In both types of worship the animal is
revered on account of some benefit, positive or negative, which the
savage hopes to receive from it. In the former worship the benefit
comes either in the positive shape of protection, advice, and help
which the animal affords the man, or in the negative shape of
abstinence from injuries which it is in the power of the animal to
inflict. In the latter worship the benefit takes the material form
of the animal's flesh and skin. The two types of worship are in some
measure antithetical: in the one, the animal is not eaten because it
is revered; in the other, it is revered because it is eaten. But
both may be practised by the same people, as we see in the case of
the North American Indians, who, while they apparently revere and
spare their totem animals, also revere the animals and fish upon
which they subsist. The aborigines of Australia have totemism in the
most primitive form known to us; but there is no clear evidence that
they attempt, like the North American Indians, to conciliate the
animals which they kill and eat.
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