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.
CHAPTER VI ORIGINS OF THESE BELIEFS--_continued_ _The Notion of the Totemic Principle, or Mana, and the Idea of Force_ Since individual totemism is later than the totemism of the clan, and even seems to be derived from it, it is to this latter form that we must turn first of all. But as the analysis which we have just made of it has resolved it into a multiplicity of beliefs which may appear quite heterogeneous, before going farther, we must seek to learn what makes its unity.
I