[1297] Nor. Tr., p. 599; Nat. Tr., p. 464.
[1298] Among the Hebrews, for example, they sprinkled the altar with the blood of the expiatory victim (Lev. iv, 5 ff.); they burned the flesh and used products of this combustion to make water of purification (Numb. xix).
[1299] Taplin, The Narrinyeri, pp. 32-34. When two persons who have thus exchanged their umbilical cords belong to different tribes, they are used as inter-tribal messengers. In this case, the exchange of cords took place shortly after birth, through the intermediary of their respective parents.
[1300] It is true that Smith did not admit the reality of these substitutions and transformations. According to him, if the expiatory victim served to purify, it was because it had nothing impure in itself. At first, it was a holy thing; it was destined to re-establish, by means of a communion, the bonds of kinship uniting the worshipper to his god, when a ritual fault had strained or broken them. An exceptionally holy animal was chosen for this operation in order that the communion might be as efficacious as possible, and efface the effects of the fault as completely as possible. It was only when they no longer understood the meaning of the rite that the sacrosanct animal was considered impure (op. cit., pp. 347 ff.). But it is inadmissible that beliefs and practices as universal as these, which we find at the foundation of the expiatory sacrifice, should be the product of a mere error of interpretation. In fact, we cannot doubt that the expiatory victim was charged with the impurity of the sin. We have shown, moreover, that these transformations of the pure into the impure, or the contrary, are to be found in the most inferior societies which we know.
[1301] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience.
[1302] Quoted by James, op. cit., p. 20.
[1303] See above, pp. 230 ff.
[1304] Only one form of social activity has not yet been expressly attached to religion: that is economic activity. Sometimes processes that are derived from magic have, by that fact alone, an origin that is indirectly religious. Also, economic value is a sort of power or efficacy, and we know the religious origins of the idea of power. Also, richness can confer mana; therefore it has it. Hence it is seen that the ideas of economic value and of religious value are not without connection. But the question of the nature of these connections has not yet been studied.
[1305] It is for this reason that Frazer and even Preuss set impersonal religious forces outside of, or at least on the threshold of religion, to attach them to magic.
[1306] Boutroux, Science et Religion, pp. 206-207.