ABSTRACT
I n the last chapter we saw1 that the practice of selecting one individual of the totem species, e.g. the calf in which Apis was supposed to manifest himself, and concentrating on it the reverence which was due to the whole species, was a relatively late development of totemism. It is also, in its ultimate consequences, inconsistent with the principle of totemism, according to which the owl totem god, for instance, was not incorporate in any one bird more than in any other, but was “ incarnate in all the owls in existence.” 2 We have also seen that it is the belief of societies which are held together by the bond of blood-relationship, that it is the same blood which runs in the veins of all blood-relations-it is the blood of their common ancestor. Hence the bloodcovenant between two individuals is a covenant between their respective kins: it is not merely the blood of the two persons that has been mingled and made one, but the blood of the two clans. It follows, therefore, that the blood of any one animal of the totem species is not the blood of that individual merely, but of the whole species. In the same way, therefore, that the blood of the tribe as a whole is communicated in initiation ceremonies to the youth, by allowing the blood of older members to flow over him,3 so it is obvious the blood of the totem species as a whole might be communicated to the person or thing over which the blood of any individual of the species was allowed to flow. But the blood is the life : it is-like breath, heart, etc.— one of the things identified by savages with the spirit or soul. The blood of any individual totem animal, therefore, is the spirit, not of that particular
animal, but of the totem species: it is, if not the totem god, at anyrate that in which he, as the spirit or soul of the species, resides, and by which his presence may be conveyed into any person or thing.
