Robertson Smith, on the other hand, a new era was reached, in which the recently recognized existence of Totemism was made the basis of an attempt to give a 1 Scipione de Ricci, bishop of Pistoia from 1780 to 1791, on the ex-Jesuits requesting him to consecrate a bell dedicated to this object, issued a pastoral letter (3rd June 1784) in which he pointed out that the spirit of true religion was "far removed from fetichism," and warned his flock against "cardiolatry."
It has been held that animal sacrifice is the primitive form and that the decay of totemism or lack of domestic animals has brought about the substitution of a human victim; but it has also been urged that in many cases animal victims are treated like human beings and must consequently have replaced them, that human beings are smeared with the blood of sacrifice, and must therefore have themselves been sacrificed before a milder regime allowed an animal to replace them.
How far totemism, or belief in deified animal ancestors, existed in prehistoric Israel, as evidenced by the tribal names Simeon (hyena, wolf), Caleb (dog), IIamor (ass), Rahel (ewe) and Leah (wild cow), as well as by the laws respecting clean and unclean animals, is too intricate and speculative a problem to be discussed here.
In fact, while Robertson Smith (in Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, as well as his Religion of the Semites, followed by Stade and Benzinger) strongly advocated the view that clear traces of totemism can be found in early Israel, later writers, such as Marti, Gesch.
We are not concerned with the question whether the earliest forms of recorded religious consciousness such as animism, or totemism, or fetishism, were themselves degradations of a primitive revelation or not.