is kept a secret: the women and children do not know it; it is never used in the ordinary life. This is because it has a religious character.10 There are even ceremonies during which it is necessary to speak a special language which must not be used for profane purposes. It is the beginning of a sacred language.11
Not only are the sacred beings separated from the profane, but also nothing which either directly or indirectly concerns the
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profane life should be confused with the religious life. Complete nudity is frequently demanded of the native as a prerequisite to being admitted to participation in the rites;1 he is required to strip himself of all his habitual ornaments, even those to which he is the most attached, and from which he separates himself the least willingly because of the protecting virtues he attributes to them.2 If he is obliged to decorate himself to play his part in the ritual, this decoration has to be made specially for the occasion; it is a ceremonial costume, a gala dress.3 As these ornaments are sacred, owing to the use made of them, he is forbidden to use them in profane affairs ; when the ceremony is finished, they are buried or burnt;4 the men must even wash themselves in such a way as to carry away with them no trace of the decorations with which they were adorned.5
In general, all acts characteristic of the ordinary life are forbidden while those of the religious life are taking place. The act of eating is, of itself, profane; for it takes place every day, it satisfies essentially utilitarian and material needs and it is a part of our ordinary existence.6 This is why it is prohibited in religious times. When one totemic group has loaned its churinga to a foreign clan, it is an exceptionally solemn moment when they are brought back and put into the ertnatulunga ; all those who take part in the ceremony must fast as long as it lasts, and it lasts a long time.7 The same rule is observed during the rites,8 of which we shall speak in the next chapter, as well as at certain moments of the initiation.9
For this same reason, all temporal occupations are suspended while the great religious solemnities are taking place. According to a remark of Spencer and Gillen,10 which we have already had occasion to cite, the life of the Australian is divided into two very distinct parts : the one is devoted to hunting, fishing and warfare ; the other is consecrated to the cult, and these two forms
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of activity mutually exclude and repel one another. It is on this principle that the universal institution of religious days of rest reposes. The distinctive character of the feast-days in all known religions is the cessation of work and the suspension of public and private life, in so far as it does not have a religious objective. This repose is not merely a sort of temporary relaxation which men have given themselves in order to give themselves up more freely to the sentiments of joy ordinarily awakened by the feast-days; for they are sad feasts, consecrated to mourning and
10Ibid., p. 657 ; Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 139 ; Nor. Tr.. pp. 580 ff.
11Howitt, Nat. Tr.. p. 537.
1Howitt, Nat. Ту., pp. 544, 597, 614, б20.
2For example, the hair belt which he ordinarily wears (Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Гг., р. 171).
3Ibid., p. 624 Я.
4Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 556.
5Ibid., p. 587.
6This act takes on a sacred character, it is true, when the elements eaten are sacred. But in itself, the act is so very profane that eating a sacred food always constitutes a profanation. The profanation may be permitted or even ordered, but, as we shall see below, only on condition that rites attenuating or expiating it precede or accompany it. The existence of these rites shows that, by itself, the sacred thing should not be eaten.
7Nor. Tr., p. 263.
8Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 171.
9Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 674. Perhaps the rule against talking during the great religious solemnities is due to the same cause. Men speak, and especially in a high voice, during ordinary life; then, in the religious life they ought to keep still or talk in a low voice. This same consideration is not foreign to the alimentary interdictions (see above, p. 128).
10Nor. Tr., p. 33.
repentance, and during which this cessation is no less obligatory. This is because work is an eminent form of profane activity : it has no other apparent end than to provide for the temporal necessities of life ; it puts us in relations with ordinary things only. On feast days, on the contrary, the religious life attains an exceptional degree of intensity. So the contrast between the two forms of existence is especially marked at this moment; consequently, they cannot remain near to each other. A man cannot approach his god intimately while he still bears on him marks of his profane life; inversely, he cannot return to his usual occupations when a rite has just sanctified him. So the ritual day of rest is only one particular case of the general incompatibility separating the sacred from th» profane ; it is the result of an interdiction.
It would be impossible to enumerate here all the different interdictions which have been observed, even in the Australian religions alone. Like the notion of sacredness upon which it rests, the system of interdicts extends into the most diverse relations; it is even used deliberately for utilitarian ends.1
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But howsoever complex it may be, it finally rests upon two fundamental interdictions, which summarize it and dominate it.
In the first place, the religious life and the profane life cannot coexist in the same place. If the former is to develop, a special spot must be placed at its disposition, from which the second is excluded. Hence comes the founding of temples and sanctuaries :
these are the spots awarded to sacred beings and things and serve them as residences, for they cannot establish themselves in any place except on the condition of entirely appropriating to themselves all within a certain distance. Such arrangements are so indispensable to all religious life that even the most inferior religions cannot do without them. The ertnatulunga, the spot where the churinga are deposited, is a veritable sanctuary. So the uninitiated are not allowed to approach it. It is even forbidden to carry on any profane occupation whatsoever there. As we shall presently see, there are other holy places where important ceremonies are celebrated.1
Likewise, the religious life and the profane life cannot coexist in the same unit of time. It is necessary to assign determined days or periods to the first, from which all profane occupations are excluded. Thus feast days are born. There is no religion, and, consequently, no society which has not known and practised this division of time into two distinct parts, alternating with one another according to a law varying with the peoples and the civilizations ; as we have already pointed out, it was probably the necessity of this alternation which led men to introduce into the continuity and homogeneity of duration, certain distinctions and differentiations which it does not naturally have.2 Of course, it is almost impossible that the religious life should ever succeed in concentrating itself hermetically in the places and times which are thus attributed to it; it is inevitable that a little of it should filter out. There are always some sacred things outside the sanctuaries ; there are some rites
1Since there is a sacred principle, the soul, within each man, from the very first, the individual is surrounded by interdicts, the original form of the moral interdicts which isolate and protect the human person to-day. Tlius the corpse ef his victim is considered dangerous for a murderer (Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 492), and is taboo for him. Now the interd.cts having this origin are frequently used by individuals as a means of withdrawing certain things from common use and thus establishing a property right over them. " When a man goes away from the camp, leaving his arms and food there," says Roth, speaking of the tribes on the Palmer River (North Queensland), " if he urinates near the objects he leaves, they become tami (equivalent to taboo) and he may be sure of finding them intact on his return " {North Queensland Ethnography, in Records of the Australian Museum. Vol. VII, No. 2, p. 75). This is because the urine, like the blood, is believed to contain some of the sacred force which is personal to the individual. So it keeps strangers at a distance. For the same reasons, the spoken word may also serve as a vehicle for these same influences; that is how it becomes possible to prevent access to an object by a mere verbal declaration. This power of making interdicts varies with different individuals ; it is greater as their character is more sacred. Men have this privilege almost to the exclusion of women (Roth cites one single case of a taboo imposed by women) ; it is at its maximum with the chiefs and old men, who use it to monopolize whatever things they find it convenient to (Roth, ibid.. p. 77). Thus the religious interdict becomes a right of property and an administrative rule.
1See below, this book. ch. ii.
2See above, p. 10.
that can be celebrated on work-days. But these are sacred things of the second rank and rites of a lesser importance. Concentration remains the dominating characteristic of this organization. Generally this concentration is complete for all that concerns the public cult, which cannot be celebrated except in common. The individual, private cult is the only one which comes very near to the temporal life. Thus the contrast between these two successive phases of human life attains its maximum of intensity in the inferior societies ; for it is there that the individual cult is the most rudimentary.3
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II
Up to the present, the negative cult has been presented to us only as a system of abstentions. So it seems to serve only to inhibit activity, and not to stimulate it or to modify it. And yet, as an unexpected reaction to this inhibitive effect, it is found to exercise a positive action of the highest importance over the religious and moral nature of the individual.
In fact, owing to the barrier which separates the sacred from the profane, a man cannot enter into intimate relations with sacred things except after ridding himself of all that is profane in him. He cannot lead a religious life of even a slight intensity unless he commences by withdrawing more or less completely from the temporal life. So the negative cult is in one sense a means in view of an end : it is a condition of access to the positive cult. It does not confine itself to protecting sacred beings from vulgar contact; it acts upon the worshipper himself and modifies his condition positively. The man who lias submitted himself to its prescribed interdictions is not the same afterwards as he was before. Before, he was an ordinary being who, for this reason, had to keep at a distance from the religious forces. Afterwards, he is on a more equal footing with them ; he has approached the sacred by the very act of leaving the profane ; he has purified and sanctified himself by the very act of detaching himself from the base and trivial matters that debased his nature. So the negative rites confer efficient powers just as well as the positive ones ; the first, like the second, can serve to elevate the religious tone of the individual. According to a very true remark which has been made, no one can engage in a religious ceremony of any importance without first submitting himself to a sort of preliminary initiation which introduces him progressively into the sacred world.1 Unctions, lustrations, benedictions or any essentially positive operation may be used for this purpose ; but the same result may be attained by means of fasts and vigils or retreat and silence, that is to say, by ritual abstinences, which are nothing more than certain interdictions put into practice.
When there are only particular and isolated negative rites, their positive action is generally too slight to be easily perceptible. But there are circumstances when a whole system of interdictions is concentrated on one man ; in these cases, their effects accumulate, and thus become more manifest. This takes place in Australia at the time of the initiation. The neophyte is submitted to a
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great variety of negative rites. He must withdraw from the society in which his existence has been passed up till then, and from almost all human society. Not only is it forbidden for him to see women and uninitiated persons,1 but he also goes to live in the brush, far from his fellows, under the direction of some old men who serve him as godfathers.2 So very true is it that the forest is considered his natural environment, that in a certain number of tribes, the word with which the initiation is designated signifies that which is from the forest.3 For this same reason, he is
3 See above, p. 219.
1 See Hubert and Mauss, Essai sur la nature et la function du sacrifice, in Melanges d'histoire des religions, pp. 22 в.
1Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 560, 657, 659, 66i. Even the shadow of a woman must not fall upon him (ibid... p. 633). Whatever he has touched must not be touched by a woman (ibid., p. 621).
2Ibid., pp. 561, 563, 670 f. ; Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 223 ; Nor. Tr., PP34°> 342.
3The word Jeraeil, for example, among the Kurnai, or Kuringal among the Yuin and Wolgal (Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 518, 617).
frequently decorated with leaves during the ceremonies at which he assists.4 In this way he passes long months,5 interspersed from time to time with rites in which he must take a part. This time is a period of all sorts of abstinences for him. A multitude of foods are forbidden him; he is allowed only that quantity of food which is absolutely indispensable for the maintenance of life;6 he is even sometimes bound to a rigorous fast,7 or must eat impure foods.8 When he eats, he must not touch the food with his hands ; his godfathers put it into his mouth for him.9 In some cases, he must go to beg his food.10 Likewise, he sleeps only as much as is indispensable.11 He must abstain from talking, to the extent of not uttering a word ; it is by signs that he makes known his needs.12 He must not wash;13 sometimes he must not move. He remains stretched out upon the earth, immobile14 and without clothing of any sort.15 Now the result of the numerous interdictions is to bring about a radical change of condition in the initiate. Before the initiation, he lived with the women ; he was excluded from the cult. After it, he is admitted to the society of men ; he takes part in the rites, and has acquired a sacred character. The metamorphosis is so complete that it is sometimes represented as a second birth. They imagine that the profane person, who was the young man up till then, has died, that he has been killed and carried away by the god of the initiation, Bunjil, Baiame or
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Daramulun, and that quite another individual has taken the place of the one that no longer is.i So here we -find the very heart of the positive effects of which negative rites are capable. Of course we do not mean to say that these latter produced this great transformation all by themselves ; but they certainly contributed to it, and largely.
In the light of these facts, we are able to understand what asceticism is, what place it occupies in the religious life and whence come the virtues which have generally been attributed to it. In fact, there is no interdict, the observance of which does not have an ascetic character to a certain degree. Abstaining from something which may be useful or from a form of activity which, since it is usual, should answer to some human need, is, of necessity, imposing constraints and renunciations. So in order to have real asceticism, it is sufficient for these practices to develop in such a way as to become the basis of a veritable scheme of life. Normally, the negative cult serves only as an introduction and preparation for the positive cult. But it sometimes happens that it frees itself from this subordination and passes to the first place, and that the system of interdicts swells and exaggerates itself to the point of usurping the entire existence. Thus a systematic asceticism is born which is consequently nothing more than a hypertrophy of the negative cult. The special virtues which it is believed to confer are only an amplified form of those conferred, to a lesser degree, by the practice of any interdiction. They have the same origin ; for they both rest on the principle that a man sanctifies himself only by efforts made to separate himself from the profane. The pure ascetic is a man who raises himself above men and acquires a special sanctity by fasts and vigils, by retreat and silence, or in a word, by privations, rather than by acts of positive piety (offerings, sacrifices, prayers, etc.). History shows to what a high religious prestige one may attain by this method: the Buddhist saint is essentially an ascetic, and he is equal or superior to the gods.
It follows that asceticism is not a rare, exceptional and nearly abnormal fruit of the religious life, as some have supposed it to be ; on the contrary, it is one of its essential elements.
4Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 348.
5Howitt, p. 561.
6Howitt, pp. 633, 538, 560.
7Ibid., p. 674 ; Parker, Euahlayi, p. 75.
8Ridley, Kamilaroi, p. 154
9Howitt, p. 563. i
10Ibid., p. 6ll.
11Ibid.. pp. 549, 674.
12Howitt, Nat. Tr., pp. 580, 596, 604, 668, 670 ; Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., pp. 223, 35i.
13Howitt, p. 557.
14Ibid., p. 604 ; Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 351.
15Howitt, p. 611.
Every religion contains it, at least in germ, for there are none in which a system of interdicts is not found. Their only difference in this regard which there may be between cults is that this germ is more or less developed in different ones. It should also be added that there probably is not a single one in which this development does not take, at least temporarily, the cliaracteristic traits of « Howitt, p. 589.
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real asceticism. This is what generally takes place at certain critical periods when, for a relatively short time, it is necessary to bring about a grave change of condition in a subject. Then, in order to introduce him more rapidly into the circle of sacred things with which he must be put in contact, he is separated violently from the profane world; but this does not come without many abstinences and an exceptional recrudescence of the system of interdicts. Now this is just what happens in Australia at the moment of initiation. In order to transform youths into men, it is necessary to make them live the life of a veritable ascetic. Mrs. Parker very justly calls them the monks of Baiame.1
But abstinences and privations do not come without suffering. We hold to the profane world by all the fibres of our flesh ; our senses attach us to it; our life depends upon it. It is not merely the natural theatre of our activity ; it penetrates us from every side ; it is a part of ourselves. So we cannot detach ourselves from it without doing violence to our nature and without painfully wounding our instincts. In other words, the negative cult cannot develop without causing suffering. Pain is one of its necessary conditions. Some have been led to think of it as constituting a sort of rite in itself ; they have seen in it a state of grace which is to be sought and aroused, even artificially, because of the powers and privileges which it confers in the same way as these systems of interdicts, of which it is the natural accompaniment. So far as we know, Preuss is the first who has realized the religious role2 which is attributed to suffering in the inferior societies. He cites the case of the Arapahs who inflict veritable torments upon themselves in order to become immune
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from the dangers of battle ; of the Big Belly Indians who submit to actual tortures on the eve of military expeditions ; of the Hupa who swim in icy rivers and then remain stretched out on the bank as long as possible, in order to assure themselves of success in their enterprises ; of the Karaya who from time to time draw blood from their arms and legs by means of scratches made out of the teeth of fish, in order to strengthen their muscles ; of the men of Dallmannhafen (Emperor William's Land in New Guinea) who combat the sterility of their women by making bloody incisions in the upper part of their thighs.1
But similar facts may be found without leaving Australia, especially in the course of the initiation ceremonies. Many of the rites practised on this occasion consist in systematically inflicting certain pains on the neophyte in order to modify his condition and to make him acquire
1One may compare these ascetic practices with those used at the initiation of a magician. Just like the young neophyte, the apprentice magician is submitted to a multitude of interdictions, the observation of which contributes to his acquisition of his specific powers (see L'Origine des pouvoirs magiques, in Hubert and Mauss, Melanges d'histoire des religions, pp. 171, 173, 176). The same is true for the husband and wife on the day before and the day after the wedding (taboos of the betrothed and newly married) ; this is because marriage also implies a grave change of condition. We limit ourselves to mentioning these facts summarily, without stopping over them ; for the first concern magic, which is not our subject, and the second have to do with that system of juridico-religious rules which relates to the commerce of the sexes, the study of which will be possible only in conjunction with the other precepts of primitive conjugal morality.
2It is true that Preuss interprets these facts by saying that suffering is a way of increasing a man's magic force (die menschliche Zauberkraft} ; from this expression, one might believe that suffering is a magic rite, not a religious one. But as we have already pointed out, Preuss gives the name magic, without great precision, to all anonymous and impersonal forces, whether they belong to magic or religion. Of course, there are tortures which are used to make magicians ; but many of those which we have described are a part of the real religious ceremonies, and, consequently, it is the religious state of the individuals which they modify.
1Preuss, Der Ursprung der Religion und Kunst, in Globus, LXXXVIII. pp. 309—400. Under this same rubric
Preuss classes a great number of incongruous rites, for example, effusions of blood which act in virtue of the positive qualities attributed to blood and not because of the suffering which they imply. We retain only those in which suffering is an essential element of the rite and the cause of its efficacy.