46 Science Religion and Reality 



Thus we find our questions answered : man's selective 

 interest in a limited number of animals and plants and the way 

 in which this interest is ritually expressed and socially conditioned 

 appear as the natural result of primitive existence, of the savage's 

 spontaneous attitudes towards natural objects and of his prevalent 

 occupations. From the survival point of view, it. is vital that 

 man's interest in the practically indispensable species should never 

 abate, that his belief in his capacity to control them should give 

 him strength and endurance in his pursuits and stimulate his 

 observation and knowledge of the habits and natures of animals 

 and plants, Totemism appears thus as a blessing bestowed by 

 religion on primitive man's efforts in dealing with his useful 

 surroundings, upon his " struggle for existence." At the same 

 time it develops his reverence for those animals and plants on which 

 he depends, to which he feels in a way grateful, and yet the 

 destruction of which is a necessity to him. And all this springs 

 from the belief of man's affinity with those forces of nature upon 

 which he mainly depends. Thus we find a moral value and 

 a biological significance in totemism, in a system of beliefs, 

 practices, and social arrangements which at first sight appears but 

 a childish, irrelevant, and degrading fancy of the savage. 



4. Death and the Reintegration of the Group 



Of all sources of religion, the supreme and final crisis of life — 

 death — is of the greatest importance. Death is the gateway to 

 the other world in more than the literal sense. According to 

 most theories of early religion, a great deal, if not all, of religious 

 inspiration has been derived from it — and in this orthodox views 

 are on the whole correct. Man has to live his life in the shadow 

 of death, and he who clings to life and enjoys its fullness must dread 

 the menace of its end. And he who is faced by death turns to 

 the promise of life. Death and its denial — Immortality — have 

 always formed, as they form to-day, the most poignant theme of 

 man's forebodings. The extreme complexity of man's emotional 

 reactions to life finds necessarily its counterpart in his attitude 

 to death. Only what in life has been spread over a long space 

 and manifested in a succession of experiences and events is here 

 at its end condensed into one crisis which provokes a violent and 

 complex outburst of religious manifestations. 



