Social Origins and Primal Law. Lang Andrew

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certainly, as soon as the totem name had given rise to the myth that the totem, in human beings as in animals and plants, was inviolable – the beast or plant of the totem blood not to be killed or eaten,58 the woman of the totem name not to be touched – so soon would endogamy, marriage within the totem, be a sin, incest. This it would be; the totem tabu once established, whether sexual tabu, or sexual jealousy, or both, caused the first prohibition, not to marry group, mates. Here we may briefly advert to Dr. Westermarck's theory of exogamy, though it interrupts the harmonious issue of our speculations.

      DR. WESTERMARCK'S THEORY

      As to exogamy, Dr. Westermarck explains it by 'an instinct' against marriage of near kin. Our ancestors who married near kin would die out, he thinks, and they who avoided such unions would survive, 'and thus an instinct would be developed,'59 by 'Natural Selection.' But why did any of our ancestors avoid such marriages at all? From 'an aversion to those with whom they lived.' And why had they this aversion? Because they had an instinct against such unions. Then why had they an instinct? We are engaged in a vicious circle. 'Lastly it is not scientific to use the term instinct of this kind of thing.'60

      MR. MORGAN'S THEORY

      As to Mr. Morgan's theory, in his Ancient Society (1877), of a movement of sanitary and moral reform, which led to prohibition of 'consanguine marriages' I shall return to it in a later part of this essay ('Other Bars to Marriage'). Here it will be found that Mr. Morgan is the source of certain other theories which we are to discuss, a fact involving a certain amount of repetition of arguments already advanced.

      RETURN TO THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

      We conclude, provisionally, that exogamy, for various reasons of sexual jealousy, and perhaps of sexual superstition, and of sexual indifference to persons familiar from infancy, may, at least, have tended to arise while each little human group was anonymous; before the acceptance of totem names by local groups. But this exogamous tendency, if it existed, must have been immensely reinforced and sweepingly defined when the hitherto anonymous groups, coming to be known by totem names, evolved the totem superstitions and tabus. Under these, I suggest, exogamy became fully developed. Marriage was forbidden, amours were forbidden (there are exceptional cases), within the totem name. This law barred, of course, marital relations between son and mother, between brother and sister, but, just as it stood, permitted incest between father and daughter, so long as the totem name was inherited from the mother. But that form of incest, in turn, came to be barred by another set of savage rules, which, whatever their origin, prohibit marriage within the generation. That set of rules, noted specially in Australia and North America, is part of what is usually styled 'The Class System.'

      CHAPTER II

      THE CLASS SYSTEM

      Under this name appear to be blended, (1) the prohibition to marry within a division, which, in its simplest form, is said to cut the tribe into two 'classes' or 'phratries,' or 'groups;'61 (2) the prohibition to marry within the totem name; (3) the prohibition to marry within the generation, and within certain recognised degrees ('classes,' 'sections') of real or inferred kinship – 'too near flesh,' too close consanguinity, which, in their present condition, many Australian tribes undoubtedly regard as a bar to matrimony. But it does not follow that they originally held this opinion.

      We shall first examine what authorities who differ from me, call the great 'bisection' of the tribe, into, say, Matthurie and Kirarawa, members of which must intermarry, the totem prohibition also remaining in force. It will here be suggested, in accordance with what has already been said, but contrary to general opinion, that the totemic prohibition is earlier than the prohibition of marriage between persons of the same segment of the 'bisection.' The opinions of most students appear, at present, to be divided thus. We hear that:

      1. The exogamous division into two moieties, or 'phratries,' is earlier than the division of each into numerous totem kins. The totem kins are regarded as later 'subdivisions' of, or additions to, the two 'original' moieties.

      2. Totem groups are earlier than the 'bisection' (though somehow, according to the same authors, the two moieties of the bisection bore totem names), but, before the 'bisection,' these totem groups were not exogamous. They only became exogamous when six of them, say, were arranged in one of the two moieties (phratries), now forbidden to marry, and another six in the other.

      I venture to prefer, as already indicated, the system (3) that totem groups not only existed, but were already exogamous, before the great 'bisection' producing the 'phratries' came into existence, though I argue that 'bisection' is a misleading term, and that the apparent division was really the result of an amalgamation of two separate and independent local totem groups.

      This theory (presently to be more fully set forth) is original on my part, at least as far as my supraliminal consciousness is concerned. I mean that I conceived myself to have hit on the idea in July 1902. But something very like my notion (I later discovered) had been printed by Dr. Durkheim, and something not unlike it was propounded by Herr Cunow (1894). Mr. Daniel McLennan had also suggested it: and I find that the Rev. John Mathew had stated a form of it in his Eagle-Hawk and Crow (1899), (pp. 1922, 93-112). Mr. Mathew's hypothesis, however, involves a theory of contending and alien races in Australia. This theory does not seem well based, but, however that may be, I recognise that Mr. Mathew's hypothesis of the origin of exogamy (p. 98), and of the origin of the 'phratries' or 'primary classes,' in many respects anticipates my own. He opposes Mr. Howitt's conclusions, and I may be allowed to say that I would prefer Mr. Howitt, owing to his unrivalled knowledge, as an ally. On the other hand, the undesigned coincidence of Dr. Durkheim's, Mr. Daniel McLennan's, Mr. Mathew's, and Herr Cunow's ideas with my own, raises a presumption that mine may not be untenable.

      THE CLASS SYSTEM IN AUSTRALIA

      Though the existence of what are called exogamous 'phratries' (two to each tribe) was made known, as regards the North American tribes, by Mr. Lewis Morgan (to whose work we return) in the middle of the nineteenth century, almost our earliest hint of its existence in Australia came from the Rev. W. Ridley, a learned missionary, in 1853-55. In Mr. McLennan's Studies in Ancient History62 will be found an account of Mr. Ridley's facts, as they gradually swelled in volume, altered in character, and were added to, and critically constructed, by the Rev. Mr. Fison, and Mr. A. W. Howitt. These gentlemen were regarded by Mr. McLennan as the allies of Mr. Morgan, in a controversy then being waged with some acerbity. He, therefore, criticised the evidence from Australia rather keenly. It is probable that Mr. Morgan and Mr. McLennan both had some right on their parts – seeing each a different side of the shield – though a few points in the discussion are still undecided. But it seems certain that the continued researches of Messrs. Fison and Howitt, reinforced by the studies of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in Central Australia, have invalidated some of Mr. McLennan's opinions as to matters of fact.

      Much trouble and confusion will be saved if we remember that, as has been said, under the 'classificatory system,' three sets of rules applying to marriage exist. The totem rule exists, rules as to marriage in relation to generations and so-called degrees of kindred (real or 'tribal') exist ('classes'), and, thirdly, there are the rules relative to 'phratries,' the phratries, being, I think, in origin themselves totemic. We shall mainly consider here the so-called 'bisection' of a tribe into two exogamous and intermarrying 'phratries,' while remembering Herr Cunow's opinion that a 'class' is one thing, a 'phratry' quite another.63

      THE VARIETIES OF MARRIAGE DIVISIONS IN AUSTRALIA

      Perhaps the most recent, lucid, and well-informed writer on the various divisions which regulate the marriages of the Australian tribes is Mr. R. H. Mathews.64 In some regions, the system of two intermarrying phratries exists, without further subdivision (except in regard to totem kins). Sometimes each phratry is divided into two 'sections' (or 'classes'), making four for the tribe. Again,

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