|TO show further how the unholy becomes, in time, the holy, or vice versa, let us glance at another barbaric institution of the past, that of the totem. The word taboo, as already explained, is Polynesian in origin; the word totem has come to us from the American Indian. Totem is a more difficult word to translate into modern thought. The most popular definition I could give to it would be to say that a totem is a "mascot." And yet, it is very much more. To savage tribes a totem was an object, more frequently an animal, which was sacred to the particular tribe that had identified itself with it. The thing, or the plant, or the beast thus selected, became an emblem, badge or bond of union. It served also as a sort of password by which the members of the tribe were recognized, and a center around which the clan grouped itself. To the totem they looked for preservation against famine, war and annihilation as a tribe. The totem was the soul of the tribe--the tribe in essence. The golden-rod is the national flower of America, the lily is upon the shield of France, the shamrock is Irish, the world over; in some such sense, only meaning very much more, was the totem to our savage ancestors. Now we are in a position to guess at least why the bible forbids swine's flesh. Solomon Reinach, a distinguished Jewish scholar, and member of the French Academy, says that the boar was the totem of the Jew long before Moses appeared on the scene. * The totem was protected by a taboo, and, therefore, to eat it was a national crime. To destroy one's totem was a sacrilege and a blasphemy, punishable by death. They looked upon the man who ate his totem with more abhorrence than we would feel toward a fellow countryman who insulted his flag. Here, then, we have two counter currents; the Sabbath, beginning as an evil day, becomes "holy," while the hog, once a totem, an object of reverence, a god, degenerates into an unclean beast. Yet the one, as much as the other, is as taboo as ever. * Orpheus, Solomon Reinach, page 27: "Les Juifs pieux s'abstiennent de manger du porc, parce que leurs lointains ancestres, cinq on six mille ans avant notre ere, avaient pour totem le sanglier."