ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS
_Critical Examination of Preceding Theories_
The beliefs which we have just summarized are manifestly of a religious
nature, since they imply a division of things into sacred and profane.
It is certain that there is no thought of spiritual beings, and in the
course of our exposition we have not even had occasion to pronounce the
words, spirits, genii or divine personalities. But if certain writers,
of whom we shall have something more to say presently, have, for this
reason, refused to regard totemism as a religion, it is because they
have an inexact notion of what religious phenomena are.
On the other hand, we are assured that this religion is the most
primitive one that is now observable and even, in all probability, that
has ever existed. In fact, it is inseparable from a social organization
on a clan basis. Not only is it impossible, as we have already pointed
out, to define it except in connection with the clan, but it even seems
as though the clan could not exist, in the form it has taken in a great
number of Australian societies, without the totem. For the members of a
single clan are not united to each other either by a common habitat or
by common blood, as they are not necessarily consanguineous and are
frequently scattered over different parts of the tribal territory. Their
unity comes solely from their having the same name and the same emblem,
their believing that they have the same relations with the same
categories of things, their practising the same rites, or, in a word,
from their participating in the same totemic cult. Thus totemism and the
clan mutually imply each other, in so far, at least, as the latter is
not confounded with the local group. Now the social organization on a
clan basis is the simplest which we know. In fact, it exists in all its
essential elements from the moment when the society includes two primary
clans; consequently, we may say that there are none more rudimentary, as
long as societies reduced to a single clan have not been discovered, and
we believe that up to the present no traces of such have been found. A
religion so closely connected to a social system surpassing all others
in simplicity may well be regarded as the most elementary religion we
can possibly know. If we succeed in discovering the origins of the
beliefs which we have just analysed, we shall very probably discover at
the same time the causes leading to the rise of the religious sentiment
in humanity.
But before treating this question for ourselves, we must examine the
most authorized solutions of it which have already been proposed.
I
In the first place, we find a group of scholars who believe that they
can account for totemism by deriving it from some previous religion.
For Tylor[552] and Wilken,[553] totemism is a special form of the cult
of the ancestors; it was the widespread doctrine of the transmigration
of souls that served as a bridge between these two religious systems. A
large number of peoples believe that after death, the soul does not
remain disincarnate for ever, but presently animates another living
body; on the other hand, "the lower psychology, drawing no definite line
of demarcation between the souls of men and of beasts, can at least
admit without difficulty the transmigration of human souls into the
bodies of the lower animals."[554] Tylor cites a certain number of
cases.[555] Under these circumstances, the religious respect inspired by
the ancestor is quite naturally attached to the animal or plant with
which he is presently confounded. The animal thus serving as a
receptacle for a venerated being becomes a holy thing, the object of a
cult, that is, a totem, for all the descendants of the ancestor, who
form the clan descended from him.
Facts pointed out by Wilken among the societies of the Malay Archipelago
would tend to prove that it really was in this manner that the totemic
beliefs originated. In Java and Sumatra, crocodiles are especially
honoured; they are regarded as benevolent protectors who must not be
killed; offerings are made to them. Now the cult thus rendered to them
is due to their being supposed to incarnate the souls of ancestors. The
Malays of the Philippines consider the crocodile their grandfather; the
tiger is treated in the same way for the same reasons. Similar beliefs
have been observed among the Bantous.[556] In Melanesia it sometimes
happens that an influential man, at the moment of death, announces his
desire to reincarnate himself in a certain animal or plant; it is easily
understood how the object thus chosen as his posthumous residence
becomes sacred for his whole family.[557] So, far from being a primitive
fact, totemism would seem to be the product of a more complex religion
which preceded it.[558]
But the societies from which these facts were taken had already arrived
at a rather advanced stage of culture; in any case, they had passed the
stage of pure totemism. They have families and not totemic clans.[559]
Even the majority of the animals to which religious honours are thus
rendered are venerated, not by special groups of families, but by the
tribes as a whole. So if these beliefs and practices do have some
connection with ancient totemic cults, they now represent only altered
forms of them[560] and are consequently not very well fitted for showing
us their origins. It is not by studying an institution at the moment
when it is in full decadence that we can learn how it was formed. If we
want to know how totemism originated, it is neither in Java nor Sumatra
nor Melanesia that we must study it, but in Australia. Here we find
neither a cult of the dead[561] nor the doctrine of transmigration. Of
course they believe that the mythical heroes, the founders of the clan,
reincarnate themselves periodically; _but this is in human bodies only_;
each birth, as we shall see, is the product of one of these
reincarnations. So if the animals of the totemic species are the object
of rites, it is not because the ancestral souls are believed to reside
in them. It is true that the first ancestors are frequently represented
under the form of an animal, and this very common representation is an
important fact for which we must account; but it was not the belief in
metempsychosis which gave it birth, for this belief is unknown among
Australian societies.
Moreover, far from being able to explain totemism, this belief takes for
granted one of the fundamental principles upon which this rests; that is
to say, it begs the question to be explained. It, just as much as
totemism, implies that man is considered a close relative of the
animal; for if these two kingdoms were clearly distinguished in the
mind, men would never believe that a human soul could pass so easily
from one into the other. It is even necessary that the body of the
animal be considered its true home, for it is believed to go there as
soon as it regains its liberty. Now while the doctrine of transmigration
postulates this singular affinity, it offers no explanation of it. The
only explanation offered by Tylor is that men sometimes resemble in
certain traits the anatomy and physiology of the animal. "The half-human
features and actions and characters of animals are watched with
wondering sympathy by the savage, as by the child. The beast is the very
incarnation of familiar qualities of man: and such names as lion, bear,
fox, owl, parrot, viper, worm, when we apply them as epithets to men,
condense into a word some leading features of a human life."[562] But
even if these resemblances are met with, they are uncertain and
exceptional; before all else, men resemble their relatives and
companions, and not plants and animals. Such rare and questionable
analogies could not overcome such unanimous proofs, nor could they lead
a man to think of himself and his forefathers in forms contradicted by
daily experience. So this question remains untouched, and as long as it
is not answered, we cannot say that totemism is explained.[563]
Finally, this whole theory rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding.
For Tylor as for Wundt, totemism is only a particular case of the cult
of animals.[564] But we, on the contrary, know that it is something
very different from a sort of animal-worship.[565] The animal is never
adored; the man is nearly its equal and sometimes even treats it as his
possession, so far is he from being subordinate to it like a believer
before his god. If the animals of the totemic species are really
believed to incarnate the ancestors, the members of foreign clans would
not be allowed to eat their flesh freely. In reality, it is not to the
animal as such that the cult is addressed, but to the emblem and the
image of the totem. Now between this religion of the emblem and the
ancestor-cult, there is no connection whatsoever.
While Tylor derives totemism from the ancestor-cult, Jevons derives it
from the nature-cult,[566] and here is how he does so.
When, under the impulse of the surprise occasioned by the irregularities
observed in the course of phenomena, men had once peopled the world with
supernatural beings,[567] they felt the need of making agreements with
these redoubtable forces with which they had surrounded themselves. They
understood that the best way to escape being overwhelmed by them was to
ally themselves to some of them, and thus make sure of their aid. But at
this period of history men knew no other form of alliance and
association than the one resulting from kinship. All the members of a
single clan aid each other mutually because they are kindred or, as
amounts to the same thing, because they think they are; on the other
hand, different clans treat each other as enemies because they are of
different blood. So the only way of assuring themselves of the support
of these supernatural beings was to adopt them as kindred and to be
adopted by them in the same quality: the well-known processes of the
blood-covenant permitted them to attain this result quite easily. But
since at this period, the individual did not yet have a real
personality, and was regarded only as a part of his group, or clan, it
was the clan as a whole, and not the individual, which collectively
contracted this relationship. For the same reason, it was contracted,
not with a particular object, but with the natural group or species of
which this object was a part; for men think of the world as they think
of themselves, and just as they could not conceive themselves apart from
their clans, so they were unable to conceive of anything else as
distinct from the species to which it belonged. Now a species of things
united to a clan by a bond of kinship is, says Jevons, a totem.
In fact, it is certain that totemism implies the close association of a
clan to a determined category of objects. But that this association was
contracted with a deliberate design and in the full consciousness of an
end sought after, as Jevons would have us believe, is a statement having
but little harmony with what history teaches. Religions are too complex,
and answer to needs that are too many and too obscure, to have their
origin in a premeditated act of the will. And while it sins through
over-simplicity, this hypothesis is also highly improbable. It says that
men sought to assure themselves of the aid of the supernatural beings
upon which things depend. Then they should preferably have addressed
themselves to the most powerful of these, and to those whose protection
promised to be the most beneficial.[568] But quite on the contrary, the
beings with whom they have formed this mystic kinship are often among
the most humble which exist. Also, if it were only a question of making
allies and defenders, they would have tried to make as many as possible;
for one cannot be defended too well. Yet as a matter of fact, each clan
systematically contents itself with a single totem, that is to say, with
one single protector, leaving the other clans to enjoy their own in
perfect liberty. Each group confines itself within its own religious
domain, never seeking to trespass upon that of its neighbours. This
reserve and moderation are inexplicable according to the hypothesis
under consideration.
II
Moreover, all these theories are wrong in omitting one question which
dominates the whole subject. We have seen that there are two sorts of
totemism: that of the individual and that of the clan. There is too
evident a kinship between the two for them not to have some connection
with each other. So we may well ask if one is not derived from the
other, and, in the case of an affirmative answer, which is the more
primitive; according to the solution accepted, the problem of the
origins of totemism will be posed in different terms. This question
becomes all the more necessary because of its general interest.
Individual totemism is an individual aspect of the totemic cult. Then if
it was the primitive fact, we must say that religion is born in the
consciousness of the individual, that before all else, it answers to
individual aspirations, and that its collective form is merely
secondary.
The desire for an undue simplicity, with which ethnologists and
sociologists are too frequently inspired, has naturally led many
scholars to explain, here as elsewhere, the complex by the simple, the
totem of the group by that of the individual. Such, in fact, is the
theory sustained by Frazer in his _Golden Bough_,[569] by Hill
Tout,[570] by Miss Fletcher,[571] by Boas[572] and by Swanton.[573] It
has the additional advantage of being in harmony with the conception of
religion which is currently held; this is quite generally regarded as
something intimate and personal. From this point of view, the totem of
the clan can only be an individual totem which has become generalized.
Some eminent man, having found from experience the value of a totem he
chose for himself by his own free will, transmitted it to his
descendants; these latter, multiplying as time went on, finally formed
the extended family known as a clan, and thus the totem became
collective.
Hill Tout believes that he has found a proof supporting this theory in
the way totemism has spread among certain societies of North-western
America, especially among the Salish and certain Indians on the Thompson
River. Individual totemism and the clan totemism are both found among
these peoples; but they either do not co-exist in the same tribe, or
else, when they do co-exist, they are not equally developed. They vary
in an inverse proportion to each other; where the clan totem tends to
become the general rule, the individual totem tends to disappear, and
_vice versa_. Is that not as much as to say that the first is a more
recent form of the second, which excludes it by replacing it?[574]
Mythology seems to confirm this interpretation. In these same societies,
in fact, the ancestor of the clan is not a totemic animal; the founder
of the group is generally represented in the form of a human being who,
at a certain time, had entered into familiar relations with a fabulous
animal from whom he received his totemic emblem. This emblem, together
with the special powers which are attached to it, was then passed on to
the descendants of this mythical hero by right of heritage. So these
people themselves seem to consider the collective totem as an individual
one, perpetuated in the same family.[575] Moreover, it still happens
to-day that a father transmits his own totem to his children. So if we
imagine that the collective totem had, in a general way, this same
origin, we are assuming that the same thing took place in the past which
is still observable to-day.[576]
It is still to be explained whence the individual totem comes. The reply
given to this question varies with different authors.
Hill Tout considers it a particular case of fetishism. Feeling himself
surrounded on all sides by dreaded spirits, the individual experienced
that sentiment which we have just seen Jevons attribute to the clan: in
order that he might continue to exist, he sought some powerful protector
in this mysterious world. Thus the use of a personal totem became
established.[577] For Frazer, this same institution was rather a
subterfuge or trick of war, invented by men that they might escape from
certain dangers. It is known that according to a belief which is very
widespread in a large number of inferior societies, the human soul is
able, without great inconvenience, to quit the body it inhabits for a
while; howsoever far away it may be, it continues to animate this body
by a sort of detached control. Then, in certain critical moments, when
life is supposed to be particularly menaced, it may be desirable to
withdraw the soul from the body and lead it to some place or into some
object where it will be in greater security. In fact, there are a
certain number of practices whose object is to withdraw the soul in
order to protect it from some danger, either real or imaginary. For
example, at the moment when men are going to enter a newly-built house,
a magician removes their souls and puts them in a sack, to be saved and
returned to their proprietors after the door-sill has been crossed. This
is because the moment when one enters a new house is exceptionally
critical; one may have disturbed, and consequently offended, the spirits
who reside in the ground and especially under the sill, and if
precautions are not taken, these could make a man pay dearly for his
audacity. But when this danger is once passed, and one has been able to
anticipate their anger and even to make sure of their favour through the
accomplishment of certain rites, the souls may safely retake their
accustomed place.[578] It is this same belief which gave birth to the
personal totem. To protect themselves from sorcery, men thought it wise
to hide their souls in the anonymous crowd of some species of animal or
vegetable. But after these relations had once been established, each
individual found himself closely united to the animal or plant where his
own vital principle was believed to reside. Two beings so closely united
were finally thought to be practically indistinguishable: men believed
that each participated in the nature of the other. When this belief had
once been accepted, it facilitated and hastened the transformation of
the personal totem into an hereditary, and consequently a collective,
totem; for it seemed quite evident that this kinship of nature should be
transmitted hereditarily from father to child.
We shall not stop to discuss these two explanations of the individual
totem at length: they are ingenious fabrications of the mind, but they
completely lack all positive proof. If we are going to reduce totemism
to fetishism, we must first establish that the latter is prior to the
former; now, not merely is no fact brought forward to support this
hypothesis, but it is even contradicted by everything that we know. The
ill-determined group of rites going under the name of fetishism seem to
appear only among peoples who have already attained to a certain degree
of civilization; but it is a species of cult unknown in Australia. It is
true that some have described the churinga as a fetish;[579] but even
supposing that this qualification were justified, it would not prove the
priority which is postulated. Quite on the contrary, the churinga
presupposes totemism, since it is essentially an instrument of the
totemic cult and owes the virtues attributed to it to totemic beliefs
alone.
As for the theory of Frazer, it presupposes a thoroughgoing idiocy on
the part of the primitive which known facts do not allow us to attribute
to him. He does have a logic, however strange this may at times appear;
now unless he were completely deprived of it, he could never be guilty
of the reasoning imputed to him. Nothing could be more natural than that
he should believe it possible to assure the survival of his soul by
hiding it in a secret and inaccessible place, as so many heroes of myths
and legends are said to have done. But why should he think it safer in
the body of an animal than in his own? Of course, if it were thus lost
in space, it might have a chance to escape the spells of a magician more
readily, but at the same time it would be prepared for the blows of
hunters. It is a strange way of sheltering it to place it in a material
form exposing it to risks at every instant.[580] But above all, it is
inconceivable that a whole people should allow themselves to be carried
into such an aberration.[581] Finally, in a very large number of cases,
the function of the individual totem is very different from that
assigned it by Frazer; before all else, it is a means of conferring
extraordinary powers upon magicians, hunters or warriors.[582] As to the
kinship of the man and the thing, with all the inconveniences it
implies, it is accepted as a consequence of the rite; but it is not
desired in its and for itself.
There is still less occasion for delaying over this controversy since it
concerns no real problem. What we must know before everything else is
whether or not the individual totem is really a primitive fact, from
which the collective totem was derived; for, according to the reply
given to this question, we must seek the home of the religious life in
one or the other of two opposite directions.
Against the hypothesis of Hill Tout, Miss Fletcher, Boas and Frazer
there is such an array of decisive facts that one is surprised that it
has been so readily and so generally accepted.
In the first place, we know that a man frequently has the greatest
interest not only in respecting, but also in making his companions
respect the species serving him as personal totem; his own life is
connected with it. Then if collective totemism were only a generalized
form of individual totemism, it too should repose upon this same
principle. Not only should the men of a clan abstain from killing and
eating their totem-animal themselves, but they should also do all in
their power to force this same abstention upon others. But as a matter
of fact, far from imposing such a renunciation upon the whole tribe,
each clan, by rites which we shall describe below, takes care that the
plant or animal whose name it bears shall increase and prosper, so as
to assure an abundant supply of food for the other clans. So we must at
least admit that in becoming collective, individual totemism was
transformed profoundly, and we must therefore account for this
transformation.
In the second place, how is it possible to explain, from this point of
view, the fact that except where totemism is in full decay, two clans of
a single tribe always have different totems? It seems that nothing
prevents two or several members of a single tribe, even when there is no
kinship between them, from choosing their personal totem in the same
animal species and passing it on to their descendants. Does it not
happen to-day that two distinct families have the same name? The
carefully regulated way in which the totems and sub-totems are divided
up, first between the two phratries and then among the various clans of
the phratry, obviously presupposes a social agreement and a collective
organization. This is as much as to say that totemism is something more
than an individual practice spontaneously generalized.
Moreover, collective totemism cannot be deduced from individual totemism
except by a misunderstanding of the differences separating the two. The
one is acquired by the child at birth; it is a part of his civil status.
The other is acquired during the course of his life; it presupposes the
accomplishment of a determined rite and a change of condition. Some seek
to diminish this distance by inserting between the two, as a sort of
middle term, the right of each possessor of a totem to transmit it to
whomsoever he pleases. But wherever these transfers do take place, they
are rare and relatively exceptional acts; they cannot be performed
except by magicians or other personages invested with special
powers;[583] in any case, they are possible only through ritual
ceremonies which bring about the change. So it is necessary to explain
how this prerogative of a few became the right of all; how that which at
first implied a profound change in the religious and moral constitution
of the individual, was able to become an element of this constitution;
and finally, how a transmission which at first was the consequence of a
rite was later believed to operate automatically from the nature of
things and without the intervention of any human will.
In support of his interpretation, Hill Tout claims that certain myths
give the totem of the clan an individual origin: they tell how the
totemic emblem was acquired by some special individual, who then
transmitted it to his descendants. But in the first place, it is to be
remarked that these myths are all taken from the Indian tribes of North
America, which are societies arrived at a rather high degree of culture.
How could a mythology so far removed from the origins of things aid in
reconstituting the primitive form of an institution with any degree of
certainty? There are many chances for intermediate causes to have
gravely disfigured the recollection which these people have been able to
retain. Moreover, it is very easy to answer these myths with others,
which seem much more primitive and whose signification is quite
different. The totem is there represented as the very being from whom
the clan is descended. So it must be that it constitutes the substance
of the clan; men have it within them from their birth; it is a part of
their very flesh and blood, so far are they from having received it from
without.[584] More than that, the very myths upon which Hill Tout relies
contain an echo of this ancient conception. The founder who gave his
name to the clan certainly had a human form; but he was a man who, after
living among animals of a certain species, finally came to resemble
them. This is undoubtedly because a time came when the mind was too
cultivated to admit any longer, as it had formerly done, that men might
have been born of animals; so the animal ancestor, now become
inconceivable, is replaced by a human being; but the idea persists that
this man had acquired certain characteristics of the animal either by
imitation or by some other process. Thus even this late mythology bears
the mark of a more remote epoch when the totem of the clan was never
regarded as a sort of individual creation.
But this hypothesis does not merely raise grave logical difficulties; it
is contradicted directly by the following facts.
If individual totemism were the initial fact, it should be more
developed and apparent, the more primitive the societies are, and
inversely, it should lose ground and disappear before the other among
the more advanced peoples. Now it is the contrary which is true. The
Australian tribes are far behind those of North America; yet Australia
is the classic land of collective totemism. _In the great majority of
the tribes, it alone is found, while we do not know a single one where
individual totemism alone is practised._[585] This latter is found in a
characteristic form only in an infinitesimal number of tribes.[586] Even
where it is met with it is generally in a rudimentary form. It is made
up of individual and optional practices having no generality. Only
magicians are acquainted with the art of creating mysterious
relationships with species of animals to which they are not related by
nature. Ordinary people do not enjoy this privilege.[587] In America, on
the contrary, the collective totem is in full decadence; in the
societies of the North-west especially, its religious character is
almost gone. Inversely, the individual totem plays a considerable rôle
among these same peoples. A very great efficacy is attributed to it; it
has become a real public institution. This is because it is the sign of
a higher civilization. This is undoubtedly the explanation of the
inversion of these two forms of totemism, which Hill Tout believes he
has observed among the Salish. If in those parts where collective
totemism is the most fully developed the other form is almost lacking,
it is not because the second has disappeared before the first, but
rather, because the conditions necessary for its existence have not yet
been fully realized.
But a fact which is still more conclusive is that individual totemism,
far from having given birth to the totemism of the clan, presupposes
this latter. It is within the frame of collective totemism that it is
born and lives: it is an integral part of it. In fact, in those very
societies where it is preponderating, the novices do not have the right
of taking any animal as their individual totem; to each clan a certain
definite number of species are assigned, outside of which it may not
choose. In return, those belonging to it thus are its exclusive
property; members of other clans may not usurp them.[588] They are
thought to have relations of close dependence upon the one serving as
totem to the clan as a whole. There are even cases where it is quite
possible to observe these relations: the individual aspect represents a
part or a particular aspect of the collective totem.[589] Among the
Wotjobaluk, each member of the clan considers the personal totems of
his companions as being his own after a fashion;[590] so they are
probably sub-totems. Now the sub-totem supposes the totem, as the
species supposes the class. Thus the first form of individual religion
met with in history appears, not as the active principle of all public
religion, but, on the contrary, as a simple aspect of this latter. The
cult which the individual organizes for himself in his own inner
conscience, far from being the germ of the collective cult, is only this
latter adapted to the personal needs of the individual.
III
In a more recent study,[591] which the works of Spencer and Gillen
suggested to him, Frazer has attempted to substitute a new explanation
of totemism for the one he first proposed, and which we have just been
discussing. It rests on the postulate that the totemism of the Arunta is
the most primitive which we know; Frazer even goes so far as to say that
it scarcely differs from the really and absolutely original type.[592]
The singular thing about it is that the totems are attached neither to
persons nor to determined groups of persons, but to localities. In fact,
each totem has its centre at some definite spot. It is there that the
souls of the first ancestors, who founded the totemic group at the
beginning of time, are believed to have their preferred residence. It is
there that the sanctuary is located where the churinga are kept; there
the cult is celebrated. It is also this geographical distribution of
totems which determines the manner in which the clans are recruited. The
child has neither the totem of his father nor that of his mother, but
the one whose centre is at the spot where the mother believes that she
felt the first symptoms of approaching maternity. For it is said that
the Arunta is ignorant of the exact relation existing between generation
and the sexual act;[593] he thinks that every conception is due to a
sort of mystic fecundation. According to him, it is due to the entrance
of the soul of an ancestor into the body of a woman and its becoming the
principle of a new life there. So at the moment when a woman feels the
first tremblings of the child, she imagines that one of the souls whose
principal residence is at the place where she happens to be, has just
entered into her. As the child who is presently born is merely the
reincarnation of this ancestor, he necessarily has the same totem; thus
his totem is determined by the locality where he is believed to have
been mysteriously conceived.
Now, it is this local totemism which represents the original form of
totemism; at most, it is separated from this by a very short step. This
is how Frazer explains its genesis.
At the exact moment when the woman realizes that she is pregnant, she
must think that the spirit by which she feels herself possessed has come
to her from the objects about her, and especially from one of those
which attract her attention at the moment. So if she is engaged in
plucking a plant, or watching an animal, she believes that the soul of
this plant or animal has passed into her. Among the things to which she
will be particularly inclined to attribute her condition are, in the
first place, the things she has just eaten. If she has recently eaten
emu or yam, she will not doubt that an emu or yam has been born in her
and is developing. Under these conditions, it is evident how the child,
in his turn, will be considered a sort of yam or emu, how he regards
himself as a relative of the plant or animal of the same species, how he
has sympathy and regard for them, how he refuses to eat them, etc.[594]
From this moment, totemism exists in its essential traits: it is the
native's theory of conception that gave rise to it, so Frazer calls this
primitive totemism _conceptional_.
It is from this original type that all the other forms of totemism are
derived. "When several women had, one after the other, felt the first
premonitions of maternity at the same spot and under the same
circumstances, the place would come to be regarded as haunted by spirits
of a peculiar sort; and so the whole country might in time be dotted
over with totem centres and distributed into totem districts."[595] This
is how the local totemism of the Arunta originated. In order that the
totems may subsequently be detached from their territorial base, it is
sufficient to think that the ancestral souls, instead of remaining
immutably fixed to a determined spot, are able to move freely over the
surface of the territory and that in their voyages they follow the men
and women of the same totem as themselves. In this way, a woman may be
impregnated by her own totem or that of her husband, though residing in
a different totemic district. According to whether it is believed that
it is the ancestor of the husband or of the wife who thus follow the
family about, seeking occasions to reincarnate themselves, the totem of
the child will be that of his father or mother. In fact, it is in just
this way that the Guanji and Umbaia on the one hand, and the Urabunna on
the other, explain their systems of filiation.
But this theory, like that of Tylor, rests upon a begging of the
question. If he is to imagine that human souls are the souls of animals
or plants, one must believe beforehand that men take either from the
animal or vegetable world whatever is most essential in them. Now this
belief is one of those at the foundation of totemism. To state it as
something evident is therefore to take for granted that which is to be
explained.
Moreover, from this point of view, the religious character of the totem
is entirely inexplicable, for the vague belief in an obscure kinship
between the man and the animal is not enough to found a cult. This
confusion of distinct kingdoms could never result in dividing the world
into sacred and profane. It is true that, being consistent with himself,
Frazer refuses to admit that totemism is a religion, under the pretext
that he finds in it neither spiritual beings, nor prayers, nor
invocations, nor offerings, etc. According to him, it is only a system
of magic, by which he means a sort of crude and erroneous science, a
first effort to discover the laws of things.[596] But we know how
inexact this conception, both of magic and of religion, is. We have a
religion as soon as the sacred is distinguished from the profane, and we
have seen that totemism is a vast system of sacred things. If we are to
explain it, we must therefore show how it happened that these things
were stamped with this character.[597] But he does not even raise this
problem.
But this system is completely overthrown by the fact that the postulate
upon which it rests can no longer be sustained. The whole argument of
Frazer supposes that the local totemism of the Arunta is the most
primitive we know, and especially that it is clearly prior to
hereditary totemism, either in the paternal or the maternal line. Now as
soon as the facts contained in the first volume of Spencer and Gillen
were at our disposal, we were able to conjecture that there had been a
time in the history of the Arunta people when the totems, instead of
being attached to localities, were transmitted hereditarily from mother
to child.[598] This conjecture is definitely proved by the new facts
discovered by Strehlow,[599] which only confirm the previous
observations of Schulze.[600] In fact, both of these authors tell us
that even now, in addition to his local totem, each Arunta has another
which is completely independent of all geographical conditions, and
which belongs to him as a birthright: it is his mother's. This second
totem, just like the first, is considered a powerful friend and
protector by the natives, which looks after their food, warns them of
possible dangers, etc. They have the right of taking part in its cult.
When they are buried, the corpse is laid so that the face is turned
towards the region of the maternal totemic centre. So after a fashion
this centre is also that of the deceased. In fact it is given the name
_tmara altjira_, which is translated: camp of the totem which is
associated with me. So it is certain that among the Arunta, hereditary
totemism in the uterine line is not later than local totemism, but, on
the contrary, must have preceded it. For to-day, the maternal totem has
only an accessory and supplementary rôle; it is a second totem, which
explains how it was able to escape observation as attentive and careful
as that of Spencer and Gillen. But in order that it should be able to
retain this secondary place, being employed along with the local totem,
there must have been a time when it held the primary place in the
religious life. It is, in part, a fallen totem, but one recalling an
epoch when the totemic organization of the Arunta was very different
from what it is to-day. So the whole superstructure of Frazer's system
is undermined at its foundation.[601]
IV
Although Andrew Lang has actively contested this theory of Frazer's, the
one he proposes himself in his later works,[602] resembles it on more
than one point. Like Frazer, he makes totemism consist in the belief in
a sort of consubstantiality of the man and the animal. But he explains
it differently.
He derives it entirely from the fact that the totem is a name. As soon
as human groups were founded,[603] each one felt the need of
distinguishing between the neighbouring groups with which it came into
contact and, with this end in view, it gave them different names. The
names were preferably chosen from the surrounding flora and fauna
because animals and plants can easily be designated by movements or
represented by drawings.[604] The more or less precise resemblances
which men may have with such and such objects determined the way in
which these collective denominations were distributed among the
groups.[605]
Now, it is a well-known fact that "to the early mind names, and the
things known by names, are in a mystic and transcendental connection of
_rapport_."[606] For example, the name of an individual is not
considered as a simple word or conventional sign, but as an essential
part of the individual himself. So if it were the name of an animal, the
man would have to believe that he himself had the most characteristic
attributes of this same animal. This theory would become better and
better accredited as the historic origins of these denominations became
more remote and were effaced from the memory. Myths arose to make this
strange ambiguity of human nature more easily representable in the mind.
To explain this, they imagined that the animal was the ancestor of the
men, or else that the two were descended from a common ancestor. Thus
came the conception of bonds of kinship uniting each clan to the animal
species whose name it bore. With the origins of this fabulous kinship
once explained, it seems to our author that totemism no longer contains
a mystery.
But whence comes the religious character of the totemic beliefs and
practices? For the fact that a man considers himself an animal of a
certain species does not explain why he attributes marvellous powers to
this species, and especially why he renders a cult to the images
symbolizing it.--To this question Lang gives the same response as
Frazer: he denies that totemism is a religion. "I find in Australia," he
says, "no example of religious practices such as praying to, nourishing
or burying the totem."[607] It was only at a later epoch, when it was
already established, that totemism was drawn into and surrounded by a
system of conceptions properly called religious. According to a remark
of Howitt,[608] when the natives undertake the explanation of the
totemic institutions, they do not attribute them to the totems
themselves nor to a man, but to some supernatural being such as Bunjil
or Baiame. "Accepting this evidence," says Lang, "one source of the
'religious' character of totemism is at once revealed. The totemist
obeys the decree of Bunjil, or Baiame, as the Cretans obeyed the divine
decrees given by Zeus to Minos." Now according to Lang the idea of these
great divinities arose outside of the totemic system; so this is not a
religion in itself; it has merely been given a religious colouring by
contact with a genuine religion.
But these very myths contradict Lang's conception of totemism. If the
Australians had regarded totemism as something human and profane, it
would never have occurred to them to make a divine institution out of
it. If, on the other hand, they have felt the need of connecting it with
a divinity, it is because they have seen a sacred character in it. So
these mythological interpretations prove the religious nature of
totemism, but do not explain it.
Moreover, Lang himself recognizes that this solution is not sufficient.
He realizes that totemic things are treated with a religious
respect;[609] that especially the blood of an animal, as well as that of
a man, is the object of numerous interdictions, or, as he says, taboos
which this comparatively late mythology cannot explain.[610] Then where
do they come from? Here are the words with which Lang answers this
question: "As soon as the animal-named groups evolved the universally
diffused beliefs about the _wakan_ or _mana_, or mystically sacred
quality of the blood as the life, they would also develop the various
taboos."[611] The words _wakan_ and _mana_, as we shall see in the
following chapter, involve the very idea of _sacredness_ itself; the one
is taken from the language of the Sioux, the other from that of the
Melanesian peoples. To explain the sacred character of totemic things by
postulating this characteristic, is to answer the question by the
question. What we must find out is whence this idea of _wakan_ comes and
how it comes to be applied to the totem and all that is derived from it.
As long as these two questions remain unanswered, nothing is explained.
V
We have now passed in review all the principal explanations which have
been given for totemic beliefs,[612] leaving to each of them its own
individuality. But now that this examination is finished, we may state
one criticism which addresses itself to all these systems alike.
If we stick to the letter of the formulæ, it seems that these may be
arranged in two groups. Some (Frazer, Lang) deny the religious character
of totemism; in reality, that amounts to denying the facts. Others
recognize this, but think that they can explain it by deriving it from
an anterior religion out of which totemism developed. But as a matter of
fact, this distinction is only apparent: the first group is contained
within the second. Neither Frazer nor Lang have been able to maintain
their principle systematically and explain totemism as if it were not a
religion. By the very force of facts, they have been compelled to slip
ideas of a religious nature into their explanations. We have just seen
how Lang calls in the idea of sacredness, which is the cardinal idea of
all religion. Frazer, on his side, in each of the theories which he has
successively proposed, appeals openly to the idea of souls or spirits;
for according to him, totemism came from the fact that men thought they
could deposit their souls in safety in some external object, or else
that they attributed conception to a sort of spiritual fecundation of
which a spirit was the agent. Now a soul, and still more, a spirit, are
sacred things and the object of rites; so the ideas expressing them are
essentially religious and it is therefore in vain that Frazer makes
totemism a mere system of magic, for he succeeds in explaining it only
in the terms of another religion.
We have already pointed out the insufficiencies of animism and naturism;
so one may not have recourse to them, as Tylor and Jevons do, without
exposing himself to these same objections. Yet neither Frazer nor Lang
seems to dream of the possibility of another hypothesis.[613] On the
other hand, we know that totemism is tightly bound up with the most
primitive social system which we know, and in all probability, of which
we can conceive. To suppose that it has developed out of another
religion, differing from it only in degree, is to leave the data of
observation and enter into the domain of arbitrary and unverifiable
conjectures. If we wish to remain in harmony with the results we have
already obtained, it is necessary that while affirming the religious
nature of totemism, we abstain from deriving it from another different
religion. There can be no hope of assigning it non-religious ideas as
its cause. But among the representations entering into the conditions
from which it results, there may be some which directly suggest a
religious nature of themselves. These are the ones we must look for.