men are found among

early tribes, and it may be taken for granted that any body of human

beings, living together and having some form of activity, would work out

some such system of rules, mostly negative or prohibitive but also to

some extent positive. Even the law of kindness, a product of natural

human sympathy, exists among the lowest known peoples. The reference of

moral growth to social necessities does not involve the denial of a

germinal sense of right and wrong or of germinal moral ideals, but this

sense and these ideals arise, through reflection, from experience. We

are here concerned only with the actual conduct of men traceable in the

early forms of society.

+584+. But while social life is the basis of ethical construction, the

actual ethical constitution of men has been influenced by religion, in

later times by the supplying of lofty ideals and sanctions, in early

times by a magical determination of things injurious. It is this second

category that is covered by the term 'taboo,' a Polynesian word said to

mean 'what is prohibited.' Prohibitions arising from natural human

relations constitute civil law; those arising from extrahuman or other

magical influences constitute taboo.[936]

+585+. Early man, regarding all objects as possibly endowed with power,

selects out of the whole mass by observation and experience certain

objects which affect his life, his relations with which he finds it

desirable to define. These are all mysterious;[937] some are helpful,

some harmful. The helpful objects become lucky stones, amulets. The

injurious or dangerous objects are the more numerous; in an atmosphere

of uncertainty the mysterious is dreaded, avoided, and guarded against

by rules.[938]

+586+. The objects affected by the conception of taboo are as various as

the conditions of human life--they include things inanimate and animate,

and events and experiences of all sorts. Sometimes the danger is

supposed to be inherent in the object, sometimes the quality of

dangerousness is imposed on it or infused into it by some authority; but

in all cases there is present the force (mana) that, in savage theory,

makes the external world a factor in human destinies.[939] This force

may be transmitted from one object to another (usually by contact[940]),

and thus the taboo infection may spread indefinitely, a silent and

terrible source of misfortune, sometimes to a single person, sometimes

to a whole community. Ceremonies connected with taboo are designed to

protect against this destructive influence.

+587+. The principal taboo usages may be classed roughly under certain

heads, which, however, will sometimes overlap one another.

+588+. _Taboos connected with the conception of life._ For early man the

central mystery of the world was life, and mystery and danger attached

to all things connected with its genesis, maintenance, and cessation--to

pregnancy, birth, death, corpses, funerals, blood. Against these things

precautions, in the form of various restrictions, had to be taken.

Pregnancy was sometimes regarded as due to supernatural agency, and in

all cases was noted as a mysterious condition in which the woman was

peculiarly exposed to evil influences; she was sometimes required to

keep her head covered or to avoid moonshine, or to live separated from

her husband.[941]

+589+. Care for women during pregnancy and after the birth of a child

might be induced by natural human kindliness. But certain usages in

connection with birth indicate fear of superhuman dangers. In many

regions (Central Asia, Africa, Oceania, China) the mother is taboo for a

certain time, being regarded apparently as a source of danger to others,

as well as being herself exposed to danger. The child also is surrounded

by perils. Mother and child are protected by isolation, ablutions

(baptism), amulets, conjurations, and by consecration to a deity.[942]

The intimate relation between father and child may make it necessary to

impose taboos on the former--he is sometimes required to go to bed (the

_couvade_, or man-childbed), to abstain from work and from certain foods

held to be injurious, and to avoid touching weapons and other dangerous

things; thus, through the identity of father and child, the latter is

guarded against the hostile mana that may be lurking near. The seclusion

of the mother sometimes varies in duration according to the sex of the

child; in most cases, apparently, the period is longer for a male

child;[943] in the Jewish ritual the period for the maid-child is twice

as great (eighty days) as that for the male;[944] the difference in the

points of view, perhaps, is that the evil influence may direct itself

particularly against, or be more serious for, the male as socially the

more important, or it may be more dangerous for the female as the

weaker.[945]

+590+. _Taboos connected with death._ The danger to the living arising

from a death is of a twofold nature: the corpse, as a strange, uncanny

thing, is a source of peril; and there are possible external

enemies--the spirit that produced the death, and the ghost of the

departed. Against these dangerous things avoidance of the corpse is the

common precaution--a dead body must not be touched, or, if it is

touched, he who touches must undergo purification.[946] Perhaps the

various modes of disposing of corpses (exposure, inhumation, cremation)

were originally attempts to get rid of their dangerous qualities; later

other motives came in. The body of a suicide was especially feared, and

was staked down on a public way to prevent its reappearance; it was

perhaps the abnormal and desperate character of the death that produced

this special fear. The dread of a corpse is, however, not universal

among savages--in many cases it is eaten, simply as food or to acquire

the qualities of the deceased, or for other reasons. It is feared as

having hurtful power, it is eaten as being sacred or helpful.

+591+. The house in which a death occurs shares the evil power of the

dead body, and sometimes must be destroyed, together with all its

furniture, or abandoned or purified.[947] Death diffuses its baleful

influence through the atmosphere, making it unfavorable for ordinary

work, which, accordingly, is often then suspended for a time.[948]

Seclusion is sometimes enjoined on widower or widow,[949] and mention of

the name of the deceased is forbidden--the identity of spouse or name

with the dead effects the transmission of what is dangerous in him. In

another direction the earthly dwelling of a dead person is protected--a

curse is pronounced on one who violates it.[950]

+592+. _Taboos connected with woman and the relations between the

sexes._ Among many peoples there is dread of the presence of women and

of their belongings under certain circumstances.[951] The ground of this

fear may lie in those physiological peculiarities of woman which are

regarded as mysterious and dangerous, and the antagonism of feeling may

have been increased by the separation between the sexes consequent on

the differences in their social functions and their daily pursuits.

Woman seems to move in a sphere different from that of man; she acts in

ways that are strange to him. Whatever its ground, the feeling of dread

is a real one: a case is reported of a man who, on learning that he had

lain down on his wife's blanket, became violently ill.

+593+. Various restrictions are imposed on women at periods of sexual

crisis. The girl on reaching the age of puberty is generally (though not

always[952]) immured, sometimes for weeks or months, to shield her from

noxious influences, human and nonhuman. During menstruation a woman is

isolated, may not be looked on by the sun, must remain apart from her

husband, and her food is strictly regulated.[953] It is not infrequently

the case that certain foods are permanently forbidden women, for what

special reasons is not clear.[954] The rule forbidding a wife to eat

with her husband may have come originally from nonreligious social

considerations (her subordination to the man, or the fact that she

belonged to a social group different from his), but in that case it

later acquired a religious character. Women have commonly been excluded

in savage communities from solemn ceremonies (as those of the initiation

of males) and from tribal councils;[955] such rules may have originated

in the natural differentiation of social functions of the sexes or in

the desire of men to keep the control of tribal life in their own

hands, but in many cases the presence of women was supposed to vitiate

the proceedings supernaturally. In industrial enterprises, such as

hunting and fishing, they are sometimes held to be a fatal

influence.[956] In family life a wife's mother was debarred from all

social intercourse with her son-in-law.[957]

+594+. Where procreation was ascribed to the union of the sexes, sexual

intercourse, as being intimately connected with life, was credited with

supernatural potency, generally unfavorable to vigor.[958] It has been

largely prohibited on all important public occasions, such as hunting

and war, and particularly in connection with religious ceremonies.[959]

Various considerations may have contributed to the establishment of such

customs, but in their earliest form we have, probably, to recognize not

any moral effort to secure chastity, but a dread of injurious mana

resident in women.[960] We may compare the fact that women have often

been regarded as specially gifted in witchcraft.[961]

+595+. _Taboos connected with great personages._ The theory of mana

includes the belief that special supernatural power resides in the

persons of tribal leaders, such as magicians, chiefs, priests. It

follows that danger attaches to their bodies (particularly to head,

hair, and nails), to their names, and to their food and other

belongings. These things must be avoided: their food must not be eaten

by common folk; their houses and other property must not be used; their

nail-cuttings must be buried so that danger may be averted from the

community; their names must not be mentioned. They themselves, being

peculiarly sensitive to malign influences, must be protected in the

house and when they walk out; and it is in some cases not safe for the

common man to look on the chief as he passes through the village.

+596+. Not all these regulations are found in any one community, but the

principle is the same everywhere. The greatest development of taboo

power in chiefs occurs in Polynesia, the home of taboo. There they are

all-powerful. Whatever a chief touches becomes his property. If he

enters a house, steps into a canoe, affixes his name to a field, it is

his. His control appears to be limited only by the accident of his

momentary desire. No one thinks of opposing his decisions--that would be

fatal to the opposer. This social situation passes when a better form of

civil government is established, but some features of the old conception

cling to later dignitaries: till recently the nail-parings of the

emperor of Japan were carefully disposed of lest, being inadvertently

touched, they should bring misfortune.

+597+. A priest also may carry taboo infection on his person. In

Ezekiel's scheme of ritual organization it is ordered that when the

priest, having offered sacrifice, goes forth into the outer court where

the people are, he shall put off the garments in which he ministered and

lay them in a sacred place, and put on other garments, lest some one

touching him should be made ritually unclean, that is taboo, forbidden

to mingle with his fellows or to do his ordinary work for a certain time

(generally till the evening).[962] In many regions there have been and

are numerous restrictions on priests, some of which are in their own

interests (to preserve their ritual purity), some in the interests of

others (to guard them against the infection of taboo).[963] Other

quasi-official or devoted persons (as, for example, the Hebrew

Nazirite[964]) were subject to restrictions of food. Strangers, who in

a primitive period were frequently put to death, in a more humane period

were subjected to purifying processes in order to remove the taboo

infection that might cling to them.[965]

+598+. _Industrial taboos._ The customs of certain Polynesian chiefs,

described above, cannot be said to aid industry, but there are taboo

usages designed to protect and further popular occupations. These

doubtless have a natural nonmagical basis--the necessity of making good

crops and protecting private property would be recognized everywhere,

and would call forth legal enactments; but it was inevitable, in certain

communities, that such enactments should be strengthened by supernatural

sanctions such as those offered by the conception of taboo.

+599+. Protective arrangements of this sort abound in Oceania and

Indonesia. In Samoa the sweet-potato fields are taboo till the crop is

gathered.[966] Hawaiian fisheries are protected by the simple device of

forbidding the taking of certain fish at certain seasons; here the

economic motive is obvious, but taboo penalties are annexed.[967] During

planting time in New Zealand all persons employed in the work were taboo

for other occupations and obliged to give all their time to the

planting; and the same rule held for hunting and fishing.[968] The

Borneo Kayans refrain from their usual occupations during planting,

harvesting, and the search for camphor.[969] Similar restrictions, of an

elaborate kind, are in force in Sumatra,[970] and in Assam.[971]

+600+. The property of private persons was protected: the common man

might impose a taboo on his land, crops, house, and garments, and these

were then safe from depredation. It was true, however, in New Zealand as

elsewhere, that the potency of the imposed taboo depended on the

influence of him who imposed it; chiefs, as uniting in their persons

civil and religious authority, were the most powerful persons in the

community, and taboos ordered by them were the most effective. In

Melanesia taboo is largely employed for the protection of private

property--curses are pronounced against trespassers, and the authority

of the tabooer is reënforced by that of the local spirit or ghost

(_tindalo_);[972] here taboo has become definitely an element of civil

law, in which it tends to be absorbed.

+601+. _Taboos connected with other important social events._ It appears

that all occurrences supposed to affect the life of the community have

been, and often still are, regarded as bringing with them, or as

attended by, supernatural influences (resident in mana or in spirits)

that may be dangerous. Against these perils the usual precautions are

taken, one of the commonest (as in cases mentioned in the preceding

paragraphs) being abstinence from ordinary work; the belief, apparently,

is that such work is tainted with the injurious influence with which the

atmosphere is charged.

+602+. Among religious ceremonies the expulsion of evil spirits was

naturally attended with danger, and work was prohibited. Such was the

custom in Athens at the Anthesteria and on the sixth day of the

Thargelia, and in Rome at the Lemuria.[973] Among existing tribes there

are numerous examples of this sort of restriction: it is found in West

Africa[974] and in Indonesia (Kar Nicobar, Bali[975]); in Assam it takes

the form of a taboo (_genna_) for laying to rest the ghosts of all who

have died within the year[976] (an All Souls ceremony).

+603+. In general, sacred seasons, times of great communal ceremonies,

demand the avoidance of ordinary pursuits, which, it is feared, may

imperil the success of the ceremonies by necessitating contact with

things infected or nonsacred. The earlier Hebrew usage recognized such

seasons (new moon, sabbath, and perhaps others); the later usage

increased the number of tabooed days as the ritual was expanded and

organised.[977] For Greece we have the Plynteria, on the principal day

of which work was suspended;[978] in Rome the feriae were such days,

regular or occasional.[979] The inbringing of first fruits was a

peculiarly solemn occasion, when gratitude to the deity mingled with

fear of hostile influences; so among the Hebrews[980] and at Athens[981]

and in Tonga.[982] Polynesian restrictions on the occasion of ceremonies

are given by Ellis.[983] All such days of abstinence from ordinary work

tend to become holidays, times of popular amusement, and a taboo element

may be suspected in such festivals as those of the later Hindu

period.[984] Naturally, also, days of restriction become sacred to

deities.

+604+. Great nonreligious tribal events and peculiar situations demand

restrictive precautions. Warriors prepare for an expedition by remaining

apart from their wives.[985] Women whose husbands are absent are

sometimes immured or forbidden all intercourse with human beings; by

reason of the identity of husband and wife supernatural harm to the

latter will affect the former. Afflictive occurrences, such as famines,

pestilences, earthquakes, are signs of some hostile supernatural power,

defense against which requires the avoidance of ordinary pursuits.

Arbitrary enactments by chiefs may attach restrictions to a particular

day. Sometimes restrictive usages, of obscure origin, become communal

law. Thus, every Toda clan has certain days of the week (not the

occasion of special ceremonies) in which it is forbidden to follow

ordinary occupations; among the things forbidden are the giving of

feasts, the performance of funeral ceremonies, the cutting of nails, and

shaving; women and dairymen may not leave the village, and the people

and buffaloes may not move from one place to another.[986] Doubtless

this system of prohibitions is the outcome of many generations of

experience--the organization of various local usages.

+605+. _Taboos connected with the moon._ Unusual celestial phenomena,

such as eclipses, meteors, and comets, have always excited terror, being

referred to some hostile supernatural agency, and have called forth

special placative and restrictive ceremonies. They are accounted for in

savage lore by various myths.[987] But the permanently important taboos

have been those that are associated with the phases of the moon. These

periodical transformations, unexplained and mysterious, seemed to early

man to have vital relation with all earthly life--the waxing and waning

of the moon was held to determine, through the sympathy existing between

all things, the growth and decay of plants, animals, and men.[988] Hence

arose the widely diffused belief that all important undertakings should

be begun while the moon was increasing, and innumerable regulations for

the conduct of affairs were established, not a few of them surviving in

civilized popular belief and practice to the present day.

+606+. Sometimes the changes in the moon are minutely observed. The

Nandi describe every day of the month by the appearance of the moon or

by its relation to occupations.[989] Natural observation in some cases

divided the lunar month into four parts: the Buddhist uposatha days are

the four days in the lunar month when the moon is full or new or halfway

between the two;[990] in Hawaii the 3d-6th, 14th-15th, 24th-25th,

27th-28th days of every month were taboo periods;[991] the Babylonians

had five such periods in certain months (four periods with one period

intercalated). But, though the quartering of the lunation may seem to us

the most natural division of the month, in actual practice it is rather

the exception.[992] The simplest division, indeed, is that into two

parts, determined by new moon and full moon (Cambodia, Siam; cf. the

Mexican period of thirteen days). The division into three periods of

ten days each (Egypt, Greece, Annam, Japan) ignores lunar phases and

seeks a convenient and symmetrical arrangement. With this decimal system

is perhaps connected the division of the month into six periods of five

days each (Yoruba, Java, Sumatra, and perhaps Babylonia). The Romans had

a somewhat irregular official division of the first half of the month

into three parts (Kalends, Nones, Ides) corresponding in a general way

to lunar phases, and also commercial periods of eight days (_nundinae_),

perhaps of similar origin. A seven-day division is found in Ashantiland

(and perhaps in Peru), and in Java there is reported a division of a

year into thirty periods of seven days each.

+607+. It appears, then, that in several communities there has been a

division of the month in the interests of convenience, without regard to

lunar phases; that in several cases a seven-day week has been fallen

upon; and that of the phases of the moon new moon and full moon have

been most frequently looked to as chronological marks. The new moon,

apart from its function of indicating the beginning of the lunar month,

has also by many tribes been hailed with joy as a friend restored to

life after seeming extinction.[993] The full moon, while it has not

entered so intimately into the emotional life of man, has played an

important part by marking the division of the month into two equal

parts.

+608+. _The Hebrew sabbath._ Taboo days are days of abstinence from

work, set apart as seasons of rest.[994] Such was the original form of

the Hebrew sabbath--it is described in the earlier Old Testament notices

simply as a day on which ordinary work was unlawful.[995] The history of

its precise origin and development is, however, by no means clear.

Theories that derive it from the cult of some particular deity or

regard it as primarily a day for placating a supernatural Power[996] may

be set aside. It may be assumed that it is an early institution somehow

connected with the moon, and a definite indication of origin appears to

be furnished by the fact that in a Babylonian inscription the term

_shabattu_[997] is used for the full moon. The identification of Hebrew

sabbath with full moon is favored by the collocation of new moon and

sabbath in early Old Testament documents[998] as days on which trading

was unlawful. These, obviously, were the two chief taboo days of the

month; the fact that new moon stands first is doubtless due to its

position in the month.

+609+. It is uncertain whether the Babylonian full-moon day was ritually

particularly important, and it is not clear how the Hebrews came to

invest this day, if it was their sabbath, with peculiar significance. In

the earlier legal documents it is merely a restrictive period--man and

beast are to rest from toil;[999] in later codes religious motives for

the observance of the day are introduced--first, gratitude to Yahweh for

the rescue of the nation from Egyptian bondage, and then respect for the

fact that Yahweh worked in creating the world six days and stopped work

on the seventh day.[1000] In the sixth century we find the sabbath

elevated to the position of specific sign of Yahweh's protective

relation to the people, and still later it is regarded as a day of

joyous obedience to divine law.[1001] Thus, the process of moralization

of the day was probably a long-continued one.[1002]

+610+. In the various experimental divisions of the month, as we have

seen, a week of seven days has been approached independently in several

places (Babylonia, Hawaii, Java, Ashantiland). The basis of this

division is doubtless the quartering of the lunation, and it has been

reënforced, probably, by considerations of convenience--seven is an

intermediate number, six days of work and one of abstinence and rest

(holiday) commends itself as a practical arrangement. It appears among

the Hebrews as early as the eighth century B.C.;[1003] it may have been

derived from or suggested by Babylonian usage, or it may have been an

ancient Hebrew custom--data on this point are lacking. In any case the

Jewish genius for religious organization seized on the seven-day scheme

and wove it into the system of worship. A more important step taken by

the Jews was the ignoring of lunar phases (except, of course, new moon

as the beginning of the month) and reckoning the week and the seventh

day (the sabbath) in a continuous line. We have noted cases in which

lunar phases were ignored, but this Jewish arrangement appears to be

unique, and its simplicity and convenience have commended it to the

world.

+611+. _Lucky and unlucky days._ The malefic influences emanating from

various objects and resident in the air attached themselves to certain

days, and out of the vast mass of experiences in every community there

grew up systems of days when things might or might not be done with

safety and advantage. There were the great occasions, economic and

astronomical, referred to above, and there were particular occurrences,

such as a death or a defeat, that stamped a day as unlucky. There are

many such beliefs, the origin of which is lost in a remote antiquity.

The ancient civilized nations had their codes of luck. Egypt had a long

list of unlucky days.[1004] In Babylonia onerous restrictions were

imposed on kings, seers, and physicians on certain days (the 7th, 14th,

19th, 21st, 28th) of the sixth and eighth months[1005] (and perhaps of

other months). A brief list of days favorable and unfavorable to work

is given by Hesiod.[1006] The Roman _dies nefasti_, properly

'irreligious days,' were inauspicious, unlucky.[1007] Similar lists of

lucky and unlucky days are found among existing tribes,[1008] and the

popular luck codes in Christian communities are numerous and

elaborate.[1009] These have done, and still do, great harm by

substituting irrational for rational rules of conduct.

+612+. In many of the cases cited above and in many totemistic

regulations there are prohibitions of particular sorts of food. Such

prohibitions, very numerous, are found in all grades of

civilization.[1010] They have arisen from various causes--climatic

conditions, hygienic beliefs, religious conceptions (as, for example,

the recognition of the sacred character of certain animals, and the

connection of certain foods with supernatural beings and

ceremonies[1011]), sometimes, perhaps, from accidental experiences; the

history of most of the particular usages escapes us. The fundamental

principle involved is the identity of the food with him who eats

it--when it is charged with supernatural power (by its own sacredness,

or by its connection with a sacred person, or by ecclesiastical decree)

it becomes malefic to an unauthorized person who partakes of it.

+613+. A peculiar form of prohibition of foods appears when a society is

divided into groups that are kept apart from one another by social and

religious traditions that have hardened into civic rules. In such cases

the diet of every group may be regulated by law, and it may become

dangerous and abhorrent for a superior to eat what has been touched by

an inferior. The best example of this sort of organization is the Hindu

system of castes, which has a marked and unhappy effect on the life of

the people.[1012] All such arbitrary social divisions yield gradually to

the influence of education and civic freedom, and this appears to be the

tendency in India at the present day.

+614+. _Punishment of violation of taboo._ Where the hostile power is

inherent in an object, punishment is supposed to follow violation

automatically--through contact the malefic influence passes into the

man's body and works destruction. Many experiences seem to the savage to

establish the certainty of such a result. Fervid belief, moreover,

produced by long tradition, acts powerfully on the imagination, and in

taboo-ridden communities thus often brings about the bodily ill called

for by the theory: a man who ate of food that he found on the roadside,

learning afterwards that it belonged to a chief, fell ill and died in a

few hours.[1013] When taboo regulations have been taken up into the

civil law,[1014] punishment for violations is inflicted by the civil

authorities. The tendency to make taboo a part of the civil law, and to

subordinate the former to the latter, increases with the advance of

knowledge and political organization; and one result of this movement is

that great personages are sometimes permitted to violate with impunity

taboos imposed by inferiors. The native theory in such cases doubtless

is that the great man's mana overcomes the taboo infection; but at

bottom, we may surmise, lies the sense of the dominance of civil

authority.

+615+. The chief's mana, however, sometimes comes into play as a means

of relief. A man who has inadvertently (or perhaps, in some instances,

purposely) violated a taboo may escape punishment by touching some part

of a chief's body. Here the innate potency of the superior man expels or

destroys the taboo force that has entered the inferior--another example

of how the primitive theory of taboo is modified by conceptions of

social rank and authority.

+616+. _Removal of taboo._ In general, magical ceremonies may be

employed to counteract the injurious influence resident in a thing or an

act, or to destroy the evil consequences resulting from a violation of

the taboo law. For this purpose sprinkling with water, bathing in water,

and the employment of charms are held to be effective. Thus in the old

Hebrew code the taboo resting on a house supposed to be infected with

the plague is removed by sprinkling the house with water and the blood

of a slain bird, and setting free a second bird alive, which is supposed

to carry the plague-power off with it.[1015] A woman is tabooed forty

days at the birth of a male child, and eighty days at the birth of a

female child; the taboo is removed by a holocaust and a

sin-offering.[1016]

+617+. A general taboo regulation may be set aside by tribal agreement

in the interests of convenience or pleasure. On certain occasions the

restrictions on the intercourse of the sexes are removed for a brief

period, at the expiration of which the prohibitory law resumes its

place.[1017] Many special ceremonies in various parts of the world have

to do with modifications of marriage laws.[1018]

+618+. _Taboo and magic._ Reference is made above to magical procedures

in connection with taboo customs. Taboo and magic have a common basis in

the conception of an occult force (which may conveniently be called

_mana_) resident in all things, but they contemplate different sides of

this force, and their social developments are very different. Taboo

recognizes the inherent malefic manifestations of the force (known by

supposed experience), and avoids them; magic uses the mana energy to

effect results impossible for unaided human power. In taboo man feels

himself to be under the dominance of an occult law, and his virtue is

blind obedience; in magic he feels himself to be the master of a great

energy, and what he needs is knowledge. Taboo has originated a mass of

irrational rules for the guidance of everyday life; magic has grown

into a quasi-science, with an organized body of adepts, touching

religion on one side and real science on another side.

+619+. A closer relationship between magic and taboo has been assumed in

view of the fact that both rest to some extent on the principle of the

association of ideas, the principle that like procedures produce like

results. It is true that some taboo rules depend on this

conception:[1019] the flesh of timid animals is avoided, that of

courageous animals is eaten, under the belief that the man partakes of

the character of the food he eats; association with women is sometimes

supposed to make a man or a boy effeminate. It is to be expected that in

the immense number of taboo prohibitions and precautions some should be

found in which the association of ideas is the determining factor. But

for the majority of taboo regulations this explanation does not hold. In

the economic and sexual taboos mentioned above, in the dread of corpses,

in the fear of touching things belonging to a chief, and in other cases

there are customs that can only be referred to a belief in an injurious

potency residing in certain objects.[1020] Practically, savage tribes

distinguish between taboo and magic.

+620+. Contamination of customs has always been the rule in human

communities, early and late, savage and civilized. We have seen how

there has often been a coalescence between taboo regulations proper and

ordinary civil law. To state the case more fully, these have been fused

into a unity of social life with individual initiative, magical notions,

arbitrary enactments. The actual social constitution even of slightly

developed tribes is composite, the outcome of long experience and

experiment in which all the lines of social feeling and thought have

gradually drawn together and been compacted into a more or less unitary

mass. While these lines have influenced each the others, it is possible,

to a considerable extent, to distinguish the sphere of each. Thus we

can, in many cases, see where ordinary civil law comes in to adopt,

modify, or set aside taboo rules, and so we can generally recognize the

line of demarcation between definite taboo and the conception of

association of ideas. In some cases the explanations offered of taboo

customs are afterthoughts--imagined hypotheses to account for things

already in existence.[1021]

+621+. The despotism exercised by taboo systems over certain Polynesian

communities is one of the extraordinary facts of human history. In New

Zealand and Hawaii the restrictions on conduct were so numerous and were

carried out so mercilessly that life under these conditions would seem

to us intolerable.[1022] In addition to a great number of particular

prohibitions and to the constant fear of violating the sacredness of the

persons of chiefs and trenching on their prerogatives, we find in New

Zealand the amazing rule that on the occasion of a great misfortune (as

a fire) the sufferer was to be deprived of his possessions--the blow

that fell on him was held to affix a stigma to all that he owned.

Besides the traditional taboos there were the arbitrary enactments of

chiefs which might constantly introduce new possibilities of suffering.

Yet with all this the people managed to live in some degree of comfort,

somewhat as in civilized communities life goes on in spite of

earthquakes, epidemics, bank failures, the injustices of law, and the

tyranny of the powerful.

+622+. The duration of certain taboo periods among various peoples in

various ages has varied greatly. Taboos relating to foods, chiefs, and

the intercourse of the sexes are usually permanent everyday customs;

those that relate to economic procedures are in force for the time

demanded by each industry. In Hawaii the catching of certain species of

fish was forbidden for half the year, and the Borneo harvest taboo

(carrying prohibition of other work) lasts sometimes for weeks. There is

mention in a Maori legend of a taboo of three years.[1023] According to

the later Hebrew law, in every seventh year all agricultural operations

ceased.[1024] A portent may demand a long period of restriction, as in

the case of the Roman nine-day ceremony (_novendiales feriae_).[1025] As

has been remarked above, economic taboos are often dictated by

convenience--they are prudential rules to which a supernatural sanction

has been attached.

+623+. _Diffusion of taboo._ Polynesia, particularly New Zealand and

Hawaii, is the special home of taboo--the only region in which it is

known to have taken the form of a well-compacted, all-embracing system.

It exists in Melanesia, but it is there less complicated and

general,[1026] and the same thing is true of British New Guinea.[1027]

In parts of Borneo it is found in modified form: there are two sorts of

taboo, one, called _mali_, absolutely forbidding work on certain

occasions, the other, called _penti_, allowing work if it is begun by a

person not _penti_; before the birth of a child the latter form of taboo

rests on both parents.[1028] The Land Dyaks have their _lali_ days and

the Sea Dyaks their _pemate_,[1029] these terms being the equivalents of

_taboo_.

+624+. Though there is no proof of the existence of all-pervading taboo

systems among the peoples of Asia and America, there are notices of

taboo regulations in particular cases in these regions. At the birth of

a child the Hindu father was subject to certain restrictions along with

the mother, and his taboo was removed by bathing.[1030] Among the Sioux

Indians on the death of a child the father is taboo for a period of six

months or a year.[1031] In West African Calabar there are taboos (called

_ibet_) on individuals, connected with spirits, the guardians of

children.[1032] In Assam economic and other taboos are elaborate and

well organized.[1033] Such observances, in connection with death, are

found among the Kafirs[1034] and the Eskimo.[1035]

+625+. For the ancient civilized peoples there is no proof of the

existence of general taboo systems. Various particular prohibitions,

involving a sense of danger in certain things, are mentioned above; they

relate chiefly to corpses, to infected houses, to women in connection

with menstruation and childbirth,[1036] to certain official persons (as

the Roman flamen dialis). There are also the lists of unlucky days

(Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, Roman). The origin of food prohibitions

(Hebrew, Pythagorean) is uncertain;[1037] they may have arisen, as is

suggested above, from general regard for sacred animals and plants, or

from totemistic relations, or from other conditions unknown to us; the

Hebrew lists of forbidden animals may have been gradually expanded under

the guidance of antagonism to surrounding non-Yahwistic cults. Whether

the ancient taboo usages are the remains of older more extensive systems

or represent the extreme point to which tabooism was carried by the

communities in question the data do not enable us to decide.

+626+. In various places, outside of the Polynesian area, we find terms

that bear a more or less close resemblance in signification to

taboo.[1038] Melanesian _tambu_ is that which has a sacred

character.[1039] The Borneo terms (_lali_, _pemate_, _mali_, _penti_)

are mentioned just above, and there is the _pomali_ of Timor (in the

Malayan Archipelago). The Malagasy _fady_ is defined as 'dangerous,

prohibited.'[1040] In Gabun (West Africa) _orunda_ is said to mean

'prohibited to human beings.'[1041] The Hebrew _tam[=e]_ is used of

things dangerous, not to be touched, ritually defiling,[1042] and this

sense sometimes attaches to the term _qadosh_ (rendered in the English

version by 'holy'), which involves the presence of a supernatural (and

therefore dangerous) quality.[1043]

+627+. From all the facts known it may be concluded that the conception

of taboo exists or has existed in some form in a great part of the

world,[1044] though its development has differed greatly in different

regions. In general its prevalence appears to have been in inverse

proportion to that of totemism--it is lacking or feeble in the chief

totemic centers, Australia and North America, and strongest in

Polynesia, where totemism is hardly recognizable. It may be said that,

while totemism appears in those forms of social life that have been

created by hunting communities,[1045] taboo is the product of more

settled societies, in which agriculture plays an important part. But

while this is true, at least in a general way, we are not able to trace

all the influences that have determined the development of totemism and

taboo; some of these are lost in the obscurity of the remote past, and,

unfortunately for purposes of investigation, both taboo and totemism, as

we now meet them in actual operation, are in process of decay. Why, for

instance, taboo has flourished in Hawaii with its fishing industries and

has not flourished in certain half-civilized, partly agricultural North

American tribes we are unable to explain precisely. We may fall back on

the vague statement that every community has accomplished that for which

its genius fitted it, but how the genius of any one people has fitted it

for this or that particular task it is not always possible to say.

+628+. _The disappearance of the taboo system_ in civilized nations is

to be referred to the general advance in intelligence and morality.

Usually this movement is a gradual and silent one, marked by a quiet

dropping of usages as they come to be held unnecessary or oppressive.

Sometimes a bold individual rebels against the established custom and

successfully introduces a new era: thus in Yoruba, under an old custom,

when a king died his eldest son was obliged to commit suicide; this

custom was set at defiance by a certain Adelu in 1860, and has not since

been observed.[1046] All the influences that tend to broaden thought go

to displace taboo. The growth of clans into tribes, the promotion of

voluntary organizations, secret societies, which displace the old

totemistic groups, the growth of agriculture and of commercial

relations--all things, in a word, that tend to make the individual

prominent and to further family life lead naturally to the abrogation of

oppressive taboos.

+629+. Doubtless also among lower tribes intercourse with higher

communities has had the same result. One of the most remarkable episodes

in the history of taboo is its complete overthrow in the Hawaiian

Islands in the year 1819 by a popular movement.[1047] The movement was

begun by members of the royal family, particularly by one of the queens,

and was eagerly followed by almost the whole population--the result was

the final overthrow of the system. This was before the arrival of

Christian missionaries; but as foreigners had visited the islands many

years before (Captain Cook first came in 1778), it is possible that the

suggestion of the reform came from observation of the fact that the

taboos were disregarded by those men without evil effects. In any case

it was the acceptance of better ideas by the people that led to the

revolutionary movement.

+630+. _Rôle of taboo in the history of religion._ The relation of taboo

to morality and religion and to the general organization of society

appears from the facts stated above. It has created neither the sense of

obligation nor the determination of what is right or wrong in conduct.

The sense of obligation is coeval with human society--man, at the moment

when he became man, was already potentially a moral being (and a

religious being as well).[1048] His experience of life induced rules of

conduct, and these, with the concurrence of some hardly definable

instincts, became imperative for him--the conception involved in the

word 'ought' gradually took shape. The practical content of the

conception was determined by all sorts of experience; the decisive

consideration was whether or not a given thing was advantageous. The

belief arose that certain disadvantageous things were to be referred to

extrahuman influences, and such things were of course to be

avoided--this belief produced the taboo system.

+631+. The prohibitions of morality sprang from social relations with

human beings, the prohibitions of taboo from social relations with

superhuman beings--duties to both classes of beings were defined by

experience. The rule "thou shalt not kill thy clansman" was a necessity

of human society; the rule "thou shalt not touch a corpse" sprang from

the fear of a superhuman, malign, death-dealing Power. Avoidance of

poisonous herbs was an obligation founded on common experience;

avoidance of a chief's food and certain other foods arose from dread of

offending a spirit or some occult Power. And so with all taboo

prescriptions as contrasted with others relating to conduct.[1049]

+632+. Taboo is in essence religious, not moral. In so far as it

supplies a supernatural sanction for moral conduct proper and maintains

rational social relations (as when a man's wife and other property are

made taboo to all but himself), it is often beneficent. On the other

hand, it is antimoral when it elevates to the rank of duties actions

that have no basis in human relations or are in any way antagonistic to

a healthy human instinct of right. This it has often done, and there has

accordingly resulted a conflict between it and morality--a conflict that

has formed no small part of the ethical history of the race, its echoes

remaining to the present day. In all religions it has been hard to bring

about an intelligent harmony between the moral and the ritual. Taboo was

not originally irrational--it sprang from the belief (rational for the

early time) in the presence of the supernatural in certain objects, and

this belief was held to be supported by early experience, according to

which it seemed that violations of taboo were followed by sickness or

death or other misfortunes. It came to be thought irrational with the

progress of knowledge and reflection.

+633+. Taboo, being a religious conception, has been adopted and

fostered by all popular systems of religion. It has been set aside not

by religion as such but by all the influences that have tended to

rationalize religion. Religious leaders have modified it so far as

modification has been demanded by public opinion. So enlightened and

spiritual minded a man as the apostle Paul declared that an unworthy

participation in the eucharistic celebration produced sickness and

death.[1050] Innumerable are the taboos that have passed silently into

oblivion.

+634+. Taboo, then, is a concomitant of man's moral life that has

sometimes opposed, sometimes coalesced with natural morality. Like all

widely extending institutions it has tended in part to weld men

together; like all irrational restrictions it has tended also to hold

men apart. Like all positive law it has fostered the sense of moral

obligation, but like all arbitrary law it has weakened the power of

intelligent and moral obedience. It has been not the guardian of

morality, but a temporary form (useful in a primitive stage of society)

in which a part of the moral law expressed itself. The real moral force

of society has been sympathetic social intercourse, which, under the

guidance of an implicit moral ideal, has been constantly employed in

trying to spiritualize or to reject those enactments of taboo that have

been proved by experience, observation, and reflection to be

injurious.[1051]