TOTEMISM— HOPKINS. 583 



became as food and drink divine; Soma as intoxicant became a 

 magical thing, taboo to the vulgar. Yet neither Soma nor cow ever 

 became a totem. Their divinity lay in their use not in their an- 

 cestorhood. 1 



Wundt thinks he has added something to the history of totemism 

 by saying that in establishing the totem on a cultural basis the cult 

 itself was made permanent; in other words, periodic religious cere- 

 monies leading up to an observance of days in general were intro- 

 duced by totemism, which (in Wundt's own words) was "the great- 

 est and most important step taken in the development of cult " (that 

 is. of cult in general). 2 Yet this discovery of Wundt is not so sig- 

 nificant as it appears to be. For it rests on the conviction that 

 totemism is the base of all other cults. As a matter of fact, savages 

 base their cult much more generally on seasonal changes than on 

 totemic observances ; in fact, the latter are often no more than the 

 reflection of the former. Wundt with his overdriven theory of the 

 Fanany-cult fails to recognize the equally old and far more common 

 fear of animals not as totems but as spirit forms of reincarnated 

 human beings. This popular belief is more important than that of 

 the " worm spirit." On the whole, Wundt's theory that totemism 

 underlies all religion and that, underlying totemism, is the belief that 

 the worms crawling out of a dead man's body are his souls is as little 

 likely to satisfy serious investigators as any of the one-sided theories 

 of the origin of religion which preceded it. Not only is totemism 

 not the basis of religion, it represents no religious stage or stratum 

 whatever. 3 



If, then, we have regard to the fact that with all its divergencies 

 in detail totemism in its original habitat (i. e., where the name arose) 

 is in the main a recognition of a peculiar bond subsisting between a 

 group of human and a group of animal or vegetable beings, that this 

 bond is not an individual or sex matter, but that in the great ma- 

 jority of cases it is connected with dietary restrictions, we have the 

 basis of what may reasonably be called totemism. To dub every cult 

 of an animal totemic is like calling any object of religious regard a 

 fetish ; it tends to meaninglessness. From this point of view we 

 may then reasonably admit as totemic what appears to be the earlier 

 stage in this human bond, as illustrated by the cases forming what I 

 have ventured to call the background of totemism, Australian, 

 Peruvian, etc., in which the reason for the bond is palpably because 

 the totem (though not yet a real totem) is regarded as the provider 

 of sustenance, primarily because it is the totemist's food, Mother 



1 The divine myrobolan called " chebulic " as an efficacious drug arose from a drop of 

 ambrosia ; garlic sprang from drops shed by Eahu and has a demoniac power, etc. The 

 Varuna tree is named for the god. Other plants and trees receive a similar sanctity. 



2 Wundt, op. cit. 2, 258. 



3 See on this point the very sensible observations of Dr. olden weiser, op. cit., p. 264. 



