[1000] See the article Taboo in the Encyclopædia Britannica, written by Frazer.
[1001] Facts prove the reality of this inconvenience. There is no lack of writers who, putting their trust in the word, have believed that the institution thus designated was peculiar to primitive peoples in general, or even to the Polynesians (see Réville, Religion des peuples primitifs, II, p. 55; Richard, La Femme dans l'histoire, p. 435).
[1002] See above, p. 43.
[1003] This is not saying that there is a radical break of continuity between the religious and the magic interdictions: on the contrary, it is one whose true nature is not decided. There are interdicts of folk-lore of which it is hard to say whether they are religious or magic. But their distinction is necessary, for we believe that the magic interdicts cannot be understood except as a function of the religious ones.
[1004] See above, p. 149.
[1005] Many of the interdictions between sacred things can be traced back, we think, to those between the sacred and the profane. This is the case with the interdicts of age or rank. For example, in Australia, there are sacred foods which are reserved for the initiated. But these foods are not all sacred to the same degree; there is a hierarchy among them. Nor are the initiated all equal. They do not enjoy all their religious rights from the first, but only enter step by step into the domain of religious things. They must pass through a whole series of ranks which are conferred upon them one after another, after special trials and ceremonies; it requires months and sometimes even years to reach the highest rank. Now special foods are assigned to each of these ranks; the men of the lower ranks may not touch the foods which rightfully belong to the men of the superior ones (see Mathews, Ethnol. Notes, etc., loc. cit. pp. 262 ff.; Parker, The Euahlayi, p. 23; Spencer and Gillen, Nor. Tr., pp. 611 ff.; Nat. Tr., pp. 470 ff.). So the more sacred repels the less sacred; but this is because the second is profane in relation to the first. In fine, all the interdictions arrange themselves in two classes: the interdictions between the sacred and the profane and the purely sacred and the impurely sacred.
[1006] See above, p. 137.
[1007] Spencer and Gillen, Nat. Tr., p. 463.
[1008] Nat. Tr., p. 538; Nor. Tr., p. 640.
[1009] Nor. Tr., p. 531.