attached to it as to a highly respected tradition and because they leave it with a feeling of moral well-being. Other considerations have only a complimentary part; they may serve to strengthen the worshippers in the attitude prescribed by the rite, but they are not the reason for the existence of this attitude.
So we have here a whole group of ceremonies whose sole purpose is to awaken certain ideas and sentiments, to attach the present to the past or the individual to the group. Not only are they unable to serve useful ends, but the worshippers themselves demand none. This is still another proof that the psychical
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state in which the assembled group happens to be constitutes the only solid and stable basis of what we may call the ritual mentality. The beliefs which attribute such or such a physical efficaciousness to the rites are wholly accessory and contingent, for they may be lacking without causing any alteration in the essentials of the rite. Thus the ceremonies of the Wollunqua show even better than the preceding ones the fundamental function of the positive cult.
If we have insisted especially upon these solemnities, it is because of their exceptional importance. But there are others with exactly the same character. Thus, the Warramunga have a totem " of the laughing boy." Spencer and Gillen say that the clan bearing this name has the same organization as the other totemic groups. Like them, it has its sacred places (mungai) where the founder-ancestor celebrated ceremonies in the fabulous times, and where he left behind him spiritchildren who became the men of the clan ; the rites connected with this totem are indistinguishable from those relating to the animal or vegetable totems.1 Yet it is evident that they could not have any physical efficaciousness. They consist in a series of four ceremonies which repeat one another more or less, but which are intended only to amuse and to provoke laughter by laughter, in fine, to maintain the gaiety and good-humour which the group has as its speciality.2
We find more than one totem among the Arunta themselves which has no other Intichiuma. We have seen that among this people, the irregularities and depressions of the land, which mark the places where some ancestor sojourned, sometimes serve as totems.3 Ceremonies are attached to these totems which are manifestly incapable of physical effects of any sort. They can consist only in representations whose object is to commemorate the past, and they can aim at no end beyond this commemoration.4
While they enable us to understand the nature of the cult better, these ritual representations also put into evidence an important element of religion : this is the recreative and esthetic element.
We have already had occasion to show that they are closely akin to dramatic representations.5 This kinship appears with still greater clarity in the latter ceremonies of which we have
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spoken. Not only do they employ the same processes as the real drama, but they also pursue an end of the same sort : being foreign to all utilitarian ends, they make men forget the real world and transport them into another where their imagination is more at ease ; they distract. They sometimes
was attributed to the fact that they had neglected to take away the debris of the hillock. So this removal is demanded by the Wollunqua itself, and in no way intended to intimidate it and exercise a coercive influence over it. This is probably merely one case of a more general rule which is in force among the Warra-munga : the instruments of the cult must be destroyed after each ceremony. Thus the ritual ornamentations with which the officiants are decorated are violently torn off from them when the rite is terminated (Nor. Tr., p. 205).
1Nor. Tr., pp. 207-208.
2Ibid.. p. 216.
3See, in the list of totems drawn up by Strehlow, Nos. 432-442 (II, p. 72).
4See Strehlow, III, p, 8. Among the Arunta there is also a totem Worra which greatly resembles
the " laughing boy " totem of Warramunga (ibid., and III, p. 124). Worra means young men. The object of the ceremony is to make the young men take more pleasure in the game labara (for this game, see Strehlow, I. P. 55, n. i).
5 See above, p. 373.
even go so far as to have the outward appearance of a recreation : the assistants may be seen laughing and amusing themselves openly.1
Representative rites and collective recreations are even so close to one another that men pass from one sort to the other without any break of continuity. The characteristic feature of the properly religious ceremonies is that they must be celebrated on a consecrated ground, from which women and non-initiated persons are excluded.2 But there are others in which this religious character is somewhat effaced, though it has not disappeared completely. They take place outside the ceremonial ground, which proves that they are already laicized to a certain degree; but profane persons, women and children, are not yet admitted to them. So they are on the boundary between the two domains. They generally deal with legendary personages, but ones having no regular place in the frame-work of the totemic religion. They are spirits, more generally malevolent ones, having relations with the magicians rather than the ordinary believers, and sorts of bugbears, in whom men do not believe with the same degree of seriousness and firmness of conviction as in the proper totemic beings and things.3 As the bonds by which the events and personages represented are attached to the history of the tribe relax, these take on a proportionately more unreal appearance, while the corresponding ceremonies change in nature. Thus men enter into the domain of pure fancy, and pass from the commemorative rite to the ordinary corrobbori, a simple public merry-making, which has nothing religious about it and in which all may take part indifferently. Perhaps some of these representations, whose sole object now is to distract, are ancient rites, whose character has been changed. In fact, the distinction between these two sorts of ceremonies is so variable that it is impossible to state with precision to which of the two kinds they belong.4
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It is a well-known fact that games and the principal forms of art seem to have been born of religion and that for a long time they retained a religious character.1 We now see what tlie reasons for this are : it is because the cult, though aimed primarily at other ends, has also been a sort of recreation for men. Religion has not played this role by hazard or owing to a happy chance, but through a necessity of its nature. Though, as we have established, religious thought is something very different from a system of fictions, still the realities to which it corresponds express themselves religiously only when religion transfigures them. Between society as it is objectively and the sacred things which express it symbolically, the distance is considerable. It has been necessary that the impressions really felt by men, which served as the original matter of this construction, should ч be interpreted, elaborated and transformed until they became unrecognizable. So the world of religious things is a partially imaginary world, though only in its outward form, and one which therefore lends itself more readily to the free creations of the mind. Also, since the intellectual forces which serve to make it are intense and tumultuous, the unique task of expressing the real with the aid of appropriate symbols is not enough to. occupy them. A surplus generally remains available which seeks to employ itself in supplementary and superfluous works of luxury, that is to say, in works of art. There are practices as well as beliefs of this sort. The state of effervescence in which the assembled worshippers find themselves must be translated outwardly by exuberant movements which are not easily subjected to too carefully defined ends. In part, they escape aimlessly, they spread themselves for the mere pleasure of so doing, and they take delight in all sorts of games. Besides, in so far as the beings to whom the cult is addressed are imaginary, they are not able to contain and regulate this exuberance ; the pressure of tangible and
1A case of this sort will be found in Nor. Tr., p. 204.
2Nat. Tr., p. 118 and n. 2, pp. 618 ff. ; Nor. Tr.. pp. 716 ff. There are some sacred ceremonies from which women are not wholly excluded (see, for example. Nor. Tr., pp. 375 Я.) ; but this is exceptional.
3See Nat. Tr., pp. 329 ff. ; Nor. Tr., pp. 210 ff.
4This is the case, for example, with the corrobbori of the Molonga among the Pitta-Pitta of Queensland and the neighbouring tribes (see Roth, Ethnog. Studies among the N.W. Central Queensland Aborigines, pp. 120 ff.).— References for the ordinary corrobbori will be found in Stirling, liep. of the Horn Expedition to Central Australia, Part IV, p. 72, and in Roth, of. cit., pp. 117 в.
1On this question see the excellent work of Culin, Games of the North American Indians {XXI Vth Rep. of the
Bureau of Am. Ethnol.).
resisting realities is required to confine activities to exact and economical forms. Therefore one exposes oneself to grave misunderstandings if, in explaining rites, he believes that each gesture has a precise object and a definite reason for its existence. There are some which serve nothing; they merely answer the need felt by worshippers for action, motion, gesticulation. They are to be seen jumping, whirling, dancing, crying and singing, though it may not always be possible i to give a meaning to all this agitation.
Therefore religion would not be itself if it did not give some place to the free combinations of thought and activity, to play,
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to art, to all that recreates the spirit that has been fatigued by the too great slavishness of daily work : the very same causes which called it into existence make it a necessity. Art is not merely an external ornament with which the cult has adorned itself in order to dissimulate certain of its features which may be too austere and too rude ; but rather, in itself, the cult is something aesthetic. Owing to the well-known connection which mythology has with poetry, some have wished to exclude the former from religion;1 the truth is that there is a poetry inherent in all religion. The representative rites which have just been studied make this aspect of the religious life manifest; but there are scarcely any rites which do not present it to some degree.
One would certainly commit the gravest error if he saw only this one aspect of religion, or if he even exaggerated its importance. When a rite serves only to distract, it is no longer a rite. The moral forces expressed by religious symbols are real forces with which we must reckon and with which we cannot do what we will. Even when the cult aims at producing no physical effects, but limits itself to acting on the mind, its action is in quite a different way from that of a pure work of art. The representations which it seeks to awaken and maintain in our minds are not vain images which correspond to nothing in reality, and which we call up aimlessly for the mere satisfaction of seeing them appear and combine before our eyes. They are as necessary for the well working of our moral life as our food is for the maintenance of our physical life, -for it is through them that the group affirms and maintains itself, and we know the point to which this is indispensable for the individual. So a rite is something different from a game; it is a part of the serious life. But if its unreal and imaginary element is not essential, nevertheless it plays a part which is by no means negligible. It has its share in the feeling of comfort which the worshipper draws from the rite performed ; for recreation is one of the forms of the moral remaking which is the principal object of the positive rite. After we have acquitted ourselves of our ritual duties, we enter into the profane life with increased courage and ardour, not only because we come into relations with a superior source of energy, but also because our forces have been reinvigorated by living, for a few moments, in a life that is less-strained, and freer and easier. Hence religion acquires a charm which is not among the slightest of its attractions.
This is why the very idea of a religious ceremony of some importance awakens the idea of a feast. Inversely, every feast,
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even when it has purely lay origins, has certain characteristics of the religious ceremony, for in every case its effect is to bring men together, to put the masses into movement and thus to excite a state of effervescence, and sometimes even of delirium, which is not without a certain kinship with the religious state. A man is carried outside himself and diverted from his ordinary occupation and preoccupations. Thus the same manifestations are to be observed in each case : cries, songs, music, violent movements, dances, the search for exciteants which raise the vital level, etc. It has frequently been remarked that popular feasts lead to excesses, and cause men to lose sight of the distinction separating the licit from the illicit;1 there are also religious ceremonies which make it
1 See above, p. 81.
1 Especially in sexual matters. In the ordinary corrobbori, sexual licence is frequent (see Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., pp. 96-97, and Nor. Tr., pp. 136-137). On sexual licence in popular feasts in general, see Hagelstrange, Suddeutsches Bauernleben im Mitlelalter, pp. 221 ft.
almost necessary to violate the rules which are ordinarily the most respected.2 Of course this does not mean that there is no way to distinguish these two forms of public activity. The simple merrymaking, the profane corrobbori, has no serious object, while, as a whole, a ritual ceremony always has an important end. Still it is to be remembered that there is perhaps no merry-making in which the serious life does not have some echo. The difference consists rather in the unequal proportions in which the two elements are combined.
III
A more general fact confirms the views which precede. In their first book. Spencer and Gillen presented the Inti-chiuma as a perfectly definite ritual entity : they spoke of it as though it were an operation destined exclusively for the assurance of the reproduction of the totemic species, and it seemed as though it ought to lose all meaning, if this unique function were set aside. But in their Northern Tribes of Central Australia, the same authors use a different language, though perhaps without noticing it. They recognize that these same ceremonies may take place either in the regular Intichiuma or in the initiation
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rites.1 So they serve equally in the making of animals or plants of the totemic species, or in conferring upon novices the qualities necessary to make them regular members of the men's society.2 From this point of view, the Intichiuma takes on a new aspect. It is no longer a distinct ritual mechanism, resting upon principles of its own, but a particular application of more general ceremonies which may be utilized for very different ends. For this reason, in their later work, before speaking of the Intichiuma and the initiation they consecrate a special chapter to the totemic ceremonies in general, making abstraction of the diverse forms which they may take, according to the ends for which they are employed.3
This fundamental indeterroination of the totemic ceremonies was only indicated by Spencer and Gillen, and rather indirectly at that; but it has now been confirmed by Strehlow in more explicit terms. " When they lead the young novices through the different feasts of the initiation," he says, " they perform before them a series of ceremonies which, though reproducing, even in their most characteristic details, the rites of the regular cult (viz. the rites which Spencer and Gillen call the Intichiuma'), do not have, nevertheless, the end of multiplying the corresponding totem and causing it to prosper."4 It is the same ceremony which serves in the two cases ; the name alone is not the same. When its special object is the reproduction of the species, they call it mbatjalkatiuma and it is only when it is a part of the process of initiation that they give it the name Intichiuma.5
Moreover, these two sorts of ceremonies are distinguished from one another among the Arunta by certain secondary characteristics. Though the structure of the rite is the same in both cases, still we know that the effusions of blood and, more generally, the oblations characteristic of the Arunta Intichiuma are not found in the initiation ceremonies. Moreover, among this same people, the Intichiuma takes place at a spot regularly fixed by tradition, to which men must make a
2 Thus the exogamic rules must be violated in the course of certain religious ceremonies (see above, p. 216, n. i). A precise ritual meaning probably could not be frn'- j for these excesses. It is merely a mechanical consequence of the state of super-excitation provoked by the ceremony. It is an example of rites having no definite object themselves, but which are mere discharges of energy (see above, p. 3Si). The native does not assign them a definite end either ; he merely says that if these licences are not committed, the rite will not produce its effects ; the ceremony will fail.
1Here are the very words used by Spencer and Gillen : " They (the ceremonies connected with the totems) are often, though by no means always, associated with the performance of the ceremonies attendant upon initiation of young men, or are connected with the Intichiuma " (Nor. Tr., p. 178).
2We leave aside the question of what this character consists in. It is a problem which would lead us into a very long and technical development and which must therefore be treated by itself. Moreover, it does not concern the propositions established in this present work.
3This is chapter vi, entitled Ceremonies Connected with the Totems.
4Strehlow, III, pp. 1-2.
5This explains the error of which Strehlow accuses Spencer and Gillen : that they applied to one form of the ceremony the term which is more appropriate for the other. But in these conditions, the error hardly seems to have the gravity attributed to it by Strehlow.
pilgrimage, while
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the scene of the initiation ceremonies is purely conventional.1 But when the Intichiuma consists in a simple dramatic representation, as is the case among the Warramunga, the lack of distinction between the two rites is complete. In the one as in the other, they commemorate the past, they put the myth into action, they play—and one cannot play in two materially different ways. So, according to the circumstances, one and the same ceremony serves two distinct functions.2
It may even lend itself to other uses. We know that as blood is a sacred thing, women must not see it flow. Yet it happens sometimes that a quarrel breaks out in their presence and ends in the shedding of blood. Thus an infraction of the ritual is committed. Among the Arunta, the man whose blood flowed first must, to atone for this fault, " celebrate a ceremony connected with the totem either of his father or of his mother";3 this ceremony has a special name, Alua u-parilima, which means the washing away of blood. But in itself, it does not differ from those celebrated at the time of the initiation or in the Intichiuma : it represents an event of ancestral history. So it may serve equally to initiate, to act upon the totemic species or to expiate a sacrilege. We shall see that a totemic ceremony may also take the place of a funeral rite.4
MM. Hubert and Mauss have already pointed out a functional ambiguity of this same sort in the case of sacrifice, and more especially, in that of Hindu sacrifice.5 They have shown how the sacrifice of communion, that of expiation, that of a vow and that of a contract are only variations of one and the same mechanism. We now see that the fact is much more primitive,
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and in no way limited to the institution of sacrifice. Perhaps no rite exists which does not present a similar indetermination. The mass serves for marriages as for burials ; it redeems the faults of the dead and wins the favours of the deity for the living, etc. Fasting is an expiation and a penance ; but it is also a preparation for communion; it even confers positive virtues. This ambiguity shows that the real function of a rite does not consist in the particular and definite effects which it seems to aim at and by which it is ordinarily characterized, but rather in a general action which, though always and everywhere the same, is nevertheless capable of taking on different forms according to the circumstances. Now this is just what is demanded by the theory which we have proposed. If the real function of the cult is to awaken within the worshippers a certain state of soul, composed of moral force and confidence, and if the various effects imputed to the rites are due only to a secondary and variable determination of this fundamental state, it is not surprising if a single rite, while keeping the same composition and structure, seems to produce various effects. For the mental dispositions, the excitation of which is its permanent function, remain the same in every case ; they depend upon the fact that the group is assembled, and not upon the special reasons for which it is assembled. But, on the other hand, they are interpreted differently according to the circumstances to which they are applied. Is it a physical result which they wish to obtain ? The
1It cannot be otherwise. In fact, as the initiation is a tribal feast, novices of different totems are initiated at the same time. So the ceremonies which thus succeed one another in the same place have to do with several totems, and, therefore, they must take place away from the places with which they are connected by the myth.
2It will now be understood why we have never studied the initiation rites by themselves : it is because they are not a ritual entity, but are formed by the conglomeration of rites of different sorts. There are interdictions, ascetic rites and representative ceremonies which cannot be distinguished from those celebrated at the time of the Intichiuma. So we had to dismember this composite system and treat each of the different rites composing it separately, classifying them with the similar rites to which they are to be related. We have also seen (pp. 285 ff.) that the initiation has served as the point of departure for a new religion which tends to surpass totemism. But it has been sufficient for us to show that totemism contained the germs of this religion ; we have had no need of following out its development. The object of this book is to study the elementary beliefs and practices ; so we must stop at the moment when they give birth to more complex forms.
3Nat. Tr., p. 463. If the individual may choose between the ceremonies of his paternal and maternal totems, it is because, owing to reasons which we have set forth above (p. 183), he participates in both.
4See below, ch. v, p. 105.
5See Essai sur le Sacrifice, in Melanges d'hisloire des Religions, p. 83.