Chapter IV: )

It is clear that the first great change in evolution was the addition to the rule, "No marriage in the local group of animal name," of the rule, "No marriage in the animal name of descent," or totem, the totem being nearer and dearer to a man than his local group name, when that became a phratry name, including several totem kins.

Now that this feeling--to which the totem of the kin was far nearer and dearer than the old local group animal whence the phratry took its name--is a genuine sentiment, can be proved by the evidence of Mr. Howitt, who certainly is not biassed by affection for my theory--his own being contrary. He says: "The class name" (that is, in our terminology, the phratry name) "is _general_, the totem name is in one sense _individual_, for it is certainly nearer to the individual than the name of the moiety" (phratry) "of the community to which he belongs."[3] Again, "It is interesting to note that the totems seem to be much _nearer_ to the aborigines, if I may use that expression, than the" (animals of?) "the primary classes," that is, phratries.[4]

As soon as this sentiment prevailed, wherever a clash of laws arose men would change their phratries, rather than change their totems, and we have seen that, to effect the present distribution of totems (never the same totem in each phratry), many persons must have changed their phratries, as did the two whole totem kins of the phratriac names, on my hypothesis. I reached these conclusions before Mr. Howitt informed us of the various dodges by which several tribes now facilitate marriages that are counter to the strict letter of the law.

It seems needless to dwell on the objection that my system "does not account for the fact that phratriac names--say Eagle Hawk, Crow--are commonly found over wide areas, and are not distributed in a way that Mr. Lang's 'casual' origin would explain."[5]

We have seen, though we knew it not when the objection was raised, that the institutions were perhaps in some cases diffused by borrowing, from a centre where Kilpara meant Crow, and Mukwara meant Eagle Hawk; and that these names, and the phratriac institution, reached regions very remote, and tribes in whose language Kilpara and Mukwara have no everyday meaning. If borrowing be rejected, then the names spread with the spread of migration from a given Mukwara-Kilpara centre, and other names for Eagle Hawk and Crow were evolved in everyday life.

Except as regards late "abnormalities," we have now surveyed the whole course of totemic evolution. May it not be said that my theory involves but a small element of conjecture? Man, however he began, was driven, by obvious economic causes, into life in small groups. Being man, he had individual likes and dislikes, involving discrimination of persons and some practical restraints. A sense of female kin and blood kin and milk kin was forced on him by the visible facts of birth, of nursing, of association. His groups undeniably did receive names; mainly animal names, which I show to be usual as group _sobriquets_ in ancient Israel and in later rural societies. These names were peculiarly suitable for silent signalling by gesture language; no others could so easily be signalled silently; none could so easily be represented in pictographs, whether naturalistic or schematised into "geometrical" marks. It is no conjecture that the names exist, and exist in the diffused manner naturally caused by women handing on their names to their offspring, as, under a system of reckoning in the female line, they do to this day. It is no conjecture that the origin of the totem names has long been forgotten.

It is no conjecture that names are believed, by savages, to indicate a mystical _rapport_, and transcendental connection, between the name and all bearers of the name. It is no conjecture that this _rapport_ is exploited for magical and other purposes. It is no conjecture that myths have been invented to explain the _rapport_ which must, it is held, exist between Emu bird and Emu man, and so in all such cases. It is no conjecture that the myths explain the _rapport_, usually, as one of blood connection, involving duties and privileges. It is no conjecture that blood is held sacred, especially kindred blood, and that this belief involves exogamy, "No marriage within the blood of the man and the totem." We give reasons for everything, whereas, if a reformatory bisection of a promiscuous horde were made, by an inspired wizard, why did he do it, and why should each moiety take an animal name? Again, if there were no recognised pre-existing connection between human groups and animals, why should one group do magic for one animal, rather than for another, in cases where they do this magic?

We have thus reached _totemism_, and we trace its varying forms in the light of institutions which grew up in the evolution--under changing conditions--of the law of exogamy. The causes are demonstrably _veræ causæ_, conspicuously present in savage human nature, and the hypothesis appears to colligate all the known facts.

The eccentric and abnormal types of social organisation, as Mr. Howitt justly observes, are found in tribes which have adopted the reckoning of descent, or inheritance of names, in the male line. Phratry names lose their meanings or vanish, even phratries themselves decay, or are found with names that can hardly be original, names of cosmogonic anthropomorphic beings, as in New Britain. Totems, under male descent, become names of groups of locality, and local limits and local names (names of places, not totems) come to be the exogamous bounds, as among the isolated Kurnai.

In America, magical societies of animal names, and containing members of many totems, have been evolved. But we must not fall into the error of regarding such societies as "phratries." Nor must we confuse matters by regarding every animal now attached to any kind of association or individual as a totem. Each sex, in many Australian tribes, has an associated animal. Each dead man, in some communities, is classed under some name of an object of nature. Each individual may have a patron animal familiar revealed to him, in a dream, or by an accident, after a fast, or may have it selected for him by soothsayers. The totem kins may classify all things, in sets, each set of things under one totem. But the animal names which are not hereditary or exogamous are not judiciously to be spoken of as "Sex Totems," "Mortuary Totems," "Individual Totems," or "Sub-totems." They are a result of applying totemic ideas to the sexes, to dead men, or to living individuals, or to the universe. Perhaps totemic methods and style were even utilised and adapted when the institution of matrimonial classes was later devised.

[1] The Arunta exception has been explained. Cf. Chapter IV.

[2] Cf. _Social Origins_, pp. 55--57, in which the author fails to discover any mode by which the distribution could occur accidentally or automatically.

[3] _J. A. I._, August 1888, p. 40.

[4] Ibid., August 1888, p. 53.

[5] N. W. Thomas, _Man_, January 1904, No. 2.