Of very much less importance in the history of culture than Animism or Magic, Totemism interests us by its strangeness. To be descended from a crocodile, or blood-brother to the crow, or “the same as a kangaroo” must be, we think, the grotesque notion of a lunatic. We never meet people who believe such a thing; it has no stronghold in our own breasts. So much the more surprising that it should, nevertheless, be widely entertained. It is, indeed, far from universal among mankind, probably much less ancient than Animism and certainly far less enduring. Where it has prevailed it is sometimes quite forgotten; and in the higher stages of human development it has no influence. But every student of early institutions finds it necessary to give himself some intelligible account of its nature and sources.
“A Totem,” says Sir James Frazer, “is a class of material objects which a savage regards with superstitious respect, believing that there exists between him and every member of the class an intimate and altogether special relation.”[510]
This definition is scientifically drawn so as to include what is common to all Totems and not to include any character that is not universally connected with them. It is true of the Totems of individuals (or guardian genii), very common among the Northern Amerinds; as well as of the Sex-Totems (say Bat for men and Owl for women) which occur in Australia; and of the Totems of clans found in many parts of the world, of which the Australian may be supposed most nearly to represent the original institution. When one speaks of Totems without qualification, one means these Clan-Totems, being incomparably the most important: others probably derive from them.
“The Clan-Totem” (to quote the same source) “is reverenced by a body of men and women who call themselves by the name of the Totem, believe themselves to be of one blood, descendants of a common ancestor, and are bound together by common obligations to each other and by a common faith in the Totem.”[511] This definition is also strict: whereas it is not uncommon for writers on Totemism to include in their notion of the Totem other characters which are accidents more or less often associated with it: as that the clan believes itself descended from the Totem; though in many cases the clan traces its origin to something that was neither Totem nor man, or regards the Totem animal as descended from their own human ancestress, or tells some story of the transformation of a man into an animal, or of an animal into a man, or of an ancestor’s friendship with the Totem animal; for the institution is a copious source of explanatory myths. Again, it may be written that no member of a clan may kill or injure the Totem, or eat, or utilise it (if an animal or plant); and this is often, but not always true. If the Totem is water, or the most important food in the district—dugong, turtle, coconut, sago—abstention is impossible or intolerably inconvenient. Hence among the Kaitish a Water clansman when alone may drink; but if others are with him he may drink only when water is given him by a man of another Totem. And to eat a little of the Totem sacramentally, in order to confirm one’s identity with it, may be allowed or (rather) required. Among the Warramunga the Snake clan may kill snakes. It may even be the clan’s duty to destroy or drive away their Totem; as happens with the Mosquito clan of the Kakadus in North Australia, and with the Reptile clan amongst the Omahas. Similarly, the clan sometimes, but by no means always, imitate the Totem in character, in costume, in dances, or bear in tattoo or otherwise its badge to manifest the community of nature. They may be thought to have special magical powers to influence its fertility or to control its actions (actions of game or wind or rain), and may use these powers for the benefit of the tribe. At death the soul of a clansman may pass into, or may appear as, the Totem animal. The Totem may be the protector of its clansmen, and in some cases it seems to have become a god. These accidents of Totemism, however, are very irregularly diffused and some of them are rare.
Most important socially is the connexion between Totemism and Marriage-customs. In the great majority of cases, men and women of the same Totem may not intermarry; the Totem clans are said to be exogamous; but there are exceptions even to this rule. In many parts of the world—America, Africa, India, Indonesia, as well as Australia—tribes are divided into non-intermarrying or exogamous classes (moieties or phratries); sometimes the classes are subdivided, and even the sub-classes again (in parts of Australia), so that in all the exogamous classes are eight; and the rules concerning these classes are such as to prevent the marriage of brothers and sisters, parents and children and first cousins. The Totem clans are usually distributed amongst the Marriage-classes; being probably the older institution (whether or not originally exogamous), they may be said to have been subordinated by the formation of the classes; and in the matter of marriage they follow the class rules. But the Arunta with some neighbouring tribes of Central Australia, though divided into eight exogamous classes, have not subordinated the Totem clans; which, accordingly, are not exogamous. If Exogamy was originally the vital utility of Totemism, the institution is undermined by the Marriage-classes, whether the clans are subordinated to the classes and merely repeat their rules, or are not subordinated and lose their Exogamy. This may explain why the classes prevail more widely than Totems, and may be found where Totemism seems to have become extinct.
§ 2. Of the Origin of Totemism
It has already been said that Totemism does not prevail universally amongst mankind. There is very little evidence of its having existed amongst the ancestors of the Indo-European peoples; and it seems to be unknown to many of the most primitive of surviving tribes—the Boschmans, Veddas, Puranas (Borneo), Andamanese, Yaghans (Tierra del Fuego) and Californian Indians. It is not, therefore, something founded in human nature itself, but must have originated (whether in one or in several places) under particular conditions.
There is some probability that the earliest Totems were animals. Wherever Totems are found most of them are animals. A list of Totems recognised in North Australia, given by Spencer and Gillen,[512] comprises 202 altogether: Animals 164,[513] Plants 22, Inanimate 16. The animals (except insects) and plants are nearly all edible. To hunters animals must have been of all things the most interesting; next, certain plants, especially to women. Animals lend the greatest plausibility to any notion of blood-relationship. The inanimate Totems include some which it is very desirable to control by Magic, such as Water, Wind, Fire, Sun, Moon and the Boomerang.
Generally, no doubt, Totemism is ancient; but in some cases the existing Totems must be recent, as among the Bahima of Uganda.[514] Nearly all their Totems are different coloured cows, or some part of a cow, and must have been adopted since the advance to pastoral life—at a stage of culture, therefore, much above the Australian. “Split Totems,” arising on the division of a clan by dividing its Totem (as the Omahas comprised Buffalo-heads, Buffalo-tails, etc.[515]), were probably formed by deliberate agreement, and had the incidental advantage that a clansman’s food-taboo did not extend to the whole buffalo, the staple food of the tribe, but only to the head or tail.
Amongst the Australian aborigines, the group of beliefs and practices included in, or connected with, Totemism are of such intense and widespread social importance, that it must have prevailed amongst them for many generations. The northern Amerinds are so much in advance of the Australians in social organisation, culture and mentality, that if their Totemism has descended to them from a time when they lived at the Australian level, its history must go back not merely for many generations but for thousands of years. And if Egyptian gods, such as Hathor and Anubis, were formerly Totems, the retrospect becomes still longer. I am not aware of any direct evidence of the prehistoric existence of Totemism, such as we have, in some ancient burials, of the existence of Animism; but some palÆolithic carvings or paintings may have had totemic significance.
It follows that any account of the origin of Totemism can only be hypothetical. Were this all, indeed, it would be on the same foot with Magic and Animism; but it is not all. That Magic should arise from belief in mysterious forces and from confusing coincidence with causation, or that Animism should result from a confusion between dreams and objective experience (with the help of Magic-ideas) is highly probable; because such errors are active to this day, and they seem to spring up in primitive minds by psychological necessity; though it may not be intrinsically necessary that the errors should be perpetuated and systematised as, in general, they have been. But the case of Totemism is different; for we do not see—at least, no one has yet shown—any sort of necessity why in certain cases clans should have borne the names of certain animals: and this is the root of the whole matter. Indeed, this practice, not being universal, cannot be necessary; and it may have had several different origins. Any relevant hypothesis, therefore, can claim no more than to agree with the known facts better than rival hypotheses; we cannot expect to deduce it from laws of human nature; whilst still another hypothesis just as good may any day be put forward by some speculative genius; and the doubt must always remain whether some important facts of Totemism have not been lost which, could they be recovered, would prove all our guesses to have been made in vain.
In spite of these discouraging considerations, several hypotheses have been proposed: this also is for us a sort of psychological necessity. They may be grouped into two classes, according as they assume the totemic names to have been originally names of individuals or of whole clans. All seem to assume that one explanation must hold good for all the cases.
Of hypotheses that trace totemic names to individuals there is, first, Spencer’s; namely, that the name of an animal or plant was first given to an individual, and then inherited by his family; who after a time forgot his personality, remembered only their descent from such a name, and assumed that their ancestor must have been an animal or plant such as still bore that name. Secondly, there is the explanation offered by Prof. Franz Boas, that the first Totems were guardian spirits of individuals, and that these became Clan-Totems of their descendants. For this account it may be said that among the Northern Amerinds the belief in guardian spirits of individuals (generally some animal) is universally diffused, and perhaps of greater importance than the Clan-Totems, seeing that these are subordinate to the Marriage-classes: moreover, the Totems are rarely, if ever, believed to have been ancestors. On the other hand, in Australia, guardian spirits of individuals are rare, whilst Totemism is universal. So that, if we suppose only one origin of the institution, it is more reasonable to view the guardian spirit as derived from the Clan-Totem. In Borneo we find the guardian spirit with some traits similar to the American, but much less generally, whilst there is now no plainly marked Totemism: but there are several beliefs akin to those of Totemism which may be marks of its former existence; and, if so, the guardian spirit may also be one of its relics.[516] Thirdly, Frazer’s hypothesis, that Totems originated in the fancies of pregnant women, who, ignorant of physiological causes, supposed that that which stirred within them must be some animal or plant that had entered them; so that the child when born could be no other than that animal or plant.
Of hypotheses which regard totemic names as from the first names of groups we have, first, Max MÜller’s, that they originated with clan marks.[517] But in Australia clan marks are not often to be found. Secondly, Professor F.B. Jevons’, that the Totem was originally some animal adopted by the tribe as a friendly natural power, aiding them in the struggle for existence.[518] But, if so, this character seems to have been lost, or greatly attenuated in Australia, and in America belongs to the guardian spirit rather than to the Totem. Thirdly, Dr. Haddon’s, that the Totem name was derived by a group from the animal or plant which was its principal food; but cases to support this suggestion are very few. Fourthly, Andrew Lang’s, that group names were obtained in some way—perhaps imposed upon each group by others, and accepted; and that names of animals or plants having been obtained in any way, and the origin forgotten, just such beliefs concerning the relation of the group to its namesake would be likely to arise, as in fact we find amongst Totemists.[519]
For want of space to discuss all these doctrines I shall deal chiefly with those of Frazer and Lang.
§ 3. The Conceptional Hypothesis
Sir J. G. Frazer, after very candidly relinquishing two early suggestions—by no means fanciful—concerning the origin of Totemism, as unsupported by sufficient evidence, has put forward a third—“conceptional Totemism”—which occurred to him upon the discovery by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen of the doctrine of totemic descent prevalent amongst the Arunta and allied tribes. These tribes are said not to be aware of the connexion between sexual intercourse and pregnancy. They say that a child is the result of the entry into a woman of the spirit of some pre-existing tribesman of this or that Totem; which, therefore, will also be the child’s. What Totem it is depends upon the place where the woman first becomes aware of quickening; for there are certain places known to the natives where the people of such or such a Totem “went into the ground” [perhaps were buried]; and in passing such a place any woman is liable to be impregnated by one of the discarnate spirits; who are always on the look-out for an opportunity to re-enter the mortal state. This is the real cause of pregnancy, for which marriage is merely a preparation.[520] A young woman who does not desire the dignity of a matron, when passing such haunted ground, runs crouching by, and cries out that she is an old woman; for facility in being deceived is a saving grace of spirits. In modified forms this doctrine of “no paternity and re-incarnation” is professed by tribes throughout the centre and north of the continent, in Queensland and in parts of West Australia.[521]
The Arunta doctrine of conception by animal or plant spirits cannot, however, be the origin of Totemism; because, as Sir James Frazer points out, the impregnating spirits are already totemic. One must, therefore, suppose (he says) an earlier state of things, in which a woman, ignorant of the true causes of childbirth, imagined at the first symptoms of pregnancy (by which the quickening seems to be meant) that she had been entered by some object, or by the spirit of some object, which had been engaging her attention at the time, or which she may have been eating—a wallaby, emu, plum or grass-seed—and later believed that the child she bare must be, or be an incarnation of, that object or spirit, and in fact nothing else than a wallaby, emu, plum or grass-seed with the appearance of a human being. If other women had similar experiences in connexion with other animals or plants, and if the descendants of their children remembered the stories, and considered themselves to be wallabies, grass-seed and so forth, the hypothesis would fully explain that identification of groups of men with groups of things which is characteristic of Totemism; and the other characters naturally follow. Such is the conceptional theory of Totemism, deriving that institution from “the sick fancies of pregnant women.”[522]
Circumstances, which Sir James Frazer regards as very similar to those which he imagined as having prevailed at some former time amongst the Arunta, have been discovered by Dr. Rivers at Mota and Motlar in the Banks Islands. There many people are “by the custom of the island” not permitted to eat certain animals or fruits or even to touch certain trees; because they are believed to be those animals or plants—their mothers having suffered some influence from such animals or plants at conception or at some subsequent period of pregnancy. “The course of events is usually as follows: a woman, sitting down in her garden, or in the bush, or on the shore, finds an animal or fruit in her loin-cloth. She takes it up and carries it to the village, where she asks the meaning of the appearance. The people say that she will give birth to a child who will have the characters of this animal, or even (it appeared) would be himself or herself that animal.”[523] She takes it to its proper home, tries to keep it, and feeds it; but after a time it will disappear, and is then believed to have entered into her. There is no belief in physical impregnation by the animal, nor of its invading the woman as a physical object; such an animal seems to be considered as “more or less supernatural, a spirit-animal, from the beginning.” “The belief is not accompanied by any ignorance of the physical rÔle of the human father.” Apparently the prohibition against eating animals or plants thus connected with oneself rests on the idea that it would amount to eating oneself—a sort of cannibalism. One partakes of its physical and mental characters. But the resemblance to, and the taboo on eating, a certain animal are individual matters; there is no belief in their being passed on to one’s descendants. In this alone the belief at Mota falls short of Totemism. “Yet it occurs in a people whose social system has no totemic features at the present time, whatever it may have had in the past.”[524] Possibly former Totem-clans have been merged in secret societies, but there is no clear evidence of it. In Melanesia, Totemism occurs in Fiji, Shortland Islands, Bismarck Archipelago (probably), Reef Islands, Santa Cruz, Vanikolo and in some regions of the Solomon Islands, but not in the Banks Islands nor in the Torres Islands to the south.
This hypothesis that Totemism is derived from the fancies of women concerning the causes of their own pregnancy suggests several adverse considerations. In the first place, it is to me incredible that the Arunta are really ignorant of paternity; young women and children perhaps may be, but not the seniors. My reasons for thinking so are set out at length in the J.R.A.I., 1819 (p. 146), namely, that the facts of childbirth are too interesting to be overlooked or misconstrued, and are well within the grasp of savage understanding; that those who think the Arunta capable of such stupidity have attended too exclusively to particular incidents of pregnancy, especially the quickening, and have not considered that there is a definite series of closely connected incidents; that there is testimony, not to be lightly put aside, that the old men know the truth in the case of human beings, and that knowledge of the parallel phenomena amongst animals is shared even by the Arunta children; that it is possible for knowledge to be repressed by dogma without being extinguished; that this is an old man’s dogma, and that we must not assume that in Australia, any more than in Europe, what people are accustomed to say is good evidence of what they really believe;[525] that other tribes at the same level of culture, in South-East Australia, are so convinced of the importance of paternity that they say the child proceeds entirely from the father; that those who deny paternity show by their customs and myths that they are secretly aware of it; and, finally, that in some cases they have clear motives for maintaining the dogma and suppressing the truth.
Secondly, the observations of Dr. Rivers in the Banks Islands give not the slightest support to the conceptional hypothesis. For (a) the Banks Islands belief “is not accompanied by any ignorance of the physical rÔle of the human father.” (b) The belief is that the child born to a woman who has been visited by a plant or animal is in some way “influenced” by the experience; not, as with the Arunta, that it is entirely due to it (except for some “preparation” by the father). (c) Before the Banks Islands belief can give rise to Totemism there must be a belief in the continuous inheritance of the plant or animal influence; and not only is this absent, but there is a strong tendency to prevent it. A woman having been influenced by an eel, her child is an eel; but if that child be a girl, there is no further transmission of eel-like qualities; the girl, on becoming pregnant, may be influenced by a yam, and then her child will be a yam. This hinders the formation of a group of human beings mysteriously allied to an animal or plant, such as Totemism implies. But (d) the conceptional hypothesis refers the origin of Totemism to the ignorant imaginings of women themselves, who think they have been entered by this or that; whereas in the Banks Islands a woman’s belief in the influence of an animal or plant upon her offspring is not prompted by her own fancy, but by a popular superstition. For when she carries the thing found in her loin-cloth to the village, “the people say” she will give birth to a child who will have the qualities of, or even will be that thing; and a child afterwards born may not eat or touch that thing “by the custom of the country.” Had the Arunta, then, of pre-totemic days such a superstition and custom for the guidance of mothers? If so, the history of that superstition and custom must be more obscure than Totemism itself. But in the Banks Islands their origin may admit of a wide solution; for although it is said that no manifest traces of Totemism are to be found there now; yet, seeing that the Australians, Papuans, Polynesians and the Melanesians to the north all have Totemism or plain vestiges of it, the improbability that Melanesians in the Banks Islands never had it is very great; and it is reasonable to suppose that the superstition concerning the influence of animals or plants upon pregnant women, and the taboo upon the eating of such an animal or plant by the offspring, represent not a possible origin of Totemism, but a survival of it.
These considerations raise a further question as to the employment of the Comparative Method. Natives of the Banks Islands are far in advance of the Arunta in all the arts of life, as well as in relation to Totemism which they seem to have outlived. Is it admissible to take some trait of their life as an example of what may have existed amongst the Arunta at a stage of culture which is generally assumed to have been inferior even to the present? When the antecedents of an institution have been lost amongst any given people, and we set out to supply them from parallel cases amongst other peoples, must we not require the same relative order of development? If a social phenomenon is found in the Banks Islands, its possibility is proved; but strictly it was possible only where it occurred: elsewhere we can expect only something similar, according to the similarity of other relevant circumstances. Comparing the Banks Islands and their people with Central Australia and its people, one discovers hardly anything common to them. And Arunta tradition (whatever worth) shows no sign of anything like the southern Melanesian culture: the Alcheringa ancestors are represented as having been already Totemists. To assume, however, that the former condition of the Arunta was even lower than the present, may not be justifiable: social degeneration is not uncommon. There would be something to guide our judgment if we knew how recently the desiccation of their country approached its present severity. But, in any case, can we suppose it to have been at all like the Melanesian?
§ 4. Andrew Lang’s Hypothesis
In some very remote age—to summarise Lang’s statement—at a level of culture inferior to that of existing Australians, distinctive names were acquired by small groups of mankind. Since a group needs names for other groups more than for itself (for itself it consists of “men” as contrasted with other kinds of animals), names may at first have been bestowed upon each group by some other, or others, in its neighbourhood—probably names of animals or plants—and accepted by each; for no opprobrium attaches to such names. In Social Origins Lang offers evidence concerning names (even depreciatory and mocking names) having been conferred in this way and accepted; but in The Secret of the Totem,[526] he says that how groups got their names is not essential to his theory. They may have been given, or adopted, on account of a group’s staple food (Haddon); or because of some animal or plant characteristic of a group’s territory; or for some fancied resemblance of its members to some animal. The important point is that, from the first, they were names of groups—not derived from the names of individuals. At the early period assumed for these events there was not a long enough memory of individuals to make their names traditionary; and, indeed, the reckoning of descent in the female line (which Lang regards as universally the most ancient custom) must have prevented the inheritance of the names of male ancestors.
Whatever may have occasioned the first fixing of names, with the flight of time the circumstances were forgotten; and groups of men and women found themselves with names—the names of animals or plants—without knowing why. The bearing of a name in common with an animal or plant inevitably suggested to the savage a mysterious connexion with the species—perhaps that they had the same sort of soul. It gave rise to an explanatory myth, and the analogy of family relationship suggested a blood-bond: the animal or plant must be one’s ancestor, brother, or primal ancestral form. From this idea follows a regard for it, respect, reverence: it must not be killed, or eaten, or used in any way; it may be protected, may be helpful; it is a Totem.
The connexion of Totemism with Exogamy (the custom of marrying outside the group or kin) Lang conceives of in this way. Adopting a suggestion of Darwin’s,[527] and the scheme of his cousin, J.J. Atkinson in Primal Law, that the primary human group consisted of a powerful male with one or more wives and their children, he argues that the jealousy of the head of this family imposed the rule—“No male to touch the females in my camp.” The sons, therefore, as they grew up, were driven out, and must find wives elsewhere. This was the beginning of Exogamy, and it may have preceded the rise of Totemism; but Totemism, once established, strengthened the custom of Exogamy by mysterious sanctions. As the Totem might not be eaten, or in any way used or touched, so a woman of the same Totem could not be married; and that not only within their immediate family-group, but not even by a male of any group having the same Totem.
In maintaining this hypothesis against those who would derive Totems from the names and traditions of individuals, Lang seems to me to lay too much stress upon the difficulty of establishing a tradition of descent amongst people who trace descent (as he would say) “on the spindle side.” If the tradition began from a woman (as it might do), there is no difficulty; and even if it began from a man, it is conceivable that his women-folk should adopt it. Moreover, in the opinion of both Westermarck and Frazer, it has not been shown that the reckoning of descent in the female line is original and universal. Still, the further we push back the origin of Totemism the more difficult it is to understand the growth of a tradition of the descent and inheritance of the name and personal qualities of an individual; and this difficulty is avoided by an hypothesis which derives Totemism from the animal- or plant-names of groups of men and women. That such names were conferred upon each group by others in the neighbourhood is a reasonable conjecture;[528] being the earliest names of groups they cannot be called nicknames; and the names of animals or plants need in no way have been offensive. It is still more reasonable to urge that, having been adopted by a group, the circumstances of their acquisition would, in a few generations, be forgotten, and that they would then become the ground of myths and mysterious totemic beliefs. But does any one think that it will now ever be possible to decide with confidence where, when, how or why the names were given at first? I do not.
As to the origin of Exogamy, I cannot believe that the primitive human groups were such as Lang described; and, if not, some other origin of that custom must be sought.
§ 5. Totemism and Marriage
Generally men and women of the same Totem cannot marry. Tribes, such as the Arunta, that do not observe this rule are so few that it is reasonable to consider them aberrant; so that in each case the non-coincidence of Totemism and Exogamy is a distinct problem.
Nevertheless, there is reason to think that these institutions have not the same origin. For several primitive tribes, some of them inferior in culture to the average Australian, have customs of Exogamy, or (at least) forbidding marriage between individuals of some certain description, who have not, and are not known ever to have recognised Totemism. Many tribes, again, who by their ethnological position may be supposed once to have entertained Totemism, have abandoned it, but still maintain Exogamy by means of Marriage-classes (phratries) or otherwise. Further, many nations of advanced culture cannot be shown ever to have been totemists, but have always (as far back as can be traced) enforced Exogamy so far as to prohibit marriage within certain degrees of kindred. And that the connexion between Totemism and Exogamy is not original but acquired, is indicated by the consideration that the most obvious tendency of Totemism would be to favour Endogamy (the practice of not marrying outside certain limits), on the obvious principle that as an animal kangaroo mates with an animal kangaroo, so a human kangaroo should marry a human kangaroo. This is so obvious that the opposite rule that a human kangaroo must not marry another one, but (zoological paradox!) only an emu or a witchety-grub, seems perverse, and only to be explained by the influence of some superstition or incidental custom. According to Arunta tradition, their ancestors in the Alcheringa were endogamous.
Whether Exogamy originated in the days of the hunting-pack—which is so far probable that the Boschmans observed it—or during the reconstitution of society after the breaking up of the packs, or even later, or in some regions at one period, in others at another, is, I fear, beyond our power of verifiable guessing. The best hypothesis as to the grounds of the custom is Westermarck’s, namely, that an instinct of mutual avoidance grew up between near kin. This requires that at the time of its origination promiscuity of sexual relations should not have prevailed in the human stock, since that would have destroyed the conditions necessary to the rise of such an instinct. If promiscuity was ever widely practised, it must have been after the breaking up of the hunting-packs. That at some stage of human life, and apparently with some Australian tribes not a remote one, promiscuity was established, has been argued (on the ground of some Australian customs) with much plausibility; but in his History of Human Marriage,[529] Westermarck has examined this opinion very carefully, and concludes that it is not tenable. His reasoning seems to me good throughout; and, having nothing important to add to it, I refer the reader to his work.
Whether amongst anthropoids any instinctive avoidance prevails, preventing what we conceive of as incest, nobody knows. With their solitary families, the growth of such a disposition may be more difficult than amongst gregarious animals (such as our ancestors had become long before they could be called “human”), who find other families at hand to intermarry with; though the primitive human bands probably were not large. Savages now at the lowest level, such as the Veddas or Yaghans, rarely form parties of more than thirty or forty. The Boschmans, before their tribal habits were destroyed in the early years of last century, though sometimes assembling in large numbers for the great hunts by means of stockade traps, yet were usually scattered in groups of a few families. It is not likely that their remote forefathers consorted in larger numbers: eight or ten families may have been enough to co-operate in hunting, or in mutual defence. Within each family constituting such a band the tendency to Exogamy may first have manifested itself.
Westermarck’s hypothesis concerning Exogamy was first published in the History of Human Marriage,[530] and has been re-stated in The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas.[531] In the former work he fully discusses the evidence as to the effects of the inter-breeding of near kin, and concludes that it is probably injurious. The evidence is conflicting, but his conclusion seems to me justifiable. And he rightly points out that if, amongst civilised nations, the mischief of inbreeding is not always manifest, it was probably much greater amongst primitive savages: (1) because the blood of the stock was purer; for in modern Europe (e.g.) every marriage brings together many different strains. (2) Because communities were then much smaller; so that under endogamous conditions whatever vice may beset inbreeding would, generation after generation, be perpetuated and exaggerated without relief. It may be added that with Endogamy the young folk are likely to begin to breed earlier—perhaps by two or three years—than they would with Exogamy; and there is no doubt that the marriage of immature individuals is highly injurious to the race.
But if inbreeding was injurious, Natural Selection favoured any family or band that practised Exogamy. That any should have done so on rational grounds, to avoid the observed evil effects of inbreeding, cannot be supposed. The motive must have been blind to the consequences, and may have taken the form of coldness toward those of opposite sex with whom one had grown up from infancy, or of aversion to the idea of marrying them. Such dispositions Natural Selection preserved, and they have descended to ourselves; for such was the beginning of the abhorrence of incest.
I conjecture that this feeling first showed itself within the family, and led the families of a band to exchange their daughters; and that later it extended to all members of the same band, and that wives were then sought from other bands. Probably wives were obtained sometimes by capture or enticement, sometimes by exchange so far as amicable relations with neighbours prevailed: for the evidence is far from showing that “marriage by capture” was ever a general custom; whilst our knowledge of the Australians and Boschmans shows that neighbouring bands of savages are not always hostile.
Such a state of things may have existed for ages before the rise of Totemism, and amongst races that never adopted Totemism. When names of animals were first given to, or adopted by, various groups, Totemism somewhere (perhaps in several places) resulted, as a belief in the magical or spiritual connexion between men and animals of the same name. But the bands that adopted Totemism were already exogamous, having an aversion to marriage with others of the same band; and the practice of Exogamy was thus brought under the mysterious sanction of totemic ideas. It would then be further extended to bar marriage with those of the same Totem in other groups.
Totemic sanctions may have been useful in confirming the Exogamy of some groups, but all superstitious aids to right conduct are liable to perverse issues, and at best they are second best. Totemism prevents consanguineous marriages, but also prevents marriage with thousands of people where no blood-relationship is traceable. If any races were able to perceive that the interest of Exogamy was the prevention of marriage between near kin, and then to keep account of kinship and govern themselves accordingly, they chose the better part.
Some exceptions to the rule that Totem-clans are exogamous may, perhaps, be explained by supposing that certain bands had not adopted Exogamy when they became totemists—may not this have happened amongst the Arunta?—and that they have since learnt Exogamy under other conditions from neighbouring people, or by conquest. Amongst the other possible conditions there are the remarkable Marriage-classes, or phratries that prevail in Australia, North America, and less regularly in other parts of the world. These Marriage-classes are considered by some ethnologists to be of deliberate institution—a reform for the regulation of Exogamy; and Spencer and Gillen, who knew the Australians so intimately, thought such a law—though its intricacy astonishes most Europeans and stumbles many—was not beyond their power of excogitation. Upon that point it would be absurd of me to have any opinion. But to suppose deliberate intention is contrary to the usual method of interpreting savage institutions: a savage language is a system of customs much more intricate and refined than the Marriage-classes, and not generally believed to have originated with the deliberate enactment of rules of grammar. I conjecture that those classes resulted at first from a grouping of exogamous Totem-clans which grew up by custom, and that the only deliberate work consisted in some minor adjustments of clan-relations. Marriage of cousins is prevented in Central and North Australia by the recognition of eight sub-classes; but the same result is obtained in other tribes by a custom which merely forbids it. Exogamous classes having been established in some tribes, may have been imitated in others.
One result of the classificatory marriage system, however it grew up, is the extended use of names of kinship to denote all individuals of the same or corresponding generation—“father” for all men who might by custom have married your mother; “brother” and “sister” for all men and women descended from those whom your father or mother might have married; “husband” or “wife” for any man or woman whom, according to custom, you might have married. When further progress has been made in culture, distinctive names are used to express blood-relationship and class-relationship. It may be worth considering whether, in Australia, some of the customs which have been supposed to bear witness to an original state of promiscuity are not really results of the classificatory system of naming relationship: marital rights having been claimed on the ground of the names “husband” and “wife” as used in that system.
The relationship of Clansman to Totem may be conceived of as one of friendliness, protection, consanguinity, or even identity; and this last I take to be the case in the age when Totemism is most alive and powerful. But in what sense can a man be the same as an emu? He may be of the same name; but by itself that would be nothing. It is not the name, but the identity which the name has come to signify that must be considered. Some light may be shed upon the problem by the saying of a native to Spencer and Gillen, pointing to a photograph of himself: “That one is just the same as me; so is a kangaroo.” The photograph might be “the same” as himself in the sense of resemblance; but in that sense the kangaroo is not the same. Some, indeed, who have speculated on the savage mind suppose that it is not only incapable of reasoning, but even of perceiving the facts before it, when under the influence of some strong belief; and I admit that this is sometimes true. But all a savage’s actions in relation to his Totem show that he is aware of the difference: not least his efforts on certain occasions to help his imagination to establish identity by disguising himself and by imitating the actions of this strange other self, and by eating a little of it to insure physical identity at least to that extent. He also seeks to multiply it that others may eat their ration, and for any theory of his identity with the Totem, this must be a puzzle.
But a photograph may be the same as oneself in another sense than mere superficial resemblance: it may, like a shadow or reflection, be (or contain) a man’s soul, or part of it. And similarly a kangaroo or other Totem may be conceived to be the same as a man, that is, as having the same soul. Perhaps this is as near as we can get to the Australian’s meaning in the above-quoted confession of faith. It is reconcilable with the ceremonial eating of some part of the Totem; for that will convey spiritual as well as physical properties: and to reconcile it with the multiplication of the Totem that others may eat, I point to the biological necessity that each clan’s Totem should be food for the other tribesmen. Where all edible animals and plants are Totems, how else can they subsist? But we have several times seen that biological necessity will place limits to a belief, and that excuses can be found for necessary actions which are in conflict with a belief. That the clansmen give their own Totem to the tribe (since they cannot defend it) is an ingenious compromise.
It is reported that amongst the Euahlayi tribe occur personal Totems (or guardians, rare in Australia) called Yunbeai, possessed chiefly by wizards. A man may eat his hereditary Totem, but not his Yunbeai; which in this privilege seems to have supplanted the Totem. His spirit is in the Yunbeai, and its spirit is in him.[532] They have, then, the same soul; and, although this belief is not strictly Totemism, it is probably derived from it. A clansman of the Yuin tribe (West Australia) had as his Totem the Black Duck, which warned him against enemies; and he related that once, whilst he slept, a Lace-Lizard man sent his Totem, which went down his throat and almost ate his Black Duck residing in his breast; so that he nearly died.[533] Were not his Black Duck and his soul the same?
This hypothesis agrees very well with a belief that one’s body and soul descend from the same ancestor as the Totem’s; and that at death one goes to, or becomes, the Totem; and excuses the fiction that the quickening of a pregnant woman may be caused by the entry into her of the spirit of some totem-plant or animal.
On the Gold Coast and elsewhere in West Africa, a man has more than one soul, it may be as many as four; and one of them dwells with some animal in the bush: thence called his “bush-soul.” Sir James Frazer’s first hypothesis concerning Totemism was that it may have been derived from the notion of an external soul which may be deposited in anything (as thus in an animal in the bush) for safety. He now thinks the connexion of the “bush-soul” with Totemism uncertain.[534] If there has been any connexion, may it not be that the “bush-soul” is derived from Totemism, and that every Totem is a sort of “bush-soul”—that is, it has a soul which is the same (at least, of the same kind) as the clansman’s?
§ 7. Totemism and Magic
The identity of a man with his name, as usually assumed by savages, whether his personal or his totemic name, is not itself a magical belief, but an inevitable result of mental association at a low level of intelligence: perhaps earlier than any notions that can properly be called magical. The name of a man, always thought of along with his other properties, seems to be as much one of them as a scar on his neck or any peculiar trait of visage or length of limb. This must be as old as naming. But such a complication of the name with other marks having been formed, it becomes the ground of magic beliefs and practices. To mention the name of a man or spirit insures his presence and participation in any rite, either acting or suffering; or where writing is known, his name on a piece of paper is as good as his nail-parings. The use of the name is not a mere animistic summons (which might be disobeyed), but an immediate instatement of the given individual. Such magic may enter into totemic observances.
The descent of the clan from the Totem-animal, or of the animal from a forefather of the clan, or of both from a tertium quid, involves metamorphosis; and this, again, is not itself a magic idea; for real metamorphoses are common in the life of birds, amphibia, insects, and it would be unreasonable to expect savages to perceive clearly that these are not parallel cases. There is a difference, however, between transformations that may be observed, such as that of a chrysalis into a butterfly, and those that have never been observed, but are merely imagined and asserted. The latter are more mysterious, and mystery is one character of magic. For example, the Witchety-Grub clan among the Arunta have as their mate a bird, the chantunga, which they will not eat because, they say, of old some full-grown witchety-grubs were transformed into these birds.[535] This change has a magical character, though no magical agency is assigned. But if any attempt were made to explain how the great change took place, recourse might be had to powers of magic. Even when agency is assigned, it is not always magical. In the earliest Alcheringa the two Ungambikula (“out of nothing”) saw in groups by the shore of the salt water a number of inapertwa, rudimentary men, mere roundish masses, without organs or means of feeding, and these they cut out into men with stone knives, therefore not by magic.[536] But, again, a tribe on the Darling River (Wathi-wathi) have traditions concerning Bookoomuri who lived long ago, excelled in Magic, and transformed themselves into animals; and here the magical power is asserted, though the manner of its operation is indefinite. But the Bear clan of the Tshimshians (British Columbia) explain their position by the story that once upon a time an Indian, whilst hunting, met a bear, which took him to its home, where he stayed two years. On returning to his village he looked like a bear; but, having been rubbed with medical herbs, recovered human shape.[537] And here the magic is as explicit as in any recipe for a were-wolf, or that fallacious ointment with which Lucius achieved his memorable transformation.
Nor, further, has the prohibition to slay, injure or eat the Totem in the first place any magical significance; for it merely puts the Totem in the position of a clansman. But the situation, being strange and mysterious, acquires a magical atmosphere; and the enforcement of the taboo by penalties is unmistakably magical. The Untmajera (North Central Australia) have a legend of a Beetle-Grub man of former times who ate beetle-grubs, and thereupon broke out in sores, wasted away and died. Or one’s hair may turn grey; or, according to the Samoan belief (not strictly totemistic), the forbidden food may grow inside one into the whole animal or plant to the destruction of its host. Such beliefs, resting on the analogy of poisons and their physiological consequences, are magical imaginations: the taboo has the same character as a conditional curse.
Similarly, the prohibition of marriage within the Totem-clan, if it originated (as I have supposed) with the fusion of Totemism and Exogamy in the customs of various early groups of men and women, is not based on Magic; but the penalties for breaking the taboo are magical. Thus amongst the Euahlayi and their neighbours men and women of the Iguana clan cannot intermarry, though coming from different parts of the country and without any traceable consanguinity; because, if they did, their children, inasmuch as their ancestors on both sides were the same animal, would “throw back” to the form or attributes of the iguana.[538] A grotesque anticipation of scientific ideas.
But the most remarkable connexion between Totemism and Magic occurs in those rites by which clansmen in several parts of the world, but especially in Australia, believe themselves able to influence their Totems: when these are edible, to multiply them; when noxious, to drive away or destroy them; or, as with the wind and rain, to control them for the general good. Spencer and Gillen[539] give astonishing descriptions of the rites of multiplication (or Intichiuma), carefully prepared and regulated, including disguisings of clansmen in the likeness of the Totems, drawings of the Totems on the ground, dances, incantations and ceremonies, sometimes representing traditional history—by which the tribesmen discharge this function of theirs. They rely chiefly on mimetic (exemplary) Magic which, by dramatising some natural process, brings it into real operation. In identifying themselves with the Totem, they exert their imaginations to the utmost, and to this end may eat a little of the Totem, at other times forbidden. This assumption that by eating a little of any animal, plant or human being, you become one with it, or acquire its qualities, or, further, that two men by eating together of the same food become allied (which is in a manner materially true, but absurdly interpreted), is another of those notions simpler than, and antecedent to, Magic, which provide a base for magical operations.[540] These solemnities last for months, and are carried out with conscientious diligence and earnestness: the infatuation is profound and universal. Here, as at most of the higher stages of culture, we find the most intense emotions of which men are capable excited by participation in communal imaginative exercises that have directly, in relation to their expectations, absolutely no result. Indeed, pre-occupation with vain employments tends to exclude all ideas that might be useful, that might lead (e.g.) to the increasing of food by the cultivation of plants or domestication of animals. Sir James Frazer has pointed out that a passage of the rites of the Grass-seed clan, in which grass-seeds are scattered about upon the ground, might have led to cultivation: but the mental state of the clan is unfavourable to cool observation. As for animals, it is some excuse for the backwardness of Australian culture that the Marsupialia do not comprise a single species that would repay domestication. Indirectly and undesignedly these performances have very useful consequences: they annually restore the unity of the tribe assembled from all parts for the great occasion; promote mutual good-will and a spirit of co-operation, for which they afford the chief opportunity; maintain the social organisation and the tradition of customs by increasing the influence of the Headmen, who have a leading part in everything that happens, and on whose authority all order and discipline depend; interrupt the monotony of savage life with variety of interests; stimulate ingenuity, and fill up the time, that might else be wasted in idleness or quarrelling, with artistic and dramatic recreation.
Upon these rites for the multiplication and control of the Totems, Sir James Frazer based his second hypothesis concerning the origin of Totemism, namely, that it was a system of co-operation amongst sections of a savage tribe for the magical supply of food, etc.: the Emu clan multiplying emus, the Kangaroo clan kangaroos, the Witchety-Grub clan witchety-grubs, and so forth.[541] But he afterwards reflected that such a design was beyond the conception of savages. And, no doubt, as a plan thought out and deliberately adopted as a whole, most ethnologists would consider it above the capacity of Australian aborigines. But if so—though not more difficult than the invention of the Classificatory Marriage System—it shows what complex arrangements, simulating design, may come into existence by the growth of custom; for the clans certainly do co-operate in the magical supply of food.
Whatever may have been the origin of Totemism the institution seems to have been utilised by some tribes in an ambitious attempt to control all nature by grouping (on very obscure principles, if on any) various classes of phenomena with the Totems, so that one clan or another is responsible for everything. Short of this, it is plainly necessary to control the wind, rain, hail and lightning. The control of an animal Totem is not always benevolent toward the animals themselves. In the Kakadu tribe it is the duty of the Mosquito clan to save the rest from mosquitoes; they make imitation mosquitoes, dance and sing, and imagine they are killing them.[542] In North America similar beliefs and practices have been found both for encouraging and for discouraging the Totem, but occasionally and irregularly. The Bird clan of the Omahas, when birds threatened the crops, prevented their devastations by chewing corn and spitting it about over the fields; when mosquitoes were troublesome, the Wind people flapped blankets to raise a wind and blow the pests away; when worms attacked the crops, the Reptile clan (worms and reptiles are confused in primitive Zoology) countermined their approaches by pounding up some of them with a little corn into a soup and eating it.[543] The most remarkable American rites for the increase of food—the Buffalo-dances and Corn-festivals of the Mandans—were not totemic, but carried out by the whole tribe. The buffalo hunting-dance to bring the herd within reach, was continued, if necessary, for weeks—in fact until the animals came; so that the Magic was always effectual.
§ 8. Totemism and Animism
If the unity of clansmen with their Totem is very early conceived of as consisting in having the same, or the same sort of, soul, it is thenceforward essentially animistic. Yet this idea seems only very slowly to have led to any sense of dependence on the Totem as a spiritual power, or to any expectation that it would help or succour the clansmen, or (consequently) to the making of any appeal to it, except by magical coercion. Perhaps the earliest way in which the Totem was supposed to aid its clansmen was by omens; as a Black Duck man of the Yuin tribe (West Australia) thought that black ducks warned him against his enemies; but this is more characteristic of guardian spirits than of Clan-Totems. Occasionally in Australia we meet with something like a prayer to a Totem. On the Tully River (Queensland) we are told by Mr. W.E. Roth that before a man goes to sleep, or on waking in the morning, he utters in a low voice the name of the animal whose name he bears, or which belongs to his group; and that then, if edible, he will be successful in hunting it or, if dangerous, it will not hurt him without warning.
Professor Durkheim has an elaborate theory of the growth of divinities from Totems in Australia, especially in the example of Bungil, the Eagle-Hawk, a great phratry name-animal in several tribes.[544] He is a persuasive writer, but perverse and ingenious. Bungil receives neither prayer nor sacrifice (these, indeed, in the author’s view are not necessary to religion), and there is nothing to show that he differs from the other glorified Headmen who are found in Australia. The most plausible of these superior beings is Byamee of the Euahlayi, who is not a Totem, but the source of Totems, which are derived from different parts of his body. At funerals prayers are addressed to him for the souls of the dead; and, again, at the close of the Boorah (initiation rites) for long life, inasmuch as the tribesmen have kept his law.[545] We are told that the nearest mission-station is a hundred miles off, and recently established; but on reading further that only those who have been initiated can go to Byamee’s sky-camp, and that gross sinners are punished in the next life in Eleanbah Wundah, a place dark but for fires,[546] we cannot help reflecting that missionaries are not the only channels of sound doctrine.
The most authentic example of the rise of a Totem to something like divine rank is the Wollunqua, the great snake of the Warramunga, which differs from other Totems in being not a real animal but a mythological monster. It is not approached with prayer or sacrifice; but is the object of rites in part propitiatory, in part coercive, and is certainly regarded with superstitious awe much as a demon might be. To please the Wollunqua, the clan build a long mound and draw its representation upon it; which, however, afterwards meets with “savage destruction.” On approaching Thapanerlu, the sacred pool where it lives, they whispered to it “to remain quiet and do them no harm.”[547]
On the whole, funeral ceremonies, in Australia, to provide the dead with necessaries, food, utensils, warmth—even precautions against ghosts—come nearer to religious ideas than anything connected with Totemism. Among the Jupagalk (Victoria) a person when in great pain would call on some dead friend to come and help him, to visit him in a dream and teach a song against the evil magic that hurt him.[548]
In Yam Island (Torres Straits) there is a cult of two brothers, Maiou and Sigai, who are said to have come from Australia. They have shrines within a fence; women and uninitiated youths are not permitted to enter, and do not know that Maiou is the crocodile (Kodal), and Sigai the hammer-headed shark (Kursi); for they are always addressed and spoken of by their names as heroes, and not by their animal or Totem names. The shrines contain effigies made of turtle-shell representing the animals; and under each effigy is a stone in which the life or spirit of the Totem-hero resides. The natives, in the north-west monsoon, danced and sang before them for fine weather; and also on going to war, praying: “O Totem Sigai and Totem Maiou, both of you close the eyes of these men so that they cannot see us.”[549] This is indisputably Religion; it is not, however, pure Totemism, but apparently a fusion of hero-worship with the Totemism of the heroes. Another hero of more recent date, Quoiam, is worshipped in the neighbouring island of Mabuaig. He came from North Queensland; and his house and cairn are still shown on a hill-top. His Totem was the shovel-nosed skate, but he has undergone no fusion with that animal. We may be inclined to infer that the hero can stand alone, whilst a Totem needs the alliance of a hero to anthropomorphise it.
Such an inference is, on the whole, confirmed by the state of religion in Fiji. There, amongst the coastal tribes, Totemism is decadent and irregular; though even on the coast of Viti Levu there are deities with animal attributes, and especially with the power of changing into animals; and the animal connected with a god must not be eaten by people of the district where he is worshipped.[550] In the mountainous interior Totemism still flourishes, and animal-gods are worshipped which have been assumed to have originated in Totems. Dr. Rivers tells us[551] that he formerly assumed this, but is inclined to revise his opinion. The Fijian Snake-god Ndengei was, according to tradition, a man who came to the island from elsewhere; probably he made a great impression and was apotheosised. His character as a Snake-god may be derived from the snake’s having been his Totem. Probably god-like beings in Fiji were in many cases heroes, but a close relation with their Totem endued them with something of the animal nature. “The evolution would not be simply from Totem to god, but from hero and Totem together to god.”
Gods present in animals, sometimes in plants, were acknowledged in Samoa, Tahiti, Hawaii, Tonga; and, in fact, Polynesia is the region where, if anywhere, Totems contribute largely to the divine population. Rivers will not deny (loc. cit.) that direct evolution of gods from Totems may have taken place; but he points out that in Samoa, for example, the Octopus-god (Ole Fe’e) was, according to tradition, brought to the island by a Fijian chief. Was then the mollusc or the chief the root from which the god grew up? In Savaii there were gods incarnate in men: one in an actual man who was a cannibal propitiated with human flesh; another, invisible to the people, though seen by strangers as a handsome young man wearing a girdle of leaves, was called the King of Fiji (Tuifiti). Other gods described by Turner[552] are Ole alii Fiti (chief of Fiji), who was manifest in an eel; and Tinalii (King of chiefs), who was associated with the sea-eel, octopus, mullet, and the ends of banana leaves. Fusion seems to have been common.
It must not, of course, be assumed that all animal gods are Totems. Among the ways in which animal gods may have arisen we cannot deny some place to Spencer’s hypothesis, that heroes have sometimes been worshipped as animals because they bore animal names; and, after their death, the eponymous animals, ever present to men’s eyes, superseded the heroes, and were connected with and transformed their legends. It is also conceivable that a hero has been worshipped in the form of an animal or plant, because he had announced that, after death, he would be in such an animal or plant; for at Ulawa (Solomon Isles) bananas were buto, things that might not be eaten, approached or beheld (according to Dr. Coddrington[553]), because an influential man had prohibited the eating of them, saying that, after death, he would be in the banana; and with so much influence he might, in favourable circumstances, have become a Banana-god. And, again, in Professor Westermarck’s opinion, “the common prevalence of animal worship is, no doubt, due to the mysteriousness of the animal world; the most uncanny of all creatures, the serpent, is also the one most generally worshipped.”[554]
But these considerations strengthen the probability that a Totem may sometimes become a god; having the general respect of the clan to begin with. Some Totems having been deified with the assistance of heroes, others may perhaps be elevated by the force of analogy; or, once the conception of a spiritual being has been reached—chiefly (as we suppose) by reflection on dreams—and animals and even inanimate things have been thought to have spiritual doubles, if then the Totem is conceived to have a spirit, and even the same as the clansman’s soul, if it is appealed to for assistance, if it sends omens, listens to prayer and accepts sacrifice, what is it but a god?
In North America the Totem seems nowhere to have been worshipped; and any tendency that may have existed to propitiate it was diverted by the superior fascination of the personal guardian-genius, to which sometimes costly sacrifices were made and even self-mutilations; as among the Mandans, who often cut off a finger to secure its favour.[555] On the other hand, a class of spirits was recognised in the “elder brother” of each species of animal (or of the most interesting species—bear, deer, snake, etc.—all of the totemic class), a being (in the words of an early missionary, 1634) “who is as it were the principle and origin of all the individuals,” and “marvellously great and powerful”:[556] it watches over the species and avenges its wrongs. In North-West America and throughout Siberia the Bear and the Raven are objects of religious reverence; not, indeed, as clan-totems, but for all men. Among the Gulf nations the Yuchis are Totemists, and a youth at his initiation is put under the care of his clan-totem, instead of a personal guardian-genius as among the northern tribes; he looks for protection, however, not to the living animals of the Totem species, but to superior beings, like the “elder brothers” of the species.[557] Similar to these must be the Beast-gods of the Zuni Indians, to whom they offer a portion of all game, praying that they will intercede for them with the Sun-Father. In South America, too, the Patagonians and Araucanians teach that each species of animal has a guardian spirit, who lives in a cave, and that the Indians themselves at death go to live with him. We can hardly doubt that in all these cases, the spirit-animals are in some way connected with totemic beliefs: if not gods, they are at least divine beings, and they exemplify a noble sort of mysticism that is natural to the Amerind imagination.[558]
Africa is the principal home of Zoolatry. The religion of the Bantu nations of South Africa is, indeed, ancestor-worship; and their serpent-cult seems to be an outgrowth of ancestor-worship (for they think that their dead return as serpents of various species according to rank); unless, indeed, it has been diverted to such a subordinate place from some more ancient superstition. In West Africa there are many Beast-gods, especially the leopard, hyena, crocodile and python. They do not, however, give much indication of totemic origin; and Sir James Frazer observes that, as the hereditary worship of animals in certain districts (as of the hyena at Accra) was not totemic, nor need similar practices have been so elsewhere.[559] Hence that the Egyptians worshipped certain animals, and that in the district of any animal’s worship it was not killed or eaten, cannot prove that the worship was totemic, unless it be shown that Totemism is the only road to Zoolatry; for, if there are other ways, any animal that becomes divine will, naturally, not be killed or eaten. On the other hand, that the Egyptians were not Exogamists does not prove they were not Totemists; since some known Totemists are not Exogamists. The natural impression of a student who merely comes amongst other things to Egyptian Religion is that Totemism was one of its sources; but it is a subject on which, more strictly than on most, only a few specialists can form a judgment.
On the whole, the contribution of Totemism to religion seems to have been greatly exaggerated. Compared with the influence of dead heroes and ancestors, or with the personification of the greater manifestations of nature—Sky, Sun, Thunder—it has been ineffective, falling short of the production of high gods; or if, as in Polynesia, it seems sometimes to have come near to that achievement, it may be suspected that its success owed much to an alliance with hero-worship.
