Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

128 Totemism, Sacrament and Sacrifice [ch.
Before entering on this enquiry we must however pause for a
moment. We have assumed so far that totemism lies behind Greek
religion, and that Greek religion can only be rightly understood
on this assumption. The assumption is not so bold as it may
seem. We do not claim for Greece a fully developed totemistic
social system, but rather that totemistic habit of thought, which
is, we believe, common to all peoples in an early phase of their
epistemology 1 . Totemism, we have tried to show, is to our mind
a habit of collective thinking based on collective emotion. The
main characteristic of such thinking is union, or rather lack of
differentiation, of subject and object. This lack of differentiation,
this felt union, shows itself in many ways, and chiefly in one
salient example, the belief in the identity of groups of human
beings with groups of animals or plants. In practice, that is in
ritual, totemism finds its natural development in the manipulation
of the spiritual continuum, in magic.
This habit of collective thinking, this lack of differentiation 2
is, we believe, characteristic not of one race, but of all races at a
given stage of their mental development. It is further, I believe,
the characteristic of Greek religion that it emerged early from the
totemistic magical stage. The Greeks were a people who drew
clear-cut outlines and sharp distinctions. But we cannot under-
stand this rapid emergence unless we understand from what they
emerged. Very early the Greeks shed their phytomorphic and
theriomorphic gods. With strong emphasis by the mouth of
Pindar- they insist that a god be clearly and impassably delimited
from man. Have we any evidence of the earlier stage of thought
against which the protest is raised ? Are there in Greek mythology
or Greek cultus definite traces of totemistic unification ?
1 Such a system probably only occurs sporadically where man's progress in
epistemology has been arrested and the social structure crystallizes. Since writing
the above I am delighted to find that my conjecture, which might appear hazardous,
has been anticipated by Mr A. B. Cook He writes (J.H.S. xiv. 1894, 157) 'On the
whole I gather that the Mycenaean worshippers were not totemists pure and single
but that the mode of their worship points to its having been developed out of still
earlier totemism.'
2 For an analysis of primitive mentality, see Levy-Bruhl, Les Fonctions Mentales
dans les Societes Inferieures, 1910.
3 01. v. 58 nv fj.arevarj
debs yeviadai.
and Isth. v. 20
dvara
See my Prolegomena, p. 477.
dvaroccri Trpiwei.