Totem and Taboo Part 10

In the most primitive societies there is only one unconditional and never failing bond, that of kins.h.i.+p. The members of a community stand by each other jointly and severally, a kin is a group of persons whose life is so bound into a physical unity that they can be considered as parts of a common life. In case of the murder of one of this kin they therefore do not say: the blood of so and so has been spilt, but our blood has been spilt. The Hebraic phrase by which the tribal relation is acknowledged is: "Thou art my bone and my flesh". Kins.h.i.+p therefore signifies having part in a general substance. It is natural then that it is based not only upon the fact that we are a part of the substance of our mother who has borne us, and whose milk nourished us, but also that the food eaten later through which the body is renewed, can acquire and strengthen kins.h.i.+p. If one shared a meal with one's G.o.d the conviction was thus expressed that one was of the same substance as he; no meal was therefore partaken with any one recognized as a stranger.

The sacrificial repast was therefore originally a feast of the kin, following the rule that only those of kin could eat together. In our society the meal unites the members of the family; but the sacrificial repast has nothing to do with the family. Kins.h.i.+p is older than family life; the oldest families known to us regularly comprised persons who belonged to various bonds of kins.h.i.+p. The men married women of strange clans and the children inherited the clan of the mother; there was no kins.h.i.+p between the man and the rest of the members of the family. In such a family there was no common meal. Even to-day savages eat apart and alone, and the religious prohibitions of totemism as to eating often make it impossible for them to eat with their wives and children.

Let us now turn to the sacrificial animal. There was, as we have heard, no meeting of the kin without animal sacrifice, but, and this is significant, no animal was slaughtered except for such a solemn occasion. Without any hesitation the people ate fruits, game and the milk of domestic animals, but religious scruples made it impossible for the individual to kill a domestic animal for his own use. There is not the least doubt, says Robertson Smith, that every sacrifice was originally a clan sacrifice, and that the _killing of a sacrificial animal_ originally belonged to those acts which were _forbidden to the individual and were only justified if the whole kin a.s.sumed the responsibility_. Primitive men had only one cla.s.s of actions, which were thus characterized, namely, actions which touched the holiness of the kin's common blood. A life which no individual might take and which could be sacrificed only through the consent and partic.i.p.ation of all the members of the clan was on the same plane as the life of a member of the kin. The rule that every guest of the sacrificial repast must partake of the flesh of the sacrificial animal, had the same meaning as the rule that the execution of a guilty member of the kin must be performed by the whole kin. In other words: the sacrificial animal was treated like one of kin; _the sacrificing community, its G.o.d, and the sacrificial animal were of the same blood_, and the members of a clan.

On the basis of much evidence Robertson Smith identifies the sacrificial animal with the old totem animal. In a later age there were two kinds of sacrifices, those of domestic animals which usually were also eaten, and the unusual sacrifice of animals which were forbidden as being unclean.

Further investigation then shows that these unclean animals were holy and that they were sacrificed to the G.o.ds to whom they were holy, that these animals were originally identified with the G.o.ds themselves and that at the sacrifice the wors.h.i.+ppers in some way emphasized their blood relations.h.i.+p to the G.o.d and to the animal. But this difference between usual and 'mystic' sacrifices does not hold good for still earlier times. Originally all animals were holy, their meat was forbidden and might be eaten only on solemn occasions, with the partic.i.p.ation of the whole kin. The slaughter of the animal amounted to the spilling of the kin's blood and had to be done with the same precautions and a.s.surances against reproach.

The taming of domestic animals and the rise of cattle-breeding seems everywhere to have put an end to the pure and rigorous totemism of earliest times[202]. But such holiness as still clung to domestic animals in what was now a 'pastoral' religion, is sufficiently distinct for us to recognize its totemic character. Even in late cla.s.sical times the rite in several localities prescribed flight for the sacrificer after the sacrifice, as if to escape revenge. In Greece the idea must once have been general that the killing of an ox was really a crime. At the Athenian festival of the Bouphonia a formal trial, to which all the partic.i.p.ants were summoned, was inst.i.tuted after the sacrifice. Finally it was agreed to put the blame for the murder upon the knife, which was then cast into the sea.

In spite of the dread which protects the life of the animal as being of kin, it became necessary to kill it from time to time in solemn conclave, and to divide its flesh and blood among the members of the clan. The motive which commands this act reveals the deepest meaning of the essence of sacrifice. We have heard that in later times every eating in common, the partic.i.p.ation in the same substance which entered into their bodies, established a holy bond between the communicants; in oldest time this meaning seemed to be attached only to partic.i.p.ation in the substance of a holy sacrifice. _The holy mystery of the sacrificial death was justified in that only in this way could the holy bond be established which united the partic.i.p.ants with each other and with their G.o.d[203]._

This bond was nothing else than the life of the sacrificial animal which lived on its flesh and blood and was shared by all the partic.i.p.ants by means of the sacrificial feast. Such an idea was the basis of all the _blood bonds_ through which men in still later times became pledged to each other. The thoroughly realistic conception of consanguinity as an ident.i.ty of substance makes comprehensible the necessity of renewing it from time to time through the physical process of the sacrificial repast.

We will now stop quoting from Robertson Smith's train of thought in order to give a condensed summary of what is essential in it. When the idea of private property came into existence sacrifice was conceived as a gift to the deity, as a transfer from the property of man to that of the G.o.d. But this interpretation left all the peculiarities of the sacrificial ritual unexplained. In oldest times the sacrificial animal itself had been holy and its life inviolate; it could be taken only in the presence of the G.o.d, with the whole tribe taking part and sharing the guilt in order to furnish the holy substance through the eating of which the members of the clan a.s.sured themselves of their material ident.i.ty with each other and with the deity. The sacrifice was a sacrament, and the sacrificial animal itself was one of the kin. In reality it was the old totem animal, the primitive G.o.d himself through the slaying and eating of whom the members of the clan revived and a.s.sured their similarity with the G.o.d.

From this a.n.a.lysis of the nature of sacrifice Robertson Smith drew the conclusion that the periodic killing and eating of the totem before the period when the _anthropomorphic deities were venerated_ was an important part of totem religion. The ceremonial of such a totem feast was preserved for us, he thought, in the description of a sacrifice in later times. Saint Nilus tells of a sacrificial custom of the Bedouins in the desert of Sinai towards the end of the fourth century A.D. The victim, a camel, was bound and laid upon a rough altar of stones; the leader of the tribe made the partic.i.p.ants walk three times around the altar to the accompaniment of song, inflicted the first wound upon the animal and greedily drank the spurting blood; then the whole community threw itself upon the sacrifice, cut off pieces of the palpitating flesh with their swords and ate them raw in such haste that in a short interval between the rise of the morning star, for whom this sacrifice was meant, and its fading before the rays of the sun, the whole sacrificial animal, flesh, skin, bones, and entrails, were devoured.

According to every testimony this barbarous rite, which speaks of great antiquity, was not a rare custom but the general original form of the totem sacrifice, which in later times underwent the most varied modifications.

Many authors have refused to grant any weight to this conception of the totem feast because it could not be strengthened by direct observation at the stage of totemism. Robertson Smith himself has referred to examples in which the sacramental meaning of sacrifices seems certain, such as the human sacrifices of the Aztecs and others which recall the conditions of the totem feast, the bear sacrifices of the bear tribe of the _Ouataouaks_ in America, and the bear festival of the Ainus in j.a.pan. Frazer has given a full account of these and similar cases in the two divisions of his great work that have last appeared[204]. An Indian tribe in California which reveres the buzzard, a large bird of prey, kills it once a year with solemn ceremony, whereupon the bird is mourned and its skin and feathers preserved. The Zuni Indians in New Mexico do the same thing with their holy turtle.

In the _Intichiuma_ ceremonies of Central Australian tribes a trait has been observed which fits in excellently with the a.s.sumptions of Robertson Smith. Every tribe that practises magic for the increase of its totem, which it cannot eat itself, is bound to eat a part of its totem at the ceremony before it can be touched by the other tribes.

According to Frazer the best example of the sacramental consumption of the otherwise forbidden totem is to be found among the Bini in West Africa, in connexion with the burial ceremony of this tribe[205].

But we shall follow Robertson Smith in the a.s.sumption that the sacramental killing and the common consumption of the otherwise forbidden totem animal was an important trait of the totem religion[206].

5

Let us now envisage the scene of such a totem meal and let us embellish it further with a few probable features which could not be adequately considered before. Thus we have the clan, which on a solemn occasion kills its totem in a cruel manner and eats it raw, blood, flesh, and bones. At the same time the members of the clan disguised in imitation of the totem, mimic it in sound and movement as if they wanted to emphasize their common ident.i.ty. There is also the conscious realization that an action is being carried out which is forbidden to each individual and which can only be justified through the partic.i.p.ation of all, so that no one is allowed to exclude himself from the killing and the feast. After the act is accomplished the murdered animal is bewailed and lamented. The death lamentation is compulsive, being enforced by the fear of a threatening retribution, and its main purpose is, as Robertson Smith remarks on an a.n.a.logous occasion, to exculpate oneself from responsibility for the slaying[207].

But after this mourning there follows loud festival gaiety accompanied by the unchaining of every impulse and the permission of every gratification. Here we find an easy insight into the nature of the _holiday_.

A holiday is permitted, or rather a prescribed excess, a solemn violation of a prohibition. People do not commit the excesses which at all times have characterized holidays, as a result of an order to be in a holiday mood, but because in the very nature of a holiday there is excess; the holiday mood is brought about by the release of what is otherwise forbidden.

But what has mourning over the death of the totem animal to do with the introduction of this holiday spirit? If men are happy over the slaying of the totem, which is otherwise forbidden to them, why do they also mourn it?

We have heard that members of a clan become holy through the consumption of the totem and thereby also strengthen their identification with it and with each other. The fact that they have absorbed the holy life with which the substance of the totem is charged may explain the holiday mood and everything that results from it.

Psychoa.n.a.lysis has revealed to us that the totem animal is really a subst.i.tute for the father, and this really explains the contradiction that it is usually forbidden to kill the totem animal, that the killing of it results in a holiday and that the animal is killed and yet mourned. The ambivalent emotional att.i.tude which to-day still marks the father complex in our children and so often continues into adult life also extended to the father subst.i.tute of the totem animal.

But if we a.s.sociate the translation of the totem as given by psychoa.n.a.lysis, with the totem feast and the Darwinian hypothesis about the primal state of human society, a deeper understanding becomes possible and a hypothesis is offered which may seem fantastic but which has the advantage of establis.h.i.+ng an unexpected unity among a series of hitherto separated phenomena.

The Darwinian conception of the primal horde does not, of course, allow for the beginning of totemism. There is only a violent, jealous father who keeps all the females for himself and drives away the growing sons.

This primal state of society has nowhere been observed. The most primitive organization we know, which to-day is still in force with certain tribes, is _a.s.sociations of men_ consisting of members with equal rights, subject to the restrictions of the totemic system, and founded on matriarchy, or descent through the mother[208]. Can the one have resulted from the other, and how was this possible?

By basing our argument upon the celebration of the totem we are in a position to give an answer: One day[209] the expelled brothers joined forces, slew and ate the father, and thus put an end to the father horde. Together they dared and accomplished what would have remained impossible for them singly. Perhaps some advance in culture, like the use of a new weapon, had given them the feeling of superiority. Of course these cannibalistic savages ate their victim. This violent primal father had surely been the envied and feared model for each of the brothers. Now they accomplished their identification with him by devouring him and each acquired a part of his strength. The totem feast, which is perhaps mankind's first celebration, would be the repet.i.tion and commemoration of this memorable, criminal act with which so many things began, social organization, moral restrictions and religion[210].

In order to find these results acceptable, quite aside from our supposition, we need only a.s.sume that the group of brothers banded together were dominated by the same contradictory feelings towards the father which we can demonstrate as the content of ambivalence of the father complex in all our children and in neurotics. They hated the father who stood so powerfully in the way of their s.e.xual demands and their desire for power, but they also loved and admired him. After they had satisfied their hate by his removal and had carried out their wish for identification with him, the suppressed tender impulses had to a.s.sert themselves[211]. This took place in the form of remorse, a sense of guilt was formed which coincided here with the remorse generally felt. The dead now became stronger than the living had been, even as we observe it to-day in the destinies of men. What the fathers' presence had formerly prevented they themselves now prohibited in the psychic situation of 'subsequent obedience', which we know so well from psychoa.n.a.lysis. They undid their deed by declaring that the killing of the father subst.i.tute, the totem, was not allowed, and renounced the fruits of their deed by denying themselves the liberated women. Thus they created the two fundamental taboos of totemism out of the _sense of guilt of the son_, and for this very reason these had to correspond with the two repressed wishes of the Oedipus complex. Whoever disobeyed became guilty of the two only crimes which troubled primitive society[212].

The two taboos of totemism with which the morality of man begins are psychologically not of equal value. One of them, the sparing of the totem animal, rests entirely upon emotional motives; the father had been removed and nothing in reality could make up for this. But the other, the incest prohibition, had, besides, a strong practical foundation.

s.e.xual need does not unite men; it separates them. Though the brothers had joined forces in order to overcome the father, each was the other's rival among the women. Each one wanted to have them all to himself like the father, and in the fight of each against the other the new organization would have perished. For there was no longer any one stronger than all the rest who could have successfully a.s.sumed the role of the father. Thus there was nothing left for the brothers, if they wanted to live together, but to erect the incest prohibition--perhaps after many difficult experiences--through which they all equally renounced the women whom they desired, and on account of whom they had removed the father in the first place. Thus they saved the organization which had made them strong and which could be based upon the h.o.m.o-s.e.xual feelings and activities which probably manifested themselves among them during the time of their banishment. Perhaps this situation also formed the germ of the inst.i.tution of the mother right discovered by Bachofen, which was then abrogated by the patriarchal family arrangement.

On the other hand the claim of totemism to be considered the first attempt at a religion is connected with the other taboo which protects the life of the totem animal. The feelings of the sons found a natural and appropriate subst.i.tute for the father in the animal, but their compulsory treatment of it expressed more than the need of showing remorse. The surrogate for the father was perhaps used in the attempt to a.s.suage the burning sense of guilt, and to bring about a kind of reconciliation with the father. The totemic system was a kind of agreement with the father in which the latter granted everything that the child's phantasy could expect from him, protection, care, and forbearance, in return for which the pledge was given to honour his life, that is to say, not to repeat the act against the totem through which the real father had perished. Totemism also contained an attempt at justification, "If the father had treated us like the totem we should never have been tempted to kill him." Thus totemism helped to gloss over the real state of affairs and to make one forget the event to which it owed its origin.

In this connexion some features were formed which henceforth determined the character of every religion. The totem religion had issued from the sense of guilt of the sons as an attempt to palliate this feeling and to conciliate the injured father through subsequent obedience. All later religions prove to be attempts to solve the same problem, varying only in accordance with the stage of culture in which they are attempted and according to the paths which they take; they are all, however, reactions aiming at the same great event with which culture began and which ever since has not let mankind come to rest.

There is still another characteristic faithfully preserved in religion which already appeared in totemism at this time. The ambivalent strain was probably too great to be adjusted by any arrangement, or else the psychological conditions are entirely unfavourable to any kind of settlement of these contradictory feelings. It is certainly noticeable that the ambivalence attached to the father complex also continues in totemism and in religions in general. The religion of totemism included not only manifestations of remorse and attempts at reconciliation, but also serves to commemorate the triumph over the father. The gratification obtained thereby creates the commemorative celebration of the totem feast at which the restrictions of subsequent obedience are suspended, and makes it a duty to repeat the crime of parricide through the sacrifice of the totem animal as often as the benefits of this deed, namely, the appropriation of the father's properties, threaten to disappear as a result of the changed influences of life. We shall not be surprised to find that a part of the son's defiance also reappears, often in the most remarkable disguises and inversions, in the formation of later religions.

If thus far we have followed, in religion and moral precepts--but little differentiated in totemism--the consequences of the tender impulses towards the father as they are changed into remorse, we must not overlook the fact that for the most part the tendencies which have impelled to parricide have retained the victory. The social and fraternal feelings on which this great change is based, henceforth for long periods exercises the greatest influence upon the development of society. They find expression in the sanctification of the common blood and in the emphasis upon the solidarity of life within the clan. In thus ensuring each other's lives the brothers express the fact that no one of them is to be treated by the other as they all treated the father. They preclude a repet.i.tion of the fate of the father. The socially established prohibition against fratricide is now added to the prohibition against killing the totem, which is based on religious grounds. It will still be a long time before the commandment discards the restriction to members of the tribe and a.s.sumes the simple phraseology: Thou shalt not kill. At first the _brother clan_ has taken the place of the _father horde_ and was guaranteed by the blood bond.

Society is now based on complicity in the common crime, religion on the sense of guilt and the consequent remorse, while morality is based partly on the necessities of society and partly on the expiation which this sense of guilt demands.

Thus psychoa.n.a.lysis, contrary to the newer conceptions of the totemic system and more in accord with older conceptions, bids us argue for an intimate connexion between totemism and exogamy as well as for their simultaneous origin.

6

I am under the influence of many strong motives which restrain me from the attempt to discuss the further development of religions from their beginning in totemism up to their present state. I shall follow out only two threads as I see them appearing in the weft with especial distinctness: the motive of the totem sacrifice and the relation of the son to the father[213].

Robertson Smith has shown us that the old totem feast returns in the original form of sacrifice. The meaning of the rite is the same: sanctification through partic.i.p.ation in the common meal. The sense of guilt, which can only be allayed through the solidarity of all the partic.i.p.ants, has also been retained. In addition to this there is the tribal deity in whose supposed presence the sacrifice takes place, who takes part in the meal like a member of the tribe, and with whom identification is effected by the act of eating the sacrifice. How does the G.o.d come into this situation which originally was foreign to him?

The answer might be that the idea of G.o.d had meanwhile appeared,--no one knows whence--and had dominated the whole religious life, and that the totem feast, like everything else that wished to survive, had been forced to fit itself into the new system. However, psychoa.n.a.lytic investigation of the individual teaches with especial emphasis that G.o.d is in every case modelled after the father and that our personal relation to G.o.d is dependent upon our relation to our physical, fluctuating and changing with him, and that G.o.d at bottom is nothing but an exalted father. Here also, as in the case of totemism, psychoa.n.a.lysis advises us to believe the faithful, who call G.o.d father just as they called the totem their ancestor. If psychoa.n.a.lysis deserves any consideration at all, then the share of the father in the idea of a G.o.d must be very important, quite aside from all the other origins and meanings of G.o.d upon which psychoa.n.a.lysis can throw no light. But then the father would be represented twice in primitive sacrifice, first as G.o.d, and secondly as the totem-animalsacrifice, and we must ask, with all due regard for the limited number of solutions which psychoa.n.a.lysis offers, whether this is possible and what the meaning of it may be.

We know that there are a number of relations of the G.o.d to the holy animal (the totem and the sacrificial animal): 1. Usually one animal is sacred to every G.o.d, sometimes even several animals. 2. In certain, especially holy, sacrifices, the so-called 'mystical' sacrifices, the very animal which had been sanctified through the G.o.d was sacrificed to him[214]. 3. The G.o.d was often revered in the form of an animal, or from another point of view, animals enjoyed a G.o.dlike reverence long after the period of totemism. 4. In myths the G.o.d is frequently transformed into an animal, often into the animal that is sacred to him. From this the a.s.sumption was obvious that the G.o.d himself was the animal, and that he had evolved from the totem animal at a later stage of religious feeling. But the reflection that the totem itself is nothing but a subst.i.tute for the father relieves us of all further discussion. Thus the totem may have been the first form of the father subst.i.tute and the G.o.d a later one in which the father regained his human form. Such a new creation from the root of all religious evolution, namely, the longing for the father, might become possible if in the course of time an essential change had taken place in the relation to the father and perhaps also to the animal.

Such changes are easily divined even if we disregard the beginning of a psychic estrangement from the animal as well as the disintegration of totemism through animal domestication[215]. The situation created by the removal of the father contained an element which in the course of time must have brought about an extraordinary increase of longing for the father. For the brothers who had joined forces to kill the father had each been animated by the wish to become like the father and had given expression to this wish by incorporating parts of the subst.i.tute for him in the totem feast. In consequence of the pressure which the bonds of the brother clan exercised upon each member, this wish had to remain unfulfilled. No one could or was allowed to attain the father's perfection of power, which was the thing they had all sought. Thus the bitter feeling against the father which had incited to the deed could subside in the course of time, while the longing for him grew, and an ideal could arise having as a content the fullness of power and the freedom from restriction of the conquered primal father, as well as the willingness to subject themselves to him. The original democratic equality of each member of the tribe could no longer be retained on account of the interference of cultural changes; in consequence of which there arose a tendency to revive the old father ideal in the creation of G.o.ds through the veneration of those individuals who had distinguished themselves above the rest. That a man should become a G.o.d and that a G.o.d should die, which to-day seems to us an outrageous presumption, was still by no means offensive to the conceptions of cla.s.sical antiquity[216]. But the deification of the murdered father from whom the tribe now derived its origin, was a much more serious attempt at expiation than the former covenant with the totem.

In this evolution I am at a loss to indicate the place of the great maternal deities who perhaps everywhere preceded the paternal deities.

But it seems certain that the change in the relation to the father was not restricted to religion but logically extended to the other side of human life influenced by the removal of the father, namely, the social organization. With the inst.i.tution of paternal deities the fatherless society gradually changed into a patriarchal one. The family was a reconstruction of the former primal horde and also restored a great part of their former rights to the fathers. Now there were patriarchs again but the social achievements of the brother clan had not been given up and the actual difference between the new family patriarchs and the unrestricted primal father was great enough to ensure the continuation of the religious need, the preservation of the unsatisfied longing for the father.

The father therefore really appears twice in the scene of sacrifice before the tribal G.o.d, once as the G.o.d and again as the totem-sacrificial-animal. But in attempting to understand this situation we must beware of interpretations which superficially seek to translate it as an allegory, and which forget the historical stages in the process. The twofold presence of the father corresponds to the two successive meanings of the scene. The ambivalent att.i.tude towards the father as well as the victory of the son's tender emotional feelings over his hostile ones, have here found plastic expression. The scene of vanquis.h.i.+ng the father, his greatest degradation, furnishes here the material to represent his highest triumph. The meaning which sacrifice has quite generally acquired is found in the fact that in the very same action which continues the memory of this misdeed it offers satisfaction to the father for the ignominy put upon him.

In the further development the animal loses its sacredness and the sacrifice its relation to the celebration of the totem; the rite becomes a simple offering to the deity, a self-deprivation in favour of the G.o.d.

G.o.d himself is now so exalted above man that he can be communicated with only through a priest as intermediary. At the same time the social order produces G.o.dlike kings who transfer the patriarchal system to the state.

It must be said that the revenge of the deposed and reinstated father has been very cruel; it culminated in the dominance of authority. The subjugated sons have used the new relation to disburden themselves still more of their sense of guilt. Sacrifice, as it is now const.i.tuted, is entirely beyond their responsibility. G.o.d himself has demanded and ordained it. Myths in which the G.o.d himself kills the animal that is sacred to him, which he himself really is, belong to this phase. This is the greatest possible denial of the great misdeed with which society and the sense of guilt began. There is an unmistakable second meaning in this sacrificial demonstration. It expresses satisfaction at the fact that the earlier father subst.i.tute has been abandoned in favour of the higher conception of G.o.d. The superficial allegorical translation of the scene here roughly corresponds with its psychoa.n.a.lytic interpretation by saying that G.o.d is represented as overcoming the animal part of his nature[217].

But it would be erroneous to believe that in this period of renewed patriarchal authority the hostile impulses which belong to the father complex had entirely subsided. On the contrary, the first phases in the domination of the two new subst.i.tutive formations for the father, those of G.o.ds and kings, plainly show the most energetic expression of that ambivalence which is characteristic of religion.

In his great work, _The Golden Bough_, Frazer has expressed the conjecture that the first kings of the Latin tribes were strangers who played the part of a deity and were solemnly sacrificed in this role on specified holidays. The yearly sacrifice (self-sacrifice is a variant) of a G.o.d seems to have been an important feature of Semitic religions.

The ceremony of human sacrifice in various parts of the inhabited world makes it certain that these human beings ended their lives as representatives of the deity. This sacrificial custom can still be traced in later times in the subst.i.tution of an inanimate imitation (doll) for the living person. The theanthropic G.o.d sacrifice into which unfortunately I cannot enter with the same thoroughness with which the animal sacrifice has been treated throws the clearest light upon the meaning of the older forms of sacrifice. It acknowledges with unsurpa.s.sable candour that the object of the sacrificial action has always been the same, being identical with what is now revered as a G.o.d, namely with the father. The question as to the relation of animal to human sacrifice can now be easily solved. The original animal sacrifice was already a subst.i.tute for a human sacrifice, for the solemn killing of the father, and when the father subst.i.tute regained its human form, the animal subst.i.tute could also be retransformed into a human sacrifice.

Thus the memory of that first great act of sacrifice had proved to be indestructible despite all attempts to forget it, and just at the moment when men strove to get as far away as possible from its motives, the undistorted repet.i.tion of it had to appear in the form of the G.o.d sacrifice. I need not fully indicate here the developments of religious thought which made this return possible in the form of rationalizations.

Robertson Smith who is, of course, far removed from the idea of tracing sacrifice back to this great event of man's primal history, says that the ceremony of the festivals in which the old Semites celebrated the death of a deity were interpreted as "a commemoration of a mythical tragedy" and that the attendant lament was not characterized by spontaneous sympathy, but displayed a compulsive character, something that was imposed by the fear of a divine wrath[218]. We are in a position to acknowledge that this interpretation was correct, the feelings of the celebrants being well explained by the basic situation.

We may now accept it as a fact that in the further development of religions these two inciting factors, the son's sense of guilt and his defiance, were never again extinguished. Every attempted solution of the religious problem and every kind of reconciliation of the two opposing psychic forces gradually falls to the ground, probably under the combined influence of cultural changes, historical events, and inner psychic transformations.

The endeavour of the son to put himself in place of the father G.o.d, appeared with greater and greater distinctness. With the introduction of agriculture the importance of the son in the patriarchal family increased. He was emboldened to give new expression to his incestuous libido which found symbolic satisfaction in labouring over mother earth.

There came into existence figures of G.o.ds like Attis, Adonis, Tammuz, and others, spirits of vegetation as well as youthful divinities who enjoyed the favours of maternal deities and committed incest with the mother in defiance of the father. But the sense of guilt which was not allayed through these creations, was expressed in myths which visited these youthful lovers of the maternal G.o.ddesses with short life and punishment through castration or through the wrath of the father G.o.d appearing in animal form. Adonis was killed by the boar, the sacred animal of Aphrodite; Attis, the lover of Kybele, died of castration[219]. The lamentation for these G.o.ds and the joy at their resurrection have gone over into the ritual of another son which divinity was destined to survive long.