apparently relapses into precisely the same stage as that which his pre-totemist forefather occupied. But as this is a matter which raises the important question, how far we can take the savage to represent "primitive" man, it is necessary to note that the post-totemistic stage, though in much it resembles the pre-totemistic, also differs much from it. In both stages, any and every rock that impresses the imagination of the savage may by him be credited with life and even with supernatural powers; he simply returns in the later period to the animism of the earlier, or rather he has never abandoned it. But he returns to it with an idea which was wholly unknown to him in the first period, namely, the conception of "worship," the idea, not merely of sacrifice, but of offering sacrifice "to" someone. Now, this conception, or rather these conceptions, as should be by this time clear, have their origin in totemism: "worship," as an act in its rudimentary stage, means only the sprinkling of blood upon the altar; the blood sprinkled is that of the totem animal, and the only object of the rite is to renew the blood-covenant between the totem clan and the totem species and to procure the presence of the totem god. The idea of offering a sacrifice "to" a god is a notion which can only be developed in a later stage of totemism, when, on the one hand, the monolith has come to be identified with the god, and, on the other, the god is no longer in the animal. Above all, worship," on its inner side and in the ideas and emotions correlated with the rite and the external act, implies the existence, for the worshipper, of a god, i.e. not merely of a supernatural being as such, but of a supernatural being who has "stated relations with a community." The ex-totemist, therefore, who retains nothing of his forefathers' beliefs and i rites but the idea that it is possible to appease a supernatural being by offering sacrifices "to" him, may gravely mislead the historian of "primitive" religion. Indeed, he has led some students to imagine that his inherited habit of offering sacrifices to stones and rocks is a primitive practice out of which religion has sprung, while the truth is that the worship of stones is a degradation of a higher form of worship. The mere existence of sacrifice is an indication of the former 1 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 119.

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existence of totemism. The very idea of a temporary compact between an individual man and a supernatural power is derived from the original form of alliance, which was always and necessarily between clans, not between individuals.

A more varied and interesting chapter in the history of the monolithic altar is that of its fortunes when a higher form of religion invades the land. If the cult of any given altar and the local sanctuary in which it stands is too vigorous to be extinguished, it may be adopted by the invading and dominant race, and incorporated into their religion. This amalgamation of cults bears the technical name of "syncretism." Thus, in the New World, the Incas, when they invaded Peru, bringing with them their worship of the Sun, built temples of the Sun in some of the local sanctuaries; and, in the Old World, the totem animals whose blood from of old had been dashed on the primitive monolith, continued to be offered at the same altar even when it had been appropriated to the service of the Sun-god or Sky-spirit, Zeus or Apollo. If, on the other hand, the local cult had already decayed, if sacrifice was rarely offered, and the monolith was but the object of traditional veneration, then the respect or the sanctity attaching to it came in course of time to require explanation, and an explanation spontaneously sprang up which commended itself to the now dominant beliefs and traditions of the new religion. Thus, in Mexico, the sanctity of the monolith of Tlalnepautla was accounted for by the belief that the great culture-god Quetzalcoatl had left on it the imprint of his hand; and, in the Old World, “monolithic pillars or cairns of stone are frequently mentioned in the more ancient parts of the Old Testament as standing at sanctuaries, generally in connection with a sacred legend about the occasion on which they were set up by some famous patriarch or hero." But matters did not always progress so peaceably. Frequently, both in its own interests, and, we may add, to the ultimate benefit of mankind, the higher religion found it necessary to undertake the suppression of the older cults. Thus Inca Roca threw down the monolith worshipped by the inhabitants of a certain village; the Councils of Tours (567) and Nantes (895) ordered the 1 Robertson Smith, op. cit. 203.

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destruction of such stones and the excommunication of their worshippers; in the seventh century, Archbishop Theodore, and in the eighth, King Edgar, found it necessary to denounce the worship of stones in England. In most cases the new religion eventually triumphed, but in none without a long struggle. The superstitious man of Theophrastus' time still anointed the stones at the cross-ways. Arnobius tells us that, when he was yet a pagan and came across a sacred stone anointed with oil, he spoke low and prayed to it; in many parts of France, at this day, pierres fites are the objects of superstitious veneration, and are believed to influence the crops; and finally, in Norway certain stones are still anointed, and supposed to bring good luck to the house.

Now, that the practice of anointing these stones has been handed down to the modern peasant from the time when they were altars on which the blood of sacrifice was smeared, will not be doubted. But if that be admitted, then the case for the view, advanced above, that the sacrifices offered to stones by the ex-totemist are also survivals of worship at an altar, is strengthened. The only difference, from this point of view, between the peasant and the savage is that the ancestral totemism of the savage died a natural death, so to speak, while that of the peasant was killed by an invading religion. Both return to their original animism, or rather have never got, in this respect, beyond it; and both retain practices which are manifestly survivals of that "primitive rite of sprinkling or dashing the blood against the altar, or allowing it to flow down on the ground at its base," which, "whatever else was done in connection with a sacrifice, was hardly ever omitted."

What else was done in connection with a sacrifice we have now to state.

CHAPTER XII

ANIMAL SACRIFICE: THE SACRIFICIAL MEAL

THAT, amongst the Semitic and Aryan peoples, the eating of the victim was part of the sacrificial rite, is too well known to need illustration. We shall therefore confine ourselves to quoting the late Professor Robertson Smith's account of the most primitive form of the Semitic ceremony, as practised by certain heathen Arabs (Saracens), and described by Nilus : "The camel chosen as the victim is bound upon a rude altar of stones piled together, and when the leader of the band has thrice led the worshippers round the altar in a solemn procession accompanied with chants, he inflicts the first wound, while the last words of the hymn are still upon the lips of the congregation, and in all haste drinks of the blood that gushes forth. Forthwith the whole company fall on the victim with their swords, hacking off pieces of the quivering flesh and devouring them raw, with such wild haste that in the short interval between the rise of the day-star, which marked the hour for the service to begin, and the disappearance of its rays before the rising sun, the entire camel, body and bones, skin, blood, and entrails, is wholly devoured.” 1

As for the Aryan peoples, we have nothing so primitive as the Semitic ceremonial described in this extract, but the ancient Prussians retained some ancient features of the original rite in one of their festivals, though with later accretions. The community met together in a barn, and a ram was brought in. The high priest laid his hands upon this victim, and invoked all the gods in order, mentioning each by name.

1 Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, 338. In this chapter, again, I follow his line of argument to the best of my ability, and add one or two illustrations from the rites of non-Semitic peoples.

Then all who were present lifted up the victim and held it aloft whilst a hymn was sung. When the hymn was finished, the ram was laid upon the ground, and the priest addressed the people, exhorting them to celebrate solemnly this feast transmitted to them from their forefathers, and to hand on in their turn the tradition of it to their children. The animal was then slain, its blood was caught in a bowl, and the priest sprinkled with it those present. The flesh was given to the women to cook in the barn. The feast lasted all night, and the remnants were buried early in the morning outside the village, in order that birds or beasts might not get them.1

The more revolting details of the Semitic rite, "the scramble described by Nilus, the wild rush to cut gobbets of flesh from the still quivering victim," are not of the essence of the ceremony, but incidental, and due merely to the uncivilised condition of the worshippers. As such they give way among the later Arabs to a more orderly partition of the sacrificial flesh amongst those present. It was, however, necessary to mention them here for two reasons: first, they show, by their very want of civilisation, that the Arabians retained the primitive form of the rite; and next, they find their parallel not merely amongst other uncivilised peoples, but also in the strange reversions practised in the "mysteries of the ancient world. These will be discussed in a later chapter, and so all we need say of them here is that different local sanctuaries differed in the degree of tenacity with which they adhered to primitive "uses" some gave them up soon, others retained them long and late. We may conjecture, therefore, that when a reversion to a lower or more barbarous ritual suddenly spreads in a civilised community, it is one of these more conservative and out-of-the-way sanctuaries which is the centre of diffusion.

Turning, however, from these barbarous and accidental adjuncts to the more important features of the rite, we may notice how the sacrificial meal differs from ordinary eating. In the first place, the victim must be consumed there and then, avтóli, on the spot where the sacrifice takes place, "there before the Lord," in the sanctuary wherein the altar 1 Bastian, Der Mensch, iii. 154. 2 Religion of the Semites, 341.