42 Science Religion and Reality 



When we pass to nutrition, the first thing to be noted is that 

 eating is for primitive man an act surrounded by etiquette, special 

 prescriptions and prohibitions, and a general emotional tension to 

 a degree unknown to us. Besides the magic of food, designed to 

 make it go a long way, or to prevent its scarcity in general — and 

 we do not speak here at all of the innumerable forms of magic 

 associated with the procuring of food — food has also a conspicuous 

 role in ceremonies of a distinctly religious character. First- 

 fruit offerings of a ritual nature, harvest ceremonies, big seasonal 

 feasts in which crops are accumulated, displayed, and, in one way 

 or another, sacralised, play an important part among agricultural 

 peoples. Hunters, again, or fishers celebrate a big catch or the 

 opening of the season of their pursuit by feasts and ceremonies at 

 which food is ritually handled, the animals propitiated or worshipped. 

 All such acts express the joy of the community, their sense of the 

 great value of food, and religion through them consecrates the 

 reverent attitude of man towards his daily bread. 



To primitive man, never, even under the best conditions, quite 

 free from the threat of starvation, abundance of food is a primary 

 condition of normal life. It means the possibility of looking 

 beyond the daily worries, of paying more attention to the remoter, 

 spiritual aspects of civilisation. If we thus consider that food is 

 the main link between man and his surroundings, that by receiving 

 it he feels the forces of destiny and providence, we can see the 

 cultural, nay, biological importance of primitive religion in the 

 sacralisation of food. We can see in it the germs of what in higher 

 types of religion will develop into the feeling of dependence upon 

 Providence, of gratitude, and of confidence in it. 



Sacrifice and communion, the two main forms in which food 

 is ritually ministered, can be now beheld in a new light against 

 the background of man's early attitude of religious reverence 

 towards the providential abundance of food. That the idea of 

 giving, the importance of the exchange of gifts in all phases of 

 social contact, plays a great role in sacrifice seems — in spite of the 

 unpopularity of this theory nowadays — unquestionable in view of 

 the new knowledge of primitive economic psychology.^ Since 



^ Cf. the writer's Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 1923, and the article on 

 "Primitive Economics" in the Economic Journal, 1921 ; as well as Professor 

 Rich. Thurnwald's memoir on "Die Gestaltung der Wirtschaftsentwicklung 

 aus ihren Anfangen heraus " in Erinnerungsgabe fiir Max Weber, 1923. 



