TOTEMISM. Totemism, as Salomon Reinach says, is difficult to define. The word totem or rather otam (mark or sign) was adopted at the beginning of the eighteenth century from the Indians of North America. It was found to be the term employed by the Ojibway, an Algon quin tribe, to designate usually the animal or plant the name of which the clan bears, and which is recognised as an ancestor, a protector, and a rallying sign. " Totemism seems to have been as widespread as the animism from which it is derived; we find it to some extent everywhere, if not in the pure form and unmixed with more recent religious conceptions, at least as a sur vival more or less clearly defined. The religions of Egypt, of Syria, of Greece, of Italy and of Gaul are all impregnated with totemism " (Reinach, O., 1909). That the Semites passed through the totem stage seems clear from the facts adduced by Robertson Smith (R.S.). Pro fessor Za pieta 1 (Der Totemismus end die Religion 1901) has opposed this view, and denied that the Israelites were tobntists, but without success, as Stanley A. Cook has shown (" Israel and Totemism " in the Jewish Quarterly Review, April, 1902). But in the light of new discoveries. the data collected by Spencer and Gillen among the tribes of Central Australia, it is felt that. Robertson Sniffles general conception of totemism and especially his theory of a " totem sacrament " will not stand. Dr. Fraz._n. (as quoted by Cook) says that Robertson Smith's theory inferred " a totem community united in reverence, awe and love of the totem animal, solemnly and sorrowfully killing it once a year, and par taking of its flesh, not as common food to fill their stomachs. but as a means of entering into a mystic com munion with the divine animal." What are the facts? " We find a community of which the greater part regu larly kills and eats the animal in question whenever they can lay hands on it, whilst the remaining section (which has the animal for its totem) does its best to multiply I ho creature in order that all the rest of the people may devour it. And since, in order to breed the animal for eating-, they think it necessary to have part of its sub stance in their bodies, they do ceremonially partake of its flesh. not in order to acquire certain mysterious divine qualities, but ultimately in order that the majority of their fellows may feed on roast kangaroo, roast emu, or whatever it may be. Instead of a mystic religious rite like the Christian sacrament of the Eucharist (which was clearly in Robertson Smith's mind), we see a magical ceremony of the most practical and business-like intention." Dr. Frazer thinks that the relation of the group to the totem cannot properly be described as wor ship. The most primitive form of totemism he finds now among the Arunta of Central Australia. The Arunta have a peculiar theory of conception. " The child has neither the totem of his father nor that of his mother, bat the one whose centre is at the spot where the mother believes that she felt the first symptoms of approaching maternity. For it is said that the Arunta is ignorant of the exact relation existing between generation and the sexual act; he thinks that every conception is due to a sort. of mystic feentlation. According to him, it is due to the entrance of the soul of an ancestor into the body of a woman and its becoming the principle of a new life there. So at the moment when a woman feels the first
tremblings of the ehild. she Imagines that one of the souls whose principal residence is at the place where she happens to be, has just entered into her. As the child who is presently born is merely the reincarnation of this ancestor, he necessarily has the same totem; thus his totem is determined by the locality where he Is believed to have been mysteriously conceived " (Emile Durkheim). Durkheim gives a brief summary of Frazer's theory. "Al the exact moment when the woman realizes that she is pregnant, she must think that the spirit by which she feels herself possessed has come to her from the objects about her, and especially from one of those which attract her attention at the moment. So if she is engaged in plucking a plant, or watehing an animal, she believes that the soul of this plant or animal has passed into her. Among the things to which she will be particularly inclined to attribute her condition are, in the first place, the things she has just eaten. If she has recently eaten emu or yam, she will not doubt that an emu or yam has been born in her and is developing. Under these con ditions, it is evident how the child, in his turn, will be considered a sort of yam or emu, bow he regards himself as a relative of the plant or animal of the same species, how he has sympathy and regard for them, how he refuses to eat them, etc. From this moment, totemism exists in its essential traits : it is the native's theory of con ception that gave rise to it, so Frazer calls this primitive totemism conceptional." The weakness of this theory is that It assumes too much, for the probability is that this so-called primitive totemism was preceded by the better known type, hereditary totemism, either in the paternal or the maternal line. Salomon Reinach in his Cults has formulated a code of (animal) totemism. 1. Certain animals are neither killed nor eaten, but man rears specimens and tends them. 2. Mourning is worn for the accidental death of a member of a particular animal species; and it is buried with the same honours as a member of the clan. 3. Occasionally the alimentary interdiction applies only to a part of the animal's body. 4 When animals, ordinarily spared, are killed under the stress of urgent necessity, the slayers address excuses to them, or strive by various artifices to extenuate the viola tion of the taboo: in other words, the murder. 5. The tabooed animal is mourned for after it has been ritually sacrificed. G. Men put on the skins of certain animals, especially in religious ceremonies. Where totemism exists, these animals are totems. 7. Clans and indi viduals take the names of animals. Where totemism exists, these animals are totems. 8. In many instances, the clan carries the image of an animal on its ensigns and arms. The individual may paint this image on his body, or tattoo himself with it. 9. The totemic animal, if dangerous, is supposed to spare the members of the totemic clan, but only when they belong to it by birth. 10. Animal totems help and protect the members of the totemic clan. 11. Animal totems foretell the future to the faithful, and serve them as guides. 12. The members of a totemic clan frequently believe themselves related to their animal totem by the bond of a common descent.