6 
INTRODUCTION 
perhaps conjecture that the spirits of the dead ancestors, 
lurking unseen in the rocks or trees, are believed to be 
gratified by the sight of these commemorative services. Thus 
far, therefore, the example of these primitive Australian 
dramas may be thought to confirm by analogy the theory of 
the late Sir William Ridgeway, that Greek tragedy originated 
in the commemoration and propitiation of the dead. 
But the dramas of the Central Australian aborigines are by 
no means all simply commemorative. A very important class 
of them is purely magical, being designed to maintain and 
multiply by magic the natural sources of subsistence, 
whether vegetable or animal, whether solid or liquid, on 
■which the very existence of the community is dependent. It 
would, therefore, be difficult to exaggerate the importance 
which the natives attach to the proper performance of these 
magical rites; it is for them a matter of life and death. The 
essence of the rites consists in mimicking the object which 
the performers desire to produce; for the principle of magic 
on which they proceed is that of sympathy or imitation; the 
ceremony must resemble the effect which it is meant to bring 
about. If the intention, for example, is to produce a supply of 
edible insects, the performers imitate the shape and move¬ 
ments of the creature; if they desire to secure a supply of 
water, they imitate the fall of rain; and so on with the other 
departments of nature which are to be magically kept in 
working order. 
Now this system of satisfying all the material wants of life 
by means of magic is ingeniously dovetailed by these savages 
into their totemic system, or rather perhaps forms an integral 
part of it. For, roughly speaking, they have subdivided the 
whole of nature into totems, and have distributed the various 
departments of nature, as totems, among the totemic clans, 
charging each clan with the duty of maintaining its own 
particular department, that is, its totem (it may be a species 
