OWING TO ITS NATURE, our study will include two parts. Since
every religion is made up of intellectual conceptions and ritual
practices, we must deal successively with the beliefs and rites
which compose the totemic religion. These two elements of
the religious life are too closely connected with each other to
allow of any radical separation. In principle, the cult is de-
rived from the beliefs, yet it reacts upon them; the myth is fre-
quently modelled after the rite in order to account for it, espe-
cially when its sense is no longer apparent. On the other hand,
there are beliefs which are clearly manifested only through
the rites which express them. So these two parts of our analy-
sis cannot fail to overlap. However, these two orders of facts
are so different that it is indispensable to study them sepa-
rately. And since it is impossible to understand anything about
a religion while unacquainted with the ideas upon which it
rests, we must seek to become acquainted with these latter first
of all.

But it is not our intention to retrace all the speculations into
which the religious thought, even of the Australians alone, has
run. The things we wish to reach are the elementary notions at
the basis of the religion, but there is no need of following
them through all the development, sometimes very confused,
which the mythological imagination of these peoples has given
them. We shall make use of myths when they enable us to un-

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