Social Origins and Primal Law

HOW THE ORIGIN OF TOTEM NAMES WAS FORGOTTEN

It appears, at least to the mind of the maker of an hypothesis, that the names of Melanesian kemas, as well as the new names of American 'gentes' (totem kins with male descent), indicate the probability that, from the first – as among our villagers – group names were given (in the majority of cases) from without, as in many American and some Melanesian cases they certainly are. We see that it is so: no group would call itself 'Cat's Cradle Players,' or 'Eaters of Hide-scrapings,' or 'Bone Pickers,' as in Florida; among the Sioux; and in Western England. We cannot possibly expect to find any groups in the process of becoming totemic and of having plant and animal names given to them from without. But we certainly do observe that names, or nicknames, relatively recent, are given to savage groups, on their way out of Totemism – the totem name often still lingering on in America, like the butos in Melanesia – and that these names, or nicknames, are given from without. Nearer to demonstration that the totem names were given in the same way (as 'Whig' and 'Tory' were given), we cannot expect to come.

It may be said that my conjecture is only a form of that suggested (if I understand him) by Mr. Herbert Spencer. An individual had an animal name or nickname. He died: his ghost was revered by his old name, say Bear. He was forgotten, and his descendants, who kept up his worship, came to think that they were descended from a real bear, and were akin to bears. I need not once more reiterate the objections to this theory, but, like my own suggestion, it involves forgetfulness of a fact, – here the fact that 'Bear' was a human ancestor. Against the chances of this forgetfulness was the circumstance that individuals were constantly being named Bear, Wolf, Eagle, and so on, in daily experience, usually with a qualifying epithet, 'Sitting Bull,' 'Howling Wolf,' and so forth. These facts might have prevented Mr. Spencer's savages from forgetting that the ancestral Bear was a Bear of human kind, like themselves and their contemporaries.

In my hypothesis, forgetfulness, on the other hand, might readily occur. When all the group names in each area had become organised and stereotyped, there would necessarily be no new giving of group names to remind the savages how these titles came into existence. On the other hand the myth-making stage, as to kinship with the name-giving plants and animals, would set in, and then would come reverent behaviour towards these creatures, as if they were kinsmen and friends. Respect for the totem, in each case, will clinch the tendency to group exogamy. I have supposed, for the reasons given, that there was already a tendency against marriage within the group. That tendency must have been confirmed by the totem tabu against making any use of any member of the totem kin, and a woman of the totem would be exempted from marital use by her male fellow-totemists. The totem belief would add a supernormal sanction to the exogamous tendency.

OTHER SOURCES OF SACREDNESS IN PLANTS AND ANIMALS

Now any such superstitious respect for an animal, whatever its origin, will take the same inevitable forms; and thus, if individuals select nyarongs, naguals, and so on, they must necessarily behave to these things as they do to their hereditary totems. There is no other way in which they can behave, if they regard the animals as mysteriously friendly and protective, though the idea that they are friendly and protective has different origins, in either case.

Thus the exigencies of my guess as to the origin of Totemism, compel me to disagree with a dictum of Mr. Frazer, 'if the relations are similar, the explanation which holds good of the one ought equally to hold good of the other.'253 The conclusion is not necessary. You may revere a rat (your totem), and a cat (your nagual) for quite different reasons, and in quite different capacities, you being the kinsman of your totem, the protégé of your nagual; but, if you revere them, your reverence can only show itself in the same ways. There are no other ways.254

RECAPITULATION

Does my guess at the origin of totems seem out of harmony with human nature? You, belonging to a local group, must call other groups by one name or another. Plant and animal names come very handy. The names fluctuate at first, but are at last accepted by the groups to which they are applied. The origin of the names being forgotten, an explanation of them is needed, and, as in every case where it is needed, it is provided in myths. The myths, once believed in, are acted upon; they become the parents of tabus, magic, rites of various kinds. Social rules must be developed, some already exist; and each group called by an animal, plant, or other such name, becomes, under that name, a social unit, and accepts, as such, the customary legislation, just as a parish does. You must not marry within the totem name: either because of the totem tabu in general, or because the totem comes to be conceived of as denoting kinship, and (for one reason or another) you had already a tendency not to marry within the limit of the group. The usual totem rules may be thwarted by other rules derived from a peculiar system of animism, very philosophically elaborated, as among the Arunta of Central Australia. The institution, in short, may develop or may dwindle, may persist in practice, or fade into faint survival, or blend with analogous superstitions, or wholly vanish, in varying conditions. Totemism affects art; to some extent it may have affected religious evolution. It is certainly a source of innumerable myths.

But, if my guess holds water, Totemism arose out of names given from without, these names being of a serviceable sort, as they could be, and are, not only readily expressed in words, but readily conveyed in gesture language from a considerable distance. The names could be 'signalled.'255 'There is an Emu man: look out!' This could easily and silently be expressed in gesture language. Place-names, and many nicknames, could not so be signalled.

This theory, of course, is not in accordance with any savage explanations of the origin of their totem. It could not be! Their explanations are such fables as only men in their intellectual condition could invent: they are myths, they involve impossibilities. My hypothesis (or myth) does not, I think, involve anything impossible or far-fetched, or incapable of proof in a general way. It is human, it is inevitable, that plant and animal names should be given, especially among groups more or less hostile. We call the French 'frogs.' It is also a fact that names given from without come to be accepted. It is a fact that names, once accepted, are explained by myths; it is a fact that myths come to be believed, and that belief influences behaviour.

AN OBJECTION ANSWERED

Here I foresee an objection; it will be said that, on the other hand, behaviour produces myths. Men find themselves performing some apparently idiotic rite: they ask themselves, 'Why do we do this thing?' and they invent a myth as an answer. Certainly they do, but you believe in a God, or in Saints, and act (or you ought to act) in a manner pleasing to these guardians of conduct. You don't believe in a God, because you behave well, and it is not because you behave well to a totem that you believe in a totem. You treat him as game, not as vermin, because you believe in him, and your belief is based on the myth which your ancestors invented to account for their having a totem.

My guess has the advantage of going behind the age of settled dwellings, agriculture, kinship through males, and the causal action of individuals. It reverts to the group stage of human life. Groups give and accept the names; invent the myths, act on their belief in the myths, and so introduce the sanction of what had perhaps been a mere tendency towards exogamy. On the other hand, my guess has the disadvantage of dealing with a hypothetical stage of society, behind experience. But this cannot be avoided, for if we base our hypotheses of the origin of Totemism on our experience of the ways of societies which have passed, or are passing, out of Totemism, our theories must necessarily be invalidated. It may be replied that I have myself given illustrations of my theory from the folk-lore of civilised society. But the only begetters of these illustrative cases are boys – and boys are in the savage stage, 'at least as far as they are able.'

In a tone more serious, it may be reiterated that no theory of the origin of Totemism is likely to be correct which derives the totem, in the first instance, in any way, from the individual, the private man. Long ago, Mr. Fison wrote, 'Sir John Lubbock considers that the "worship of plants and animals is susceptible of a very simple explanation, and has really originated from the practice of naming, first individuals, and then their families, after particular animals."'256 Mr. Fison replied, 'This is surely a reversal of the true order. The Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, the badge of a group, not of an individual. The individual takes it, in common with his fellows, only because he is a member of the group. And, even if it were first given to an individual, his family, i.e. his children, could not inherit it from him,' when descent is reckoned on the female side.257

It is a commonplace, perhaps an overworked commonplace, that the group, not the individual, is the earlier social unit. Yet the hypotheses of Lord Avebury, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Dr. Wilken, Mr. Boas, Miss Alice Fletcher, and Messrs. Hose and McDougall, all derive from individuals, in one way or other, the most archaic names of human groups. The hypothesis of Mr. Max Müller leaves the origin of the group name unexplained. The later hypothesis (especially provisional), of Mr. Frazer, does start from the group name, but I am not certain whether we are to understand that each group name is derived from the plant Or animal or selected by the group as the object of its magical rites, or whether, for some unknown reason, each group already bore the name of the animal, or plant, or element, before entering on the great co-operative industrial system. Now it seems to me certain that the names, in each case, were originally not names of individuals, or in any way derived from individuals, but were names of groups. As to how pristine groups might obtain such names I have offered what, in the nature of the case, has to be only a conjecture. But named, as soon as men had intelligence and speech, the groups, as groups, had to be, and the actual names are such as, whether in savagery or in full civilisation, are given to individuals, and are also, in civilised rural society, given to local groups, to members of parishes and villages. So far, the cause which I suggest is a vera causa of collective group names.

OTHER OBJECTIONS ANSWERED

A well-known Folk-lorist to whom I submitted my theory, rather 'in the rough,' replied to me thus: 'I have thought of Totemism as meaning a social system, that is, as including belief, worship, kinship, society. And therefore, the animal or plant names are an essential part of the system. You, as I understand it, come along and say the name is the result of one of the trifles of the human mind, therefore did not enter into the totem system very deeply, and certainly did not belong to the beliefs and the worship, except as the result of a later myth-making age. Of course your book may explain all, and I shall look forward to studying it, as I have always enjoyed your studies.

'But I confess I don't much believe in these accidents causing or rather entering into so widely spread a system as Totemism. Cut away the name and nothing is left to Totemism except myth, survivals, and a social grouping without any apparent cement. Blood kinship as a basis of society surely arose much later, unless Dr. Reevers's remarkable evidence from the Haddon expedition to New Guinea helps the matter. He found, you remember, blood kinship traceable by definite genealogies beneath, so to speak, a system of Totemism, and but for the most minute examination blood kinship would have escaped observation once more and Totemism only would have been reported. Is this blood kinship the true social basis and Totemism only a veneer?

'I have goodly notes on Totemism and non-Totemism, and I confess it difficult to eliminate the name as an important part of the system. It covers every part – is the shell into which all the rest fits. Now I have too much respect for our savage friends to think they used myth any further than we do. We go every Sunday saying "I believe," but we don't build up much upon this. Our social fabric, nay our religion, is not of this. And so of the savage. If I grant you the myth of descent from an animal to have arisen out of a pre-existing name system, I am no nearer the understanding of totem-kinship as the basis of a social group.'

These are natural objections, on a first view of my suggestions. Totemism is a social system, but there was an age before totemism, an age of undeveloped totemism; into these we try to peer. But the method of name-giving which I postulate is hardly 'a trifle of the human mind.' It is, as I have proved, a widely diffused, probably an universal tendency of the human mind. Not less universal, in the savage intellectual condition, is the belief in the personality and human characteristics of all things whatsoever; man is only one tribe in the cosmic kinship, and is capable of specially close kinship with animals. Nobody denies this, and the resulting myths to explain the connection of the groups and their totems are not only natural, but inevitable – the real origin of the connection, 'in the dark backward and abysm of time,' being forgotten. We may go to church, and say 'I believe,' and we may not act up to our creeds. 'And so of the savage.' But it is not 'so of the savage.' His belief in a myth of kinship with an Emu is carried into practice, and regulates his conduct, magical and social. This is not contestable. In the same way a Christian who believes in the efficacy of masses for the welfare of his dead friends, pays for masses. At the lowest, he 'thinks the experiment well worth trying.' To other myths, say as to the origin of the spots on a beast, a savage may 'give but a doubtsome credit.' They are not of a nature to affect his conduct in any way. But the totem myths do affect his conduct, quite undeniably, and, even if there are sceptics, public opinion and customary law compel them to regulate their behaviour on the lines of the general belief. We are not to be told that nobody believes in anything! The 'social grouping' consequent on the beliefs is not 'without any apparent cement.' The cement is the belief in the actual kinship of all persons having the same totem name, and sacred totem blood, even if they belong to remote and hostile tribes. All wolves are brethren in the wolf; all bears are brethren in the bear; and so men-bears are sisters to women-bears, and brothers may not marry sisters. Here is 'apparent cement' of the very best quality, and in abundance, given the acknowledged condition of the savage intellect.

Manifestly these ideas belong, as a whole, to 'a later myth-making age ' – that is to an age later than the dateless period of the hypothetical anonymous groups. But, between that hypothetical period and the evolution of the idea of group kinship with animals and plants, and with all men of the same animal and plant stock names, there is time enough and to spare for the full evolution of Totemism.

Again, to a Darwinian, the enormous influence of 'accidents' in evolution ought not to be a matter hard of belief; without 'accidents' (in the Darwinian sense of the word), there would be no differentiation at all, and no evolution. The Darwinian 'accident' seems to mean a variation of unknown cause. But the giving of plant and animal group names is hardly an 'accident' of this kind. 'What else are you to call it?' the player asked, when questioned as to the origin of the words 'a yorker.' And by what names so handy and serviceable as plant and animal names were pristine men to call the neighbouring groups?

I have shown why place names were less handy, and how, in nomadic life, they were scarcely possible. Local names come in as Totemism goes out. Long nicknames, 'Boil-food-with-the-paunch-skin,' 'Take down their leggings,' 'Travel-with-very-light-baggage,' 'Shot-at-some-white-object' (Siouan nicknames of gentes), are much less handy, much less easy to be signalled by gesture language, and are certainly much later than 'Emu,' 'Wolf,' 'Kangaroo,' 'Eagle,' 'Skunk,' and other totem names. If such totem names were, originally, the favourite form of nomenclature for hostile groups (like our 'Sick Vulture' for a famous scholar, or 'Talking Potato,' for Mr. J. W. Croker), I see not much of an 'accident' in the circumstance.

The totem names, then, came in upon a very early society: and myth, belief, custom, and rite, crystallised round them, and round the idea of blood kindred, which must be very early indeed.

My critic asks, 'Is blood kinship the true social basis, and Totemism only a veneer?' That question I have already answered. In my opinion mankind, in evolving prohibitions of marriage, first had their eyes on contiguity, that of 'hearth-mates.' Groups of hearth-mates were next distinguished by totem names. But these names could give no superstitious sanction to customary laws, till the idea of 'blood kinship' with, or descent from, or evolution out of, or other form of kinship with the totem was developed. At this period, the totem name roughly indicated ties of blood kinship. But the Australians, as we saw, have now reached a clearer idea of what blood kinship is, and, by a bye-law, prohibit marriages of 'too near flesh,' in cases where, though the persons are akin by blood, totem law does not interfere. Totem law has had an educating influence in developing the objection to marriages between people contiguous as hearth-mates, into the objection to marriages between persons too near in blood kinship. Thus Totemism is not 'only a veneer.'

On the foundation of all these blended ideas, Totemism arose, a stately but fantastic structure, varying in shape under changing conditions, like an iceberg in summer seas. It is, indeed, 'a far cry' from anonymous human groups, and groups of plant or animal names, to Helen, the daughter of the swan, that was Zeus! But the pedigree is hardly disputable.

On the other hand, suppress the totem names, give the original groups such titles as the Sioux 'Take-down-their-leggings,' or 'Boil-meat-in-the-paunch-skin' (some names you must give them), and what is left? Suppose such names to have been those of pristine groups, and suppose them to be tending to exogamy. A 'Boil-meat-in-the-paunch-skin' man may not marry a 'Boil-meat-in-the-paunch-skin' girl; but must marry a 'Take-down-their-leggings' girl, or a 'shoot-in-the-woods' girl, or a 'Do-not-split-the-body-of-a-buffalo-with-a-knife-but-cut – it-up-as-they-please' girl! That is rather cumbrous: marriage rules on that basis are not readily conceivable.

And where is here the tabu sanction? Brother Wolf or Brother Emu is a thinkable, powerful, sacred kinsman, who will not have his tabu tampered with. But there is no sanctity in Do-not-split-the-body-of-a-buffalo-with-a-knife-but – cut-it-up-as-they-please!

Luckily we have here a case in point. My theory is that animal names being once given to the groups, the animal, in accordance with savage ideas, became a kinsman and protector. The animal or vegetable or other type, in each case, sanctioned various tabus, including exogamy. Had the name been another kind of nickname, as 'Boil-meat-in-the paunch-skin,' what was there to sanction the tabu? Or, if the group name was a local name, where was the sanction? Exogamy does persist where totem groups have become local, and are now known by the names of their places of settlement. But not always. Of an Australian tribe, the Gournditch Mara, we read that it consisted of four local divisions, water (mere?), swamp, mountain, and river. But there was no exogamous rule affecting marriage. A man of the group dwelling in the swamp might marry a woman of the same group. There was descent in the male line; wife-lending was highly condemned. The office of headman was hereditary in the male line, 'before any whites came into the country.' The benighted tribe was not devoid of superstition.

'They believed that there was a future good and bright place, to which those who were good went after death, and that there was a Man at that place who took care of the world and of all the people.' The place was called Mūmble-Mirring. The dark, bad place was Burreet Barrat. 'This belief they had before there was any white person in the country.'

As these statements are odious to most anthropologists, they cannot be true, and thus a slur is cast on all that we learn about the Gournditch Mara. But though a missionary (the Rev. Mr. Stähle) cannot, of course, be trusted here, he had no professional motive for fictions about the marriage laws of the tribe. They had no ceremonies of initiation, no seasons of license, apparently no totems, and the merely local names of groups naturally carried no exogamous prohibition: conveyed no tabu sanction.258 Had there never been any totem names, exogamy might never have arisen.

How my friendly critic is 'no nearer to the understanding of totem kinship as the basis of a social group,' if, for the sake of the argument, he grants 'the myth of descent from an animal to have arisen from a pre-existing name system,' I am at a loss to comprehend. Here are groups, Bear, Wolf, Trout, Racoon, firmly, though erroneously, believing that they are akin to these animals. Naturally they 'behave as such.' Each racoon has duties to other racoons, and to the actual racoons. He does not shoot a racoon if he can get anything else; he does not shoot a racoon sitting. He is brother to racoons of his own sex, and to sisters in the racoon of the other sex. He does not marry them. The belief in the racoon kinship is the basis of that social group – the man has other social groups of other kinds. Savages believe in their beliefs, to the extent of dying from fear after infringing a tabu in which they believe. Thus I would reply to the objections offered after a first glance at my conjecture.