Social Origins and Primal Law. Lang Andrew
are of little value as to historical facts,108 but the consciousness of the Central Australian tribes accepts the possibility that new customs may now be proposed, debated, and adopted. If no such thing ever occurred, the belief in its possibility could scarcely have arisen among the Arunta. But the possibility has its limits, and one of these is the deliberate primeval introduction of exogamy, for no conceivable reason, and its imposition on a society already totemic but not yet exogamous. Perhaps few critics will frankly say that exogamy was thus imposed; they will try to qualify or evade so improbable and antiquated a theory. Yet they cannot but slip back into it, while they believe in 'segmentations' of 'an undivided commune,' and of later totemic 'subdivisions' of the 'segmentations.'
In any case these Arunta and cognate tribes of similar usages, so recently discovered, so anomalous, so odd, are 'the only begetters' of the latest hypotheses of Mr. Frazer and Mr. Spencer – namely, that totems, originally, were co-operative industrial groups with no influence on marriage rules. Do the Arunta, then, present a surviving model of primitive Totemism, in other regions modified and contaminated; or is their Totemism not, like their metaphysics and psychology, a 'freak,' an unique divergence from the normal development, as I have from the first maintained?109 All these difficulties and confusions, as to 'phratries' and totems, inevitably arise from the doctrine that the original totem groups were not at first exogamous, and only became exogamous when separate sets of them were scheduled under the two more recent exogamous primary divisions, or were segmented out of them. In that case it is not easy to see how we can escape from the impossible theory that exogamy, and the primary divisions, were the result, of direct legislative enactment. Even if we could believe this, we see no conceivable motive, except Mr. Fison's divine intervention, an idea which, it appears, he put forward quite provisionally in an argument with Lord Avebury.110
THE ARUNTA
The case of these Central Australian tribes, in regard to Totemism and marriage prohibitions, is so peculiar that it demands particular notice. Mr. Frazer some years ago propounded the hypothesis that the Arunta tribe, especially, are the most 'primitive' of living peoples, are still in 'the chrysalis stage' of humanity, whence it would follow that their singular kind of Totemism, and of marriage rules, is nearest to the beginning, and best represents the original type.111 The Arunta, dwelling in the arid regions of the centre, have certainly been little contaminated by European influences. They are naked, houseless, non-agricultural nomads, like all the Australian tribes, and it is asserted by Messrs. Spencer and Gillen and others that they have not yet discovered the rather obvious facts as to the reproduction of the species. All this has certainly a primitive air. But I have ventured to reply that the Arunta, as regards the family, are confessedly more advanced towards individual marriage than their neighbours, the Urabunna, with whom they freely intermarry.112 Unlike what is told of the Urabunna, the Arunta recognise 'individual marriage.' They deliberately and ingeniously modify their system on the occasion of intermarriage with the Urabunna. These reckon descent in the female, the Arunta in the male line.113 The office of Alatunja, or head man of a local group, among the Arunta, is hereditary in the male line, descending to a brother of the late Alatunja, if he leaves no adult son.114
Moreover, the Arunta, and cognate tribes, occupy an area of 750 miles, and their meetings and discussions last for months. A people truly primitive cannot be conceived as capable of such immense local associations, and of such prolonged and pacific assemblies. Again, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, rightly or wrongly, believe that 'communal marriage' is the earlier institution, and that it persists, 'slightly modified' among the Urabunna, but not among the Arunta. Thus, beyond all doubt, the Arunta are more developed, more advanced, than the Urabunna, and it is hardly safe to say that, where their organisation differs from that of the Urabunna, and other tribes in general, it differs because it is more 'primitive.' It must be less primitive, a special divergence from the type.
ARUNTA METAPHYSICS
Again, as proof that they are in no chrysalis stage, the Arunta possess a reasoned theory of things, so ingenious and complex, so peculiar, so extraordinary, so carefully atheistic, that one could scarcely believe it possible for naked savages, were it not so well attested. The theory is that of the original evolution of types of life into plants and animals, which, with the minimum of extra-natural aid, became human. The human beings possessed souls, which on the death, or disappearance into earth, of the original owners, were hereditary, being reborn into Arunta children. These souls each of a given totem (the plant or animal or other thing which first became human) haunt certain local centres. One place is the centre of Grub totem souls, another of Cat totem souls, and so forth. Each new child is of the totem of the haunted locality where the mother supposes that she conceived it; a totem soul of that locality has become incarnate in her, and from her is born. Thus the wife may be of one totem, the child of another; the husband may be of the wife's totem, of the child's, or of another. The totem is thus no bar to marriage, and is not inherited, all this being the result of the peculiar philosophic system of the Arunta. Their totemism is thus a 'sport,' and not the original form of the institution.
We cannot reverse the case, the philosophy of hereditary totemic souls cannot be the result of the present mode of inheriting the totem from the group of souls that haunts each locality, it cannot be a myth invented to explain that custom. That custom requires the peculiar Arunta soul-belief as its basis, and cannot exist without the belief. If the child received its totem name from the place where it is born, we might say, 'Originally the child was called after the place of its birth.' (Arunta children still receive territorial personal names from the place of their birth.) 'Later, Totemism came in with totem local names, each place having a totem title. The local totem name of the place where a child was born was then given to each child. Still later, arose a myth that totem souls haunted each place, and that the child received its totem name because a local totem soul was incarnated in it, at the place where it was born.' We cannot maintain this theory – which makes the present Arunta belief a myth to explain the present Arunta custom – because that custom it does not explain. The child receives its totem name, not from the place where it is born, but from the place where the totem soul entered into its mother. Nor can we assume that totem names were originally given, not to human groups, but to districts of territory. Thus the present Arunta mode of obtaining the totem, in each case, is the direct result of the Arunta philosophic belief. That belief is peculiar, is elsewhere unheard of, is the property of a tribe distinctly more advanced in marriage rules, and local solidarity, than some of its neighbours, and therefore cannot be primary. It follows that the Arunta mode of obtaining the totem, not by inheritance, is not 'primitive,' is not the original model from which the rest of savage mankind has diverged. This I state, because, as a rule, a belief exists to explain an institution, and, as a rule, an institution is not the result of a belief.
ARUNTA TOTEM EATING AND TRADITIONS
Each Arunta totem kin may now eat, in moderation, of its own totem, and each kin does magic (Intichiuma) for the benefit of its totem, as part of the food supply of the tribe in general. The traditions represent men and women of the same totem as, of old, usually intermarrying (that is, as endogamous): while they are also said, as a rule, to have fed almost exclusively on their totems, being thus endophagous.
All these usages, real or traditional (except doing magic for the benefit of the totem), are at the opposite pole from the customary exogamous and exophagous Totemism of savage tribes all over the world, and even in Australia. If, therefore, the Arunta and tribes practising the same usages are primitive (it may be, and has been argued), their Totemism is, in origin, the earliest known case of the division of labour; each group selecting and working (by magic) for the benefit of its totem, as part of the tribal food supply. I elsewhere argue that each group must probably have had a recognised connection with its totem, before it set out to do magic for the propagation of the creature.115 But I have also maintained that the Arunta are far from being 'primitive,' but are rather a 'sport,'
Here I dissent from Mr. Frazer and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen; the point is discussed later.
In 1895,
Spencer and Gillen, pp. 68, 69, 121.
See 'The Origin of Totemism,'