314 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 
practise these ceremonies in Europe could say why they do so. 
Australia may almost be said to have now supplied that direct 
testimony which was hitherto lacking, for the Arunta and other 
Australian tribes do consciously and avowedly practise their 
Intichiuma ceremonies as charms for making plants to grow, 
rain to fall, and so forth. The analogy thus brought to lght 
between the modes of thought of man in Europe and Australia 
furnishes a striking proof of the fundamental identity of the 
human mind under every variety of colour and under every 
sky. 
So much for the Intichiuma ceremonies in general. But 
there is one special feature in some of them to which I would 
direct your attention. We have long been familiar with the 
rule that men may not eat their totem, when their totem happens 
to be a plant, and that they may neither kill nor eat it when it 
happens to be an animal. But long ago my acute friend, the 
late W. Robertson Smith, was led by various scattered indica- 
tions to conclude that among totem tribes a custom prevailed of 
killing and eating the totem animal on rare and solemn occa- 
sions as a form of sacrament or communion with the totem 
deity. No single instance of such a practice was known among 
totem tribes. Certain cases, indeed, were known in which an 
animal apparently regarded as divine was slain with great 
solemnity asa religious rite. Such, for example, were the sacri- 
fice of the ram at Thebes in ancient Egypt, of the great buzzard 
among some Californian tribes, and of turtles among the Zunis ; 
but, in the first place, there was no positive evidence that the 
animals thus slain were totems, and in the second place, al- 
though they were killed, they were in many, perhaps in most, 
cases not eaten ; and thus essential links in the chain of Robert- 
son Smith’s argument were wanting. For, according to him, 
the divine animal slain was a totem, and it was slain in order 
that it might be eaten by the worshippers, who were thus sup- 
posed to enter into a mystic communion with the totem by par- 
taking of his flesh and blood. Like my distinguished friend 
I was at one time inclined to think that some of the animals 
thus solemnly slain probably were or had once been totems (a) ; 
but as years passed, and still no evidence was forthcoming of 
any such practices among actual totem tribes, I became more and 
more sceptical as to their existence, although in the meantime 
the assumption of a sacramental communion with the totem 
by partaking of its flesh had become almost a commonplace with 
some writers, who had adopted Robertson Smith’s conclusion 
(a) The Golden Bough, I1., p. 95. In the cases to which I referred in this passage the 
sacred animals are killed, but not eaten. Neither in The Golden Bough nor in Totemism 
have I adduced any example of the sacramental eating of an animal which could with 
any show of probability be regarded as a totem. I desire to point this out expressly, as 
my writings have sometimes been referred to vaguely as containing evidence of this sort, 
though in fact they do not. 
