The Secret of the Totem
Really the evidence of Collins, on analysis, is found to describe (i.) a Dog dance; (ii.) a native carrying a Kangaroo effigy made of grass; (iii.) a Kangaroo hunt. Nothing proves the working of totemic ceremonies: the point is not established. Collins saw a hunt dance, not a ceremony whose "sole object was the purpose of increasing the number of the animal or plant after which the totem is called," and to do that is the aim of the Intichiuma.99 The hunt dances seen by Collins were just those seen by Mr. Howitt at an initiation ceremony.100 In the Emu Intichiuma of the Arunta the Emus are represented by men, but no Emu hunt is exhibited, and women are allowed to see the imitators of the fowls.101 The ceremonies reported by Collins were done at an initiation of boys, which "the women of course were not allowed to see."102
Apparently we have not "clear evidence" that Collins saw Intichiuma, or totemic co-operative magic, in the south, and Mr. Howitt asserts and tries to explain its absence there.
It is, of course, perfectly natural that men, when once they come to believe in a mystic connection between certain human groups and certain animals, should do magic for these animals. But, in point of fact, we do not find the practice in the more primitively organised tribes outside the Arunta sphere of influence, and we do find the practice most, and most highly organised, in tribes of advanced type, in America and the Torres Isles, quite irrespective of the natural abundance of supplies, which is supposed to account for the very slight development of Intichiuma on the north coast of Australia.
I cannot agree with Mr. Hartland in supposing that the barren nature of the Arunta country forced the Arunta to do magic for their totems. The country is not so bare as to prevent large assemblies, busy with many ceremonials, from holding together during four consecutive months, while Mr. Howitt's south-eastern tribes, during a ceremonial meeting which lasted only for a week, needed the white man's tea, mutton, and bread. If fertile land makes agricultural magic superfluous, why does Europe abound in agricultural magic? Among the Arunta, the totem names, deserting kinships, clung to local groups, and with the names went the belief that the inhabitants of the locality or the bearers of the names had a special rapport with the name-giving animals or plants. This rapport was utilised in magic for the behoof of these objects, and for the good of the tribe, which is singularly solidaire.
We trust we have shown that the primal origin of totemic institutions cannot be found in the very peculiar and strangely modified totemism of the Arunta, and of their congeners. Their marriage law, to repeat our case briefly, now reposes solely on the familiar and confessedly late system of exogamous alternating classes, as among other northern tribes. The only difference is that the totems are now (and nowhere else is this the case), in both of the exogamous moieties, denoted by the classes, and they are in both moieties because, owing to the isolated belief in reincarnation of local ghosts, attached to stone amulets, they are acquired by accident, not, as elsewhere, by inheritance. A man who does not inherit his father's totem because of the accident of his conception in a local centre of another totem, does, none the less, inherit his totemic ceremonies and rites. Totemism is thus en pleine décadence among the Arunta, from whom, consequently, nothing can be learned as to the origin of totemism.
NOTEThe Arunta legends of the Alcheringa usually describe the various wandering groups, all, in each case, of one totem, as living exclusively for long periods on their own totems, plants, or animals. This cannot be historically true; many plants, and such animals as grubs, are in season for but a brief time. On the other hand, we meet a legend of women of the Quail totem who lived exclusively, not on quails, but on grass seeds.103 Again, in only one case are men of the Achilpa, or Wild Cat totem, said to have eaten anything, and what they ate was the Hakea flower. Later they became Plum men, Ulpmerka, but are not said to have eaten plums. In a note (Note I, p. 219) Messrs. Spencer and Gillen say that "Wild Cat men are represented constantly as feeding on plums." They are never said to have eaten their own totem, the Wild Cat, which is forbidden to all Arunta, though old men may eat a little of it Reasons, not totemic, are given for the avoidance.104 We are not told anything about the Intichiuma or magical rites for the increase of the Wild Cat, which is not eaten. Are they performed by men of the Wild Cat totem? The old men of the totem might eat very sparingly of the Wild Cat, at their Intichiuma, but certainly the members of other totems who were present would not eat at all. The use of a Wild Cat Intichiuma is not obvious: there is no desire to propagate the animal as an article of food.
CHAPTER V
THE THEORIES OF DR. DURKHEIM
Theories of Dr. Durkheim – Was man originally promiscuous? – Difficulty of ascertaining Dr. Durkheim's opinion – Apparent contradictions – Origin of totemism – A horde, which did not prohibit incest, splits into two "primary clans" – These are hostile – Each has an animal god, and its members are of the blood of the god, consubstantial with him – Therefore may not intermarry within his blood – Hence exogamy – These gods, or totems, "cannot be changed at will" – Questions as to how these beliefs arise – Why does the united horde choose different gods? – Why only two such gods? – Uncertainty as to whether Dr. Durkheim believes in the incestuous horde – Theory of "collective marriage," a "last resource" – The "primary clans" said to have "no territorial basis" – Later it is assumed that they do have territorial bases – Which they overpopulate – Colonies sent forth – These take new totems – Proof that an exogamous "clan" has no territorial basis – And cannot send out "clan" colonies – Colonies can only be tribal– No proof that a "clan" ever does change its totem – Dr. Durkheim's defence of one of his apparent inconsistencies – Reply to his defence – Mr. Frazer's theory (1887) that a totemic "clan" throws off other clans of new totems, and becomes a phratry – Objections to this theory – The facts are opposed to it – Examples – Recapitulation – Eight objections to Dr. Durkheim's theory.
Dr. Durkheim, Professor of Sociology in the University of Bordeaux, has displayed much acuteness in his destructive analysis of the Arunta claims to possess a primitive form of totemism.105 He has also given the fullest and most original explanation of the reason why, granting that groups of early men had each a special regard for a particular animal or plant, whose name they bore, they tabooed marriage within that name.106
With these and other merits the system of Dr. Durkheim, as unfolded at intervals in his periodical (L'Année Sociologique, 1898-1904), has, I shall try to show, certain drawbacks, at least as we possess it at present, for it has not yet appeared in the form of a book. As to the point which in this discussion we have taken first, throughout, it is not easy to be certain about the Professor's exact opinion. What was the condition of human society before totemic exogamy was evolved? Dr. Durkheim writes, "Many facts tend to prove that, at the beginning of societies of men, incest was not forbidden. Nothing authorises us to suppose that incest was prohibited before each horde (peuplade) divided itself into two primitive 'clans,' at least" (namely, what we now call "phratries"), "for the first form of the prohibition known to us, exogamy, everywhere appears as correlative to this organisation, and certainly this is not primitive. Society must have formed a compact and undivided mass before bisecting itself into two distinct groups, and some of Morgan's tables of nomenclature" (of relationships) "confirm this hypothesis."107
So far this is the ordinary theory. An undivided promiscuous horde, for reasons of moral reformation, or any other reason, splits itself into two exogamous "clans," or germs of the phratries. These, when they cease to be hostile (as they were on Dr. Durkheim's but not on Mr. Howitt's theory), peacefully intermarry, and become the phratries in a local tribe.
Why did the supposed compact horde thus divide itself into two distinct hostile "clans," each, on Dr. Durkheim's theory, claiming descent from a different animal, the totem of each "clan"? Why were two bodies in the same horde claiming two different animal ancestors? Why were the two divisions in a common horde mutually hostile? That they were originally hostile appears when our author says that, at a given stage of advance, "the different totemic groups were no longer strangers or enemies, one of the other."108 Marriages, at this early period, must necessarily have been made by warlike capture, for the two groups were hostile, were exogamous, and, being hostile, would not barter brides peacefully. Women, therefore, we take it, could only be obtained for each group by acts of war. "Ages passed before the exchange of women became peaceful and regular. What vendettas, what bloodshed, what laborious negotiations were for long the result of this régime!"109
But why were they exogamous, these two primary groups formed by the bisection of a previously undivided incestuous horde? Why could not each of the two groups marry its own women? There must have been a time when they were not exogamous, and could marry their own women, for they were only exogamous, in Dr. Durkheim's theory, because they were totemic, and they did not begin by being totemic. The totem, says Dr. Durkheim, in explanation of exogamy, is a "god" who is in each member of his group while they are in him. He is blood of their blood and soul of their soul.110 This being so – as it is wrong to shed the blood of our kindred – a man of totem Emu, say, may not marry a maid of, say, totem Emu; he must seek a bride from the only other group apparently at this stage accessible, that is a maid of, say, totem Kangaroo. Presently all Kangaroos of a generation must have been Emus by female descent; all Emus, Kangaroos; for the names were inherited through women. The clans were thus inextricably blended, and neither had a separate territory, a point to be remembered.
Manifestly the strange superstitious metaphysics of totemism must have occupied a long time in evolution. The sacredness of the totem is the result of a primitive "religiosity," Dr. Durkheim says, which existed before gods or other mythological personages had been developed. There is supposed by early man (according to our author) to be a kind of universal element of power, dreadful and divine, which attaches to some things more than to others, to some men more than to others, and to all women in their relations with men.111 This mystic something (rather like the Mana of the Maories, and the Wakan of many North American tribes) is believed by each group (if I correctly understand Dr. Durkheim) to concentrate itself in their name-giving animal, their totem.112 All tabu, all blood tabu, has in the totem animal its centre and shrine, in the opinion of each group. Human kinship, of Emu man to Emu woman, is, if I understand rightly, a corollary from their common kinship with the Emu bird; or rather the sacredness of their kinship, not to be violated by marriage, is thus derived; an opinion which I share.
How all this came to be so; why each of two "clans" in one horde chose, or acquired, a given animal as the centre of the mysterious sacred atmosphere, Dr. Durkheim has not, so far, told us. Yet surely there must have been a reason for selecting two special animals, one for each of the two "clans," as the tabu, the totem, the god. Moreover, as such a strange belief cannot be an innate idea of the human mind, and as this belief, with its corollaries, is, in Dr. Durkheim's theory, the sole origin of exogamy, there must have been a time when men, not having the belief, were not exogamous, and when their sexual relations were wholly unregulated. They only came under regulation after two "clans" of people, in a horde, took to revering two different sacred animals, according to Dr. Durkheim.
The totem, he says, is not only the god, but the ancestor of the "clan," and this ancestor, says Dr. Durkheim, is not a species – animal or vegetable – but is such or such an individual Emu or Kangaroo. This individual Emu or Kangaroo, however, is not alive, he is a creature of fancy; he is a "mythical being, whence came forth at once all the human members of the 'clan,' and the plants or animals of the totem species. Within him exist, potentially, the animal species and the human 'clan' of the same name."113
"Thus," Dr. Durkheim goes on, "the totemic being is immanent in the clan, he is incarnate in each individual member of the clan, and dwells in their blood. He is himself that blood. But, while he is an ancestor, he is also a god, he is the object of a veritable cult; he is the centre of the clan's religion… Therefore there is a god in each individual member of the clan (for the entire god is in each), and, as he lives in the blood, the blood is divine. When the blood flows, the god is shed" (le dieu se répand).
All this, of course, was the belief (if ever it was the belief) when totemism was in its early bloom and vigour, for to-day a black will shoot his totem, but not sitting; and will eat it if he can get nothing else, and Mr. Howitt mentions cases in which he will eat his totem if another man bags it.114 The Euahlayi, with female kin, eat their totems, after a ceremony in which the tabu is removed.115 Totemism is thus decadent to-day. But "a totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of at their will, at least so long as totemic beliefs are still in vigour… A totem, in short, is not a mere name, but before all and above all, he is a religious principle, which is one and consubstantial with the person in whom it has its dwelling-place; it makes part of his personality. One can no more change one's totem than one can change one's soul…"116 He is speaking of Arunta society on the eve of a change from female to male reckoning of descent.
So far, the theory of Dr. Durkheim is that in a compact communal horde, where incest was not prohibited, one "clan" or division took to adoring, say, the Eagle Hawk, another set the Crow; to claiming descent each from their bird; to regarding his blood as tabu; to seizing wives only from the other "clan"; and, finally, to making peaceful intermarriages, each, exclusively, only from the other set, Eagle Hawk from Crow, Crow from Eagle Hawk. We do not learn why half the horde adored one, and the other half another animal. If the disruption of the horde produced two such "clans," "at least," there may have been other "clans," sets equally primal, as Lizard, Ant, Wallaby, Grub. About these we hear nothing more in the theory; the two "primary clans" alone are here spoken of as original, and are obviously the result of a mere conjecture, to explain the two phratries of animal name, familiar in our experience.
No attempt is made to explain either why members of the same horde chose separate animal gods; or why – unless because of consequent religious differences – the two "clans," previously united, were now hostile; or why there were at first only two such religious hostile "clans"; or, if there were more, what became of the others.
Meanwhile, we are not even sure that Dr. Durkheim does believe in a primary incestuous horde, when "Society must have formed a compact undivided mass … before splitting into two distinct groups, and some of Morgan's tables of nomenclature corroborate this hypothesis."117 It is true that Dr. Durkheim makes this assertion. But, in the same volume (i. p. 332), Dr. Durkheim tells us that Mr. Morgan's theory of obligatory promiscuity (a theory based, as we saw in Chapter II., on the terms of relationship) "seems to us to be definitely refuted." Again, Mr. Morgan, like Mr. Howitt and Mr. Spencer, regarded the savage terms for relationships as one proof of "group marriage," or "collective marriage," including unions of the nearest of kin. (Compare our Chapter III.) But Dr. Durkheim writes, "The hypothesis of collective marriage has never been more than a last resource, intended to enable us to envisage these strange customs: but it is impossible to overlook all the difficulties which it raises … this improbable conception."118
Is it possible that, after many times reading the learned Professor's work, I misunderstand him? With profound regret I gather that he does not believe in the theory of "obligatory promiscuity" in an undivided horde, which I have supposed to be the basis of his system; a horde "in which there is nothing to show that incest was forbidden." That incest, in Mr. Morgan's theory, was "obligatory," I cannot suppose, because, if nobody knew who was akin to whom, nothing could compel a man to marry his own sister or daughter. I am obliged to fear that I do not understand what is meant. For Dr. Durkheim made society begin in a united solid peuplade, in which "there is no reason to suppose that incest was forbidden," and as proof he cited some of Mr. Morgan's tables of relationships. He then gave his theory of how exogamy was introduced into the "compact undivided mass." He next appears to reject this "mass," and Morgan's argument for its existence. Is there an inconsistency, or do I merely fail to understand Dr. Durkheim?
Let us, however, take Dr. Durkheim's theory of a horde with "permissive" incest, split, for some reason, into two distinct hostile "clans" worshipping each its own "god," an animal; each occupying a different territory; reckoning by female kin; exogamous, and intermarrying. Such communities, exogamous, intermarrying, and with female descent, Dr. Durkheim uniformly styles "primary clans," or "elementary totemic groups."119 It is obvious that they constitute, when once thoroughly amalgamated by exogamy and peaceful intermarriage, a local tribe, with a definite joint territory, and without clan territory. At every hearth, through the whole tribal domain, both clans are present; the male mates are, say, Eagle Hawks, the women and children are Crows, or vice versa. Neither "clan" as such "has any longer a territorial basis." "The clan," says Dr. Durkheim, "has no territorial basis." "The clan is an amorphous group, a floating mass, with no very defined individuality; its contours, especially, have no material marks on the soil."120 This is as true as it is obvious. The clans, when once thoroughly intermixed, and with members of each clan present, as father, mother, and children, by every hearth, can, as clans, have no local limits, no territorial boundaries, and Dr. Durkheim maintains this fact Indeed, he distinguishes the clan from the tribe as being non-territorial.121
Yet though he thus asserts what every one must see to be true, his whole theory of the origin of the totem kins ("secondary clans") within the phratries, and his theory (as we shall show later) of the matrimonial classes, rests on the contradictory of his averment. He then takes the line that the exogamous clans with female descent do, or did, possess definite separate territorial bases, which seems contrary to the passage where he says that they do not!122 He has reversed his position.
We first gave Dr. Durkheim's statement as to how the totem kins (which he calls "secondary clans") came to exist within the phratries.
"When a clan increases beyond a certain measure, its population cannot exist within the same space: it therefore throws off colonies, which, as they no longer occupy the same habitat with, nor share the interests of the original group from which they emerged, end by taking a totem which is all their own: thenceforth they constitute new clans."123 Again, "the phratry is a primary clan, which, as it develops, has been led to segment itself into a certain number of secondary clans, which retain their sentiment of community and of solidarity."124
All this is (as far as I can see), by Dr. Durkheim's own previous statement, impossible. A totemic clan, exogamous, with female descent, cannot, as a clan, overflow its limits of "space," for, as a clan, he tells us, it "has no territorial basis," no material assigned frontier, marked on the soil.125 "One cannot say at what precise point of space it begins, or where it ends." The members of one "clan" are indissolubly blended with the members of the other "clan," in the local tribe. This point, always overlooked by the partisans of a theory that the various totem kins are segments of "a primary clan," can be made plain. By the hypothesis there are two "clans" before us, of which Eagle Hawk (male) always marries Crow (female), their children being Crows, and Crow (male) always marries Eagle Hawk (female), the children being Eagle Hawks. The tribal territory is over-populated (the clan has no territory). A tribal decree is therefore passed, that clan Eagle Hawk must "segment itself," and go to new lands. This decree means that a portion of clan Eagle Hawk must emigrate. Let, then, Eagle Hawk men, women, and children, to the amount of half of the clan, be selected to emigrate. They go forth to seek new abodes. In doing so the Eagle Hawk men leave their Crow wives at home; the Eagle Hawk women leave their Crow children, and Crow husbands; the Eagle Hawk children leave their Crow fathers. Not a man or woman in the segmented portion of clan Eagle Hawk can now have a wife or a husband, for they can only marry Crows. They all die out! Such is the result of segmenting clan Eagle Hawk.
Yet the thing can be managed in no other way, for, if the emigrant Eagle Hawk men take with them their Crow wives and children, they cannot marry (unless men marry their daughters, Crows) when they become widowers, and unless Crow brothers marry Crow sisters, which is forbidden. Moreover, this plan necessitates a segmentation, not of clan Eagle Hawk, but of the tribe, which is composed of both Crows and Eagle Hawks. These conspicuous facts demolish the whole theory of the segmentation of a "clan" into a new clan which takes a new totem, though it would need two.
Moreover, why should a tribal colony of two blended clans take, as would be absolutely necessary, two new totem names at all? We know not one example of change of totem name in Australia.126 Their old totems were their gods, their flesh, their blood, their vital energies, by Dr. Durkheim's own definition. "The members of a clan literally deem themselves of one flesh, of one blood, and the blood is that of the mythic being" (the totem) "from which they are all descended."127 How and why then, should emigrants from "clans," say Eagle Hawk and Crow, change their gods, their blood, their flesh, their souls? To imagine that totems or even the descent of totems can be changed, by legislation, from the female to the male line, is, says Dr. Durkheim, "to forget that the totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will… at least so long as totemic beliefs are in vigour."128
Our author goes on: "A totem, in fact, is not a mere name, it is, above all and before all, a religious principle, one with the individual in whom it dwells; and part of his personality. One can no more change his totem, than he can change his soul…"
In that case, how did the supposed colonies thrown off by a segmented clan, manage to change their totems, as they did, on Dr. Durkheim's theory?129 They lived in the early vigour of totemic beliefs, and during that blooming age of totemism, says Dr. Durkheim, "the totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of at will," and yet, on his theory, they did dispose of it, they took new totems.130
The supposed process seems to me doubly impossible by Dr. Durkheim's premises. A "clan," exogamous, with female kin, cannot overflow its territory, for it has confessedly, as a "clan," no delimitations of territory. Consequently a clan cannot throw off a colony (only a tribe can do that); therefore, as there can be no "clan" colony, the tribal colony cannot change its one totem, for it has two. Moreover, Dr. Durkheim says that there can be no such cavalier treatment of the totem: "Tant du moins que les croyances totémiques sont encore en vigueur." Yet he also says that the totems were thus cavalierly treated when totemic beliefs were in vigour.
