The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life Part 22

The first thing which is implied in the notion of the causal relation is the idea of efficacy, of productive power, of active force. By cause we ordinarily mean something capable of producing a certain change. The cause is the force before it has shown the power which is in it; the effect is this same power, only actualized. Men have always thought of causality in dynamic terms. Of course certain philosophers had refused all objective value to this conception; they see in it only an arbitrary construction of the imagination, which corresponds to nothing in the things themselves. But, at present, we have no need of asking whether it is founded in reality or not; it is enough for us to state that it exists and that it const.i.tutes and always has const.i.tuted an element of ordinary mentality; and this is recognized even by those who criticize it. Our immediate purpose is to seek, not what it may be worth logically, but how it is to be explained.

Now it depends upon social causes. Our a.n.a.lysis of facts has already enabled us to see that the prototype of the idea of force was the mana, wakan, orenda, the totemic principle or any of the various names given to collective force objectified and projected into things.[1187] The first power which men have thought of as such seems to have been that exercised by humanity over its members. Thus reason confirms the results of observation; in fact, it is even possible to show why this notion of power, efficacy or active force could not have come from any other source.

In the first place, it is evident and recognized by all that it could not be furnished to us by external experience. Our senses only enable us to perceive phenomena which coexist or which follow one another, but nothing perceived by them could give us the idea of this determining and compelling action which is characteristic of what we call a power or force. They can touch only realized and known conditions, each separate from the others; the internal process uniting these conditions escapes them. Nothing that we learn could possibly suggest to us the idea of what an influence or efficaciousness is. It is for this very reason that the philosophers of empiricism have regarded these different conceptions as so many mythological aberrations. But even supposing that they all are hallucinations, it is still necessary to show how they originated.

If external experience counts for nothing in the origin of these ideas, and it is equally inadmissible that they were given us ready-made, one might suppose that they come from internal experience. In fact, the notion of force obviously includes many spiritual elements which could only have been taken from our psychic life.

Some have believed that the act by which our will brings a deliberation to a close, restrains our impulses and commands our organism, might have served as the model of this construction. In willing, it is said, we perceive ourselves directly as a power in action. So when this idea had once occurred to men, it seems that they only had to extend it to things to establish the conception of force.

As long as the animist theory pa.s.sed as a demonstrated truth, this explanation was able to appear to be confirmed by history. If the forces with which human thought primitively populated the world really had been spirits, that is to say, personal and conscious beings more or less similar to men, it was actually possible to believe that our individual experience was enough to furnish us with the const.i.tuent elements of the notion of force. But we know that the first forces which men imagined were, on the contrary, anonymous, vague and diffused powers which resemble cosmic forces in their impersonality, and which are therefore most sharply contrasted with the eminently personal power, the human will. So it is impossible that they should have been conceived in its image.

Moreover, there is one essential characteristic of the impersonal forces which would be inexplicable under this hypothesis: this is their communicability. The forces of nature have always been thought of as capable of pa.s.sing from one object to another, of mixing, combining and transforming themselves into one another. It is even this property which gives them their value as an explanation, for it is through this that effects can be connected with their causes without a break of continuity. Now the self has just the opposite characteristic: it is incommunicable. It cannot change its material substratum or spread from one to another; it spreads out in metaphor only. So the way in which it decides and executes its decisions could never have suggested the idea of an energy which communicates itself and which can even confound itself with others and, through these combinations and mixings, give rise to new effects.

Therefore, the idea of force, as implied in the conception of the causal relation, must present a double character. In the first place, it can come only from our internal experience; the only forces which we can directly learn about are necessarily moral forces. But, at the same time, they must be impersonal, for the notion of an impersonal power was the first to be const.i.tuted. Now the only ones which satisfy these two conditions are those coming from life together: they are collective forces. In fact, these are, on the one hand, entirely psychical; they are made up exclusively of objectified ideas and sentiments. But, on the other hand, they are impersonal by definition, for they are the product of a co-operation. Being the work of all, they are not the possession of anybody in particular. They are so slightly attached to the personalities of the subjects in whom they reside that they are never fixed there. Just as they enter them from without, they are also always ready to leave them. Of themselves, they tend to spread further and further and to invade ever new domains: we know that there are none more contagious, and consequently more communicable. Of course physical forces have the same property, but we cannot know this directly; we cannot even become acquainted with them as such, for they are outside us. When I throw myself against an obstacle, I have a sensation of hindrance and trouble; but the force causing this sensation is not in me, but in the obstacle, and is consequently outside the circle of my perception. We perceive its effects, but we cannot reach the cause itself. It is otherwise with social forces: they are a part of our internal life, as we know, more than the products of their action; we see them acting. The force isolating the sacred being and holding profane beings at a distance is not really in this being; it lives in the minds of the believers. So they perceive it at the very moment when it is acting upon their wills, to inhibit certain movements or command others. In a word, this constraining and necessitating action, which escapes us when coming from an external object, is readily perceptible here because everything is inside us. Of course we do not always interpret it in an adequate manner, but at least we cannot fail to be conscious of it.

Moreover, the idea of force bears the mark of its origin in an apparent way. In fact, it implies the idea of power which, in its turn, does not come without those of ascendancy, mastership and domination, and their corollaries, dependence and subordination; now the relations expressed by all these ideas are eminently social. It is society which cla.s.sifies beings into superiors and inferiors, into commanding masters and obeying servants; it is society which confers upon the former the singular property which makes the command efficacious and which makes _power_. So everything tends to prove that the first powers of which the human mind had any idea were those which societies have established in organizing themselves: it is in their image that the powers of the physical world have been conceived. Also, men have never succeeded in imagining themselves as forces mistress over the bodies in which they reside, except by introducing concepts taken from social life. In fact, these must be distinguished from their physical doubles and must be attributed a dignity superior to that of these latter; in a word, they must think of themselves as souls. As a matter of fact, men have always given the form of souls to the forces which they believe that they are. But we know that the soul is quite another thing from a name given to the abstract faculty of moving, thinking and feeling; before all, it is a religious principle, a particular aspect of the collective force. In fine, a man feels that he has a soul, and consequently a force, because he is a social being. Though an animal moves its members just as we do, and though it has the same power as we over its muscles, nothing authorizes us to suppose that it is conscious of itself as an active and efficacious cause. This is because it does not have, or, to speak more exactly, does not attribute to itself a soul. But if it does not attribute a soul to itself, it is because it does not partic.i.p.ate in a social life comparable to that of men. Among animals, there is nothing resembling a civilization.[1188]

But the notion of force is not all of the principle of causality. This consists in a judgment stating that every force develops in a definite manner, and that the state in which it is at each particular moment of its existence predetermines the next state. The former is called cause, the latter, effect, and the causal judgment affirms the existence of a necessary connection between these two moments for every force. The mind posits this connection before having any proofs of it, under the empire of a sort of constraint from which it cannot free itself; it postulates it, as they say, _a priori_.

Empiricism has never succeeded in accounting for this apriorism and necessity. Philosophers of this school have never been able to explain how an a.s.sociation of ideas, reinforced by habit, could produce more than an expectation or a stronger or weaker predisposition on the part of ideas to appear in a determined order. But the principle of causality has quite another character. It is not merely an imminent tendency of our thought to take certain forms; it is an external norm, superior to the flow of our representations, which it dominates and rules imperatively. It is invested with an authority which binds the mind and surpa.s.ses it, which is as much as to say that the mind is not its artisan. In this connection, it is useless to subst.i.tute hereditary habit for individual habit, for habit does not change its nature by lasting longer than one man's life; it is merely stronger. An instinct is not a rule.

The rites which we have been studying allow us to catch a glimpse of another source of this authority, which, up to the present, has scarcely been suspected. Let us bear in mind how the law of causality, which the imitative rites put into practice, was born. Being filled with one single preoccupation, the group a.s.sembles: if the species whose name it bears does not reproduce, it is a matter of concern to the whole clan.

The common sentiment thus animating all the members is outwardly expressed by certain gestures, which are always the same in the same circ.u.mstances, and after the ceremony has been performed, it happens, for the reasons set forth, that the desired result seems obtained. So an a.s.sociation arises between the idea of this result and that of the gestures preceding it; and this a.s.sociation does not vary from one subject to another; it is the same for all the partic.i.p.ators in the rite, since it is the product of a collective experience. However, if no other factor intervened, it would produce only a collective expectation; after the imitative gestures had been accomplished, everybody would await the subsequent appearance of the desired event, with more or less confidence; an imperative rule of thought could never be established by this. But since a social interest of the greatest importance is at stake, society cannot allow things to follow their own course at the whim of circ.u.mstances; it intervenes actively in such a way as to regulate their march in conformity with its needs. So it demands that this ceremony, which it cannot do without, be repeated every time that it is necessary, and consequently, that the movements, a condition of its success, be executed regularly: it imposes them as an obligation.

Now they imply a certain definite state of mind which, in return, partic.i.p.ates in this same obligatory character. To prescribe that one must imitate an animal or plant to make them reproduce, is equivalent to stating it as an axiom which is above all doubt, that like produces like. Opinion cannot allow men to deny this principle in theory without also allowing them to violate it in their conduct. So society imposes it, along with the practices which are derived from it, and thus the ritual precept is doubled by a logical precept which is only the intellectual aspect of the former. The authority of each is derived from the same source: society. The respect which this inspires is communicated to the ways of thought to which it attaches a value, just as much as to ways of action. So a man cannot set aside either the ones or the others without hurling himself against public opinion. This is why the former require the adherence of the intelligence before examination, just as the latter require the submission of the will.

From this example, we can show once more how the sociological theory of the idea of causality, and of the categories in general, sets aside the cla.s.sical doctrines on the question, while conciliating them. Together with apriorism, it maintains the prejudicial and necessary character of the causal relation; but it does not limit itself to affirming this; it accounts for it, yet without making it vanish under the pretext of explaining it, as empiricism does. On the other hand, there is no question of denying the part due to individual experience. There can be no doubt that by himself, the individual observes the regular succession of phenomena and thus acquires a certain _feeling_ of regularity. But this feeling is not the _category_ of causality. The former is individual, subjective, incommunicable; we make it ourselves, out of our own personal observations. The second is the work of the group, and is given to us ready-made. It is a frame-work in which our empirical ascertainments arrange themselves and which enables us to think of them, that is to say, to see them from a point of view which makes it possible for us to understand one another in regard to them. Of course, if this frame can be applied to the contents, that shows that it is not out of relation with the matter which it contains; but it is not to be confused with this. It surpa.s.ses it and dominates it. This is because it is of a different origin. It is not a mere summary of individual experiences; before all else, it is made to fulfil the exigencies of life in common.

In fine, the error of empiricism has been to regard the causal bond as merely an intellectual construction of speculative thought and the product of a more or less methodical generalization. Now, by itself, pure speculation can give birth only to provisional, hypothetical and more or less plausible views, but ones which must always be regarded with suspicion, for we can never be sure that some new observation in the future will not invalidate them. An axiom which the mind accepts and must accept, without control and without reservation, could never come from this source. Only the necessities of action, and especially of collective action, can and must express themselves in categorical formulae, which are peremptory and short, and admit of no contradiction, for collective movements are possible only on condition of being in concert and, therefore, regulated and definite. They do not allow of any fumbling, the source of anarchy; by themselves, they tend towards an organization which, when once established, imposes itself upon individuals. And as action cannot go beyond intelligence, it frequently happens that the latter is drawn into the same way and accepts without discussion the theoretical postulates demanded by action. The imperatives of thought are probably only another side of the imperatives of action.

It is to be borne in mind, moreover, that we have never dreamed of offering the preceding observations as a complete theory of the concept of causality. The question is too complex to be resolved thus. The principle of causality has been understood differently in different times and places; in a single society, it varies with the social environment and the kingdoms of nature to which it is applied.[1189] So it would be impossible to determine with sufficient precision the causes and conditions upon which it depends, after a consideration of only one of the forms which it has presented during the course of history. The views which we have set forth should be regarded as mere indications, which must be controlled and completed. However, as the causal law which we have been considering is certainly one of the most primitive which exists, and as it has played a considerable part in the development of human thought and industry, it is a privileged experiment, so we may presume that the remarks of which it has been the occasion may be generalized to a certain degree.

CHAPTER IV

THE POSITIVE CULT--_continued_

III.--_Representative or Commemorative Rites_

The explanation which we have given of the positive rites of which we have been speaking in the two preceding chapters attributes to them a significance which is, above all, moral and social. The physical efficaciousness a.s.signed to them by the believer is the product of an interpretation which conceals the essential reason for their existence: it is because they serve to remake individuals and groups morally that they are believed to have a power over things. But even if this hypothesis has enabled us to account for the facts, we cannot say that it has been demonstrated directly; at first view, it even seems to conciliate itself rather badly with the nature of the ritual mechanisms which we have a.n.a.lysed. Whether they consist in oblations or imitative acts, the gestures composing them have purely material ends in view; they have, or seem to have, the sole object of making the totemic species reproduce. Under these circ.u.mstances, is it not surprising that their real function should be to serve moral ends?

It is true that their physical function may have been exaggerated by Spencer and Gillen, even in the cases where it is the most incontestable. According to these authors, each clan celebrates its Intichiuma for the purpose of a.s.suring a useful food to the other clans, and the whole cult consists in a sort of economic co-operation of the different totemic groups; each works for the others. But according to Strehlow, this conception of Australian totemism is wholly foreign to the native mind. "If," he says, "the members of one totemic group set themselves to multiplying the animals or plants of the consecrated species, and seem to work for their companions of other totems, we must be careful not to regard this collaboration as the fundamental principle of Arunta or Loritja totemism. The blacks themselves have never told me that this was the object of their ceremonies. Of course, when I suggested and explained the idea to them, they understood it and acquiesced. But I should not be blamed for having some distrust of replies gained in this fashion." Strehlow also remarks that this way of interpreting the rite is contradicted by the fact that the totemic animals and plants are not all edible or useful; some are good for nothing; some are even dangerous. So the ceremonies which concern them could not have any such end in view.[1190] "When some one asks the natives what the determining reason for these ceremonies is," concludes our author, "they are unanimous in replying: 'It is because our ancestors arranged things thus. This is why we do thus and not differently.'"[1191] But in saying that the rite is observed because it comes from the ancestors, it is admitted that its authority is confounded with the authority of tradition, which is a social affair of the first order. Men celebrate it to remain faithful to the past, to keep for the group its normal physiognomy, and not because of the physical effects which it may produce. Thus, the way in which the believers themselves explain them show the profound reasons upon which the rites proceed.

But there are cases when this aspect of the ceremonies is immediately apparent.

I

These may be observed the best among the Warramunga.[1192]

Among this people, each clan is thought to be descended from a single ancestor who, after having been born in some determined spot, pa.s.sed his terrestrial existence in travelling over the country in every direction.

It is he who, in the course of his voyages, gave to the land the form which it now has; it is he who made the mountains and plains, the water-holes and streams, etc. At the same time, he sowed upon his route living germs which were disengaged from his body and, after many successive reincarnations, became the actual members of the clan. Now the ceremony of the Warramunga which corresponds exactly to the Intichiuma of the Arunta, has the object of commemorating and representing the mythical history of this ancestor. There is no question of oblations or, except in one single case,[1193] of imitative practices. The rite consists solely in recollecting the past and, in a way, making it present by means of a veritable dramatic representation.

This word is the more exact because in this ceremony, the officiant is in no way considered an incarnation of the ancestor, whom he represents; he is an actor playing a role.

As an example, let us describe the Intichiuma of the Black Snake, as Spencer and Gillen observed it.[1194]

An initial ceremony does not seem to refer to the past; at least the description of it which is given us gives no authorization for interpreting it in this sense. It consists in running and leaping on the part of two officiants,[1195] who are decorated with designs representing the black snake. When they finally fall exhausted on the ground, the a.s.sistants gently pa.s.s their hands over the emblematic designs with which the backs of the two actors are covered. They say that this act pleases the black snake. It is only afterwards that the series of commemorative ceremonies commences.

They put into action the mythical history of the ancestor Thalaualla, from the moment he emerged from the ground up to his definite return thither. They follow him through all his voyages. The myth says that in each of the localities where he sojourned, he celebrated totemic ceremonies; they now repeat them in the same order in which they are supposed to have taken place originally. The movement which is acted the most frequently consists in twisting the entire body about rhythmically and violently; this is because the ancestor did the same thing to make the germs of life which were in him come out. The actors have their bodies covered with down, which is detached and flies away during these movements; this is a way of representing the flight of these mystic germs and their dispersion into s.p.a.ce.

It will be remembered that among the Arunta, the scene of the ceremony is determined by the ritual: it is the spot where the sacred rocks, trees and water-holes are found, and the worshippers must go there to celebrate the cult. Among the Warramunga, on the contrary, the ceremonial ground is arbitrarily chosen according to convenience. It is a conventional scene. However, the original scene of the events whose reproduction const.i.tutes the theme of the rite is itself represented by means of designs. Sometimes these designs are made upon the very bodies of the actors. For example, a small circle coloured red, painted on the back and stomach, represents a water-hole.[1196] In other cases, the image is traced on the soil. Upon a ground previously soaked and covered with red ochre, they draw curved lines, made up of a series of white points, which symbolize a stream or a mountain. This is a beginning of decoration.

In addition to the properly religious ceremonies which the ancestor is believed to have celebrated long ago, they also represent simple episodes of his career, either epic or comic. Thus, at a given moment, while three actors are on the scene, occupied in an important rite, another one hides behind a bunch of trees situated at some distance. A packet of down is attached about his neck which represents a _wallaby_.

As soon as the princ.i.p.al ceremony is finished, an old man traces a line upon the ground which is directed towards the spot where the fourth actor is hidden. The others march behind him, with eyes lowered and fixed upon this line, as though following a trail. When they discover the man, they a.s.sume a stupefied air and one of them beats him with a club. This represents an incident in the life of the great black snake.

One day, his son went hunting, caught a _wallaby_ and ate it without giving his father any. The latter followed his tracks, surprised him and forced him to disgorge; it is to this that the beating at the end of the representation alludes.[1197]

We shall not relate here all the mythical events which are represented successively. The preceding examples are sufficient to show the character of these ceremonies: they are dramas, but of a particular variety; they act, or at least they are believed to act, upon the course of nature. When the commemoration of Thalaualla is terminated, the Warramunga are convinced that black snakes cannot fail to increase and multiply. So these dramas are rites, and even rites which, by the nature of their efficacy, are comparable on every point to those which const.i.tute the Intichiuma of the Arunta.

Therefore each is able to clarify the other. It is even more legitimate to compare them than if there were no break of continuity between them.

Not only is the end pursued identical in each case, but the most characteristic part of the Warramunga ritual is found in germ in the other. In fact, the Intichiuma, as the Arunta generally perform it, contains within it a sort of implicit commemoration. The places where it is celebrated are necessarily those which the ancestor made ill.u.s.trious.

The roads over which the worshippers pa.s.s in the course of their pious pilgrimages are those which the heroes of the Alcheringa traversed; the places where they stop to proceed with the rites are those where their fathers sojourned themselves, where they vanished into the ground, etc.

So everything brings their memory to the minds of the a.s.sistants.

Moreover, to the manual rites they frequently add hymns relating the exploits of their ancestors.[1198] If, instead of being told, these stories are acted, and if, in this new form, they develop in such a way as to become an essential part of the ceremony, then we have the ceremony of the Warramunga. But even more can be said, for on one side, the Arunta Intichiuma is already a sort of representation. The officiant is one with the ancestor from whom he is descended and whom he reincarnates.[1199] The gestures he makes are those which this ancestor made in the same circ.u.mstances. Speaking exactly, of course he does not play the part of the ancestral personage as an actor might do it; he is this personage himself. But it is true, notwithstanding, that, in one sense, it is the hero who occupies the scene. In order to accentuate the representative character of the rite, it would be sufficient for the duality of the ancestor and the officiant to become more marked; this is just what happens among the Warramunga.[1200] Even among the Arunta, at least one Intichiuma is mentioned in which certain persons are charged with representing ancestors with whom they have no relationship of mythical descent, and in which there is consequently a proper dramatic representation: this is the Intichiuma of the Emu.[1201] It seems that in this case, also, contrarily to the general rule among this people, the theatre of the ceremony is artificially arranged.[1202]

It does not follow from the fact that, in spite of the differences separating them, these two varieties of ceremony thus have an air of kinship, as it were, that there is a definite relation of succession between them, and that one is a transformation of the other. It may very well be that the resemblances pointed out come from the fact that the two sprang from the same source, that is, from the same original ceremony, of which they are only divergent forms: we shall even see that this hypothesis is the most probable one. But even without taking sides on this question, what has already been said is enough to show that they are rites of the same nature. So we may be allowed to compare them, and to use the one to enable us to understand the other better.

Now the peculiar thing in the ceremonies of the Warramunga of which we have been speaking, is that not a gesture is made whose object is to aid or to provoke directly the increase of the totemic species.[1203] If we a.n.a.lyse the movements made, as well as the words spoken, we generally find nothing which betrays any intention of this sort. Everything is in representations whose only object can be to render the mythical past of the clan present to the mind. But the mythology of a group is the system of beliefs common to this group. The traditions whose memory it perpetuates express the way in which society represents man and the world; it is a moral system and a cosmology as well as a history. So the rite serves and can serve only to sustain the vitality of these beliefs, to keep them from being effaced from memory and, in sum, to revivify the most essential elements of the collective consciousness. Through it, the group periodically renews the sentiment which it has of itself and of its unity; at the same time, individuals are strengthened in their social natures. The glorious souvenirs which are made to live again before their eyes, and with which they feel that they have a kinship, give them a feeling of strength and confidence: a man is surer of his faith when he sees to how distant a past it goes back and what great things it has inspired. This is the characteristic of the ceremony which makes it instructive. Its tendency is to act entirely upon the mind and upon it alone. So if men believe nevertheless that it acts upon things and that it a.s.sures the prosperity of the species, this can be only as a reaction to the moral action which it exercises and which is obviously the only one which is real. Thus the hypothesis which we have proposed is verified by a significant experiment, and this verification is the more convincing because, as we have shown, there is no difference in nature between the ritual system of the Warramunga and that of the Arunta. The one only makes more evident what we had already conjectured from the other.

II

But there are ceremonies in which this representative and idealistic character is still more accentuated.

In those of which we have been speaking, the dramatic representation did not exist for itself; it was only a means having a very material end in view, namely, the reproduction of the totemic species. But there are others which do not differ materially from the preceding ones, but from which, nevertheless, all preoccupations of this sort are absent. The past is here represented for the mere sake of representing it and fixing it more firmly in the mind, while no determined action over nature is expected of the rite. At least, the physical effects sometimes imputed to it are wholly secondary and have no relation with the liturgical importance attributed to it.

This is the case notably with the ceremonies which the Warramunga celebrate in honour of the snake Wollunqua.[1204]

As we have already said, the Wollunqua is a totem of a very especial sort. It is not an animal or vegetable species, but a unique being: there is only one Wollunqua. Moreover, this being is purely mythical.

The natives represent it as a colossal snake whose length is such that when it rises on its tail its head is lost in the clouds. It resides, they believe, in a water-hole called Thapauerlu, which is hidden in the bottom of a solitary valley. But if it differs in certain ways from the ordinary totems, it has all their distinctive characteristics nevertheless. It serves as the collective name and emblem of a whole group of individuals who regard it as their common ancestor, while the relations which they sustain with this mythical beast are identical with those which the members of other totems believe that they sustain with the founders of their respective clans. In the Alcheringa[1205] times, the Wollunqua traversed the country in every direction. In the different localities where it stopped, it scattered "spirit-children," the spiritual principles which still serve as the souls of the living of to-day. The Wollunqua is even considered as a sort of pre-eminent totem.

The Warramunga are divided into two phratries, called Uluuru and Kingilli. Nearly all the totems of the former are snakes of different kinds. Now they are all believed to be descended from the Wollunqua; they say that it was their grandfather.[1206] From this, we can catch a glimpse of how the myth of the Wollunqua probably arose. In order to explain the presence of so many similar totems in the same phratry, they imagined that all were derived from one and the same totem; it was necessary to give it a gigantic form so that in its very appearance it might conform to the considerable role a.s.signed to it in the history of the tribe.

Now the Wollunqua is the object of ceremonies not differing in nature from those which we have already studied: they are representations in which are portrayed the princ.i.p.al events of its fabulous life. They show it coming out of the ground and pa.s.sing from one locality to another; they represent different episodes in its voyages, etc. Spencer and Gillen a.s.sisted at fifteen ceremonies of this sort which took place between the 27th of July and the 23rd of August, all being linked together in a determined order, in such a way as to form a veritable cycle.[1207] In the details of the rites const.i.tuting it, this long celebration is therefore indistinct from the ordinary Intichiuma of the Warramunga, as is recognized by the authors who have described it to us.[1208] But, on the other hand, it is an Intichiuma which could not have the object of a.s.suring the fecundity of an animal or vegetable species, for the Wollunqua is a species all by itself and does not reproduce. It exists, and the natives do not seem to feel that it has need of a cult to preserve it in its existence. These ceremonies not only seem to lack the efficacy of the cla.s.sic Intichiuma, but it even seems as though they have no material efficacy of any sort. The Wollunqua is not a divinity set over a special order of natural phenomena, so they expect no definite service from him in exchange for the cult. Of course they say that if the ritual prescriptions are badly observed, the Wollunqua becomes angry, leaves his retreat and comes to punish his worshippers for their negligence; and inversely, when everything pa.s.ses regularly, they are led to believe that they will be fortunate and that some happy event will take place; but it is quite evident that these possible sanctions are an after-thought to explain the rite. After the ceremony had been established, it seemed natural that it should serve for something, and that the omission of the prescribed observances should therefore expose one to grave dangers. But it was not established to forestall these mythical dangers or to a.s.sure particular advantages. The natives, moreover, have only the very haziest ideas of them. When the whole ceremony is completed, the old men announce that if the Wollunqua is pleased, he will send rain. But it is not to have rain that they go through with the celebration.[1209] They celebrate it because their ancestors did, because they are attached to it as to a highly respected tradition and because they leave it with a feeling of moral well-being. Other considerations have only a complimentary part; they may serve to strengthen the worshippers in the att.i.tude prescribed by the rite, but they are not the reason for the existence of this att.i.tude.

So we have here a whole group of ceremonies whose sole purpose is to awaken certain ideas and sentiments, to attach the present to the past or the individual to the group. Not only are they unable to serve useful ends, but the worshippers themselves demand none. This is still another proof that the psychical state in which the a.s.sembled group happens to be const.i.tutes the only solid and stable basis of what we may call the ritual mentality. The beliefs which attribute such or such a physical efficaciousness to the rites are wholly accessory and contingent, for they may be lacking without causing any alteration in the essentials of the rite. Thus the ceremonies of the Wollunqua show even better than the preceding ones the fundamental function of the positive cult.

If we have insisted especially upon these solemnities, it is because of their exceptional importance. But there are others with exactly the same character. Thus, the Warramunga have a totem "of the laughing boy."

Spencer and Gillen say that the clan bearing this name has the same organization as the other totemic groups. Like them, it has its sacred places (_mungai_) where the founder-ancestor celebrated ceremonies in the fabulous times, and where he left behind him spirit-children who became the men of the clan; the rites connected with this totem are indistinguishable from those relating to the animal or vegetable totems.[1210] Yet it is evident that they could not have any physical efficaciousness. They consist in a series of four ceremonies which repeat one another more or less, but which are intended only to amuse and to provoke laughter by laughter, in fine, to maintain the gaiety and good-humour which the group has as its speciality.[1211]