an extraordinary piece of “coöperative magic.” Primitive men formed what might be called a magic production and consumption club. Each totem clan undertook to see to the cleanliness of a certain article of food. If it were a question of inedible totems like harmful animals, rain, wind, or similar objects, it was the duty of the totem clan to dominate this part of nature and to ward off its injuriousness. The efforts of each clan were for the good of all the others. As the clan could not eat its totem or could eat only a very little of it, it furnished this valuable product for the rest and was in turn furnished with what these had to take care of as their social totem duty. In the light of this interpretation furnished by the Intichiuma ceremony, it appeared to Frazer as if the prohibition against eating the totem had misled observers to neglect the more important side of the relation, namely the commandment to supply as much as possible of the edible totem for the needs of others.
Frazer accepted the tradition of the Aruntas that each totem clan had originally lived on its totem without any restriction. It then became difficult to understand the evolution that followed through which savages were satisfied to
humblest beginnings of human speculation but which is utterly foreign to the simple, sensuous, and concrete modes of the savage. (“Totemism and Exogamy,” I., p. 117.)
