Magic Science and Religion 43 



the giving of gifts is the normal accompaniment of all social 

 intercourse among primitives, the spirits who visit the village, or 

 the demons who haunt some hallowed spot, or divinities when 

 approached, are given their due, their share sacrificed from the 

 general plenty, as any other visitors or persons visited would be. 

 But underlying this custom there is a still deeper religious element. 

 Since food is to the savage the token of the beneficence of the 

 world, since plenty gives him the first, the most elementary, 

 inkling of Providence, by sharing in food sacrificially with his 

 spirits or divinities the savage shares with them in the beneficial 

 powers of his Providence already felt by him but not yet compre- 

 hended. Thus in primitive societies the roots of sacrificial 

 offerings are to be found in the psychologyof gift, which is to them 

 communion in beneficent abundance. 



The sacramental meal is only another expression of the same 

 mental attitude, carried out in the most appropriate manner by 

 the act by which life is retained and renewed — the act of eating. 

 But this ritual seems to be extremely rare among lower savages, 

 and the sacrament of communion, prevalent at a level of culture 

 when the primitive psychology of eating is no more, has by then 

 acquired a different symbolic and mystical meaning. Perhaps 

 the only case of sacramental eating, well attested and known with 

 some detail, is the so-called " totemic sacrament " of the Central 

 Australian tribes, and this seems to require a somewhat more 

 special interpretation. 



3. MarCs Selective Interest in Nature 



This brings us to the subject of totemism, briefly defined in 

 the first section. As may have been seen, the following 

 questions have to be asked about totemism. First, why does a 

 primitive tribe select for its totems a limited number of species, 

 primarily animals and plants ; and on what principles is this 

 selection made ? Secondly, why is this selective attitude expressed 

 in beliefs of affinity, in cults of multiplication, above all in the 

 negative injunctions of totemic taboos, and again in injunctions 

 of ritual eating, as in the Australian " totemic sacrament " ? 

 Thirdly and finally, why with the subdivision of nature into a 

 limited number of selected species does there run parallel a sub- 

 division of the tribe into clans correlated with the species ? 



