Thus the Wild Dog clan of the Arunta has many traditions that their ancestors killed and ate Wild Dog men and women.​[364] Such traditions probably preserve a true reminiscence of a state of things still more savage than the present practice of the Binbinga. At that more or less remote time, if we may trust the scattered hints of custom and legend which are the only evidence we have to go upon, the men and women of a totem clan, in defiance of the customs of a later age, regularly cohabited with each other,​[365] ate their totems, and devoured each other’s dead bodies. In such a state of things there was no sharp line of distinction drawn, either in theory or in practice, between a man and his totem; and this confusion is again confirmed by the legends, from which it is often difficult to make out whether the totemic ancestor spoken of is a man or an animal.​[366] And if measures were taken to resuscitate both, it may well have been primarily in order that both might be eaten again. The system was thoroughly practical in its aim; only the means it took to compass its ends were mistaken. It was in no sense a religion, unless we are prepared to bestow the name of religion on the business of the grazier and the market-gardener; for these savages certainly bred animals and plants, and perhaps bred men, for much the same reasons that a grazier and a market-gardener breed cattle and vegetables. {p108} But whereas the methods of the grazier and market-gardener rest upon the laws of nature, and therefore do really produce the effects they aim at, the methods of these savages are based on a mistaken conception of natural law, and therefore totally fail to bring about the intended result. Only they do not perceive their failure. Kindly nature, if we may personify her for a moment, draws a veil before their eyes, and herself works behind the veil those wonders of reproduction which the poor savage vainly fancies that he has wrought by his magical ceremonies and incantations. In short, totemism, as it exists at present among these tribes, appears to be mainly a crude, almost childlike attempt to satisfy the primary wants of man, especially under the hard conditions to which he is subject in the deserts of Central Australia, by magically creating everything that a savage stands in need of, and food first of all. But to say so is not to affirm that this has been the purpose, and the only purpose, of Australian totemism from the beginning. That beginning lies far behind us in the past, and is therefore necessarily much more obscure and uncertain than the function of totemism as a fully developed system, to which alone the preceding remarks are applicable. Our examination of the magical rites performed by the Australians for the maintenance of the food supply has led us into this digression. It is time to pass to ceremonies practised for the same purpose and on the same principles by peoples in other parts of the world.