to find an actual sacred meal in which the absorption of blood into the worshippers seems part of the rites.[1] Nor has he been able to show any analogous rites with such an avowed object among savages. Mr. Frazer, indeed, in his new book gives numerous examples of such meals, but none in which the object is to restore communion between god and worshipper. The whole idea of communion seems to me too theologically abstract to be at the basis of savage rites of sacrifice. For these we must look to some utilitarian motive, based, it may be, on some savage and seemingly absurd idea, but logically deduced from it. Now, it is difficult to see what advantage a savage can derive from being made one with his god, by eating the same flesh as he. One could understand the use of “eating the god”, by which to obtain the divine qualities and powers: Mr. Frazer gives many examples of this. But what is the use of eating the same thing as the god?
Even in the totem systems there does not seem to be any attempt to renew a tribal bond with the totem, though there is, in initiatory ceremonies, an attempt to give blood-communion with the fellow-tribesmen (Frazer, Totemism, 45-6). At the basis of Prof. Smith’s views, indeed, there is an assumption of the existence of totemism among the primitive Semites, the evidence for which he has brought forward in his Kinship and Marriage in Ancient Arabia. Now, this is a question still sub judice, and there are extremely few judices. I cannot think of more than four men in Europe who are competent, from knowledge of pre-historic Arabia, to pass judgment on the success of Prof. Smith’s attempt to prove totemism in Arabia; and of these, two, Wellhausen and Goldziher, are adverse to his claims. But even assuming Arabic totemism to be proved, Prof. Smith has still to show that in totemistic
- ↑ As the passage from Nilus is of such crucial importance for Prof. Smith’s views, it would have been well if he had reprinted it in an Appendix. It is not everyone who has access to Nili opera quædam inedita, Parisiis, 1639.
