The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

The explanation which we have given of the positive rites of which we have been speaking in the two preceding chapters attributes to them a significance which is, above all, moral and social. The physical efficaciousness assigned to them by the believer is the product of an interpretation which conceals the essential reason for their existence: it is because they serve to remake individuals and groups morally that they are believed to have a power over things. But even if this hypothesis has enabled us to account for the facts, we cannot say that it has been demonstrated directly; at first view, it even seems to conciliate itself rather badly with the nature of the ritual mechanisms which we have analysed. Whether they consist in oblations or imitative acts, the gestures composing them have purely material ends in view; they have, or seem to have, the sole object of making the totemic species reproduce. Under these circumstances, is it not surprising that their real function should be to serve moral ends?

It is true that their physical function may have been exaggerated by Spencer and Gillen, even in the cases where it is the most incontestable. According to these authors, each clan celebrates its Intichiuma for the purpose of assuring a useful food to the other clans, and the whole cult consists in a sort of economic co-operation of the different totemic groups; each works for the others. But according to Strehlow, this conception of Australian totemism is wholly foreign to the native mind. "If," he says, "the members of one totemic group set themselves to multiplying the animals or plants of the consecrated species, and seem to work for their companions of other totems, we must be careful not to regard this collaboration as the fundamental principle of Arunta or Loritja totemism. The blacks themselves have never told me that this was the object of their ceremonies. Of course, when I suggested and explained the idea to them, they understood it and acquiesced. But I should not be blamed for having some distrust of replies gained in this fashion." Strehlow also remarks that this way of interpreting the rite is contradicted by the fact that the totemic animals and plants are not all edible or useful; some are good for nothing; some are even dangerous. So the ceremonies which concern them could not have any such end in view.[1190] "When some one asks the natives what the determining reason for these ceremonies is," concludes our author, "they are unanimous in replying: 'It is because our ancestors arranged things thus.

This is why we do thus and not differently.'"[1191] But in saying that the rite is observed because it comes from the ancestors, it is admitted that its authority is confounded with the authority of tradition, which is a social affair of the first order. Men celebrate it to remain faithful to the past, to keep for the group its normal physiognomy, and not because of the physical effects which it may produce. Thus, the way in which the believers themselves explain them show the profound reasons upon which the rites proceed.