Robertson Smith is the first who undertook this work of elaboration. He realized more clearly than any of his predecessors how rich this crude and confused religion is in germs for the future. It is true that MacLennan had already connected it with the great religions of antiquity; but that was merely because he thought he had found here and there the cult of animals or plants. Now if we reduce totemism to a sort of animal or plant worship, we have seen only its most superficial aspect: we have even misunderstood its real nature. Going beyond the mere letter of the totemic beliefs, Smith set himself to find the fundamental principles upon which they depend. In his book upon _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_,[185] he had already pointed out that totemism supposes a likeness in nature, either natural or acquired, of men and animals (or plants). In his _The Religion of the Semites_,[186] he makes this same idea the first origin of the entire sacrificial system: it is to totemism that humanity owes the principle of the communion meal. It is true that the theory of Smith can now be shown one-sided; it is no longer adequate for the facts actually known; but for all that, it contains an ingenious theory and has exercised a most fertile influence upon the science of religions. The _Golden Bough_[187] of Frazer is inspired by these same ideas, for totemism, which MacLennan had attached to the religions of classical antiquity, and Smith to the religions of the Semitic peoples, is here connected to the European folk-lore. The schools of MacLennan and Morgan are thus united to that of Mannhardt.[188]