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This is as much as to say that there would have been no sacred beings and therefore no religion.
But even supposing that this sensation of being " overwhelmed " were really able to suggest religious ideas, it could not have produced this effect upon the primitive, for he does not have it. He is in no way conscious that cosmic forces are so superior to his own. Since science has not yet taught him modesty, he attributes to himself an empire over things which he really does not have, but the illusion of which is enough to prevent his feeling dominated by them. As we have already pointed out, he thinks that he can command the elements, release the winds, compel the rain to fall, or stop the sun, by a gesture, etc.1 Religion itself contributes to giving him this security, for he believes that it arms him with extended powers over nature. His rites are, in part, means destined to aid him in imposing his will upon the world. Thus, far from being due to the sentiment which men should have of their littleness before the universe, religions are rather inspired by the contrary sentiment. Even the most elevated and idealistic have the effect of reassuring men in their struggle with things : they teach that faith is, of itself, able " to move mountains," that is to say, to dominate the forces of nature. How could they give rise to this confidence if they had had their origin in a sensation of feebleness and impotency ?
Finally, if the objects of nature really became sacred because of their imposing forms or the forces which they manifest, then the sun, the moon, the sky, the mountains, the sea, the winds, in a word, the great cosmic powers, should have been the first to be raised to this dignity ; for there are no others more fitted to appeal to the senses and the imagination. But as a matter of fact, they were divinized but slowly. The first beings to which the cult is addressed—the proof will be found in the chapters which follow—are humble vegetables and animals, in relation to which men could at least claim an equality : they are ducks, rabbits, kangaroos, lizards, worms, frogs, etc. Their objective qualities surely were not the origin of the religious sentiments which they inspired.
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CHAPTER IV
TOTEMISM AS AN ELEMENTARY RELIGION History of the Question.—Method of Treating it
Howsoever opposed their conclusions may seem to be, the two systems which we have just studied agree upon one essential point: they state the problem in identical terms. Both undertake to construct the idea of the divine out of the sensations aroused in us by certain natural phenomena, either physical or biological. For the animists it is dreams, for the naturists, certain cosmic phenomena, which served as the point of departure for religious evolution. But for both, it is in the nature, either of man or of the universe, that we must look for the germ of the grand opposition which separates the profane from the sacred.
But such an enterprise is impossible: it supposes a veritable creation ex nihilo. A fact of common experience cannot give us the idea of something whose characteristic is to be outside the world of common experience. A man, as he appears to himself in his dreams, is only a man. Natural forces, as our senses perceive them, are only natural forces, howsoever great their intensity may be. Чепсе comes the common criticism which we address to both doctrines. In order to explain how these pretended data of religious thought have been able to take a sacred character which has no objective foundation, it would be necessary to admit that a whole world of delusive representations has superimposed itself upon the other, denatured it to the point of making it unrecognizable, and substituted a pure hallucination for reality. Here, it is the illusions of the dream which brought about this transfiguration ; there, it is the brilliant and vain company of images evoked by the word. But in
1 We shall see below, in speaking of the efficacy of rites and faith, how these illusions are to be explained (Bk. III. ch. ii).
one case as in the other, it is necessary to regard religion as the product of a delirious imagination. Thus one positive conclusion is arrived at as the result of this critical examination. Since
neither man nor nature have of themselves a sacred character, they must get it from another [88]
source. Aside from the human individual and the physical world, there should be some other reality, in relation to which this variety of delirium which all religion is in a sense, has a significance and an objective value. In other words, beyond those which we have called animistic and naturistic, there should be another sort of cult, more fundamental and more primitive, of which the first are only derived forms or particular aspects.
In fact, this cult does exist : it is the one to which ethnologists have given the name of totemism.
It was only at the end of the eighteenth century that the word totem appeared in ethnographical literature. It is found for the first time in the book of an Indian interpreter, J. Long, which was published in London in 1791.1 For nearly a half a century, totemism was known only as something exclusively American.2 It was only in 1841 that Grey, in a passage which has remained celebrated,3 pointed out the existence of wholly similar practices in Australia. From that time on, scholars began to realize that they were in the presence of a system of a certain generality.
But they saw there only an essentially archaic institiition, an ethnographical curiosity, having no great interest for the historian. MacLennan was the first who undertook to attach totemism to the general history of humanity. In a series of articles in the Fortnightly Review ,4 he set himself to show that toteraism was not only a religion, but one from which were derived a multitude of beliefs and practices which are found in much more advanced religious systems. He even went so far as to make it the source of all the animal-worshipping and plant-worshipping cults which are found among ancient peoples. Certainly this extension of totemism was abusive. The cults of animals and plants depend upon numerous causes which cannot be reduced to one, without the error of too great simplicity. But this error, by its very exaggerations, had at least the advantage, that it put into evidence the historical importance of totemism.
Students of American totemism had already known for aTotemism as an Elementary Religion
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long time that this form of religion was most intimately united to a determined social organization, that its basis is the division of the social group into clans.1 In 1877, in his Ancient Society,2 Lewis H. Morgan undertook to make a study of it, to determine its distinctive characteristics, and at the same time to point out its generality among the Indian tribes of North and Central America. At nearly the same moment, and even following the direct suggestion of Morgan, Fison and Howitt 3 established the existence of the same social system in Australia, as well as its relations with totemism.
Under the influence of these directing ideas, observations could be made with better method. The researches which the American Bureau of Ethnology undertook, played an important part in the advance of these studies.4 By 1887, the documents were sufficiently numerous and significant to
1Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter.
2This idea was so common that even M. Reville continued to make America the classic land of totemism (Religions des peuples поп civilises, I, p. 242).
3Journals of Two Expeditions in North-West and Western Australia, II, p. 228.
4The Worship of Animals and Plants. Totems and Totemism (1869, 1870).
1This idea is found already very clearly expressed in a study by Gallatin entitled Synopsis of the Indian Tribes (Archaologia Americana, II, pp. 109 ff.), and in a notice by Morgan in the Cambrian Journal, l8bo, p. 149.
2This work had been prepared for and preceded by two others by the same author: The League of the Iroquois
(1851), and Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family (1871).
3Kamilaroi and Kuruai, 1880.
4In the very first volumes of the Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology are found the study of Powell,
make Frazer consider it time to unite them and present them to us in a systematic form. Such is the object of his little book Totemism,5 where the system is studied both as a religion and as a legal institution. But this study was purely descriptive ; no effort was made to explain totemism6 or to understand its fundamental notions.
Robertson Smith is the first who undertook this work of elaboration. He realized more clearly than any of his predecessors how rich this crude and confused religion is in germs for the future. It is true that MacLennan had already connected it with the great religions of antiquity ; but that was merely because he thought he had found here and there the cult of animals or plants. Now if we reduce totemism to a sort of animal or plant worship, we have seen only its most superficial aspect: we have even misunderstood its real nature. Going
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beyond the mere letter of the totemic beliefs, Smith set himself to find the fundamental principles upon which they depend. In his book upon Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia,1 he had already pointed out that totemism supposes a likeness in nature, either natural or acquired, of men and animals (or plants). In his The Religion of the Semites,2 he makes this same idea the first origin of the entire sacrificial system : it is to totemism that humanity owes the principle of the communion meal. It is true that the theory of Smith can now be shown one-sided ; it is no longer adequate for the facts actually known ; but for all that, it contains an ingenious theory and has exercised a most fertile influence upon the science of religions. The Golden Bough 3 of Frazer is inspired by these same ideas, for totemism, which MacLennan had attached to the religions of classical antiquity, and Smith to the religions of the Semitic peoples, is here connected to the European folk-lore. The schools of MacLennan and Morgan are thus united to that of Mannhardt.4
During this time, the American tradition continued to develop with an independence which it has kept up until very recent times. Three groups of societies were the special object of the researches which were concerned with totemism. These are, first, certain tribes of the North-west, the Tlinkit, the Haida, the Kwakiuti, the Salish and the Tsimshian ; then, the great nation of the Sioux ; and finally, the Pueblo Indians in the southwestern part of the United States. The first were studied principally by Dall, Krause, Boas, Swanton, Hill Tout; the second by Dorsey ; the last by Mindeleff, Mrs. Stevenson and Gushing.5 But however rich the harvest of facts thus gathered in all parts of the country may have been, the documents at our disposal were still fragmentary. Though the American religions contain numerous traces of totemism, they have passed the stage of real totemism. On the other hand, observations in Australia had brought little more than scattered beliefs and isolated rites, initiation rituals and interdictions relative to totemism. It was with facts taken from all these sources that Frazer attempted to draw a picture of totemism in its entirety. Whatever may be the incontestable merit of the reconstruction undertaken in
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such circumstances, it could not help being incomplete and hypothetical. A totemic religion in
Wyandot Government (I, p. 59), that of Cushing, Zufii Fetiches (II, p. 9), Smith, Myths of the Iroquois (ibid., p. 77). and the important work of Dorsey, Omaha Sociology (III. p. 211), which are also contributions to the study of totemism.
5This first appeared, in an abridged form, in the Encyclopedia Britannica (9th ed.).
6In his Primitive Culture, Tyior had already attempted an explanation of totemism, to which we shall return presently, but which we shall not give here ; for by making totemism only a particular case of the ancestor-cult, he completely misunderstood its importance. In this chapter we mention only those theories which have contributed to the progress of the study of totemism.
1Published at Cambridge, 1885.
2First edition, 1889. This is the arrangement of a course given at the University of Aberdeen in 1888. Cf. the article
Sacrifice in the Encyclopedia Britannica (9th edition).
3London, 1890. A second edition in three volumes has since appeared (1900) and a third in five volumes is already in course of publication.
4In this connection must be mentioned the interesting work of Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, 3 vols., 1894-1896.
5We here confine ourselves to giving the names of the authors ; their works will be indicated below, when we make use of them.
complete action had not yet been observed.
It is only in very recent years that this serious deficiency has been repaired. Two observers of remarkable ability, Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, discovered1 in the interior of the Australian continent a considerable number of tribes whose basis and unity was founded in totemic beliefs. The results of their observations have been published in two works, which have given a new life to the study of totemism. The first of these. The Native Tribes of Central Australia2 deals with the more central of these tribes, the Arunta, the Luritcha, and a little farther to the south, on the shores of Lake Eyre, the Urabunna. The second, which is entitled The Northern Tribes of Central Australia,3 deals with the societies north of the Urabunna, occupying the territory between MacDonnell's Range and Carpenter Gulf. Among the principal of these we may mention the Unmatjera, the Kaitish, the Warramunga, the Worgaia, the Tingilli, the Binbinga, the Walpari, the Gnanji and finally, on the very shores of the gulf, the Мага and the Anula.4
More recently, a German missionary, Carl Strehlow, who has also passed long years in these same Central Australian societies,5 has commenced to publish his own observations on two of these tribes, the Aranda and the Loritja (the Arunta and Luritcha of
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Spencer and Gillen).1 Having well mastered the language spoken by these peoples,2 Strehlow has been able to bring us a large number of totemic myths and religious songs, which are given us, for the most part, in the original text. In spite of some differences of detail which are easily explained and whose importance has been greatly exaggerated,3 we shall see that the observations of Strehlow, though completing, making more precise and sometimes even rectifying those of Spencer and Gillen, confirm them in all that is essential.
These discoveries have given rise to an abundant literature to which we shall have occasion to return. The works of Spencer and Gillen especially have exercised a considerable influence, not only because they were the oldest, but also because the facts were there presented in a systematic
1If Spencer and Gillen have been the first to study these tribes in a scientific and thorough manner, they were not the first to talk about them. Howitt had 'g already described the social organization of the Wuaramongo (Warramunga of Spencer and Gillen) in 1888 in his Further Notes on the Australian Classes in The Journal of the Anthropological Institute (hereafter, J.A.I.), pp. 44 f.
2The Arunta had already been briefly studied by Schuize (The Aborigines of the Upper and Middle Finke River, in Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia, Vol. ; XIV, fasc. 2) : the organization of the Chingalee (the Tjingilli of Spencer and Gillen), the Wombya, etc., by Mathews (Wombya Organization of the Australian Aborigines, in
American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. II, p. 494; Divisions of some West Australian Tribes, ibid., p. 185 ; Proceedings Amer. Philos. Soc., XXXVII, pp. 151-152, and Journal Roy. Soc. of N.S. Wales, XXXII, p. 71 and XXXIII, p. 111). The first results of the study made of the Arunta had also been published already in the Report on the Work of the Horn Scientific Expedition to Central Australia, Pt. IV (1896). The first part of this Report is by Stirling, the second by Gillen ; the entire publication was placed under the direction of Baldwin Spencer.
3London, 1899. Hereafter, Native Tribes or Nat. Tr. э London, 1904. Hereafter, Northern Tribes or Nor. Tr.
4We write the Arunta, the Anula, the Tjingilli, etc., without adding the characteristic s of the plural. It does not seem very logical to add to these words, which are not European, a grammatical sign which would have no meaning except in our languages. Exceptions to this rule will be made when the name of the tribe has obviously been Europeanized (the Hurons for example).
5Strehlow has been in Australia since 1892 ; at first he lived among the Dteri, and from them he went to the Arunta.
1Die Arandaund Loritja-Stdmme in Zeniral Australien. Four fascicules have been published up to the present. The last appeared at the moment when the present book was finished, so it could not be used. The two first have to do with the myths and legends, and the third with the cult. It is only just to add to the name of Strehlow that of von Leonhardi, who has had a great deal to do with this publication. Not only has he charged himself with editing the manuscripts of Strehlow, but by his judicious questions he has led the latter to be more precise on more than one point. It would be useful also to consult an article which von Leonhardi gave the Globus, where numerous extracts from his correspondence with Strehlow will be found (Ueber einige religiose und totemistische Vorstellungender Aranda und Loritja in Zentral Australien, in Globus, XCI, p. 285). Cf. an article on the same subject by N. W. Thomas in Folk-lore, XVI, pp. 428 ff.
2Spencer and Gillen are not ignorant of it, but they are far from possessing it as thoroughly as Strehlow.
3Notably by Klaatsch, Schlussbericht uber meine Reise nach Australien, in Zeitschrift f. Ethnologic, 1907, pp. 635 ff.
form, which was of a nature to give a direction to later studies,4 and to stimulate speculation. Their results were commented upon, discussed and interpreted in all possible manners. At this same time, Howitt, whose fragmentary studies were scattered in a number of different publications,5 undertook to do for the southern tribes what Spencer and Gillen had done for those of the centre. In his Native Tribes of South-East Australia,6 he gives us a view of the social organization of the peoples who occupy Southern Australia, New South Wales, and a good part of Queensland. The progress thus realized suggested to Frazer the idea of completing his Totemism by a sort of compendium 7 where would be brought
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together all the important documents which are concerned either with the totemic religion or the family and matrimonial organization which, rightly or wrongly, is believed to be connected with this religion. The purpose of this book is not to give us a general and systematic view of totemism, but rather to put the materials necessary for a construction of this sort at the disposition of scholars.1 The facts are here arranged in a strictly ethno-graphical and geographical order : each continent, and within the continent, each tribe or ethnic group is studied separately. Though so extended a study, where so many diverse peoples are successively passed in review, could hardly be equally thorough in all its parts, still it is a useful hand-book to consult, and one which can aid greatly in facilitating researches.
II
From this historical resume it is clear that Australia is the most favourable field for the study of totemism, and therefore we shall make it the principal area of our observations.
In his Totemism, Frazer sought especially to collect all the traces of totemism which could be found in history or ethnography. He was thus led to include in his study societies the nature and degree of whose culture diners most widely : ancient Egypt,2 Arabia and Greece,3 and the southern Slavs4 are found there, side by side with the tribes of Australia and America. This manner of procedure is not at all surprising for a disciple of the anthropological school. For this school does not seek to. locate religions in the social environments of which they are a part,5 and to differentiate them according to the different environments to which they are thus connected. But rather, as is indicated by the name which it has taken to itself, its purpose is to go beyond the national and historical differences to the universal and really human bases of the religious life. It is supposed that man has a religious nature of himself, in virtue of his
4 The book of K. Langloh Parker, The Euahlayi Tribe, that of Eyimann, Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Sudausfralien; that of John Mathews, Two Representative Tribes of Queensland, and certain recent articles of Mathews all show the influence of Spencer and Gillen.
5A list of these publications will be found in the preface to his Nat. Tr., pp. 8-9.
6London, 1904. Hereafter we shall cite this work by the abbreviation Nat. Tr., but always mentioning the name of Howitt, to distinguish it from the first work of Spencer and Gillen, which we abbreviate in the same manner.
7Totemism and Exogamy, 4 vols., London, 1910. The work begins with a re-edition of Totemism, reproduced without any essential changes.
1It is true that at the end and at the beginning there are some general theories on totemism, which will be described
and discussed below. But these theories are relatively independent of the collection of facts which accompanies them, for they had already been published in different articles in reviews, long before this work appeared. These articles are reproduced in the first volume (PP. 89-172).
2Totemism, p. 12.
3Ibid., p. :5.
4Ibid., p. 32.
5It should be noted that in this connection, the more recent work. Totemism and Exogamy, shows an important progress in the thought as well as the method of Frazer. Every time that he describes the religious or domestic institutions at a tribe, he sets himself to determine the geographic and social conditions in each this tribe is placed. Howsoever summary these analyses may be, they bear witness nevertheless to a rupture with the old methods of the anthropological school.