Such are the ceremonies of the Australian Arunta, observed and described in detail by Messrs Spencer and Gillen[205]. These ceremonies, consisting of lengthy and elaborate mummeries, are called _Intichiuma_, and their object seems to be to secure the increase of the animal or plant associated with a particular totem. The pantomimes enacted seem to be of the nature of sympathetic magic, and they are interspersed with chanted invitations to the particular plant or animal to be fertile. The point of special interest is that the ceremonies are closely connected with certain taboos on particular foods. Mr Lang[206] suggests that the removal of the taboo at the time of the _Intichiuma_ may indicate that the necessary ‘close time’ is over. The imposition of the taboo is on this showing not due to any primary moral instinct in man, but simply a practical necessity if the plant or animal is not to become extinct. The removal of the taboo after a suitable lapse of time is, if man himself is not to become extinct, equally practical and necessary. This sort of taboo is in fact a kind of primitive ‘game law.’ Philochoros[207] gives an instance: ‘At Athens,’ he says, ‘a prohibition was issued that no one should eat of unshorn lamb on the occasion of failure in the breed of sheep.’ If at the end of the close time it was customary to eat a little of a plant or animal, the eating being accompanied by certain solemn ceremonials, the food itself would easily come to be regarded as specially sacred and as having sacramental virtue, and the further step would soon be taken of regarding it as consecrated to certain spirits or divinities. This _may_ have been in part the origin of the offering of first-fruits. The removal of a taboo is assuredly not the same thing as the worship of a god, but it is easy to see how the one might slide over into the other. A taboo is by common consent placed upon the harvest fruits till all are ripe: such harvest-fruits are _sacred_, forbidden, dangerous. Why? As soon as primitive man has fashioned for himself any sort of god in his own image, the answer is ready, ‘The Lord thy God is a jealous God.’ Primitive man is so instinctively anthropomorphic that it seems to me rash to assert that the notion of taboo _precedes_ that of sacrifice. The natives of Central Australia appear to have taboo without the notion of sacrifice, i.e. of any spirit to whom sacrifice is made; another race might have a primitive notion of a spirit to be placated without the notion of taboo; or the two might be inextricably blended and only our modern habit of pitiless analysis separate them.