Chapter XXXIII: Conclusion (3)

[2] But that is not equivalent to saying that all luxury is lacking to the primitive cults. On the contrary, we shall see that in every religion there are beliefs and practices which do not aim at strictly utilitarian ends (Bk. III, ch. iv, § 2). This luxury is indispensable to the religious life; it is at its very heart. But it is much more rudimentary in the inferior religions than in the others, so we are better able to determine its reason for existence here.

[3] It is seen that we give a wholly relative sense to this word "origins," just as to the word "primitive." By it we do not mean an absolute beginning, but the most simple social condition that is actually known or that beyond which we cannot go at present. When we speak of the origins or of the commencement of religious history or thought, it is in this sense that our statements should be understood.

[4] We say that time and space are categories because there is no difference between the rôle played by these ideas in the intellectual life and that which falls to the ideas of class or cause (on this point see, Hamelin, _Essai sur les éléments principaux de la représentation_, pp. 63, 76).

[5] See the support given this assertion in Hubert and Mauss, _Mélanges d'Histoire des Religions_ (_Travaux de l'Année Sociologique_), chapter on _La Représentation du Temps dans la Religion_.

[6] Thus we see all the difference which exists between the group of sensations and images which serve to locate us in time, and the category of time. The first are the summary of individual experiences, which are of value only for the person who experienced them. But what the category of time expresses is a time common to the group, a social time, so to speak. In itself it is a veritable social institution. Also, it is peculiar to man; animals have no representations of this sort.

This distinction between the category of time and the corresponding sensations could be made equally well in regard to space or cause. Perhaps this would aid in clearing up certain confusions which are maintained by the controversies of which these questions are the subject. We shall return to this point in the conclusion of the present work (§ 4).

[7] _Op. cit._, pp. 75 ff.

[8] Or else it would be necessary to admit that all individuals, in virtue of their organo-physical constitution, are spontaneously affected in the same manner by the different parts of space: which is more improbable, especially as in themselves the different regions are sympathetically indifferent. Also, the divisions of space vary with different societies, which is a proof that they are not founded exclusively upon the congenital nature of man.

[9] See Durkheim and Mauss, _De quelques formes primitives de classification_, in _Année Sociologique_, VI, pp. 47 ff.

[10] See Durkheim and Mauss, _De quelques formes primitives de classification_, in _Année Sociologique_, VI, p. 34.

[11] _Zuñi Creation Myths_, in _13th Rep. of the Bureau of Amer. Ethnol._, pp. 367 ff.

[12] See Hertz, _La prééminence de la main droite_. _Etude de polarité religieuse_, in the _Revue Philosophique_, Dec., 1909. On this same question of the relations between the representation of space and the form of the group, see the chapter in Ratzel, _Politische Geographie_, entitled _Der Raum in Geist der Völker_.

[13] We do not mean to say that mythological thought ignores it, but that it contradicts it more frequently and openly than scientific thought does. Inversely, we shall show that science cannot escape violating it, though it holds to it far more scrupulously than religion does. On this subject, as on many others, there are only differences of degree between science and religion; but if these differences should not be exaggerated, they must be noted, for they are significant.

[14] This hypothesis has already been set forth by the founders of the _Völkerpsychologie_. It is especially remarked in a short article by Windelbrand entitled _Die Erkenntnisslehre unter dem Völkerpsychologischen Gesichtspunke_, in the _Zeitsch. f. Völkerpsychologie_, viii, pp. 166 ff. Cf. a note of Steinthal on the same subject, _ibid._, pp. 178 ff.

[15] Even in the theory of Spencer, it is by individual experience that the categories are made. The only difference which there is in this regard between ordinary empiricism and evolutionary empiricism is that according to this latter, the results of individual experience are accumulated by heredity. But this accumulation adds nothing essential to them; no element enters into their composition which does not have its origin in the experience of the individual. According to this theory, also, the necessity with which the categories actually impose themselves upon us is the product of an illusion and a superstitious prejudice, strongly rooted in the organism, to be sure, but without foundation in the nature of things.

[16] Perhaps some will be surprised that we do not define the apriorist theory by the hypothesis of innateness. But this conception really plays a secondary part in the doctrine. It is a simple way of stating the impossibility of reducing rational knowledge to empirical data. Saying that the former is innate is only a positive way of saying that it is not the product of experience, such as it is ordinarily conceived.

[17] At least, in so far as there are any representations which are individual and hence wholly empirical. But there are in fact probably none where the two elements are not found closely united.

[18] This irreducibility must not be taken in any absolute sense. We do not wish to say that there is nothing in the empirical representations which shows rational ones, nor that there is nothing in the individual which could be taken as a sign of social life. If experience were completely separated from all that is rational, reason could not operate upon it; in the same way, if the psychic nature of the individual were absolutely opposed to the social life, society would be impossible. A complete analysis of the categories should seek these germs of rationality even in the individual consciousness. We shall have occasion to come back to this point in our conclusion. All that we wish to establish here is that between these indistinct germs of reason and the reason properly so called, there is a difference comparable to that which separates the properties of the mineral elements out of which a living being is composed from the characteristic attributes of life after this has once been constituted.

[19] It has frequently been remarked that social disturbances result in multiplying mental disturbances. This is one more proof that logical discipline is a special aspect of social discipline. The first gives way as the second is weakened.

[20] There is an analogy between this logical necessity and moral obligation but there is not an actual identity. To-day society treats criminals in a different fashion than subjects whose intelligence only is abnormal; that is a proof that the authority attached to logical rules and that inherent in moral rules are not of the same nature, in spite of certain similarities. They are two species of the same class. It would be interesting to make a study on the nature and origin of this difference, which is probably not primitive, for during a long time, the public conscience has poorly distinguished between the deranged and the delinquent. We confine ourselves to signalizing this question. By this example, one may see the number of problems which are raised by the analysis of these notions which generally pass as being elementary and simple, but which are really of an extreme complexity.

[21] This question will be treated again in the conclusion of this work.

[22] The rationalism which is imminent in the sociological theory of knowledge is thus midway between the classical empiricism and apriorism. For the first, the categories are purely artificial constructions; for the second, on the contrary, they are given by nature; for us, they are in a sense a work of art, but of an art which imitates nature with a perfection capable of increasing unlimitedly.

[23] For example, that which is at the foundation of the category of time is the rhythm of social life; but if there is a rhythm in collective life, one may rest assured that there is another in the life of the individual, and more generally, in that of the universe. The first is merely more marked and apparent than the others. In the same way, we shall see that the notion of class is founded on that of the human group. But if men form natural groups, it can be assumed that among things there exists groups which are at once analogous and different. Classes and species are natural groups of things.

If it seems to many minds that a social origin cannot be attributed to the categories without depriving them of all speculative value, it is because society is still too frequently regarded as something that is not natural; hence it is concluded that the representations which express it express nothing in nature. But the conclusion is not worth more than the premise.

[24] This is how it is legitimate to compare the categories to tools; for on its side, a tool is material accumulated capital. There is a close relationship between the three ideas of tool, category and institution.

[25] We have already attempted to define religious phenomena in a paper which was published in the _Année Sociologique_ (Vol. II, pp. 1 ff.). The definition then given differs, as will be seen, from the one we give to-day. At the end of this chapter (p. 47, n. 1), we shall explain the reasons which have led us to these modifications, but which imply no essential change in the conception of the facts.

[26] See above, p. 3. We shall say nothing more upon the necessity of these preliminary definitions nor upon the method to be followed to attain them. That is exposed in our _Règles de la Méthode sociologique_, pp. 43 ff. Cf. _Le Suicide_, pp. 1 ff. (Paris, F. Alcan).

[27] _First Principles_, p. 37.

[28] _Introduction to the Science of Religions_, p. 18. Cf. _Origin and Development of Religion_, p. 23.

[29] This same frame of mind is also found in the scholastic period, as is witnessed by the formula with which philosophy was defined at this time: _Fides quærens intellectum_.

[30] _Introduction to the History of Religions_, pp. 15 ff.

[31] _Introduction to the History of Religions_, p. 23.

[32] See below, Bk. III, ch. ii.

[33] _Prolegomena to the History of Religions_, p. 25 (tr. by Squire).

[34] _Primitive Culture_, I, p. 424. (Fourth edition, 1903.)

[35] Beginning with the first edition of the _Golden Bough_, I, pp. 30-32.

[36] Notably Spencer and Gillen and even Preuss, who gives the name magic to all non-individualized religious forces.

[37] Burnouf, _Introduction à l'histoire du bouddhisme indien_, sec. edit., p. 464. The last word of the text shows that Buddhism does not even admit the existence of an eternal Nature.

[38] Barth, _The Religions of India_, p. 110 (tr. by Wood).

[39] Oldenberg, _Buddha_, p. 53 (tr. by Hoey).

[40] Oldenberg, _ibid._, pp. 313 ff. Cf. Kern, _Histoire du bouddhisme dans l'Inde_, I, pp. 389 ff.

[41] Oldenberg, p. 250; Barth, p. 110.

[42] Oldenberg, p. 314.

[43] Barth, p. 109. In the same way, Burnouf says, "I have the profound conviction that if Çâkya had not found about him a Pantheon already peopled with the gods just named, he would have felt no need of inventing them" (_Introd. à l'hist. du bouddhisme indien_, p. 119).

[44] Burnouf, _op. cit._, p. 117.

[45] Kern, _op. cit._, I, p. 289.

[46] "The belief, universally admitted in India, that great holiness is necessarily accompanied by supernatural faculties, is the only support which he (Çâkya) should find in spirits" (Burnouf, p. 119).

[47] Burnouf, p. 120.

[48] _Ibid._, p. 107.

[49] _Ibid._, p. 302.

[50] This is what Kern expresses in the following terms: "In certain regards, he is a man; in certain others, he is not a man; in others, he is neither the one nor the other" (_op. cit._, I, p. 290).

[51] "The conception" "was foreign to Buddhism" "that the divine Head of the Community is not absent from his people, but that he dwells powerfully in their midst as their lord and king, so that all cultus is nothing else but the expression of this continuing living fellowship. Buddha has entered into Nirvâna; if his believers desired to invoke him, he could not hear them" (Oldenberg, p. 369).

[52] "Buddhist doctrine might be in all its essentials what it actually is, even if the idea of Buddha remained completely foreign to it" (Oldenberg, p. 322).--And whatever is said of the historic Buddha can be applied equally well to the mythological Buddhas.

[53] For the same idea, see Max Müller, _Natural Religion_, pp. 103 ff. and 190.

[54] _Op. cit._, p. 146.

[55] Barth, in _Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses_, VI, p. 548.

[56] Oldenberg, _op. cit._, p. 53.

[57] 1 Sam. xxi., 6.

[58] Levit. xii.

[59] Deut. xxii., 10 and 11.

[60] _La religion védique_, I, p. 122.

[61] _Ibid._, p. 133.

[62] "No text," says Bergaigne, "bears better witness to the consciousness of a magic action by man upon the waters of heaven than verse x, 32, 7, where this belief is expressed in general terms, applicable to an actual man, as well as to his real or mythological ancestors: 'The ignorant man has questioned the wise; instructed by the wise, he acts, and here is the profit of his instruction: he obtains the flowing of streams'" (p. 137).

[63] _Ibid._, p. 139.

[64] Examples will also be found in Hubert, art. _Magia_ in the _Dictionnaire des Antiquités_, VI, p. 1509.

[65] Not to mention the sage and the saint who practise these truths and who for that reason are sacred.

[66] This is not saying that these relations cannot take a religious character. But they do not do so necessarily.

[67] Schultze, _Fetichismus_, p. 129.

[68] Examples of these usages will be found in Frazer, _Golden Bough_, 2 edit., I, pp. 81 ff.

[69] The conception according to which the profane is opposed to the sacred, just as the irrational is to the rational, or the intelligible is to the mysterious, is only one of the forms under which this opposition is expressed. Science being once constituted, it has taken a profane character, especially in the eyes of the Christian religions; from that it appears as though it could not be applied to sacred things.

[70] See Frazer, _On Some Ceremonies of the Central Australian Tribes in Australian Association for the Advancement of Science_, 1901, pp. 313 ff. This conception is also of an extreme generality. In India, the simple participation in the sacrificial act has the same effects; the sacrificer, by the mere act of entering within the circle of sacred things, changes his personality. (See, Hubert and Mauss, _Essai sur le Sacrifice in the Année Sociologique_, II, p. 101.)

[71] See what was said of the initiation above, p. 39.

[72] We shall point out below how, for example, certain species of sacred things exist, between which there is an incompatibility as all-exclusive as that between the sacred and the profane (Bk. III, ch. v, § 4).

[73] This is the case with certain marriage and funeral rites, for example.

[74] See Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 534 ff.; _Northern Tribes of Central Australia_, p. 463; Howitt, _Native Tribes of S.E. Australia_, pp. 359-361.

[75] See Codrington, _The Melanesians_, ch. xii.

[76] See Hubert, art. _Magia_ in _Dictionnaire des Antiquités_.

[77] For example, in Melanesia, the _tindalo_ is a spirit, now religious, now magic (Codrington, pp. 125 ff., 194 ff.).

[78] See Hubert and Mauss, _Théorie Générale de la Magie_, in _Année Sociologique_, vol. VII, pp. 83-84.

[79] For example, the host is profaned in the black mass.

[80] One turns his back to the altar, or goes around the altar commencing by the left instead of by the right.

[81] _Loc. cit._, p. 19.

[82] Undoubtedly it is rare that a ceremony does not have some director at the moment when it is celebrated; even in the most crudely organized societies, there are generally certain men whom the importance of their social position points out to exercise a directing influence over the religious life (for example, the chiefs of the local groups of certain Australian societies). But this attribution of functions is still very uncertain.

[83] At Athens, the gods to whom the domestic cult was addressed were only specialized forms of the gods of the city ([Greek: Zeus ktêsios, Zeus herkeios]). In the same way, in the Middle Ages, the patrons of the guilds were saints of the calendar.

[84] For the name Church is ordinarily applied only to a group whose common beliefs refer to a circle of more special affairs.

[85] Hubert and Mauss, _loc. cit._, p. 18.

[86] Robertson Smith has already pointed out that magic is opposed to religion, as the individual to the social (_The Religion of the Semites_, 2 edit., pp. 264-265). Also, in thus distinguishing magic from religion, we do not mean to establish a break of continuity between them. The frontiers between the two domains are frequently uncertain.

[87] Codrington, _Trans. and Proc. Roy. Soc. of Victoria_, XVI, p. 136.

[88] Negrioli, _Dei Genii presso i Romani_.

[89] This is the conclusion reached by Spencer in his _Ecclesiastical Institutions_ (ch. xvi), and by Sabatier in his _Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion, based on Psychology and History_ (tr. by Seed), and by all the school to which he belongs.

[90] Notably among numerous Indian tribes of North America.

[91] This statement of fact does not touch the question whether exterior and public religion is not merely the development of an interior and personal religion which was the primitive fact, or whether, on the contrary, the second is not the projection of the first into individual consciences. The problem will be directly attacked below (Bk. II, ch. v, § 2, cf. the same book, ch. vi and vii, § 1). For the moment, we confine ourselves to remarking that the individual cult is presented to the observer as an element of, and something dependent upon, the collective cult.

[92] It is by this that our present definition is connected to the one we have already proposed in the _Année Sociologique_. In this other work, we defined religious beliefs exclusively by their obligatory character; but, as we shall show, this obligation evidently comes from the fact that these beliefs are the possession of a group which imposes them upon its members. The two definitions are thus in a large part the same. If we have thought it best to propose a new one, it is because the first was too formal, and neglected the contents of the religious representations too much. It will be seen, in the discussions which follow, how important it is to put this characteristic into evidence at once. Moreover, if their imperative character is really a distinctive trait of religious beliefs, it allows of an infinite number of degrees; consequently there are even cases where it is not easily perceptible. Hence come difficulties and embarrassments which are avoided by substituting for this criterium the one we now employ.

[93] We thus leave aside here those theories which, in whole or in part, make use of super-experimental data. This is the case with the theory which Andrew Lang exposed in his book, _The Making of Religion_, and which Father Schmidt has taken up again, with variations of detail, in a series of articles on _The Origin of the Idea of God_ (_Anthropos_, 1908, 1909). Lang does not set animism definitely aside, but in the last analysis, he admits a sense or intuition of the divine directly. Also, if we do not consider it necessary to expose and discuss this conception in the present chapter, we do not intend to pass it over in silence; we shall come to it again below, when we shall ourselves explain the facts upon which it is founded (Bk. II, ch. ix, § 4).

[94] This is the case, for example, of Fustel de Coulanges who accepts the two conceptions together (_The Ancient City_, Bk. I and Bk. III, ch. ii).

[95] This is the case with Jevons, who criticizes the animism taught by Tylor, but accepts his theories on the origin of the idea of the soul and the anthropomorphic instinct of man. Inversely, Usener, in his _Götternamen_, rejects certain hypotheses of Max Müller which will be described below, but admits the principal postulates of naturism.

[96] _Primitive Culture_, chs. xi-xviii.

[97] _Principles of Sociology_, Parts I and VI.

[98] This is the word used by Tylor. It has the inconvenience of seeming to imply that men, in the proper sense of the term, existed before there was a civilization. However, there is no proper term for expressing the idea; that of primitive, which we prefer to use, lacking a better, is, as we have said, far from satisfactory.

[99] Tylor, _op. cit._, I, pp. 455 f.

[100] See Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, I, pp. 143 ff., and Tylor, _op. cit._, I, pp. 434 ff., 445 ff.

[101] Tylor, II, pp. 113 ff.

[102] Tylor, I, pp. 481 ff.

[103] _Principles of Sociology_, I, p. 126.

[104] _Ibid._, pp. 322 ff.

[105] _Ibid._, pp. 366-367.

[106] _Ibid._, p. 346. Cf. p. 384.

[107] See below, Bk. II, ch. viii.

[108] See Spencer and Gillen, _The Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 123-127; Strehlow, _Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral Australien_, II, pp. 52 ff.

[109] _The Melanesians_, pp. 249-250.

[110] Howitt, _The Native Tribes of South-Eastern Australia_, p. 358.

[111] _Ibid._, pp. 434-442.

[112] Of the negroes of southern Guinea, Tylor says that "their sleeping hours are characterized by almost as much intercourse with the dead as their waking are with the living" (_Primitive Culture_, I, p. 443). In regard to these peoples, the same author cites this remark of an observer: "_All their dreams_ are construed into visits from the spirits of their deceased friends" (_ibid._, p. 443). This statement is certainly exaggerated; but it is one more proof of the frequency of mystic dreams among the primitives. The etymology which Strehlow proposes for the Arunta word _altjirerama_, which means "to dream," also tends to confirm this theory. This word is composed of _altjira_, which Strehlow translates by "god" and _rama_, which means "see." Thus a dream would be the moment when a man is in relations with sacred beings (_Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme_, I, p. 2).

[113] Andrew Lang, who also refuses to admit that the idea of the soul was suggested to men by their dream experiences, believes that he can derive it from other empirical data: these are the data of spiritualism (telepathy, distance-seeing, etc.). We do not consider it necessary to discuss the theory such as it has been exposed in his book _The Making of Religion_. It reposes upon the hypothesis that spiritualism is a fact of constant observation, and that distance-seeing is a real faculty of men, or at least of certain men, but it is well known how much this theory is scientifically contested. What is still more contestable is that the facts of spiritualism are apparent enough and of a sufficient frequency to have been able to serve as the basis for all the religious beliefs and practices which are connected with souls and spirits. The examination of these questions would carry us too far from what is the object of our study. It is still less necessary to engage ourselves in this examination, since the theory of Lang remains open to many of the objections which we shall address to that of Tylor in the paragraphs which follow.

[114] Jevons has made a similar remark. With Tylor, he admits that the idea of the soul comes from dreams, and that after it was created, men projected it into things. But, he adds, the fact that nature has been conceived as animated like men does not explain how it became the object of a cult. "The man who believes the bowing tree or the leaping flame to be a living thing like himself, does not therefore believe it to be a supernatural being--rather, so far as it is like himself, it, like himself, is not supernatural" (_Introduction to the History of Religions_, p. 55).

[115] See Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 506, and _Nat. Tr._, p. 512.

[116] This is the ritual and mythical theme which Frazer studies in his _Golden Bough_.

[117] _The Melanesians_, p. 119.

[118] _Ibid._, p. 125.

[119] There are sometimes, as it seems, even funeral offerings. (See Roth, _Superstition, Magic and Medicine_, in _North Queensland Ethnog._, Bulletin No. 5, § 69 c., and _Burial Customs_, in _ibid._, No. 10, in _Records of the Australian Museum_, Vol. VI, No. 5, p. 395). But these offerings are not periodical.

[120] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 538, 553, and _Nor. Tr._, pp. 463, 543, 547.

[121] See especially, Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, ch. vi, vii, ix.

[122] _The Religions of Primitive Peoples_, pp. 47 ff.

[123] _Myth, Ritual and Religions_, p. 123.

[124] _Les Religions des peuples non civilisés_, II, _Conclusion_.

[125] _The Religion of the Semites_, 2 ed., pp. 126, 132.

[126] This is the reasoning of Westermarck (_Origins of Human Marriage_, p. 6).

[127] By sexual communism we do not mean a state of promiscuity where man knows no matrimonial rules: we believe that such a state has never existed. But it has frequently happened that groups of men have been regularly united to one or several women.

[128] See our _Suicide_, pp. 233 ff.

[129] Spencer, _Principles of Sociology_, I, pp. 129 f.

[130] _The Melanesians_, p. 123.

[131] Dorsey, _A Study of Siouan Cults_, in _XIth Annual Report of the Bureau of Amer. Ethnology_, pp. 431 ff., and _passim_.

[132] _La religion des peuples non civilisés_, I, p. 248.

[133] V. W. de Visser, _De Graecorum diis non referentibus speciem humanam_. Cf. P. Perdrizet, _Bulletin de correspondance hellénique_, 1899, p. 635.

[134] However, according to Spencer, there is a germ of truth in the belief in spirits: this is the idea that "the power which manifests itself inside the consciousness is a different form of power from that manifested outside the consciousness" (_Ecclesiastical Institutions_, § 659). Spencer understands by this that the notion of force in general is the sentiment of the force which we have extended to the entire universe; this is what animism admits implicitly when it peoples nature with spirits analogous to our own. But even if this hypothesis in regard to the way in which the idea of force is formed were true--and it requires important reservations which we shall make (Bk. III, ch. iii, § 3)--it has nothing religious about it; it belongs to no cult. It thus remains that the system of religious symbols and rites, the classification of things into sacred and profane, all that which is really religious in religion, corresponds to nothing in reality. Also, this germ of truth, of which he speaks, is still more a germ of error, for if it be true that the forces of nature and those of the mind are related, they are profoundly distinct, and one exposes himself to grave misconceptions in identifying them.

[135] This is undoubtedly what explains the sympathy which folk-lorists like Mannhardt have felt for animistic ideas. In popular religions as in inferior religions, these spiritual beings of a second order hold the first place.

[136] In the essay entitled _Comparative Mythology_ (pp. 47 ff).

[137] _Herabkunft des Feuers und G[=o]ttertranks_, Berlin, 1859 (a new edition was given by Ernst Kuhn in 1886). Cf. _Der Schuss des Wilden Jägers auf den Sonnen-hirsch_, Zeitschrift f. d. Phil., I, 1869, pp. 89-169. _Entwickelungsstufen des Mythus_, Abhandl. d. Berl. Akad., 1873.

[138] _Der Ursprung der Mythologie_, Berlin, 1860.

[139] In his book _Hercule et Cacus_. _Étude de mythologie comparée._ Max Müller's _Comparative Mythology_ is there signalized as a work "which marks a new epoch in the history of Mythology" (p. 12).

[140] _Die Griechischen Kulte und Mythen_, I, p. 78.

[141] Among others who have adopted this conception may be cited Renan. See his _Nouvelles études d'histoire religieuse_, 1884, p. 31.

[142] Aside from the _Comparative Mythology_, the works where Max Müller has exposed his general theories on religion are: _Hibbert Lectures_ (1878) under the title _The Origin and Development of Religion; Natural Religion_ (1889); _Physical Religion_ (1890); _Anthropological Religion_ (1892); _Theosophy, or Psychological Religion_ (1893); _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_ (1897). Since his mythological theories are closely related to his philosophy of language, these works should be consulted in connection with the ones consecrated to language or logic, especially _Lectures on the Science of Language_, and _The Science of Thought_.

[143] _Natural Religion_, p. 114.

[144] _Physical Religion_, pp. 119-120.

[145] _Ibid._, p. 121; cf. p. 304.

[146] _Natural Religion_, pp. 121 ff., and 149-155.

[147] "The overwhelming pressure of the infinite" (_ibid._, p. 138).

[148] _Ibid._, pp. 195-196.

[149] Max Müller even goes so far as to say that until thought has passed this first stage, it has very few of the characteristics which we now attribute to religion (_Physic. Rel._, p. 120).

[150] _Physic. Rel._, p. 128.

[151] _The Science of Thought_, p. 30.

[152] _Natural Religion_, pp. 393 ff.

[153] _Physic. Rel._, p. 133; _The Science of Thought_, p. 219; _Lectures on the Science of Language_, II, pp. 1 ff.

[154] _The Science of Thought_, p. 272.

[155] _The Science of Thought_, I, p. 327; _Physic. Rel_., pp. 125 ff.

[156] _Mélanges de mythologie et de linguistique_, p. 8.

[157] _Anthropological Religion_, pp. 128-130.

[158] This explanation is not as good as that of Tylor. According to Max Müller, men could not admit that life stopped with death; therefore they concluded that there were two beings within them, one of which survived the body. But it is hard to see what made them think that life continued after the body was decomposed.

[159] For the details, see _Anthrop. Rel._, pp. 351 ff.

[160] _Anthrop. Rel._, p. 130.--This is what keeps Max Müller from considering Christianity the climax of all this development. The religion of ancestors, he says, supposes that there is something divine in man. Now is that idea not the one at the basis of the teaching of Christ? (_ibid._, pp. 378 ff.). It is useless to insist upon the strangeness of the conception which makes Christianity the latest of the cults of the dead.

[161] See the discussion of the hypothesis in Gruppe, _Griechishen Kulte und Mythen_, pp. 79-184.

[162] See Meillet, _Introduction à l'étude comparative des langues indo-européennes_, p. 119.

[163] Oldenberg, _Die Religion des Vedas_, pp. 59 ff.; Meillet, _Le dieu Iranien Mythra_, in _Journal Asiatique_, X, No. 1, July-August, 1907, pp. 143 ff.

[164] In this category are a large number of the maxims of popular wisdom.

[165] It is true that this argument does not touch those who see in religion a code (especially of hygiene) whose provisions, though placed under the sanction of imaginary beings, are nevertheless well founded. But we shall not delay to discuss a conception so insupportable, and which has, in fact, never been sustained in a systematic manner by persons somewhat informed upon the history of religions. It is difficult to see what good the terrible practices of the initiation bring to the health which they threaten; what good the dietetic restrictions, which generally deal with perfectly clean animals, have hygienically; how sacrifices, which take place far from a house, make it more solid, etc. Undoubtedly there are religious precepts which at the same time have a practical utility; but they are lost in the mass of others, and even the services which they render are frequently not without some drawbacks. If there is a religiously enforced cleanliness, there is also a religious filthiness which is derived from these same principles. The rule which orders a corpse to be carried away from the camp because it is the seat of a dreaded spirit is undoubtedly useful. But the same belief requires the relatives to anoint themselves with the liquids which issue from a corpse in putrefaction, because they are supposed to have exceptional virtues.--From this point of view, magic has served a great deal more than religion.

[166] _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_, I, pp. 68 f.

[167] _Lectures on the Science of Language_, II, p. 456 ff.; _Physic. Rel._, pp. 276 ff.--Also Bréal, _Mélanges_, p. 6, "To bring the necessary clarity into this question of the origin of mythology, it is necessary to distinguish carefully the _gods_, which are the immediate product of the human intelligence, from the _fables_, which are its indirect and involuntary product."

[168] Max Müller recognized this. See _Physic. Rel._, p. 132, and _Comparative Mythology_, p. 58. "The gods are _nomina_ and not _numina_, names without being and not beings without name."

[169] It is true that Max Müller held that for the Greeks, "Zeus was, and remained, in spite of all mythological obscurations, the name of the Supreme Deity" (_Science of Language_, II, p. 478). We shall not dispute this assertion, though it is historically contestable; but in any case, this conception of Zeus could never have been more than a glimmer in the midst of all the other religious beliefs of the Greeks.

Besides this, in a later work, Max Müller went so far as to make even the notion of god in general the product of a wholly verbal process and thus of a mythological elaboration (_Physic. Rel._, p. 138).

[170] Undoubtedly outside the real myths there were always fables which were not believed, or at least were not believed in the same way and to the same degree, and hence had no religious character. The line of demarcation between fables and myths is certainly floating and hard to determine. But this is no reason for making all myths stories, any more than we should dream of making all stories myths. There is at least one characteristic which in a number of cases suffices to differentiate the religious myth: that is its relation to the cult.

[171] See above, p. 28.

[172] More than that, in the language of Max Müller, there is a veritable abuse of words. Sensuous experience, he says, implies, at least in certain cases, "beyond the known, _something unknown, something which I claim the liberty to call infinite_" (_Natural Rel._, p. 195; cf. p. 218). The unknown is not necessarily the infinite, any more than the infinite is necessarily the unknown if it is in all points the same, and consequently like the part which we know. It would be necessary to prove that the part of it which we perceive differs in nature from that which we do not perceive.

[173] Max Müller involuntarily recognizes this in certain passages. He confesses that he sees little difference between Agni, the god of fire, and the notion of ether, by which the modern physicist explains light and heat (_Phys. Rel._, pp. 126 f.). Also, he connects the notion of divinity to that of agency (p. 138) or of a causality which is not natural and profane. The fact that religion represents the causes thus imagined, under the form of personal agents, is not enough to explain how they got a sacred character. A personal agent can be profane, and also, many religious forces are essentially impersonal.

[174] We shall see below, in speaking of the efficacy of rites and faith, how these illusions are to be explained (Bk. III, ch. ii).

[175] _Voyages and Travels of an Indian Interpreter._

[176] This idea was so common that even M. Réville continued to make America the classic land of totemism (_Religions des peuples non civilisés_, I, p. 242).

[177] _Journals of Two Expeditions in North-West and Western Australia_, II, p. 228.

[178] _The Worship of Animals and Plants._ _Totems and Totemism_ (1869, 1870).

[179] This idea is found already very clearly expressed in a study by Gallatin entitled _Synopsis of the Indian Tribes_ (_Archæologia Americana_, II, pp. 109 ff.), and in a notice by Morgan in the _Cambrian Journal_, 1860, p. 149.

[180] This 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).

[181] _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, 1880.

[182] In the very first volumes of the _Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology_ are found the study of Powell, _Wyandot Government_ (I, p. 59), that of Cushing, _Zuñi 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.

[183] This first appeared, in an abridged form, in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (9th ed.).

[184] In his _Primitive Culture_, Tylor 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.

[185] Published at Cambridge, 1885.

[186] First edition, 1889. This is the arrangement of a course given at the University of Aberdeen in 1888. Cf. the article _Sacrifice_ in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (9th edition).

[187] London, 1890. A second edition in three volumes has since appeared (1900) and a third in five volumes is already in course of publication.

[188] In this connection must be mentioned the interesting work of Sidney Hartland, _The Legend of Perseus_, 3 vols., 1894-1896.

[189] We here confine ourselves to giving the names of the authors; their works will be indicated below, when we make use of them.

[190] If 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 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. The Arunta had already been briefly studied by Schulze (_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.

[191] London, 1899. Hereafter, _Native Tribes_ or _Nat. Tr._

[192] London, 1904. Hereafter, _Northern Tribes_ or _Nor. Tr._

[193] We 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).

[194] Strehlow has been in Australia since 1892; at first he lived among the Dieri, and from them he went to the Arunta.

[195] _Die Aranda- und Loritja-Stämme in Zentral 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 religiöse und totemistische Vorstellungen der 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.

[196] Spencer and Gillen are not ignorant of it, but they are far from possessing it as thoroughly as Strehlow.

[197] Notably by Klaatsch, _Schlussbericht über meine Reise nach Australien_, in _Zeitschrift f. Ethnologie_, 1907, pp. 635 ff.

[198] The book of K. Langloh Parker, _The Euahlayi Tribe_, that of Eylmann, _Die Eingeborenen der Kolonie Südaustralien_; that of John Mathews, _Two Representative Tribes of Queensland_, and certain recent articles of Mathews all show the influence of Spencer and Gillen.

[199] A list of these publications will be found in the preface to his _Nat. Tr._, pp. 8-9.

[200] London, 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.

[201] _Totemism and Exogamy_, 4 vols., London, 1910. The work begins with a re-edition of _Totemism_, reproduced without any essential changes.

[202] It 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).

[203] _Totemism_, p. 12.

[204] _Ibid._, p. 15.

[205] _Ibid._, p. 32.

[206] It 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 of a tribe, he sets himself to determine the geographic and social conditions in which 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.

[207] Undoubtedly we also consider that the principal object of the science of religions is to find out what the religious nature of man really consists in. However, as we do not regard it as a part of his constitutional make-up, but rather as the product of social causes, we consider it impossible to find it, if we leave aside his social environment.

[208] We cannot repeat too frequently that the importance which we attach to totemism is absolutely independent of whether it was ever universal or not.

[209] This is the case with the phratries and matrimonial classes; on this point, see Spencer and Gillen, _Northern Tribes_, ch. iii; Howitt, _Native Tribes_, pp. 109 and 137-142; Thomas, _Kinship and Marriage in Australia_, ch. vi and vii.

[210] _Division du Travail social_, 3rd ed., p. 150.

[211] It is to be understood that this is not always the case. It frequently happens, as we have already said, that the simpler forms aid to a better understanding of the more complex. On this point, there is no rule of method which is applicable to every possible case.

[212] Thus the individual totemism of America will aid us in understanding the function and importance of that in Australia. As the latter is very rudimentary, it would probably have passed unobserved.

[213] Besides, there is not one unique type of totemism in America, but several different species which must be distinguished.

[214] We shall leave this field only very exceptionally, and when a particularly instructive comparison seems to us to impose itself.

[215] This is the definition given by Cicero: _Gentiles sunt qui inter se eodem nomine sunt_ (_Top._ 6). (Those are of the same gens who have the same name among themselves.)

[216] It may be said in a general way that the clan is a family group, where kinship results solely from a common name; it is in this sense that the _gens_ is a clan. But the totemic clan is a particular sort of the class thus constituted.

[217] In a certain sense, these bonds of solidarity extend even beyond the frontiers of the tribe. When individuals of different tribes have the same totem, they have peculiar duties towards each other. This fact is expressly stated for certain tribes of North America (see Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, III, pp. 57, 81, 299, 356-357). The texts relative to Australia are less explicit. However, it is probable that the prohibition of marriage between members of a single totem is international.

[218] Morgan, _Ancient Society_, p. 165.

[219] In Australia the words employed differ with the tribes. In the regions observed by Grey, they said _Kobong_; the Dieri say _Murdu_ (Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 91); the Narrinyeri, _Ngaitye_ (Talpin, _in_ Curr, II, p. 244); the Warramunga, _Mungái_ or _Mungáii_ (_Nor. Tr._, p. 754), etc.

[220] _Indian Tribes of the United States_, IV, p. 86.

[221] This fortune of the word is the more regrettable since we do not even know exactly how it is written. Some write _totam_, others _toodaim_, or _dodaim_, or _ododam_ (see Frazer, _Totemism_, p. 1). Nor is the meaning of the word determined exactly. According to the report of the first observer of the Ojibway, J. Long, the word _totam_ designated the protecting genius, the individual totem, of which we shall speak below (Bk. II, ch. iv) and not the totem of the clan. But the accounts of other explorers say exactly the contrary (on this point, see Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, III, pp. 49-52).

[222] The _Wotjobaluk_ (p. 121) and the _Buandik_ (p. 123).

[223] The same.

[224] The _Wolgal_ (p. 102), the _Wotjobaluk_ and the _Buandik_.

[225] The _Muruburra_ (p. 117), the _Wotjobaluk_ and the _Buandik_.

[226] The _Buandik_ and the _Kaiabara_ (p. 116). It is to be remarked that all the examples come from only five tribes.

[227] Thus, out of 204 kinds of totems, collected by Spencer and Gillen out of a large number of tribes, 188 are animals or plants. The inanimate objects are the boomerang, cold weather, darkness, fire, lightning, the moon, red ochre, resin, salt water, the evening star, a stone, the sun, water, the whirlwind, the wind and hail-stones (Nor. Tr., p. 773. Cf. Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, I, pp. 253-254).

[228] Frazer (_Totemism_, pp. 10 and 13) cites a rather large number of cases and puts them in a special group which he calls _split-totems_, but these are taken from tribes where totemism is greatly altered, such as in Samoa or the tribes of Bengal.

[229] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 107.

[230] See the tables collected by Strehlow, _op. cit._, II, pp. 61-72 (cf. III, pp. xiii-xvii). It is remarkable that these fragmentary totems are taken exclusively from animal totems.

[231] Strehlow, II, pp. 52 and 72.

[232] For example, one of these totems is a cave where an ancestor of the Wild Cat totem rested; another is a subterranean gallery which an ancestor of the Mouse clan dug, etc. (_ibid._, p. 72).

[233] _Nat. Tr._, pp. 561 ff. Strehlow, II, p. 71, note 2. Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, pp. 426 ff.; _On Australian Medicine Men_, _J.A.I._, XVI, p. 53; _Further Notes on the Australian Class Systems_, _J.A.I._, XVIII, pp. 63 ff.

[234] Thaballa means "laughing boy," according to the translation of Spencer and Gillen. The members of the clan which bear this name think they hear him laughing in the rocks which are his residence (_Nor. Tr._, pp. 207, 215, 226 note). According to a myth given on p. 422, there was an initial group of mythical Thaballa (cf. p. 208). The clan of the Kati, "full-grown men," as Spencer and Gillen say, seems to be of the same sort (_Nor. Tr._, p. 207).

[235] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 226 ff.

[236] Strehlow, II, pp. 71 f. He mentions a totem of the Loritja and Arunta which is very close to the serpent Wollunqua: it is the totem of a mythical water-snake.

[237] This is the case with Klaatsch, in the article already cited (see above, p. 92, n. 3).

[238] As we indicated in the preceding chapter, totemism is at the same time of interest for the question of religion and that of the family, for the clan is a family. In the lower societies, these two problems are very closely connected. But both are so complex that it is indispensable to treat them separately. Also, the primitive family organization cannot be understood before the primitive religious beliefs are known; for the latter serve as the basis of the former. This is why it is necessary to study totemism as a religion before studying the totemic clan as a family group.

[239] See Taplin, _The Narrinyeri Tribe_, in Curr, II, pp. 244 f.; Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 131.

[240] _Nor. Tr._, pp. 163, 169, 170, 172. It is to be noted that in all these tribes, except the Mara and the Anula, the transmission of the totem in the paternal line is only a general rule, which has exceptions.

[241] According to Spencer and Gillen (Nat. Tr., pp. 123 ff.), the soul of the ancestor becomes reincarnate in the body of the mother and becomes the soul of the child; according to Strehlow (II, pp. 51 ff.), the conception, though being the work of the ancestor, does not imply any reincarnation; but in neither interpretation does the totem of the child necessarily depend upon that of the parents.

[242] _Nat. Tr._, p. 133; Strehlow, II, p. 53.

[243] It is in large part the locality where the mother believes that she conceived which determines the totem of the child. Each totem, as we shall see, has its centre and the ancestors preferably frequent the places serving as centres for their respective totems. The totem of the child is therefore that which belongs to the place where the mother believes that she conceived. As this should generally be in the vicinity of the place which serves as totemic centre for her husband, the child should generally follow the totem of his father. It is undoubtedly this which explains why the greater part of the inhabitants of a given locality belong to the same totem (_Nat. Tr._, p. 9).

[244] _The Secret of the Totem_, pp. 159 ff. Cf. Fison and Howitt, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, pp. 40 f.; John Mathews, _Eaglehawk and Crow_; Thomas, _Kinship and Marriage in Australia_, pp. 52 ff.

[245] Howitt, _Nat. Tr._, p. 124.

[246] Howitt, pp. 121, 123, 124; Curr, III, p. 461.

[247] Howitt, p. 126.

[248] Howitt, pp. 98 ff.

[249] Curr, II, p. 165; Brough Smyth, I, p. 423; Howitt, _op. cit._, p. 429.

[250] Howitt, pp. 101, 102.

[251] J. Mathews, _Two Representative Tribes of Queensland_, p. 139.

[252] Still other reasons could be given in support of this hypothesis, but it would be necessary to bring in considerations relative to the organization of the family, and we wish to keep these two studies separate. Also this question is only of secondary interest to our subject.

[253] For example, Mukwara, which is the name of a phratry among the Barkinji, the Paruinji and the Milpulko, designates the eagle-hawk, according to Brough Smyth; now one of the clans of this phratry has the eagle-hawk as totem. But here the animal is designated by the word Bilyara. Many cases of the same thing are cited by Lang, _op. cit._, p. 162.

[254] Spencer and Gillen, _Nat. Tr._, p. 115. According to Howitt (_op. cit._, pp. 121 and 454), among the Wotjobaluk, the clan of the pelican is found in the two phratries equally. This fact seems doubtful to us. It is very possible that the two clans may have two varieties of pelicans as totems. Information given by Mathews on the same tribe seems to point to this (_Aboriginal Tribes of N.S. Wales and Victoria_, in _Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of N.S. Wales_, 1904, pp. 287 f.).

[255] In connection with this question, see our memoir on _Le Totémisme_, in the _Année Sociologique_, Vol. V, pp. 82 ff.

[256] On the question of Australian matrimonial classes in general, see our memoir on _La Prohibition de l'inceste_, in the _Année Soc._, I, pp. 9 ff., and especially for the tribes with eight classes, _L'Organisation matrimoniale des societés Australiennes_, in _Année Soc._, VIII, pp. 118-147.

[257] This principle is not maintained everywhere with an equal strictness. In the central tribes of eight classes notably, beside the class with which marriage is regularly permitted, there is another with which a sort of secondary concubinage is allowed (Spencer and Gillen, _Nor. Tr._, p. 106). It is the same with certain tribes of four classes. Each class has a choice between the two classes of the other phratry. This is the case with the Kabi (see Mathews, _in_ Curr, III, 162).