Philosophic Studies of the University of Chicago (Volume 7 ) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III THEORY OF THE SACRIFICE The absorbing feature of the vedic worship was the sacrifice; it gained even greater power in ritualistic Brahmanism. In the latter the details of the sacrifice were more important than the god invoked. But throughout this variation the purpose and conception underlying the sacrifice remained the same. The most naive statement of its meaning is found in the Atharva-Veda, where primitive elements had been revived or infused into the experience of the period. It becomes necessary, then, to study the essentials of religious culture as found in the most primitive peoples. Here there is no sacrifice in the customary sense of conceiving sacrifice, but a rite involving all the intenseness and exactness of the sacrifice. These ceremonials are concerned with the clan totem, which may be a plant or an animal. A most intimate relation exists between the totem and the group--an identity of the two--a kind of participation that insures the life of the community. The English expedition to the Strait of Torres gives confirmation to these facts. There is a mystical affinity between the members of a clan and their totem. This is an idea deeply impressed on them, and it is evidently of prime import. More than once they have said with emphasis: augund (the totem) is the same thing as relationship: the same as family. They admit a definite physiological and psychological resemblance between the human members and the animal members of the clan. There is scarcely doubt that this feeling reacts on the members of the clan, and induces them to live according to the traditional character of their totem. Thus, according to what they have told us, the following clans are war-like: the cassowary, the crocodile, the snake, the shark; the rayfish, th...