24 Science Religion and Reality 



on the other side, which objects are called the totems of the 

 human group." Totemism thus has two sides : it is a mode of 

 social grouping and a religious system of beliefs and practices. As 

 religion, it expresses primitive man's interest in his surroundings, 

 the desire to claim an affinity and to control the most important 

 objects : above all, animal or vegetable species, more rarely useful 

 inanimate objects, very seldom man-made things. As a rule 

 species of animals and plants used for staple food or at any rate 

 edible or useful or ornamental animals are held in a special form of 

 " totemic reverence " and are tabooed to the members of the clan 

 which is associated with the species and which sometimes performs 

 rites and ceremonies for its multiplication. The social aspect of 

 totemism consists in the subdivision of the tribe into minor units, 

 called in anthropology clans, gentes, sibs, or ph.ratries. 



In totemism we see therefore not the result of early man's 

 speculations about mysterious phenomena, but a blend of a utili- 

 tarian anxiety about the most necessary objects of his surroundings, 

 with some preoccupation in those which strike his imagination 

 and attract his attention, such as beautiful birds, reptiles and 

 dangerous animals. With our knowledge of what could be called 

 the totemic attitude of mind, primitive religion is seen to be nearer 

 to reality and to the immediate practical life interests of the savage, 

 than it appeared in its " animistic " aspect emphasised by Tylor 

 and the earlier anthropologists. 



By its apparently strange association with a problemxitic form 

 of social division, I mean the clan system; totemism has taught 

 anthropology yet another lesson : it has revealed the importance 

 of the sociological aspect in all the early forms of cult. The 

 savage depends upon the group with whom he is in direct contact 

 both for practical co-operation and mental solidarity to a far 

 larger extent than does civilised man. Since — as can be seen in 

 totemism, magic, and many other practices — early cult and ritual 

 are closely associated with practical concerns as well as with mental 

 needs, there must exist an intimate connection between social 

 organisation and religious belief. This was understood already 

 by that pioneer of religious anthropology, Robertson Smith, 

 whose principle that primitive religion " was essentially an affair 

 of the community rather than of individuals " has become a 

 Leitmotiv of modern research. According to Professor Durkheim, 

 who has put these views most forcibly, " the religious " is identical 



