Now in dealing with the animal kingdom, in obtaining the useful and defending himself against the dangerous or repulsive species, primitive man, where his natural means fail him has recourse to the supernatural. The magical claims over any aspect of nature lead always to an assertion of a sort of affinity or kinship between the magician and the object controlled. In deed most magic implies mythological descent from animals or affiliation to them. Thus we see that the native's practical inter est in the animal or vegetable kingdom leads through magic directly to the assertion of a mutual bond.
Magic has a tendency to become specialised and departmental, exclusive and hereditary in a kinship group or clan. The sub division of the tribe into totemic clans seems to be best explained therefore, by the hypothesis that such clans were originally mag ical bodies engaged in controlling, through spell and rite, certain animal or vegetable species for the welfare of the tribe.
Thus is assigned to totemism a definite cultural function. Selective interest in vitally relevant factors of the environment, man's capacity to control it, are embodied in a system of beliefs which standardise, enhance and sacralise these culturally valuable mental states. By endorsing man's confidence and his hopes of effective control, by making these tendencies substantial in an explicit mythological dogma, totemism contributes to individual happiness, to social cohesion and to the general efficiency of culture.
In recent work (Frazer, Crawley, Van Gennep, Miss Jane Har rison) much stress has been laid upon the association of religion with the crises of life. In fact in most religions, savage or civi lised, the main phases of human life history—conception and preg nancy, birth and puberty, marriage and death—are associated with belief, ritual and mythological stories. Religion therefore fulfils
at vital crises an indispensable function in the scheme of human culture.
Culture entails a transformation of direct instinctive response into a mode of behaviour governed by purposive ends, that is, by cultural values. But here in the very act of bestowing her bless ings, culture heaps up burdens and creates difficulties. The fruit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and in giving man forethought, culture gives him also the terrors and pangs of despondency; it makes him probe into his own destiny, and ponder over the ulti mate things of human existence. Belief in immortality, early ideas of spirits, gods and beneficent powers, give man comfort and dispel his early misgivings. The role of religion consists in the establishment of spiritual ends, dogmatic realities and moral rules of conduct. In totemism, which sacralises important factors of the environment; in the belief in immortality and in the associ ated ideas about communion with spirits and their influence on human fate; in the consecration of food and of indispensable ele ments of culture, such as fire, standard implements, tokens of wealth; in surrounding tribal tradition and order with the halo of sanctity, religion is the source of social and cultural values. Again since man is to adventure in pursuits for which he is not equipped instinctively—to move through water, jungle and desert, to invade and conquer cold, arid and tropical places—culture has to provide him with a mental force to carry him across the gaps in instinctive endowment. The necessary confidence in his own powers of controlling his environment by spell and rite are given to man in magic.