The Secret of the Totem

CHAPTER VI

THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

Mr. Darwin's theory of man's early social condition – Either men lived in male communities, each with his own female mates, or man was solitary, living alone with his female mates and children – His adolescent sons he drove away – The latter view accepted – It involves practical exogamy – Misunderstood by M. Salomon Reinach – Same results would follow as soon as totems were evolved – Totemism begins in assumption, by groups of men, of the names of natural objects – Mr. Howitt states this opinion – Savage belief in magical rapport between men and things of the same name – Mr. Frazer and Professor Rhys died for this fact – Theory of Dr. Pikler – Totemism arises in the need of names to be represented in pictographs – But the pictograph is later than the name – Examples of magic of names – Men led to believe in a connection of blood kin between themselves and objects of the same names – These objects regarded with reverence – Hence totemic exogamy merely one aspect of the general totem name – Group names were sobriquets of local groups, given by members of other local groups – Proof that such names may be accepted and gloried in – Cases of tribal names given from without and accepted – Mr. Hill-Tout on influence of names – His objection to our theory answered – Mr. Howitt's objections answered – American and Celtic cases of derisive nicknames accepted – Two Australian totem names certainly sobriquets – Religious aspect of totemism – Results from a divine decree – Other myths – Recapitulation.

The problem has been to account for the world-wide development of kinships, usually named after animals, plants, and other objects, and for the rule that the members of these kins may never marry within the kinship as limited by the name, Crow, Wolf, or whatever it may be. Why, again, are these kinships regimented, in each tribe, into two "phratries," exogamous, which also frequently bear animal names? No system hitherto proposed seems satisfactory, for the reasons given in the preceding critical chapters.

In trying to construct a more satisfactory system than those which have been criticised, we must commence, like others, with an hypothesis as to what kind of social animal man was when he began his career. Now we really are not quite reduced to conjecture, for Mr. Howitt's knowledge of savage life, in such a country as Australia, proves that the economic conditions, the search for supplies, and the blunt inefficiency of the earliest weapons, instruments, and hunting methods must have forced men to live in small separate groups. The members, again, of each group, being animated by "individual likes and dislikes" (including love, hate, jealousy, maternal affection, and the associations of kindness between a male and those whom he provided for and protected), must soon have evolved some discrimination of persons, and certain practical restraints on amatory intercourse. In groups necessarily very small, these germinal elements of later morality could be evolved, as they could not be evolved in the gregarious communal horde of theory.

Even when man's ancestors were hardly men, Mr. Darwin thus states his opinion as to their social condition.

He says, "We may conclude, judging from what we know of the jealousy of all Male Quadrupeds… that promiscuous intercourse in a state of Nature is extremely improbable. Therefore, looking far back in the stream of Time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, the most probable view is (a) that he aboriginally lived in small communities, each [man] with a single wife, or, if powerful, with several, whom he jealously guarded from all other men. Or (b) he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several wives, like the Gorilla – for all the natives agree that bat one adult male is found in a band. When the young male grows up, a contest takes place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or driving out the others, establishes himself as head of the community.

"Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding within the limits of the same family."142

There is no communal horde in either of Mr. Darwin's conjectures, and the males of these "families" were all exogamous in practice, all compelled to mate out of the group of consanguinity, except in the case of the sire, or male head, who, of course, could mate with his own daughters.

Were I forced to conjecture, I should adopt Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis (b) because, given man so jealous, and in a brutal state so very low as that postulated, he could not hope "jealously to guard his women from all other men," if he lived in a community with other men.

There would be fights to the death (granting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of male jealousy, man being an animal who makes love at all seasons),143 and the little community would break up. No respect would be paid to the Seventh Commandment, and Mr. Darwin's first conjectured community would end in his second – given the jealousy and brutality and animal passions of early man, as postulated by him.

On Mr. Darwin's second conjecture our system could be based. Small "family" groups, governed by the will of the sire or master, whose harem contains all the young females in the group, would be necessarily exogamous in practice – for the younger male members. The sire would drive out all his adult sons as they came to puberty, and such as survived and found mates would establish, when they could, similar communities.

With efflux of time and development of intellect the rule, now conscious, would become, "No marriage within this group of contiguity;" the group of the hearth-mates. Therefore, the various "family groups" would not be self-sufficing in the matter of wives, and the males would have to seize wives by force or stealth from other similar and hostile groups. Exogamy, in fact, so far as the rule was obeyed, would exist, with raiding for wives. (This is the view of Mr. Atkinson, in his Primal Law.)144

If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis as to the primal state of man's brutal ancestors be rejected, economic and emotional conditions, as stated by Mr. Howitt (ch. iv., supra), would still keep on constantly breaking up, in everyday life, each supposed communal horde of men into small individualistic groups, in which the jealousy of the sire or sires might establish practical exogamy, by preventing the young males from finding mates within the group. This would especially be the case if the savage superstitions about sexual separation and sexual taboo already existed, a point on which we can have no certainty.145 Young males would thus be obliged to win mates, probably by violence, from other hostile camps. But, whether this were so or not, things would inevitably come to this point later, as soon as the totem belief was established, with the totemic taboo of exogamy," No marriage within the totem name and blood."

The establishment of totemic belief and practice cannot have been sudden. Men cannot have, all in a moment, conceived that each group possessed a protective and sacred animal or other object of one blood with themselves. Not in a moment could they have drawn, on Dr. Durkheim's lines, the inference that none must marry within the sacred totem blood. Before any such faith and rule could be evolved, there must have been dim beginnings of the belief (so surprising to us) that each human group had some intimate connection with this, that, or the other natural species, plants, or animals. We must first seek for a cause of this belief in the connection of human groups with animals, the idea of which connection must necessarily be prior to the various customs and rules founded on the idea. Mr. Baldwin Spencer remarks, "What gave rise in the first instance to the association of particular men with particular plants and animals it does not seem possible to say." Mr. Howitt asks, "How was it that men assumed the names of objects which, in fact, must have been the commencement of totemism?"146 The answer may be very simple. It ought to be an answer which takes for granted no superstition as already active; magic, for instance, need not have yet been developed.

In criticising the theory of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, we have tried to show that human groups would not work magic each for a separate animal, unless they already believed in a connection of a mystic or peculiarly intimate kind between themselves and their animal. Whether late or early in evolution, the Arunta totem magic can only rest on the belief in a specially close and mystical rapport between the totem animal or plant, and the human beings of the same name. How could the belief in that rapport arise?

Manifestly, if each group woke to the consciousness that it bore the name of a plant or animal, and did not know how it came to bear that name, no more was needed to establish, in the savage mind, the belief in an essential and valuable connection between the human group Emu, and the Emu species of birds, and so on. As Mr. Howitt says, totemism begins in the bearing of the name of an object by a human group.

It is difficult to understand how a fact so obvious as this – that the community of name, if it existed, and if its origin were unknown, would come to be taken by the groups as implying a mystic connection between all who bore it, men or beasts – can have escaped the notice of any one who is acquainted with the nature of savage thinking, and with its survivals into civilised ritual and magic. Mr. Frazer has devoted forty-two pages of his Golden Bough147 to the record of examples of this belief about names, in various forms. He quotes Professor Rhys to the effect that probably "the whole Aryan family believed at one time, not only that the name was a part of the man, but that it was that part of him which is termed the soul, the breath of life, or whatever you may choose to define it as being." So says Mr. Rhys in an essay on Welsh Fairies.148 This opinion rests on philological analysis of the Aryan words for "name," and is certainly not understated.149 But, if the name is the soul of its bearer, and if the totem also is his soul, then the name and the soul and the totem of a man are all one! There we have the rapport between man and totemic animal for which we are seeking.

Whether "name" in any language indicates "soul" or not, the savage belief in the intimate and wonder-working connection of names and things is a well-ascertained fact. Now as things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, animals and sets of men having the same name are, in savage opinion, mystically connected with each other. That is now the universal savage belief, though it need not have existed when names were first applied to distinguish things, and men, and sets of men. Examples of the belief will presently be given.

This essential importance, as regards the totemic problem, of the names, has not escaped Professor Julius Pikler.150 Men, says Dr. Pikler, needed for each other, collectively, "ein bleibender schriftlich fixierbarer Name von Gemeinschaften und individuen." They wanted permanent names of human communities and of the members of these communities, names which could be expressed in pictographs, as in the pictures of the Red Indian totem, reversed on grave-posts; or erect, on pillars outside of the quarters of the totem kin in Red Indian villages; or in tattooing, and so forth.

This is practically the theory of Mr. Max Müller.151 Mr. Max Müller wrote, "A totem is (i.) a clan mark, then (ii.) a clan name, then (iii.) the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly (iv.) the name of something worshipped by the clan," This anticipated Dr. Pikler's theory.152

It is manifest, of course, that the name necessarily comes into use before, not as Mr. Max Müller thought, and as Dr. Pikler seems to think, after its pictorial representation, "the clan mark." A kin must have accepted the name of "the Cranes," before it used the Crane as its mark on a pillar in a village (villages being late institutions), or on grave-posts, or in tattoo marks. A man setting up an inn determines to call it "The Green Boar," "The White Hart," or "The Lochinvar Arms," before he has any of these animals, or the scutcheon of the Gordons of Lochinvar, painted on the signboard. He does not give his inn the name because it has the signboard; it has the signboard because it has the name. In the same way, a community must have had a name, say Eagle Hawk or Crow, before a savage could sketch, or express by gesture, a Crow or Eagle Hawk, and expect the public to understand that he meant to indicate, whether by pictograph or gesture language, a member of that Eagle Hawk or Crow named community. Totemism certainly is not, as Dr. Pikler argues, "die Folge der Schriftart, der Schrifttechnik jenes Menschen."153

The names came before the pictographs, not the pictographs before the names, necessarily; but the animal or vegetable names had this advantage, among others, that they could be expressed in terms of pictograph, or of gesture language. You cannot express in art, without writing, a tribal name, such at least as are the tribal names of the men who say Wonghi or Kamil when they mean "No," or of other tribes when they mean "What?"

Dr. Pikler says that "the germ of totemism is the naming," and here we agree with him, but we cannot follow him when he adds that "the naming is a consequence of the primitive schriftteknik," a result of the representation in the pictograph. A man knows himself and is known by others to be, by group name, a Crane, or a Rain-cloud, or a Bear, before he makes his mark with the pictograph of the bird's footprint, as

So far we must differ, then, from Dr. Pikler; naming is indeed the original germ of totemism, but the names came before the pictographs which represent the animals denoted by the names: it could not possibly be otherwise. But when once the name of the community, Eagle Hawk, Crow, Bear, Crane, Rain-cloud, or what not, is recognised and accepted, then, as Dr. Pikler writes, "even the Greeks,155 in ages of philosophic thought relatively advanced, conceived that there was a material connection between things and their names," and, in the same way, savages, bearing an animal group-name, believed that there was an important connection, in fact, between the men and the name-giving animal, "and so conceived the idea of kinship with or descent from" the name-giving animal.156