Lang Andrew
Social Origins and Primal Law
MODERN THEORIES
Mr. McLennan himself at first had a theory, which, as far as I heard him speak of it, was more or less akin to my own. But he abandoned it, says his brother, Mr. Daniel McLennan, for reasons that to him appeared conclusive. I ought to mention that Mr. A. H. Keane informed me, several years ago, that he had independently evolved a theory akin to mine, of which, as it then stood, I had published some hint. (For a statement of Mr. Keane's theory see our Preface.) In 1884204 I wrote, 'People united by contiguity, and by the blind sentiment of kinship not yet brought into explicit consciousness, might mark themselves by a badge, and might thence derive a name, and, later, might invent a myth of their descent from the object which the badge represented.' But why should such people mark themselves by a badge, and why, if they did, should the mark be, not a decorative or symbolic pattern, but the representation of a plant or animal? These questions I cannot answer, and my present guess is not identical with that of 1884.
Meanwhile let us keep one point steadily before our minds. Totemism, at a first glance, seems a perfectly crazy and irrational set of beliefs, and we might think, with Dr. Johnson, that there is no use in looking for reason among the freaks of irrational people. But man is never irrational. His reason for doing this, or believing that, may seem a bad reason to us, but a reason he always had for his creeds and conduct, and he had a reason for his totem belief, a reason in congruity with his limited knowledge of facts, and with his theory of the universe. For all things he wanted an explanation. Now what he wanted a reason for, in Totemism, was the nature and origin of the connection between his own and the neighbouring groups, and the plant or animal names which they bore. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, 'what gave rise, in the first instance, to the association of particular men with particular animals and plants, it is impossible to say.' But it is not impossible to guess, with more or less of probability. The connection once established, savages guessed at its origin: their guesses, as always, were myths, and were of every conceivable kind. The myth of descent from or kinship with the animal or plant, the Darwinian myth, does not stand alone. Every sort of myth was fashioned, was believed, and influenced conduct. Our business is to form our own guess as to the original connection between men and their totems: a guess which shall be consistent with human nature.
MR. MAX MÜLLER'S THEORY
Many such guesses by civilised philosophers exist. We need not dwell long on that of Mr. Max Müller, akin, as it is, to my own early conjecture, 'a totem is a clan mark, then a clan name, then the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly the name of something worshipped by the clan.'205 We need not dwell on this, because the kind of 'clan mark' on a pillar outside of the quarters of the clan, in a village, is peculiar to North America, and to people dwelling in fixed settlements. Among the nomadic Australians, we have totemism without the settlements, without the totem pillar, without the 'clan mark,' on the pillar, which, thus, cannot be the first step in Totemism. Again, the 'clan name,' or group name, must be earlier than the 'clan mark,' which merely expresses it, just as my name is prior to my visiting card, or as the name of an inn, 'The Red Lion,' is prior to the sign representing that animal. Obviously we have to ask first, whence comes the clan name, or group name?
THE THEORY OF MR. HERBERT SPENCER
In a passage on animal-worship, Mr. Herbert Spencer (unless I misconceive him) advances a theory of the origin of Totemism. True, he does not here speak of totems, but he suggests an hypothesis to explain why certain stocks claim descent from animals, and why these animals are treated by them with more or less of religious regard. Actual men, in savagery, are often called by 'animal nicknames,' and we cannot be surprised if the savage … gets the idea that an ancestor named 'the tiger' was an actual tiger … Inevitably, then, he grows up believing that his father descended from a tiger – thinking of himself as one of the tiger stock.206
It were superfluous to dwell on this theory. Totem names are group names; and, as they occur where group names are derived from the mother, they cannot have originated in the animal nicknames of individual dead grandfathers. The names of the dead are usually tabued and forgotten; but that is of no great moment. The point is that such group names are derived through mothers, in the first instance, not through male founders of families.207
No theory which starts from an individual male ancestor, and his name bequeathed to his descendants, can be correct. That Mr. Spencer's does start in this way may be inferred from the following text: 'commonly the names of the clans which are forbidden to intermarry, such as Wolf, Bear, Eagle, Whale, &c., are names given to men, implying, as I have before contended (170-173), descent from distinguished male ancestors bearing those names – descent which, notwithstanding the system of female kinship, was remembered when there was pride in the connection.'
A brief-lived joy in the name of which the male ancestor's descendants were proud, left them, in the second generation, under exogamy and female kin. Thus my father was nicknamed 'Tiger.' Proud of the title, I call myself Tiger. But I must marry a woman who is Not-Tiger, and my offspring are Not-Tigers. My honour hath departed!
MR. FRAZER'S THEORIES
The hypotheses of Mr. J. G. Frazer are purely provisional. He starts from the idea, so common in Märchen, of the person whose 'soul,' 'life,' or 'strength' is secretly hidden in an animal, plant, or other object. The owner of the soul wraps the 'soul-box' up in a mystery, it is the central secret of his existence, for he may be slain by any one who can discover and destroy his 'soul-box.' Next Mr. Frazer offers many cases of this actual belief and practice among savage and barbarous peoples; and, as a freak or survival, the idea is found even among the civilised. We meet the superstition in the Melanesian group of islands (where Totemism is all but extinct), and perhaps among the Zulus, with their serpent Idhlozi, whose life is associated with their own. Mr. Atkinson's New-Caledonians, however, did not think that death inflicted on their animal 'fathers' involved danger to themselves, though it distressed them, as an outrage to sentiment. Then we have the 'bush-souls' (one soul out of four in the possession of each individual), among the natives of Calabar. These souls, Miss Kingsley wrote, are never in plants, but always in wild beasts, and are recognisable only by second-sighted men. The 'bush-soul' of a man is often that of his sons: the daughters often inherit the mother's 'bush-soul:' or children of both sexes may take the bush-soul of either father or mother. The natives will not injure their bush-soul beasts. Nothing is known as to prohibition of marriage between persons of the same bush-soul. Here we have really something akin to the totem, the bush-souls being hereditary, at least for one generation. But this is among a house-dwelling, agricultural people, far above the state of real savagery: not among a 'primitive' people.
The Zapotecs of Central America, again, choose, by a method of divination, 'a tona or second self,' an animal, for each child, at its birth. It is, by the nature of the case, not hereditable. The nagual, usually a beast, of each Indian of Guatemala is well known; and is discovered, on the monition of a dream, by each individual. Therefore it cannot be hereditable. The sexes, in Australia, have each a friendly and protecting species of animal; say a Bat for all men, a Nightjar for all women: indeed, in Australia, all the elements of nature have their place in the cosmic tribe. To injure the animal of either sex, is to injure one of the sex. There is no secret about the matter.
Mr. Frazer then argues, 'the explanation which holds good of the one' (say 'the sex totem,' or 'personal totem'), 'ought equally to hold good of the other' (the group totem). 'Therefore, the reason why a tribe' (I venture to prefer 'group,' or 'kin,' as there are many totems in each 'tribe') 'revere a particular species of animals or plants … and call themselves after it, would seem to be a belief that the life of each individual of the tribe is bound up with some one plant or animal of the species, and that his or her death would be the consequence of killing that particular animal or destroying that particular plant.' Mr. Frazer thinks that 'this explanation squares well' with Sir George Grey's description of a Kobong or totem in Western Australia. There, a native gives his totem 'a fair show' before killing it, always affording it a chance of escape, and never killing it in its sleep. He only does not shoot his kindred animal sitting, and his plant he only spares 'in certain circumstances, and at a particular period of the year.' Mr. Frazer writes that as the man does not know which individual of the species of plant or animal 'is specially dear to him, he is obliged to spare them all, for fear of injuring the dear one.' But the man, it seems from Grey's account, does not 'spare' any of them; he kills or plucks them, 'reluctantly,' and in a sportsmanlike manner, 'never without affording them a chance of escape.' In a case of Sir George Grey's, the killing of a crow hastened the death of a man of the Crow totem, who had been ailing for some days. But the Australians do not think that to kill a man's totem is to kill the man. Somebody's totem is killed whenever any animal is slain. Mr. Frazer now finds that the Battas, for example, 'do not in set terms affirm their external soul to be in their totems,' and I am not aware that any totemists do make this assertion. They freely offer all other sorts of mythical explanations as to what their totems originally were, as to the origin of their connection with their totems, but never say that their totems are their 'soul-boxes.'
Mr. Frazer has an answer to this objection. 'How close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he' (the savage) 'hides the inner keep and citadel of his being.' The Giant, in the Märchen, tries to keep the secret of his 'soul-box,' much more then does 'the timid and furtive savage.' 'No inducement that can be offered is likely to tempt him to imperil his soul by revealing its hiding-place to a stranger. It is, therefore, no matter for surprise that the central mystery of the savaged life should so long have remained a secret, and that we should be left to piece it together from scattered hints and fragments, and from the recollections of it which linger in fairy tales.'
On reflection, we cannot but see the flaw in this reasoning. No savage has revealed to European inquirers that his totem is his 'soul-box.' But every other savage knows his fatal secret. Every savage, well aware that his own totem is the hiding-place of his soul, knows that the totems of his enemies are the hiding-places of their souls. He wants to kill his enemies, and he has an easy mode of doing so, to shoot down every specimen of their totems. His enemies will then die, when he is lucky enough to destroy their 'soul-boxes.' Now I am not aware, in the destructive magic of savages, of a single case in which a totem is slain, or tortured for the purpose of slaying or torturing a man of that totem. All other sorts of sympathetic magic are practised, but where is the evidence for that sort, which ought to be of considerable diffusion?208 The supposed 'secret' of savage life is no secret to other savages. Each tells any inquirer what his 'clay' or totem is. He blazons his totem proudly. The nearest approach to invidious action, against a totem, with which I am acquainted, is the killing by the Kurnai women, of the men's 'sex totem,' when the young men are backward wooers. The purpose is to produce a fight between lads and lasses, a rude form of flirtation, after which engagements, or elopements, are apt to follow.209
Mr. Frazer tentatively suggests another, a rival or a subsidiary solution of the problem, to which reference has already been made. Among the Arunta and other tribes, 'the totemic system has a much wider scope, its aim being to provide the community with a supply of food and all other necessaries by means of certain magical ceremonies, the performance of which is distributed among the various totem groups.' That is to say, these totemic magical ceremonies now exist for the purpose of propagating, as part of the food supply, animals or vegetables, which, by the former theory, were the secret receptacles of the lives of the tribesmen. To kill and eat these sacred receptacles would endanger the lives of the tribesmen, but to risk that is quite in accordance with the practical turn of the Arunta mind. Mr. Frazer has, however, suggested a possible method of reconciling his earlier hypothesis – that a totem was a soul-box – with his later theory, that the primal object of totem groups was to breed their totems for food.210
Mr. Frazer observes, 'It is not as yet clear how far the particular theory of Totemism suggested by the Central Australian system is of general application, and … in the uncertainty which still hangs over the origin and meaning of Totemism, it seems scarcely worth while to patch up an old theory which the next new facts may perhaps entirely demolish.' He then cites the Arunta belief that their ancestors of 'the dream time' (who were men evolved out of animals or plants, these objects being their totems) kept their souls (like the Giant of the fairy tale) in stone churingas (a kind of amulets) which they hung on poles when they went out hunting. We have thus a va-et-vient between each man, and the spirit of the plant or animal out of which he, or his human ancestor, was evolved. That spirit (in origin the spirit of an animal or plant) is now handed down with the stone churinga, and is reincarnated in each child, who is thus, an incarnation of the original totem. Such is the Arunta theory, and thus each living Arunta is the totem's soul-box, while, to savage reasoners, the totem soul may, perhaps, seem also to tenant simultaneously each plant or animal of its species.
This is a theory of Totemism;211 but, so far, we only know the facts on which it is based among one extraordinary tribe of anomalous development. We have still to ask, what was the original connection of the men with the plants and animals, which the Arunta explain by their myth? Was that connection originally one of magic-working, by each group, for its totem species, and, if so, why or how did the groups first select their plants and animals? Mr. Haddon's theory, presently to be criticised, may elucidate that point of departure.
SUGGESTION OF MR. N. W. THOMAS
As I am writing, a theory, or suggestion, by Mr. N. W. Thomas appears in Man (1902, No. 85). Mr. Thomas begins with the spirit which dwells in an African fetich, and becomes the servant of its owner. The magical apparatus 'may be a bag of skin containing parts of various animals. Such an animal may be the familiar of the owner, his messenger, or an evil spirit that possesses him;' similar beliefs are held about the wer-wolf. Now the American-Indian has his 'medicine bag.' 'The contents are the skin, feathers, or other part of the totem animal.'
Distinguo: they are parts, not of the 'totem animal,' but of the adopted animal of the individual, often called his manitu. If we say 'the totem animal,' we beg the question; we identify the totem with the manitu of the individual. It may be true, as Mr. Thomas says, that 'the basis of individual Totemism seems to be the same as that of fetishism,' but I am not discussing 'individual Totemism,' but real group Totemism. Mr. Thomas also is clear on this point, but, turning to Australia, he says that 'the individual totem seems to be confined to the medicine-man.' From information by Mrs. Langloh Parker, I doubt the truth of this idea. A confessedly vague reminiscence of Mr. Rusden does not help us. Speaking of an extinct tribe on the Hunter River, N.S.W., he says that he 'does not recollect all their class divisions, Yippai' (Ippai), 'and Kombo' (Kumbo). 'Apropos of the generic names' (whatever these may be) 'the Geawe-gal had a superstition that every one had within himself an affinity to the spirit of some beast, bird, or reptile. Not that he sprang from the creature in any way' (as is a common totemic myth), 'but that the spirit which was in him was akin to that of the creature.' This is vague. Mr. Rusden does not say that his native informant said, that the 'spirit' was the man's totem in each case.212 But Mr. Thomas, on this evidence, writes: 'This belief suggests that the interpretation suggested for individual Totemism can also be applied to clan Totemism,' apparently because, among the extinct tribe, not only sorcerers, but, in this case, every one was the receptacle of an animal (not a plant) spirit. But obviously the animal spirits of the Geawe-gal may be the spirits – not of their group totems, if they had any – but of their individual manitus, which we do not know to be confined to sorcerers. Every one is a sorcerer, better or worse, in a society where every one works magic.
Next, the wer-wolf has a way of returning 'to look at' (to eat, I think) the body of his victim. Now in North Queensland, as in Scotland, the body of a dead man is surrounded with dust or ashes (flour in Scotland), and the dust is inspected, to find the tracks of some bird or animal.213 From such marks, if any, 'the totem of the malefactor is inferred.' The malefactor is the person who, by the usual superstition, is thought magically to have caused the death of the tribesman. 'These facts seem best interpreted if we suppose that in North Queensland the sorcerer is believed to return in animal form, and that the form is that of his totem, for in no other way does it seem possible to identify the man's totem by observing the footsteps.'
Is the man's group totem meant? If so, the process could not identify 'the malefactor,' there are hundreds of men of his totem. Is his manitu or 'individual totem' meant? Then the process might be successful, but has no concern with the origin of hereditary kin-Totemism. Indeed Mr. Thomas 'leaves the applicability of the theory to group Totemism for subsequent consideration.' We shall show – indeed, in Mr. Herbert Spencer's case we have shown – the difficulty of deriving kin-Totemism from the manitu, or 'obsessing spirit' if Mr. Thomas pleases, of the individual. This point, as is said, Mr. Thomas reserves for later consideration.
DR. WILKEN'S THEORY
We now come to a theory which exists in many shapes, but in all is vitiated, I think, by the same error of reasoning. Mr. Tylor, however, has lent at least a modified approval to the hypothesis as mooted by the late Dutch anthropologist, Dr. Wilken, of Leyden. Mr. Tylor writes, 'if it does not completely solve the totem problem, at any rate it seems to mark out its main lines.' Unluckily the hypothesis of Dr. Wilken is perhaps the least probable of all. The materials are found, not in a race so comparatively early as the Australians or Adamanese, but among the settled peoples of Malay, Sumatra, and Melanesia. By them, in their Tables of Precedence, 'the Crocodile is regarded as equal in rank to the Dutch Resident.' Crocodiles are looked on as near kinsmen of men, who, when they die, expect to become crocodiles. To kill crocodiles is murder. 'So it is with tigers, whom the Sumatrans worship and call ancestors.'
Mr. Tylor observes, 'Wilken sees in this transmigration of souls the link which connects Totemism with ancestor-worship,' and thinks that Dr. Codrington's remarks on Melanesian ways add weight to this opinion. In Melanesia, as Dr. Codrington reports, an influential man, before his death, will lay a ban, or tabu, on something, say a banana, or a pig. He says that he 'will be in' a shark, a banana, a bird, a butterfly, or what not. Dr. Codrington's informant, Mr. Sleigh of Lifu, says 'that creature would be sacred to his family,' they would call it 'papa,' and 'offer it a young cocoa-nut.' 'But they did not adopt thus the name of a tribe.' The children of papa, who chose to be a butterfly (like Mr. Thomas Haynes Bailey) do not call themselves 'The Butterflies,' nor does the butterfly name mark their exogamous limit. Mr. Tylor concludes, 'an ancestor, having lineal descendants among men and sharks, or men and owls, is thus the founder of a totem family, which mere increase may convert into a totem clan, already provided with its animal name.' This conclusion is tentative, and put forth with Mr. Tylor's usual caution. But, as a matter of fact, no totem kin is actually founded thus, for example, in Melanesia. The institutions of that region, as we are to show, really illustrate the way out of, not the way into, Totemism. Moreover the theory, as expressed by Mr. Tylor in the words cited, must be deemed unfortunate because it takes for granted that 'the Patriarchal theory' of the origin of the so-called 'clan,' or totem group, is correct. A male ancestor founds a family, which swells, 'by natural increase,' into a 'clan.' The ancestor is worshipped under the name of Butterfly, his descendants, the clan founded by him, are named Butterflies. But all this can only happen where male ancestors are remembered, and are worshipped, where descent is reckoned in the male line, and where, as among ourselves, a remembered male ancestor founds a House, as Tam o' the Cowgate founded the House of Haddington. In short Dr. Wilken has slipped back into the Patriarchal theory. Now, among totemists like the Australians, ancestors are not remembered, their names are tabued, they are not worshipped, they do not found families, where descent is reckoned in the female line.214
