ribesman or took a mean advantage of him, you 'sinned' against him; and
naturally you expiated the sin by an equivalent sacrifice of some kind
made to the one you had wronged. Such an idea and such a practice were
the very foundation of social life and human morality, and must have
sprung up as soon as ever, in the course of evolution, man became
CAPABLE of differentiating himself from his fellows and regarding his
own conduct as that of a 'separate self.' It was in the very conception
of a separate self that 'sin' and disunity first began; and it was
by 'sacrifice' that unity and harmony were restored, appeasement and
atonement effected.

But in those earliest times, as I have already indicated more than once,
man felt himself intimately related not only to his brother tribesman,
but to the animals and to general Nature. It was not so much that he
THOUGHT thus as that he never thought OTHERWISE! He FELT subconsciously
that he was a part of all this outer world. And so he adopted for his
totems or presiding spirits every possible animal, as we have seen,
and all sorts of nature-phenomena, such as rain and fire and water and
clouds, and sun, moon and stars--which WE consider quite senseless and
inanimate. Towards these apparently senseless things therefore he felt
the same compunction as I have described him feeling towards his brother
tribesmen. He could sin against them too. He could sin against his
totem-animal by eating it; he could sin against his 'brother the ox' by
consuming its strength in the labor of the plough; he could sin against
the corn by cutting it down and grinding it into flour, or against the
precious and beautiful pine-tree by laying his axe to its roots and
converting it into mere timber for his house. Further still, no doubt he
could sin against elemental nature. This might be more difficult to be
certain of, but when the signs of elemental displeasure were not to be
mistaken--when the rain withheld itself for months, or the storms and
lightning dealt death and destruction, when the crops failed or evil
plagues afflicted mankind--then there could be little uncertainty that
he had sinned; and Fear, which had haunted him like a demon from the
first day when he became conscious of his separation from his fellows
and from Nature, stood over him and urged to dreadful propitiations.

In all these cases some sacrifice in reparation was the obvious thing.
We have seen that to atone for the cutting-down of