feathers, mimicking their gestures. For his own days his judgment would
have been unquestionably right; but again, if we look at the beginning
of things, we find an origin and an impulse much deeper, vaguer, and
more emotional.

The beast dances found widespread over the savage world took their rise
when men really believed, what St. Francis tried to preach: that beasts
and birds and fishes were his "little brothers." Or rather, perhaps,
more strictly, he felt them to be his great brothers and his fathers,
for the attitude of the Australian towards the kangaroo, the North
American towards the grizzly bear, is one of affection tempered by deep
religious awe. The beast dances look back to that early phase of
civilization which survives in crystallized form in what we call
_totemism_. "Totem" means tribe, but the tribe was of animals as well as
men. In the Kangaroo tribe there were real leaping kangaroos as well as
men-kangaroos. The men-kangaroos when they danced and leapt did it, not
to _imitate_ kangaroos--you cannot imitate yourself--but just for
natural joy of heart because they _were_ kangaroos; they belonged to the
Kangaroo tribe, they bore the tribal marks and delighted to assert their
tribal unity. What they felt was not _mimesis_ but "participation,"
unity, and community. Later, when man begins to distinguish between
himself and his strange fellow-tribesmen, to realize that he is _not_ a
kangaroo like other kangaroos, he will try to revive his old faith, his
old sense of participation and oneness, by conscious imitation. Thus
though imitation is not the object of these dances, it grows up in and
through them. It is the same with art. The origin of art is not
_mimesis_, but _mimesis_ springs up out of art, out of emotional
expression, and constantly and closely neighbours it. Art and ritual
are at the outset alike in this, that they do not seek to copy a fact,
but to reproduce, to re-enact an emotion.