Father Martin Dobrizhoffer, writing in 1784, may be quoted.*

"Though the paternal indulgence of the Roman Pontiffs makes the first and second degrees of relationship alone a bar to the marriage of the Indians, yet the Abipones, instructed by nature and the examples of their ancestors, abhor the very thought of marrying anyone related to them by the most distant tie of relationship. Long experience has convinced me that the respect for consanguinity, by which they are deterred from marrying into their own families, is implanted by nature in the minds of most of the people of Paraguay.'

The primary cause probably lies in the sexual jealousy of primitive man in his emergence from the protohuman stage, that passion being a dominant part of his animal heritage. In his 'Social Origins' Mr Andrew Lang included a posthumous essay on 'Primal Law' by his relative, Mr Atkinson, who had the advantage, through residence in the New Caledonian archipelago, of studying savage life on the spot. Among his books was 'The Descent of Man,' in which Darwin opposed the theory that sexual intercourse between the earliest human societies was promiscuous, and arguing' from the strength of the feeling of jealousy all through the animal kingdom, as well as from the analogy of the lower animals,' more particularly of the anthropoid apes, advanced as 'the more probable view that man aboriginally lived in small communities, each with a single wife, or, if powerful, with several, whom he jealously guarded against all other men.' It is on this hypothesis that Atkinson formulated his 'primal law of the family.'

'The patriarch had only one enemy whom he should dread, an enemy with each coming year more and more to be feared -deadly rivals of his very own flesh and blood, and the fruit of his loins-namely, that neighbouring group of young males exiled by sexual jealousy from his own and similar neighbouring groups-a youthful band of brothers living together in forest celibacy, or at most in polyandrous relation with some single female captive.' ('Why single?' asks Mr Lang.) ... The

* 'An Account of the Abipones,' translated by Sara Coleridge (1822), ii, 212.

Ch. xx, section 'On the Causes which Prevent or Check the Action of Sexual Selection with Savages.'

relations between this mob and the old male are always strained; the latter has constantly to be on the watch to shield his marital rights.'

The result would be that the women within the group would be tabu to them; the junior males must seek wives from outside-hence exogamy, and by the import of these alien females the family groups would grow into tribes. † The social tabu furnishes the most likely key to the origin of the curious avoidance-customs prevalent among the lower races, the well-known widespread tabu between a man and his mother-in-law being explained by Mr Atkinson as a survival of a measure of protection for the marital rights of her husband.'

Concerning totemism in North America, where only faint traces of it now remain, ‡ Schoolcraft, whose knowledge of North American Indian life and customs was unrivalled, says that

'The totem is a symbol of the name of the progenitor, generally some quadruped, or bird, or other object in the animal kingdom, which stands, if we may so express it, as the surname of the family. It is always some animated object, and seldom or never derived from the inanimate class of nature. Its significant importance is derived from the fact that individuals unhesitatingly trace their lineage from it. By whatever names they may be called during their lifetime, it is the totem, and not their personal name, that is recorded on the tomb or adjedatig that marks the place of burial.' §

The class totem is not to be confused with the manitou or guardian spirit of the Red Indian; the one is by descent, the other by choice or experience through dreams or visions as the result of fastings and vigils. This distinction between the individual and the class totem, which passes by inheritance from generation to generation, 'stronger,' as Dr Frazer says, 'than the bond of blood or family in the modern sense,' must be kept in

* Cf. Judges xxi, 20-23.

+ Social Origins,' p. 220-222. On the subject of marriage prohibition, see Thomas's 'Kinship Organization and Group Marriage,' and Westermarck's 'History of Human Marriage,' chaps. xiv, xv.

Totemism, pure and simple, seems always to lose ground after the introduction of pastoral life.' Robertson Smith's 'Religion of the Semites,' p. 355.

§ 'Indian Tribes,' ii, 49 (1851).

mind. Both are independent of the sex totem found in some parts of Australia, which is common to all members of the tribe, whether male or female, sex being the dividing-line between them.

Sir George (then Captain) Grey, when exploring NorthWestern Australia in 1837-9, was the first to observe the parallelism between the totem of the red man and that of the Australian natives.* He found that the latter were divided into large family groups bearing the same name, marriage within the groups being forbidden; and that each individual had a totem name, locally known as kobong, so that he would not kill or eat an animal of the species to which his kobong belonged. Similarly, a native who has a vegetable for his kobong, may not gather it under certain circumstances, and at a particular period of the year.' A generation passed before interest in the subject was revived through a series of essays in the 'Fortnightly Review,' 1869-70, by the late J. F. McLennan, in which the significance of totemism as a social and religious system was expounded. McLennan's researches put anthropologists upon eager quest, by far the most notable results being obtained by Messrs Spencer and Gillen, whose book on the Native Tribes of Central Australia' was published in 1899. Both speak with authority, for Mr Gillen held for nearly twenty years the post of sub-protector of the aborigines; and he and his colleague so won their confidence as to become fully initiated members of the large and important Arunta tribe. It is on the report of the extraordinary beliefs of these natives about conception that Dr Frazer bases his latest theory of the origin of totemism.

Confirming, on broad lines, Sir George Grey's narrative, Messrs Spencer and Gillen report that

' each local group reveals the fact that it is composed largely, but not entirely, of individuals who describe themselves by the name of some one animal or plant. Thus there will be one area which belongs to a group who call themselves kangaroo men, another belonging to emu men, another to Hakea-flower men, and so on, almost every animal and plant which is found in the country having its representative among the human inhabitants. The area of country which is

* Journal of Two Expeditions of Discovery in Australia,' ii, 229.

occupied by each of these, which will be spoken of as local Totemic groups, varies to a considerable extent, but is never very large, the most extensive one with which we are acquainted being that of the witchetty grub people of the Alice Springs district. This group at the present time is represented by exactly forty individuals . . . and the area of which they are recognised as proprietors extends over about 100 square miles. In contrast to this, one particular group of plumtree people is, at the present day, represented by one solitary individual, and he is the proprietor of only a few square miles' (p. 9).

...

*

Although the totem name is usually that of an animal or plant, the list also includes 'wind, sun, water or cloud; in fact, there is scarcely an object, animate or inanimate, to be found in the country occupied by the natives which does not give its name to some totemic group of individuals.' Parallel examples of inanimate totems abound; and what strange vagaries are to be found is shown by Sir Herbert Risley, who tells us that among the Khanger caste of Bundelkund there is a brick sept who may use only wattle and mud in building their dwellings; among the Sindur sept of Chotia Nagpur vermilion is a totem; and among the Dravidians the month of June, Wednesday in every week, the moon, the rainbow, and the constellation Pleiades, figure as totems.

The theories of its origin to which totemism has given rise are manifold and irreconcilable. Herbert Spencer connected it with his key to all religions-— ancestor-worship. A nickname, say of bird or beast, was given to a man; in course of time it is believed that he who is called a tiger is descended from a tiger, and the cult of that animal is established. Among civilised people a nickname remains a symbol; among savages it crystallises into a matter of fact; 'everywhere the results of mistakes meet us.'t Lord Avebury gave qualified adhesion to this; and in the latest reprint of his 'Origin of Civilisation' he reaffirms his belief that totemism arose from the practice of naming, first individuals, and then their families, after particular animals, respect for

* 'People of India,' chap. ii, Social Types.

† 'Principles of Sociology,' i, 362.

the totem culminating at length into awe, and leading up to religion.* Dr Wilken connects totemism and ancestor-worship by the link of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and he is supported by Mr Hill Tout and other American anthropologists to this extent, that they derive the totem-name from the manitou or guardian spirit of individual ancestors.

The objection to one and all of these theories is that they do not explain the origin of the totem as the clanname. A more recent theory, that of Dr Haddon, is that the clan takes its name from the animal or plant which is its staple diet. The search after food would familiarise man with the habits of the object collected or hunted; and there would be developed a feeling of relationship 'based not on even the most elementary of psychic concepts, but on the most deeply-seated and urgent of human claims-hunger.'† This theory, coming from a skilled explorer, may have an element of truth as applied locally, but not universally; moreover, it does not explain the occurrence of inanimate totems. In his 'Social Origins' (1903) and 'Secret of the Totem' (1905), to which works Dr Frazer, in analysing and passing judgment on the other theories, does not refer, Mr Andrew Lang, accepting Darwin's theory of the social conditions of the earliest human communities, assumes the existence of an unknown period when these communities were nameless. In the long course of time, as the groups multiplied and came into more neighbourly relations with each other, appellations came into use as necessary marks of identification, being probably not self-bestowed, but given as sobriquets by one group to another, these sobriquets being chosen on the basis of a fancied resemblance of the groups, who were generically alike, to this or that object. Whether the names originated from without or within must, as Mr Lang admits, remain conjectural; what is certain is that, in some way or other, the groups were labelled; and what appears probable is that the origin of the name, in the course of time, was forgotten. But the name is more than a label to the savage mind; it is 'the outward and visible sign'

Preface to 1911 edition.

† Address to Section H, Brit. Assoc. Report, 1902, p. 746.