When this relation has been established, it makes the phenomena of contagion appear under a new aspect. Taken by themselves, they seem to be quite foreign to the logical life. Is their effect not to mix and confuse beings, in spite of their natural differences? But we have seen that these confusions and participation have played a rôle of the highest utility in logic; they have served to bind together things which sensation leaves apart from one another. So it is far from true that contagion, the source of these connections and confusions, is marked with that fundamental irrationality that one is inclined to attribute it at first. It has opened the way for the scientific explanations of the future.
CHAPTER II
THE POSITIVE CULT
I.—The Elements of the Sacrifice
Whatever the importance of the negative cult may be, and though it may indirectly have positive effects, it does not contain its reason for existence in itself; it introduces one to the religious life, but it supposes this more than it constitutes it. If it orders the worshipper to flee from the profane world, it is to bring him nearer to the sacred world. Men have never thought that their duties towards religious forces might be reduced to a simple abstinence from all commerce; they have always believed that they upheld positive and bilateral relations with them, whose regulation and organization is the function of a group of ritual practices. To this special system of rites we give the name of positive cult.
For some time we almost completely ignored the positive cult of the totemic religion and what it consists in. We knew almost nothing more than the initiation rites, and we do not know those sufficiently well even now. But the observations of Spencer and Gillen, prepared for by those of Schulze and confirmed by those of Strehlow, on the tribes of central Australia, have partially filled this gap in our information. There is one ceremony especially which these explorers have taken particular pains to describe to us and which, moreover, seems to dominate the whole totemic cult: this is the one that the Arunta, according to Spencer and Gillen, call the Intichiuma. It is true that Strehlow contests the meaning of this word. According to him, intichiuma (or, as he writes it, intijiuma) means "to instruct" and designates the ceremonies performed before the young man to teach him the traditions of the tribe. The feast which we are going to describe bears, he says, the name mbatjalkatiuma, which means "to fecundate" or "to put into a good condition."[1104] But we shall not try to settle this question of vocabulary, which touches the real problem but slightly, as the rites in question are all celebrated in the course of the initiation. On the other hand, as the word Intichiuma now belongs to the current language of ethnography, and has almost become a common noun, it seems useless to replace it with another.[1105]
The date on which the Intichiuma takes place depends largely upon the season. There are two sharply separated seasons in Australia: one is dry and lasts for a long time; the other is rainy and is, on the contrary, very short and frequently irregular. As soon as the rains arrive, vegetation springs up from the ground as though by enchantment and animals multiply, so that the country which had recently been only a sterile desert is rapidly filled with a luxurious flora and fauna. It is just at the moment when the good season seems to be close at hand that the Intichiuma is celebrated. But as the rainy season is extremely variable, the date of the ceremonies cannot be fixed once for all. It varies with the climatic circumstances, which only the chief of the totemic group, the Alatunja, is qualified to judge: on a day which he considers suitable, he informs his companions that the moment has arrived.[1106]
Each totemic group has its own Intichiuma. Even if this rite is general in the societies of the centre, it is not the same everywhere; among the Warramunga, it is not what it is among the Arunta; it varies, not only among the tribes, but also within the tribe, among the clans. But it is obvious that the different mechanisms in use are too closely related to each other to be dissociated completely. There is no ceremony, perhaps, which is not made up of several, though these are very unequally developed: what exists only as a germ in one, occupies the most important place in another, and inversely. Yet they must be carefully distinguished, for they constitute just so many different ritual types to be described and explained separately, but afterwards we must seek some common source from which they were derived.
Let us commence with those observed among the Arunta.