In the growth of civilisation vengeance has gradually come to be concentrated upon the offender only." [152] Thus the blood-feud appears to have originated from the idea of primary retributive justice between clan and clan.

When a member of a clan had been killed, one of the offending clan must be killed in return.

Who he might be, and whether the original homicide was justifiable or not, were questions not regarded by primitive man; motives were abstract ideas with which he had no concern; he only knew that a piece of the common life had been lopped off, and the instinct of self-preservation of the clan demanded that a piece of the life of the offending clan should be cut off in return.

And the tie which united the kin was eating and drinking together.

"According to antique ideas those who eat and drink together are by this very act tied to one another by a bond of friendship and mutual obligation." [153] This was the bond which first united the members of the totem-clan both among themselves and with their totem.