Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/417

 Totemism in the Evolution of Religion. 377

domesticated any animal. It is to them also that I turn for a refutation of M. Marillier's position that totemism as a cause of domestication is superfluous. For domestication, according to M. Marillier, all that is required is that an animal should be considered divine and treated as sacred by the inhabitants of the district ; ^ it is not necessary that it should be a totem. I quite agree that an animal will become tame if treated as divine or sacred ; but I look round the two totem-areas, the homes of the Redskin and the Australian blackfellow, and I ask myself, Where are there any animals, except totem-animals, which are treated as sacred or divine? Why should we invoke divine animals which are not totems to account for domestication, when there are already totem-animals all over the world ready and able to do the work ?

But, says M. Marillier, domestic animals are rarely, if indeed ever, found as totems.'*^ Well, in the two areas of North America and Australia, of course, they could not be, because there are not any. In Europe and Asia, totemism is a stage of social evolution too long past for us to find anything but survivals. And when in Africa, amongst the Damaras, we do come across the domestic cow looking, as M. Marillier admits,'^ very like a totem, M. Marillier says — e mera conjectura — that in this case the cattle are probably not totems, but have taken the place of the real original totem-animals.

On one point, however — and not only one point I am happy to say — M. Marillier and I are agreed. It is that originally domesticable animals (whether they were totems or not) were not eaten, or only in a ritual way ; and it was but gradually and by very slow degrees that they came to be eaten commonly and non-ritually. I wish to point out that the same thing happens with animals that certainly are

' n., p. 367. ■"' III., p. 228. ' I., p. 232.