It is possible to explain why this idea has been unable to reach the same degree of abstraction in Australia as in the more advanced societies. This is not merely due to the insufficient aptitude of the Australian for abstracting and generalizing: before all, it is the nature of the social environment which has imposed this particularism. In fact, as long as totemism remains at the basis of the cultural organization, the clan keeps an autonomy in the religious society which, though not absolute, is always very marked. Of course we can say that in one sense each totemic group is only a chapel of the tribal Church; but it is a chapel enjoying a large independence. The cult celebrated there, though not a self-sufficing whole, has only external relations with the others; they interchange without intermingling; the totem of the clan is fully sacred only for this clan. Consequently the groups of things attributed to each clan, which are a part of it in the same way the men are, have the same individuality and autonomy. Each of them is represented as irreducible into similar groups, as separated from them by a break of continuity, and as constituting a distinct realm. Under these circumstances, it would occur to no one that these heterogeneous worlds were different manifestations of one and the same fundamental force; on the contrary, one might suppose that each of them corresponded to an organically different mana whose action could not extend beyond the clan and the circle of things attributed to it. The idea of a single and universal mana could be born only at the moment when the tribal religion developed above that of the clans and absorbed them more or less completely. It is along with the feeling of the tribal unity that the feeling of the substantial unity of the world awakens. As we shall presently show,[646] it is true that the Australian societies are already acquainted with a cult that is common to the tribe as a whole. But if this cult represents the highest form of the Australian religions, it has not succeeded in touching and modifying the principles upon which they repose: totemism is essentially a federative religion which cannot go beyond a certain degree of centralization without ceasing to be itself.