The Secret of the Totem

Here a word might be said as to the method of conjecture about institutions of which the origins are concealed "in the dark backward and abysm of time."

There are conjectures and conjectures! None is capable in every detail of historical demonstration, but one guess may explain all the known facts, and others may explain few or none. We are dealing with human affairs – they whose groups first answered to animal group-names were men as much as we are. They had reason; they had human language, spoken or by gesture, and human passions. That conjecture, therefore, which deals with the first totemists as men, men with plenty of human nature, is better than any rival guess which runs contrary to human nature as known in our experience of man, savage, barbaric, or civilised.

Once more, a set of guesses which are consistent with themselves is better than a set of guesses which can be shown to be even ludicrously self-contradictory. If any guess, again, colligates all the known facts, if any conjectural system will "march," will meet every known circumstance in the face, manifestly it is a better system than one which stumbles, breaks down, evades giving an answer to the problems, says that they are insoluble, is in contradiction with itself, and does not even try to colligate all the known facts. A consistent system, unmarred by self-contradictions; in accordance with known human nature; in accordance, too, with recognised rules of evolution, and of logic; and co-ordinating all known facts, if it is tried on them, cannot be dismissed with the remark that "there are plenty of other possible guesses."

Our method must be – having already stated the facts as they present themselves in the most primitive organisation of the most archaic society extant – to enumerate all the possible conjectures which have been logically (or even illogically) made as to the origin of the institutions before us.

All theories as to how these institutions arose, must rest, primarily, on a basis of conjecture as to the original social character of man. Nowhere do we see absolutely primitive man, and a totemic system in the making. The processes of evolution must have been very gradually developed in the course of distant ages, but our conjecture as to the nature, in each case, of the processes must be in accordance with what is known of human nature. Conjecture, too, has its logical limitations.

We must first make our choice, therefore, between the guess that the earliest human beings lived in very small groups (as, in everyday life, the natives of Australia are in many cases still compelled to do by the precarious nature of their food supplies), or the guess that earliest man was gregarious, and dwelt in a promiscuous horde with no sort of restraint. One or other view must be correct.

On the former guess (men originally lived in very small groups), the probable mutual hostility of group to rival group, the authority of the strongest male in each group, and the passions of jealousy, love, and hate, must inevitably have produced some rudimentary restrictions on absolute archaic freedom. Some people would be prevented from doing some things, they must have been checked by the hand of the stronger; and from the habit of restraint customary rules would arise. The advocates of the alternative conjecture – that man was gregarious, and utterly promiscuous – take it for granted (it seems to me) that the older and stronger males established no rudimentary restrictions on the freedom of the affections, but allowed the young males to share with them the females in the horde, and that they permitted both sexes to go entirely as they pleased, till, for some unknown reason and by some unknown authority, the horde was bisected into exogamous moieties (phratries), and after somehow developing totem kins (unless animal-named magical groups had been previously developed, on purpose to work magic), became a tribe with two phratries.

It is not even necessary for us to deny that the ancestors of man were originally communal and gregarious. What we deem to be impossible is that, till man had developed into something more like himself, as we know him, than an animal without jealousy, and ignorant of anything prejudicial to any one's interests in promiscuous unions, he could begin to evolve his actual tribal institutions. This is also the opinion of Mr. Howitt, as we shall see later.

Thus whoever tries to disengage the evolutionary processes which produced the existing society of Australia must commence by making his choice between the two conjectures – early man gregarious, promiscuous, and anarchist; or early man unsociable, fierce, bullying, and jealous. A via media is attempted, however, by Mr. Howitt, to which we shall return.

Next, it is clear and certain that some human beliefs about the animals which give their names, in known cases, to the two large exogamous divisions of the tribe (phratries), and about the other animals which give names to the totem kins, and, in one or two cases, to the matrimonial classes, must be, in some way, connected with the prohibitions to marry, first within the phratries, then, perhaps, within the totem kins, then within the Classes (or within the same generation).

Thus there are here five courses which conjecture can logically take.

(a) Members of certain recognised human groups already married habitually out of their group into other groups, before the animal names (now totem names) were given to the groups. The names came later and merely marked, at first, and then sanctioned, the limits within which marriage had already been forbidden while the groups were still nameless.

Or (b) the animal names of the phratries and totem kins existed (perhaps as denoting groups which worked magic for the behoof of each animal) before marriage was forbidden within their limits. Later, for some reason, prohibitions were enacted.

Or (c) at one time there were no marriage regulations at all, but these arose when, apparently for some religious reason, a hitherto undivided communal horde split into two sections, each of which revered a different name-giving animal as their "god" (totem), claimed descent from it, and, out of respect to their "god," did not marry any of those who professed its faith, and were called by its name, but always married persons of another name and "god."

Or (d) men were at first in groups, intermarrying within the group. These groups received names from animals and other objects, because individual men adopted animal "familiars," as Bear, Elk, Duck, Potato, Pine-tree. The sisters of the men next adopted these animal or vegetable "familiars," or protective creatures, from their brothers, and bequeathed them, by female descent, to their children. These children became groups bearing such names as Bear, Potato, Duck, and so on. These groups made treaties of marriage with each other, for political reasons of acquiring strength by union. The treaties declared that Duck should never marry Duck, but always Elk, and vice versa. This was exogamy, instituted for political purposes, to use the word "political" proleptically.

Or (e) men were at first in a promiscuous incestuous horde, but, perceiving the evils of this condition (whatever these evils might be taken to be), they divided it into two halves, of which one must never marry within itself, but always in the other. To these divisions animal names were given; they are the phratries. They threw off colonies, or accepted other groups, which took new animal names, and are now the totem kins.

Finally, in (f) conjectures (a) and (c) may be combined thus: groups of men, still nameless as groups, had for certain reasons the habit of not marrying within themselves; but, after receiving animal names, they developed an idea that the animal of each group was its kinsman, and that, for a certain superstitious reason, it was even more wrong than it had been before, to marry "within the blood" of the animal, as, for Emu to marry Emu. Or (f2) the small groups did marry within themselves till, after receiving animal names, they evolved the superstition that such marriage was a sin against the animals, and so became exogamous.

On the point of the original state of society conjecture seems to be limited to this field of possible choices. At least I am acquainted with no theory hitherto propounded, which does not set out from one or other of these conjectural bases. We must not attack each other's ideas merely because they start from conjectures: they can start in no other way. Our method must be to discover which conjecture, as it is developed, most consistently and successfully colligates all the ascertained facts and best endures the touchstone of logic.

Of the hypotheses enumerated above, the system to be advocated here is that marked (f 1 and 2). Men, whatever their brutal ancestors may have done, when they became men indeed, lived originally in small anonymous local groups, and had, for a reason to be given, the habit of selecting female mates from groups not their own. Or, if they had not this habit they developed the rule, after the previously anonymous local groups had received animal names, and after the name-giving animals came to receive the measure of respect at present given to them as totems.

The second hypothesis (b) (that the animal names of the groups were originally those of societies which worked magic, each for an animal, and that the prohibition on marriage was later introduced) has been suggested by Professor Baldwin Spencer and Mr. J. G. Frazer, and is accepted by Mr. Howitt.

The third conjecture (c) (man originally promiscuous, but ceasing to be so from religious respect for the totem, or "god") is that of Dr. Durkheim.

The fourth theory (d) is that of Mr. Hill-Tout.27

The fifth theory (e) was that of Mr. Howitt. He now adopts the similar theory of Mr. Spencer (b).

I have not included the theory of Mr. J. F. McLennan, the founder of all research into totemism. In his opinion, totemism, that is, the possession by different stocks of different name-giving animals, "is older than exogamy in all cases." That is, as Mr. Robertson Smith explains, "it is easy to see that exogamy necessarily presupposes the existence of a system of kinship which took no account of degrees, but only of participation in a common stock. Such an idea as this could not be conceived by savages in an abstract form; it must necessarily have had a concrete expression, or rather must have been thought under a concrete and tangible form, and that form seems to have been always supplied by totemism." (Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 189, 1885). This means that, before they were exogamous, men existed in groups of animal name, as Ravens, Wolves, Ants, and so on. When they became conscious of kinship, and resolved to marry out of the kin, or stock, they fixed the name, say Raven, Wolf, or what not, as the limit within which there must be no marriage. But Mr. McLennan's theory as to why they determined to take no wives within the stock and name, has never been accepted. (See Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, pp. 311-314.)

Mr. McLennan supposed that female infanticide made women scarce in each group, and that therefore they stole each other's girls, and, finally, abstained from their own. But the objections to this hypothesis are infinite and obvious. At one time Mr. McLennan thought that tattooing was the origin of totemism. Members of each group tattooed the semblance of an animal on their flesh – but, as far as I am aware, he did not ask why they adopted this practice. Manifestly a sense of some special connection between the animal and the group must have been prior to the marking of the members of the group with the effigy of the animal. What gave rise to this belief in the connection? (See Chapter VI., criticism of Dr. Pikler). Mr, McLennan merely mentioned to me, in conversation, this idea, which he later abandoned. It had previously occurred to Garcilasso de la Vega that the germ of totemism was to be found in the mere desire to differentiate group from group; which is the theory to be urged later, the names being the instruments of differentiation.

Mr. A. K. Keane, as in Mr. McLennan's abandoned conjecture, and as in the theory of Dr. Pikler, makes totemism arise in "heraldic badges," "a mere device for distinguishing one individual from another, one family or clan group from another … the personal or family name precedes the totem, which grows out of it." (Ethnology, pp. 9, II).