THEORIES OF LORD AVEBURY
The opinions of Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock) are to be collected
from the sixth edition (1902) of his _Origin of Civilisation_.
First published in 1870, this was a pioneer work of great value and
importance. Perhaps the vast amount of new information and of new
speculation which has accrued since 1870 might almost make us wish that
Lord Avebury had found time to re-write his early book. But he ‘sees
no reason to change in any essential respects the opinions originally
expressed,’ and merely adds a few references to such recent researches
as those of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen. Therefore we must not look
to Lord Avebury for much new light on the origin of the Australian
‘classes’ or ‘primary divisions,’ or ‘phratries,’ and on their
relations to the totem kindreds within them.
LORD AVEBURY ON TOTEMISM
Our author (p. 217) regards Totemism as synonymous with Nature-Worship.
He speaks of ‘Nature-Worship or Totemism, in which natural objects,
trees, lakes, stones, animals, &c. are worshipped.’ I am not acquainted
(unless it be in early Peru) with any totem kin whose totem is a lake;
and totems, very often, are not ‘worshipped’ at all. Nature-Worship,
again, may exist where there is no Totemism, and Totemism where there
is no Nature-Worship, indeed where, as among the Arunta, there is,
strictly speaking, no worship, as far as we are informed.
Again (p. 351), ‘Totemism’ (as opposed to fetichism), ‘is a
deification of classes.’ But the term ‘deification’ implies the
possession, by the deifiers, of the conception of Deity; of gods, or
of a god. The Australians have totems, but, according to Lord Avebury,
have no notion of a god or gods. They ‘possess merely certain vague
ideas as to the existence of evil spirits, and a general dread of
witchcraft’ (p. 338). It is not clear, then, how they can ‘deify’
classes of things, if they have no notion of deity. ‘They do not
believe in the existence of a true Deity’ (with a capital D), says Lord
Avebury, without defining what ‘a _true_ Deity’ is: and, contrary to
the evidence of Mr. Howitt and many others, he denies that ‘morality is
in any way connected with their religion, if such it can be called’ (p.
338).
The authority cited is of 1859,[1] and is contradicted, for example,
by Mr. Howitt (1880-1890), who is not here quoted. It is clear that
Australian totems cannot result from the ‘deification of classes,’ if
the Australians have no conception of Deity, whether ‘true’ or not so
true.
Lord Avebury remarks, ‘True, myths do not occur among the lowest races’
(p. 355), whereas, with many others, myths of the origin of Totemism do
notably occur, as we have shown, among perhaps all totemistic races.
Perhaps we should read, deleting the comma, ‘true myths do not occur
among the lowest races,’ when the question as to what a ‘true myth’ is
again arises, as in the case of ‘a true Deity.’ Perhaps we must suppose
that by ‘a true myth,’ or a ‘true Deity,’ Lord Avebury implies a Deity
or a myth in accordance with his own conception of either.
LORD AVEBURY ON THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM
‘The worship of animals,’ says our author (p. 275), ‘is susceptible
of a very simple explanation, and perhaps, as I have ventured to
suggest,[2] may have originated from the practice of naming, first
individuals, and then their families, after particular animals. A
family, for instance, which was called after the bear, would come to
look on that animal first with interest, then with respect, and at
length with a sort of awe.’ If by ‘individuals,’ male individuals
are intended, this theory is open to the objection that Lord Avebury
regards descent in the female as earlier than descent in the male line
(p. 164), while ‘families’ with enduring relations to their founders,
can hardly yet have been consciously envisaged, by his theory, at so
very rudimentary a stage. Moreover, we try to show that totem names
were, originally, group names, and were not derived from the personal
names of individuals, an opinion in which Mr. Haddon concurs. Lord
Avebury’s theory is, apparently, that of Mr. Herbert Spencer, _minus_
the supposed worship of the ghost of the male ancestor and founder of
the family.
COMMUNAL MARRIAGE
Lord Avebury assumes, as a working hypothesis, that ‘the communal
marriage system ... represents the primitive and earliest social
condition of man....’ (p. 102). The objections to this hypothesis we
have stated, though, of course, historic certainty cannot be attained.
Lord Avebury, assuming ‘communal marriage’ as the Primitive stage,
holds that it ‘was gradually superseded by individual marriage founded
on capture, and that this led firstly to exogamy, and then to female
infanticide; thus reversing Mr. McLennan’s order of sequence’ (p.
108). ‘Originally no man could appropriate a woman of his own _tribe_
exclusively to himself ... without infringing _tribal_ rights, but,
on the other hand, if a man captured a woman belonging to another
_tribe_, he thereby acquired an individual and peculiar right to
her, and she became his exclusively, no one else having any claim or
property in her’ (p. 110). (I here italicise ‘tribe’ and ‘tribal.’ Lord
Avebury intends, I think, a woman of the same ‘fire-circle’ (p. 188),
not a woman of the _tribe_ understood as a large and inevitably not
primitive local aggregate of friendly groups of different totems, such
as the Arunta, Narrinyeri, Pawnees, and so forth.)
In brief, men would desire to appropriate to themselves some woman,
at first from beyond their own ‘tribe.’ This they could only do by
capture. Their individual right in her would be modified by the
disgusting license of the bridal night, which Lord Avebury regards as
‘compensation’ to the other males of the ‘tribe’ (pp. 138, 557-560).
That license I would rather explain as Mr. Crawley does: the topic does
not need to be insisted on at length in this place. Lord Avebury, at
all events, supposes that a form of capture finally came to be applied,
with results in individual marriage, to women of the same ‘tribe’ (p.
111). But if we have ‘complete and conclusive evidence that in large
portions of Australia every man had the privilege of a husband over
every woman not belonging to his own gens; sharing, of course, these
privileges with every other man belonging to the same class or _gens_
as himself’ (p. 112), I fail to see that a man gained anything by
enduring the trouble and risk of capturing a bride all to himself.
Before the capture she had been, it seems, the common spoil of the
males of her ‘tribe;’ when captured she was the common spoil of her
captor’s ‘class or _gens_’--though a ‘class’ and a _gens_ are not, I
think, identical, but much the reverse.
The rather promiscuous use of terms for different kinds of human
communities affected all the pioneer works on primitive society, and,
indeed, still perplexes our speculations. Thus Lord Avebury suggests
(p. 119) the case of four exogamous neighbouring ‘tribes,’ with kinship
traced through women. ‘After a certain time the result would be that
each tribe would consist of four septs or ‘clans’ (totem kins?),
‘representing the four original tribes, and hence we should find
communities in which each tribe is divided into clans, and a man must
always marry a woman of a different clan.’
We do not, perhaps, know any exogamous tribes in our sense of ‘tribe;’
a Dieri is not obliged to marry out of the Dieri, or an Urabunna out
of the Urabunna. By ‘tribe’ here, it seems probable that Lord Avebury
intends not a large local aggregate, but ‘a very small community,’ for
he writes ‘we have seen that, under the custom of communal marriage,
a child was regarded as related to the _tribe_, but not specially to
any particular father or mother. Such a ‘state of things, indeed,
is only possible in very small communities.’ Now a tribe is a very
large community. The members of such communities must have been poor
observers if they did not discover the relation between a child and the
woman who bore and, for several years, nursed it. But such ‘tribes’
are not tribes in the sense in which I use the word; they are rather
‘groups of the same hearth.’ Now it is easy to see how small groups
of the same hearth became exogamous, namely through sexual jealousy,
and sexual tabu, which would oblige the young males to wander away, or
to get wives by capture, practices resulting, under the tabu, in the
sacred rule of exogamy. This, however, is not Lord Avebury’s theory of
the origin of exogamy.
Lord Avebury’s theory does not become more distinct when he says, ‘In
Australia, where the same family names’ (totem names?) ‘are common
almost over the whole continent, no man may marry a woman whose family
name’ (totem name?) ‘is the same as his own’ (here the Arunta are an
exception) ‘and who belongs therefore to the same tribe’ (p. 144).
But surely, if the ‘family names’ are ‘common almost over the whole
continent,’ a woman may well have the same ‘family name’ (say Emu) as
a man, and yet need not be of his tribe. An Arunta Emu man and a Dieri
Emu woman would have the same ‘family name’ (totem name), but would
not, therefore, ‘belong to the same tribe.’ It even appears that Lord
Avebury regards ‘tribe’ and ‘clan’ and ‘family’ as synonymous terms,
for, in proof of the statement that people of the same ‘family name’
necessarily belong to the same ‘tribe,’ he quotes my late uncle, Mr.
Gideon Scott Lang, ‘No man can marry a woman of the same clan, though
the parties be no way related according to our ideas.’[3] By ‘clan’ Mr.
Lang here meant totem kin, and if Lord Avebury thinks ‘clan’ equivalent
to ‘tribe,’ a ‘tribe’ must be a totem kin, which it is not; at least if
we understand ‘tribe’ as a local aggregate of various totem kindreds.
These perplexities are caused by a vague terminology, and occurred
naturally in a book of 1870, as they do in Mr. McLennan’s own
pioneer works. But in 1903 we must try to aim at closer and more
exact distinctions and definitions, though we are still retarded and
perplexed by the lack of truly scientific nomenclature. As far as I can
perceive, Lord Avebury is apt to use ‘family,’ ‘tribe,’ ‘clan,’ and
‘_gens_’ as equivalents, while each of them, in various places, appears
to be understood as denoting a totem kindred. Thus (p. 181) ‘under a
system of female descent combined with exogamy a man must marry out
of his tribe,’ where ‘tribe’ seems to mean ‘totem kin.’ Compare p.
187: ‘another general rule, in America as elsewhere, is that no one
may marry within his own clan or family,’ where ‘clan or family’ like
‘tribe’ seems to mean ‘totem kin.’
This use of terms makes it difficult for me to feel sure that I
apprehend Lord Avebury’s theory correctly. However I take it to be
that, originally,’very small communities’ (‘tribes’) lived in ‘communal
marriage.’ Nobody knew who was the son of what father or of what
mother, though, in a very small community one would expect the senior
vigorous male or males to prevent son-and-mother, or brother-and-sister
unions, by force, out of natural jealousy. This was not done, but some
males wanted wives to themselves in private property, and got them by
capture, paying ‘compensation’ in the license of the bridal night. But
a man might fall in love with a lass in his own ‘tribe’ (‘very small
community’) and want to keep _her_ to himself (p. 111). ‘Hence would
naturally arise a desire on the part of many to extend the right of
capture, which originally had reference only to women of a different
tribe, and to apply it to all those belonging to their own.’ Is ‘tribe’
still used of ‘a very small community,’ or is it here employed in the
now more prevalent and much wider sense? If not, is the ‘capture’ now
a mere ceremonial formula? Apparently ‘tribe,’ now and here, does mean
(as elsewhere it does not) a large local aggregate, for we are next
told of ‘the division of Australian tribes into classes or gentes’
(though a ‘class’ is one thing and a _gens_, if totem kin is meant, is
another thing), and of the ‘1,000 miles of wives,’ who, by the theory,
are _not_ individual wives of individual men. Such wives, special
rights in such wives, were acquired ‘originally by right of capture.’
But, when men possessed marital privileges, each ‘over every woman not
belonging to his own _gens_; sharing, of course, these privileges with
every other man belonging to the same _gens_ or class as himself’ (p.
112), where is the individual right acquired by capture? It seems that
each man, besides his ‘1,000 miles of wives’ ‘has his own individual
wife ... by right of capture.’ Now the Urabunna have no such individual
wives, if, like Lord Avebury, we accept the statement of Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen (p. 63). But the Arunta have such individual wives.
Here it seems necessary for Lord Avebury, if he agrees with these
authors, to prove that the Arunta, unlike the Urabunna, do demonstrably
acquire their individual wives by capture. But no such demonstration
is produced. Till proof is offered I am unable to appreciate the force
of Lord Avebury’s reasoning, while like Mr. Crawley, I doubt whether
individual marriage does not exist among the Urabunna, the Piraungaru
license not being, I conceive, a true survival of communal marriage,
but a peculiar institution.
LORD AVEBURY ON RELATIONSHIPS
Analysing Mr. Morgan’s collection of names for relationships, Lord
Avebury (p. 182) says, ‘in fact the idea of relationship, like that
of marriage, was founded, not upon duty, but upon power.’ We try to
suggest that the classificatory names for relationships are, to a great
extent, expressive of status, seniority, and mutual duties and services
in the community--these duties and services themselves being gradually
established by power--the power of the seniors. Yet some terms analysed
by Lord Avebury have, linguistically, other sources. ‘Wife,’ in Cree,
is ‘part of myself,’ _dimidium animæ meæ_, these twain are one flesh.
Obviously this pretty term does not spring from ‘communal marriage.’
In Chocta, ‘husband’ is ‘he who leads me,’--again not communal, but
indicating the old-fashioned theory of wifely obedience. (‘He who kicks
me’ would suffice, in some civilised quarters.) ‘Daughter-in-law,’
in Delaware, is ‘my cook,’ indicating service; and ‘husband’ is ‘my
aid through life,’ showing the advanced Homeric, or Christian, view
of marriage (pp. 180-181). ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’ in many African,
European and Asian, Non-Aryan, Oceanic, Australian, and, really in
Aryan languages, also often in America, are ‘the easiest sounds which
a child can pronounce indicating father and mother’ (pp. 442-449). If
babes could distinguish father and mother, these relationships, one
thinks, could not have been unknown to adults. They may be, and are,
extended in usage, so as to embrace what we call uncles and aunts and
seniors of the kin, but this, I try to argue, does not necessarily
imply that fatherhood and motherhood, owing to communal marriage, were
long unknown.
The result of Lord Avebury’s analysis of Mr. Morgan’s tables of terms
is to prove progress in the discrimination of degrees of kin, though
ancient sweeping terms occasionally survive among races fairly advanced
out of savagery. ‘Relationship is, at first, regarded as a matter, not
of blood, but of tribal organisation’ (p. 208). Here I agree that words
or terms for what we call relationship often do seem to denote status,
duty, service, and intermarriageableness in the community. But I do not
think that the ties of blood are thereby proved to have been unknown.
Maternity could not be doubtful, especially where the mother nursed
her child for several years.
Lord Avebury adds, ‘the terms for what we call relationships are, among
the lower races of men, mere expressions for the results of marriage
customs, and do not comprise the idea of relationship as we understand
it’ (p. 210).
For this reason, I think, we must avoid the fallacy of arguing as if
the terms _did_ denote ‘relationship as we understand it,’ when we
wish to prove a past of communal marriage. The terms indicate, in Lord
Avebury’s words, ‘the connection of individuals _inter se_, their
duties to one another, their rights, and the descent of their property.’
This is precisely my own opinion, and for this very reason I do not
hold that these terms arose in ignorance as to who was the mother,
or even the father, of a child. All the duties and rights, as Lord
Avebury says, ‘are regulated more by the relation to the tribe than to
the family’--in our sense of ‘family.’ But this, in my view, proves
that the terms (in their present significance) are relatively late
and advanced, for the institution of the Tribe (as I understand the
word) implies the friendly combination of many totem kins, and of many
‘fire-circles,’ into the tribe, the large local aggregate. No such
combination can have been truly ‘primitive.’ But we have seen that
Lord Avebury seems to use ‘tribe’ in various places, as equivalent
to ‘family,’ ‘clan,’ _gens_, and, apparently, to ‘totem kin.’ Quite
possibly he means that the horde is prior to what I may call the
‘fire-circle,’ the ‘very small community,’ which, in places, he terms
‘the tribe,’ or so I understand him. If so, I cannot follow him here,
as I am not inclined to think that truly primitive man lived in hordes
of considerable numbers: the difficulties of supply, among other
reasons, make the idea improbable.
If I have failed to understand Lord Avebury, perhaps his somewhat
indeterminate terminology may plead my excuse.
[Footnote 1: ‘Report of the Committee of the Legislative Council on
Aborigines.’ Victoria, pp. 9, 69, 77.]
[Footnote 2: _Prehistoric Times_, p. 598.]
[Footnote 3: G. Scott Lang, _The Aborigines of Australia_, p. 10.]