which exist or have existed on the face of the earth, only a relatively very small number are capable of domestication; and before they were brought under cultivation there was nothing whatever in their appearance or in man's scanty experience to indicate that they, and they alone, could be domesticated. How, then, did he light upon exactly those kinds which were capable of cultivation ? Simply by trying all. Those kinds which were incapable of domestication remained wild; the few that could be cultivated became our domestic animals and plants. But though man "tried" all kinds, he was not aware that he was making experiments, still less that the consequence of his attempts would be the "domestication" of certain species. How could he be, when the very idea of "domestic animals" had not yet dawned upon man's mind? It could, then, have been no consideration of utility, no prospective personal benefit, no foresight of the consequences, that made man all over the globe attempt to domesticate every species of animal that he came across-indeed, he did not know that he was "domesticating it. The suggestion that his motive was amusement 2 does not supply an adequate cause; granted that amusement might lead a man here and there to capture an animal and try to tame it, we cannot suppose the whole human race in every latitude and on every continent giving itself up to this kind of amusement," as we must suppose, if we are thus to account for the domestication of animals-to say nothing of plants. And when we bear in mind that the savage is usually incapable of steady, continuous, persistent effort, we shall require a more potent cause than amusement as a motive for the long labour of domestication. But in totemism we have a cause persistent, world-wide, and adequate to account for the facts. The totem animal, not merely an individual but the whole species, is reverenced, protected, and allowed, or rather encouraged to increase and multiply over the whole area traversed by the tribe-and the area

1 The above argument is borrowed from Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 243–270. He also recognises the sanctity of certain animals as one of the causes leading to the domestication of animals, but does not mention totemism, and thinks that the savage's habit of making pets is the chief cause. 2 Lord Kames, Sketches, bk. i. sk. 1 (Payne, 282).

required for the support of a nomad family is considerable. This treatment is continued for generations, for it is the religion of the tribe. The appearance of the animal is welcomed with rejoicing as the manifestation of the tribal deity, offerings are made to it, and, being free from molestation, it discovers the fact, acquires confidence, and if it has the instinct of domestication, ceases to be wild. In a word, the animal becomes tame-which is a different thing from being tamed.

It may perhaps seem inconsistent with this theory of the origin of an artificial food-supply, that the totem is never consumed as food. But it is not by eating their cattle that a pastoral people become rich, but by abstaining from eating them. The cattle are their capital; the interest thereof, on which they live, consists of the milk and its products. It is not until nomad life is given up and agriculture has provided another and even more abundant source of food, that the community becomes rich enough to afford to eat the flesh of their cattle; and by that time the clan, of which the totem was an honoured member, and to which its flesh was taboo, has itself dissolved and made way for those local organisations which hold a nation together. In the same way, it is not by consuming corn that wheat is grown, but by abstaining from its consumption. To make it an extinct species, all that is required is to consume every ear of corn existing. The savage required no teaching in the art of consumption; it is the lesson of abstinence which it is hard for him to learn. That lesson he was incapable of teaching himself, but totemism taught him. The fact that the agricultural is universally a later stage in the development of civilisation than the pastoral, is, we may conjecture, because animal preceded plant totems: animals have the blood which is necessary for the blood-covenant between the human kin and the totem kind; and it was only later that plants possessing a sap or juice which may act as blood, especially if it is reddish in colour, came to be adopted as totems.

The domestication of plants is a question to which we shall recur in a subsequent chapter, and the reader is requested, therefore, to suspend judgment on this point. But,

as it may appear a paradox to assert that men learnt to eat cattle by abstaining from eating them, perhaps a few more words in elucidation should be given. The ordinary theory of the beginnings of domestication is presumably that the hunter, having learnt by experience that beef was good, or that "mountain sheep are sweet," resolved to spare the young animals and breed from them. To this there are two objections. First, the savage, having practically no thought for the morrow, is habitually reckless and wasteful in consumption, eats all he can, and only goes hunting again when there is absolutely nothing left to eat. Next, as a matter of fact, their cattle are precisely the animals which pastoral peoples do not eat. "The common food of these races is milk or game; cattle are seldom killed for food, and only on exceptional occasions, such as the proclamation of a war,' etc. Amongst the Zulus the killing of a cow "is seldom and reluctantly done." 2 "A Kaffir does not often slaughter his cattle, except for sacrifice or to celebrate a marriage."3 "Every idea and thought of the Dinka is how to acquire and maintain cattle; a kind of reverence would seem to be paid to them.. a cow is never slaughtered, but when sick it is segregated from the rest and carefully tended in the large huts built for the purpose. . . indescribable is the grief when either death or rapine has robbed a Dinka of his cattle. He is prepared to redeem their loss by the heaviest sacrifices, for they are dearer to him than wife or child."4 the Indian women breed fowl and other domestic animals in their cottages, they never eat them. . . much less kill them."5 The Battas of Sumatra (who are totemists) have domesticated "the buffalo, dog, pig, goat, fowl, and horse; buffaloes and goats, dogs and horses (which latter are carefully fattened), as a rule never serve for food except at festivals." 6

Though

It is therefore the ordinary theory of domestication that is paradoxical, for it assumes that man domesticates animals 1 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 297.

2 Ibid. quoting Shaw, Memorials of South Africa, 59.

8 Shooter, Kafirs of Natal, 28.

4 Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, i. 163.

Ulloa, quoted in Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty, 247.

6 Waitz, Anthropologie, v. 1. 183.

.

for no other purpose than to eat them, and then does not eat them. On the other hand, the view here advanced is that totemism is or has been world-wide-it can be traced in Australia, North America, Central America, South America, Africa, Asia, Polynesia 1—that probably every species of animal has been worshipped as a totem somewhere or other, at some time or other; that, in consequence of the respect paid to them, those animals which were capable of domestication became gradually tame of themselves; and finally, in consequence of changing circumstances-religious, social, and economic-as totemism and the taboo on the flesh of the totem faded away, the habit of eating those domesticated animals which are good for food grew slowly up. The growth of this habit will be traced in the chapter on the Sacrificial Meal. Here, however, one or two points may be noted. If our theory be true, we should expect to find, even amongst those peoples who have taken to eating domesticated animals, traces of reluctance to kill or consume animals which once were forbidden food. Such traces are found. kill an ox was once a capital offence in Greece, and the word Bovpóvia implies that such slaughter was murder.3 In England, it was in Cæsar's time a religious offence to eat fowl (as it was amongst the South American Indians mentioned above in the quotation from Ulloa), goose, or hare; and yet they were bred, he says. Cæsar feels that there is something strange in this, but (anticipating Lord Kames) he conjectures that the creatures were bred for amusement, "animi voluptatisque causa." But there are two obvious objections to this: first, if they were bred merely for amusement, there could have been no religious offence in eating them; next, if there was a taboo on eating them, they were not domesticated merely for amusement. Wild animals are undoubtedly commonly kept as pets by savages, but savages have no scruples about killing pets. Thus Captain Speke says, "I was told Suna kept buffaloes, antelopes, and animals of all sorts. . . M'tese,

1 Frazer, Totemism, 91–9.

2 Varro, R. R. ii. 5.

* Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 306.

4 Cæs. B. G. v. 12: gustare fas non putant; haec tamen alunt."

To

his son, no sooner came to the throne than he indulged in shooting them down before his admiring wives, and now he has only one buffalo and a few parrots left." If the fowl and other domestic animals bred by the South American Indians were merely pets, we should not find that "if a stranger offers ever so much money for a fowl they refuse to part with it;" or that, on seeing it killed, the Indian woman "shrieks, dissolves into tears, and wrings her hands as if it had been an only son." 2

Other animals which civilised man is reluctant to feed on are swine, dogs, and horses. The two latter animals are of importance for our argument, not merely because they show how long the loathing set up by the original taboo can survive its cause, but also because they remind us that domestic animals serve other purposes than that of providing an artificial food-supply. According to our theory, animals that were capable of domestication became tame of themselves, in consequence of the respect and protection afforded to them as to other totem animals; and it was only in the course of time that it gradually dawned on the mind of man that he might make economic use of them. On the other hand, the ordinary view is that man first saw how useful

2 Ulloa, ap. Galton, 247.

1 Galton, op. cit. 249. The swine, like the hare, was forbidden food to the Hebrews. With regard to the former animal, the facts seem to be as follows: The swine as a domesticated animal was not known to the undispersed Semites or to the Sumerian population of Babylon (Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities, 261); on the other hand, its flesh was forbidden food to all the Semites (Religion of the Semites, 218). The inference, therefore, is that (1) it was after their dispersion that the Semites became acquainted with the swine as a domestic animal, (2) it was forbidden food from the time of its first introduction and spread amongst them. In the next place, (1) the pig can only be housed and reared amongst a settled, i.e. agricultural, population, (2) the pig is associated especially with the worship of agricultural deities, e.g. Demeter, Adonis, and Aphrodite. The inference again is that, as agriculture and the religious rites associated with it spread together, it was in connection with some form of agricultural worship that the domestication of the pig found its way amongst the various branches of the Semitic race. Finally, the swine (1) was esteemed sacrosanct by some Semites, (2) is condemned in Isaiah (lxv. 4, lxvi. 3, 16; cf. Religion of Semites, 291) as a heathen abomination. The inference, then, is that the worship with which the swine was associated did not find equal acceptance amongst all the Semites. Where it did find acceptance, the flesh was forbidden because it was sacred; where it did not, it was prohibited because of its association with the worship of false gods.