ne. But then no sooner had he done this than he was bound to
perceive that in cutting down the corn or in eating his totem-bear
or kangaroo he was slaying his own best self and benefactor. In
that instant the consciousness of DISUNITY, the sense of sin in some
undefined yet no less disturbing and alarming form would come in. If,
before, his ritual magic had been concentrated on the simple purpose of
multiplying the animal or, vegetable forms of his food, now in addition
his magical endeavor would be turned to averting the just wrath of the
spirits who animated these forms--just indeed, for the rudest savage
would perceive the wrong done and the probability of its retribution.
Clearly the wrong done could only be expiated by an equivalent sacrifice
of some kind on the part of the man, or the tribe--that is by the
offering to the totem-animal or to the corn-spirit of some victim whom
these nature powers in their turn could feed upon and assimilate. In
this way the nature-powers would be appeased, the sense of unity would
be restored, and the first At-one-ment effected.

It is hardly necessary to recite in any detail the cruel and hideous
sacrifices which have been perpetrated in this sense all over the world,
sometimes in appeasement of a wrong committed or supposed to have been
committed by the tribe or some member of it, sometimes in placation or
for the averting of death, or defeat, or plague, sometimes merely
in fulfilment of some long-standing custom of forgotten origin--the
flayings and floggings and burnings and crucifixions of victims without
end, carried out in all deliberation and solemnity of established
ritual. I have mentioned some cases connected with the sowing of the
corn. The Bible is full of such things, from the intended sacrifice of
Isaac by his father Abraham, to the actual crucifixion of Jesus by
the Jews. The first-born sons were claimed by a god who called himself
"jealous" and were only to be redeemed by a substitute. (1) Of the
Canaanites it was said that "even their daughters they have BURNT in the
fire to their gods"; (2) and of the King of Moab, that when he saw
his army in danger of defeat, "he took his eldest son that should have
reigned in his stead and offered him for a burnt-offering on the wall!"
(3) Dr. Frazer (4) mentions the similar case of the Carthaginians
(about B.C. 300) sacrificing two hundred children of good family as a
propitiation to Baal and to save their beloved city from th