ce in its lowest and its earliest stage of development. In them,
therefore, if anywhere, we might expect to find what would be religion
in its lowest and earliest stage indeed but still religion. Reduced to
its lowest terms, religion, it was felt at first, must imply at least
belief in a god and communion with him. If, therefore, religion was to
be found amongst the representatives of the lowest and earliest stage in
the evolution of humanity, belief in a god and communion with him must
there be found. He who seeks finds. Robertson Smith found amongst the
Australians totem-gods and sacramental rites. Indeed, it was at that
time the belief universally held by students of the science of religion
that in Australia a totem was a god and a god might be a totem. It was
conjectured by Robertson Smith that in Australia the totem animal or
plant was eaten sacramentally. Since, then, the totem in Australia was
held to be both the god and the animal or plant in which the god
manifested himself, it followed that in Australia we had, preserved to
this day, the earliest form of sacrifice--that in which the totem animal
was itself the totem god to whom it was offered as a sacrifice, and was
itself--or rather himself--the sacramental meal furnished to his
worshippers. The totem was eaten, it was conjectured, with the object of
acquiring the qualities of the divine creature, or of absorbing them
into the person of the worshipper. That the totem was eaten
sacramentally rested, as has just been said, on the conjecture made by
Robertson Smith in 1889; but in 1899 Dr. (now Sir James) Frazer declared
that, thanks to the investigations of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, 'here,
in the heart of Australia, among the most primitive savages known to
us, we find the actual observance of that totem sacrament which
Robertson Smith, with the intuition of genius, divined years ago, but of
which positive examples have hitherto been wanting.'

On the foundation thus laid by the intuition of Robertson Smith and
approved in 1899 by Sir James Frazer, a simple and complete theory of
the evolution of religion was possible. In any one tribe there were
several totem-kins. The totem of each kin was divine, but the
personality of a totem was so undeveloped in conception that, though it
might, and on the theory did, develop into a deity, it was originally
more of the nature of a spirit than a god, and totemism proper might
easily pass into polydaemonism, that is a syst