THE TOTEMIC AGE
[1. THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF TOTEMISM.]
The expression 'totemic age' involves a widened application of the term 'totem.' This word is taken from the language of the Ojibways or, as the English call them, the Chippewa Indians. To these Indians of the Algonquin race, the 'totem' signified first of all a group. Persons belong to the same totem if they are fellow-members in a group which forms part of a tribe or of a clan. The term 'clan,' suggested by the clan divisions of the Scottish Highlanders, is the one usually employed by English ethnologists in referring to the smaller divisions of a tribe. The tribe consists of a number of clans, and each clan may include several totems. As a rule, the totem groups bear animal names. In North America, for example, there was an eagle totem, a wolf totem, a deer totem, etc. In this case the animal names regularly refer to particular clans within a tribe; in other places, as, for example, in Australia, they designate separate groups within a clan. Moreover, the totem animal is also usually regarded as the ancestral animal of the group in question. 'Totem,' on the one hand, is a group name, and, on the other, a name indicative of ancestry. In the latter connection it has also a mythological significance. These various ideas, however, interplay in numerous ways. Some of the meanings may recede, so that totems have frequently become a mere nomenclature of tribal divisions, while at other times the idea of ancestry, or, perhaps also, the cult significance, predominates. The idea gained ground until, directly or indirectly, it finally permeated all phases of culture. It is in this sense that the entire period pervaded by this culture may be called the 'totemic age.'
Even in its original significance—as a name for a group of members of a tribal division or for the division itself—the conception of the totem is connected with certain characteristic phenomena of this period, distinguishing it particularly from the culture of primitive man. I refer to tribal division and tribal organization. The horde, in which men are united purely by chance or at the occasional call of some undertaking, only to scatter again when this is completed, has disappeared. Nor is it any longer merely the single family that firmly binds individuals to one another; in addition to it we find the tribal division, which originates in accordance with a definite law of tribal organization and is subject to specific norms of custom. These norms, and their fixed place in the beliefs and feelings of the tribal members, are connected with the fact that originally, at all events, the totem animal was regarded, for the most part, as having not merely given its name to a group of tribal members but as having actually been its forefather. In so far, animal ancestors apparently preceded human ancestors. Bound up with this is the further fact that these animal ancestors possessed a cult. Thus, ancestor cult also began with the cult of animals, not with that of human ancestors. Aside from specific ceremonies and ceremonial festivals, this animal cult originally found expression primarily in the relations maintained toward the totem animal. It was not merely a particular animal that was to a certain extent held sacred, but every representative of the species. The totem members were forbidden to eat the flesh of the totem animal, or were allowed to do so only under specific conditions. A significant counter-phenomenon, not irreconcilable with this, is the fact that on certain occasions the eating of the totem flesh constituted a sort of ceremony. This likewise implies that the totem animal was held sacred. When this conception came into the foreground, the totem idea became extended so as to apply, particularly in its cult motives and effects, to plants, and sometimes even to stones and other inanimate objects. This, however, obviously occurred at a later time.
From early times on, the phenomena of totemism have been accompanied by certain forms of tribal organization. Every tribe is first divided, as a rule, into two halves. Through a further division, a fairly large number of clans arise, which, in turn, eventually split up into subclans and separate totem groups. Each of these groups originally regarded some particular totem animal or other totem object as sacred. The most important social aspect of this totemic tribal organization, however, consists in the fact that it involved certain norms of custom regulating the intercourse of the separate groups with one another. Of these norms, those governing marriage relations were of first importance. The tribal organization of this period was bound up with an important institution, exogamy, which originated in the totemic age. In the earliest primitive period every tribal member could enter into marriage with any woman of the tribe whom he might choose; according to the Veddahs, even marriage between brother and sister was originally not prohibited. Thus, endogamy prevailed within the primitive horde. This, of course, does not mean that there was no marriage except within the narrow circle of blood relationship, but merely that marriage was permitted between close relatives, more particularly between brothers and sisters. The exogamy characteristic of totemic tribal organization consists in the fact that no marriages of any kind are allowed except between members of different tribal divisions. A member of one particular group can enter into marriage only with one of another group, not with a person belonging to his own circle. By this means, totemic tribal organization gains a powerful influence on custom. Through marriage it comes into relation with all phenomena connected with marriage, with birth and death and the ideas bound up with them, with the initiation ceremonies in which the youths are received into the association of men, etc. As a result of the magical significance acquired by the totem animal, special associations are formed. These become united under the protection of a totem animal and give impetus to the exoteric cult associations, which, in their turn, exercise a profound influence upon the conditions of life. Though it is probable that these associations had their origin in the above-mentioned men's clubs, their organizing principle was the totem animal and its cult.
Besides its influence on matters connected with the relations of the sexes, the totem animal was the source of several other ideas. After the separate tribal group has come to feel itself united in the cult of the totem animal, a single individual may acquire a particular guardian animal of his own. Out of the tribal totem there thus develops the individual totem. Then, again, the different sexes, the men and the women of the tribe, acquire their special totem animals. These irradiations of the totemic conception serve partly to extend it and partly to give it an irregular development. Of the further phenomena that gradually come to the foreground during the totemic age, one of the most important is the growing influence of dominant individual personalities. Such personalities, of course, were not unknown even to the primitive horde, on the occasion of important undertakings. But tribal organization for the first time introduces a permanent leadership on the part of single individuals or of several who share the power. Thus, totemism leads to chieftainship as a regular institution—one that later, of course, proves to be among the foremost factors in the dissolution of the age that gave it birth. For chieftainship gives rise to political organization; the latter culminates in the State, which, though destroying the original tribal organization, is, nevertheless, itself one of the last products of totemic tribal institutions.
With the firmer union of tribal members there comes also tribal warfare. So long as primitive man remains comparatively unaffected by other peoples, and particularly by those of a different cultural level, he lives, on the whole, in a state of peace. An individual may, of course, occasionally raise his weapon against another person, but there are no tribal wars. These do not appear until the period of totemism, with whose firm social organization they are closely connected. The tribe feels itself to be a unit, as does likewise each subordinate clan and group. Hence, related tribes may unite in common undertakings. More frequently, however, they fall into dissension, and warfare must decide their claims to the possession of territory or to a disputed hunting-ground. This warfare finds contributory causes in tribal migrations. New peoples, some of them perhaps from strange tribes, enter into a territory and crowd out its inhabitants. Thus, war and migration are closely connected. Strife between tribes and peoples—that is, warfare—begins with culture in general, particularly with the most primitive social culture, as we may doubtless designate totemism in distinction from the still more primitive life of the horde.
This leads to a number of further changes. Tribal ownership of the land becomes more firmly established, as does also the custom of allotting a particular share to the clan. Personal property, moreover, comes to be more and more differentiated from the possessions of the group. Trade, which in primitive times was almost entirely restricted to secret barter, becomes public, and is finally widened into tribal commerce. When this occurs, great changes in external culture are inaugurated. Implements, weapons, and articles of dress and of adornment are perfected. This stage having been attained, the totemic age advances to a utilization of the soil in a way that is unknown to primitive man. The land is cultivated by means of agricultural implements. Of these, however, the hoe long continues to be the only one; though it supplants the digging-stick, its use depends on human power alone. The care and breeding of animals is also undertaken; the herdsman's or, as it is usually called, the nomadic, life is inaugurated. The breeding of useful domestic animals, in particular, is very closely connected with totemism. The animal, which at the beginning of the period was regarded as sacred, acquires the status of a work animal. It loses its dominion over mankind; instead, it becomes a servant, and, as a result, its cult significance gradually vanishes. The very moment, however, that marks the passing of the sacred animal into the useful animal also signalizes the end of the totemic era and the beginning of the age of heroes and gods.
These various traits are far from giving us a complete picture of the wide ramifications of totemic ideas and customs. Enough has been said, however, to indicate how the totemic conception first widens and deepens its influence, permeating the external social organization no less than the separate phases of society, and then finally leads on to its own dissolution. It is precisely this that justifies us in calling the entire period the totemic age. Yet the boundaries of this period are naturally much less clearly defined, or sharply demarcated as to beginning and end, than are those of the preceding primitive age. Man is primitive so long as he is essentially limited in his immediate means of support to that which nature directly offers him or to the labour of his own hands. But even in its beginnings the totemic age transcends these conditions. Tribal organization and the connected phenomena of war, migration, and the beginnings of open trade relations are cultural factors which from the outset represent an advance beyond the primitive state. But the lower limit of the age cannot be definitely fixed; still less can we determine the point at which it terminates. The chieftain of the totemic age is the forerunner of the ruler who appears in the succeeding period. Similarly, totem animals are even more truly the precursors of the later herd, and of agricultural animals. Thus, it is not at all permissible to speak merely of a culture, as one may do in the case of the primitive age. There are a number of different cultures—indeed, several levels of culture, which are in part co-existent but in part follow upon one another. Their only similarity is the fact that they all exhibit the fundamental characteristics of the totemic age. Consider the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Negritos of the Philippines, the inland and forest-dwelling tribes of Malacca. When we have described the general cultural conditions of one of these tribes, we have given the essential features of all. This, however, is far from true in the case of totemism, for this includes many forms of culture and various periods of development. Even in speaking of levels of culture we may do so only with the reservation that each level in its turn includes within it a large number of separate forms of culture, of numerous sorts and gradations. Moreover, the external culture, reflected in dress and habitation, in personal decoration, in implements and weapons, in food and its preparation, does not in the least parallel the social phenomena represented by tribal organization, marriage relations, and forms of rulership. Though the general character of the Polynesian peoples permits their inclusion within the totemic age, their tribal organization exhibits the characteristics of totemic society only imperfectly. In other aspects of their culture, however, they rank far higher than the Australians or some of the Melanesian tribes; these possess a very complex social organization, but are, nevertheless, only slightly superior, on the whole, to primitive peoples. Thus, the various phases of totemic culture may develop in relative independence of one another, even though they are in constant interaction. This is true particularly in the sense that the more developed totemic customs and cults occur even on low cultural levels, whereas, on the other hand, they more and more disappear with the progress of culture.
[2. THE STAGES OF TOTEMIC CULTURE.]
We cannot undertake to describe the extraordinarily rich external culture attained by those groups of peoples who may, in the main, be counted as belonging to the domain of totemism. This is the task of ethnology, and is not of decisive importance for folk psychology. True, in the case of primitive man, the conditions of external culture were described in some detail. This was necessary because of the close connection between these conditions and the psychical factors fundamental to all further development. The beginning of the totemic period marks a great change. New forces now come into play, such as are not to be found among the universal motives that have controlled the life of man from its very beginning. Of these forces there is one in particular that should be mentioned—one that is practically lacking among primitive tribes. This consists in the reciprocal influences exercised upon one another by peoples who occupy approximately the same plane of culture but who nevertheless exhibit certain qualitative differences. Migrations are also an important factor in the totemic age, as well as is the tribal warfare with which migrations are connected.
If we disregard these qualitative differences and attempt to introduce a degree of order into the profusion of the totemic world solely on the basis of general cultural characteristics, we may distinguish three great cultural stages, of which the third, again, falls into two markedly different divisions. We may ignore certain isolated remnants of peoples that are scattered over almost all parts of the world and exhibit very unlike stages of civilization, in order to give our exclusive attention to those forms of culture that belong to compact groups. In this event we shall find that the lowest stage is unquestionably exemplified in the Australian region, as well as by some of the Melanesian peoples. Above this, we have a second level of culture, the Malayo-Polynesian. Wide as is the difference between these cultures, they are nevertheless connected by numerous transitional steps, to be found particularly in Melanesian and Micronesian regions. The third stage of totemic culture itself falls into two essentially different divisions, the American, on the one hand, and the African, on the other. These divisions, of course, include only the so-called natural peoples of these countries, or, more accurately expressed, those tribes which, as regards the characteristics of their social and particularly of their religious development, still belong to totemic culture.
The fact that Australian culture, in spite of its highly complex tribal organization, occupies the lowest plane of all, itself indicates how great may be the discrepancy between totemism in general and the direct influence which it exerts upon tribal organization and external culture. This explains why the Australian native was regarded, up to very recent times, as the typical primitive man. As a matter of fact, his general culture differs but slightly from that of primitive races. The Australian also is a gatherer and a hunter, and shows no trace of a knowledge of agriculture nor, much less, of cattle-raising. Even his faithful domestic animal, the dog, is rarely used for hunting, but is regarded solely as the companion of man. Among the Australians, therefore, the woman still goes about with digging-stick in hand, seeking roots and bulbs for food. Man's life still centres about the chase, and, when one hunting-ground becomes impoverished, he seeks another. Likewise, there is no systematic care for the future. The food is prepared directly in the ashes of the fire or between hot stones—for cooking is not yet customary—and fire is produced by friction or drilling just as it is by primitive man. His utensils also are in essential harmony with his general culture.
But there is one important difference. There has come a change of weapon. This change points to a great revolution inaugurated at the beginning of the totemic age. Primitive man possesses only a long-distance weapon; for the most part he uses bow and arrow. With this weapon he kills his game; with it the individual slays his enemy from ambush. On the other hand, war between tribes or tribal divisions, in which large numbers are opposed, may scarcely be said to exist. This would not be possible with bow and arrow. Thus, the very fact that this is the only weapon indicates that relatively peaceful conditions obtained in primitive culture. Quite otherwise with the Australian! His weapons are markedly different from those of primitive man. Bow and arrow are practically unknown to him; they are found only among the tribes of the extreme north, having probably entered from Melanesia. The real weapons of the Australian are the wooden missile and the javelin. The wooden missile, bent either simply or in the form of a boomerang, whose above-mentioned asymmetrical curve is designed to cause its return to the thrower, is a long-distance weapon. For the most part, however, it is employed only in hunting or in play. The same remains true, to some extent, also of the javelin. The latter has reached a perfected form, being hurled, not directly from the hand, but from a grooved board. The pointed end of the javelin extends out beyond this groove; at its other end there is a hollow into which is fitted a peg, usually consisting of a kangaroo tooth. When the spear is hurled from the board this peg insures the aim of the shot, just as does the gun-barrel that of the bullet; the leverage increases the range. There are also other weapons which are designed for use at close range—the long spear, the club, and, what is most indicative of battle, the shield. The latter cannot possibly be a hunting implement, as might still be the case with the spear and the club, but is a form of weapon specifically intended for battle. The shield of the Australian is long, and usually raised toward the centre. It covers the entire body, the enemy being attacked with spear or club. Thus, the weapons reflect a condition of tribal warfare.
The second great stage of culture, which we may call, though somewhat inaccurately, the Malayo-Polynesian, offers a radically different picture. To a certain extent, the relation between tribal organization and external culture is here the reverse of that which obtains in the Australian world. In Australia, we find a primitive culture alongside of a highly developed tribal organization; in the Malayo-Polynesian region, there is a fairly well developed culture, but a tribal organization which is partly in a state of dissolution and partly in transition to further political and social institutions, including the separation of classes and the rulership of chiefs. Evidently these latter conditions are the result of extensive racial fusion, which is incomparably greater in the Malayo-Polynesian region than in Australia. True, we no longer harbour the delusion that Australia is inhabited by a uniform population. It also has been subject to great waves of immigration, particularly from New Guinea, from whence came the Papuans, one of the races which itself attained to the Malayo-Polynesian level of culture. Naturally the Papuan influx affected chiefly the northern part of Central Australia. The Tasmanian tribe, now extinct, was probably a remnant of the original Australian population. But migrations and racial fusions have caused even greater changes among those peoples who, culturally, must be classed with the Malayo-Polynesians. Here likewise there are many different levels, the lowest of which, as found among the Malayo-Polynesian mixed population, was yet but slightly higher, in some respects, than Australian culture, whereas the culture of the true Malays and Polynesians has already assumed a more advanced character. Ethnology is not yet entirely able to untangle the complicated problems connected with these racial fusions. Much less, of course, can we undertake to enter into these controversial points. We here call attention merely to certain main stages exhibited by the external culture of these peoples, quite aside from considerations of race and of tribal migrations. The Negritos and the Papuans of various parts of Melanesia possess a culture bordering on the primitive—indeed, they may even be characterized as primitive, since they possess characteristics of pretotemic society. Of these tribes, the Papuans of New Guinea and of the islands of the Torres Straits clearly manifest totemic characteristics, while yet possessing special racial traits that are exceptionally pronounced. They differ but little from primitive man, however, so far as concerns either their method of securing food or their dress, the latter of which is exceedingly scanty and is made, for the most part, of plant materials. But these peoples, just as do the Australians, have weapons indicative of battles and migrations; moreover, they exhibit also other marks of a somewhat developed culture. The Papuans are the first to change the digging-stick into the hoe, a useful implement in tilling the soil. In this first form of the hoe, the point is turned so as to form an acute angle with the handle to which it is attached. Hence the soil is not tilled in the manner of the later hoe-culture proper; nothing more is done than to draw furrows into which the seeds are scattered. In many respects, however, this primitive implement represents a great advance over the method of simply gathering food as practised when the digging-stick alone was known. It is the man who makes the furrows with the hoe, since the loosening of the ground requires his greater strength; he walks ahead, and the woman follows with the seeds, which she scatters into the furrows. For the first time, thus, we discern a provision for the future, and also a common tilling of the soil. The gathering of the fruits generally devolves upon the woman alone. But even among the Papuans this first step in the direction of agriculture is found only here and there. The possibility of external influences therefore remains.
Far superior to the Papuan race is the Micronesian population, which, as regards its racial traits, is intermediate between the Melanesians and the Polynesians. Migration and racial fusion here become increasingly important cultural factors. In their beginnings, these factors already manifest themselves in the wanderings of the Papuan and Negrito tribes. One of the most striking discoveries of modern ethnology is the finding of distinct traces of Papuan-Negritic culture in regions, such as the west coast of Africa, which are very remote from the original home of the culture in question. The Papuan races likewise wandered far across the Indian Ocean. Obviously there were Papuan migrations, probably in repeated trains, from New Guinea across the Torres Strait to Northern Australia, where they seem to have influenced social institutions and customs as well as external culture. Above the level of the Negrito and Papuan peoples, who, in their numerous fusions, themselves form several strata, we finally have the Malayo-Polynesian population. The Malayo-Polynesians are widely spread over the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the earth. Because of their significance for the particular stage of totemism now under discussion, we have called the entire cultural period by their name. The fragments of the Negrito and Papuan races, which are scattered here and there over limited sections of the broad territory covered by the wanderings of these tribes, apparently represent remnants of the original inhabitants. As the result of long isolation, certain groups of these peoples have remained on a very primitive plane, as have, for example, the above-described inland tribes of Malacca, or the peoples of Ceylon and of other islands of the Indian archipelago. Others have mingled with the Malays, who have come in from the mainland of India, and with them have formed the numerous levels and divisions of the Malayo-Polynesian race. This accounts for the fact that this Oceanic group of peoples includes a great many forms of culture, which are not, however, susceptible of any sharp demarcation. The culture of the Negritos and the Papuans, on the one hand, is as primitive as is that of the Australians—indeed, isolated fragments of perished races were even more primitive than are the Australians; on the other hand, however, some of the Malayo-Polynesian peoples are already decidedly in advance of any other people whose culture falls within the totemic age.
The chief ethnological problem relating to these groups of peoples concerns the origin of the Malays, who, without doubt, have given the greatest impetus to the cultural development of these mixed races. This problem is as yet unsolved, and is perhaps insolvable. The Malay type, however, particularly on its physical side, points to Eastern Asia. The resemblance to the Mongolians as regards eyes, skull, and colour of skin is unmistakable. At the same time, however, the original Malays probably everywhere mixed with the native inhabitants, remnants of whom have survived in certain places, particularly in the inaccessible forest regions of the Malayan archipelago. Now, the Malays were obviously, even in very early times, a migratory people. Their wanderings, in fact, were far more extensive than any other folk-migrations with which we are familiar in the history of Occidental peoples. Starting, as we may suppose, in Central Asia, that great cradle of the human race, they spread to the coasts, particularly to Indo-China, and then to the large islands of Sunda, Sumatra, and Borneo, to Malacca, and, farther, over the entire region of Oceania. Here, by mixture with the native population, they gave rise to a new race, the Polynesians proper. But the Polynesian portion of the race also preserved the migratory impulse. Thus, the Malayans were the first to create a perfected form of boat, and to it the Polynesians added many new features. Thenceforth the Malay was not restricted to dangerous coast voyages, as was the case with the use of such boats as those of the Australians or the Papuans of New Guinea. It was a boat of increased size, equipped with sails and oars and often artistically fitted out, in which the Malay traversed the seas. With the aid of these boats—which were, at best, small and inadequate for a voyage on the open sea—and at a time when the compass was as yet unheard of and only the starry heavens could give approximate guidance to their course, the Malays and Polynesians traversed distances extending from the Philippines to New Zealand. Of course, these expeditions advanced only stage by stage, from island to island. This is shown by the legends of the Maoris of New Zealand, who were clearly the first of the Polynesians to migrate, and who therefore remained freest from mixture with strange races. The same fact is attested by the great changes in dialect which the Malayan language underwent even in the course of the migrations of the Malays—changes which lead us to infer that to many of the island regions settled by these peoples there were repeated waves of immigration separated by intervals of centuries.
Connected with this is a further important factor—one which exercised a destructive influence upon the original totemism, only a few traces of which have survived among these tribes. The boatman, alone on the broad seas, with only the starry firmament to direct his course, turns his gaze involuntarily to the world of stars which serves as his guide. Thus, particularly in Polynesia, there sprang up a celestial mythology. This, in turn, again reacted upon the interpretation of terrestrial objects. By breaking up tribes and their divisions, furthermore, the migrations destroyed the former tribal organization and, through the influence gained by occasional bold leaders on such expeditions, gave rise to new forms of rulership. An added factor was the change of environment, the effect of which was noticeable even at the beginning of totemic culture in the influence which the Papuan migration exercised upon the northern parts of Australia—the parts most accessible to it. The Oceanic Islands are as poor in animal life as they are rich in plants. The totemic ideas prevalent in these regions, therefore, came more and more to lose their original basis. This accounts for the fact that the entire domain is characterized by two phenomena which are far in advance of anything analogous that may be found on similar cultural levels in other parts of the earth. One of these—namely, the development of a celestial mythology—scarcely occurs anywhere else in so elaborate a form. Of course, we also find many clear traces of the influence of celestial phenomena in the mythological conceptions of the Babylonians and Egyptians, of the Hindoos, the Greeks, the Germans, etc. But the elements of celestial mythology have here been so assimilated by terrestrial legend-material and by heroic figures as to be inseparable from them. Thus, the celestial elements have in general become secondary features of mythological conceptions whose characteristic stamp is derived from the natural phenomena of man's immediate environment. Even the celestial origin of these elements has been almost entirely lost to the popular consciousness which comes to expression in the legend. The case is entirely different with the celestial mythology of the Polynesians, particularly as it occurs in the legends of the Maoris. In the latter, the celestial movements, as directly perceived, furnish a large part of the material for the mythical tales. These deal with the ascent of ancestors into the heavens or their descent from heaven, and with the wanderings and destinies of the original ancestors, who are regarded as embodied in the sun, moon, and stars; thus, they differ from the mythologies of most cultural peoples, in that they are not simply deity legends that suggest celestial phenomena in only occasional details. Moreover, no mention of ancestral or totem animal occurs in Polynesian mythology. There are only occasional legends, associated with the mighty trees of this island-world, that may perhaps be traceable to the plant totems of Melanesia. Such being the conditions, it might seem that, in any case, we are not justified in including the entire Malayo-Polynesian culture within the totemic age. Nevertheless, quite apart from the fact that the other phases of external culture are all such as indicate the totemic stage of development, the obviously primitive character of the celestial legends themselves—for they have not as yet developed true hero and deity conceptions—marks this culture as one of transition. Its totemic basis has almost disappeared; yet the earlier manner of securing food, the modes of dress, the decoration, and the belief in spirits and magic have essentially remained, even though decoration and weapons, particularly, have undergone a far richer development. Thus, the external decoration of the body reached its highest perfection in the artistic dot-patterns exemplified in the tattooing of the Polynesians. The origin of this bodily adornment is here again probably to be traced to magical beliefs. The Polynesians also possess carved wooden idols and fantastically shaped masks. To the bow and the lance they have added the knife and the sword; to the long shield, the small, round shield, which serves for defence in the more rapid movements of single combat. Many localities also have a peculiar social institution, likewise bound up with the development of warfare initiated by migration and strife. This institution consists in an exclusive organization comprising age-groups and the men's club. The latter, in turn, are themselves symptomatic of the disintegration of the original totemic tribal divisions. There is, moreover, one further custom, taboo, which has grown up under totemic influences and has received its richest development with manifold transformations and ramifications within this very transitional culture of Polynesia. The earliest form of taboo, which consists in the prohibition of eating the flesh of the totem animal, has, it is true, disappeared. But the idea of taboo has been transferred to a great number of other things, to sacred places, to objects and names, to the person and property of individuals, particularly of chiefs and priests. The tremendous influence of these phenomena, whose origin is closely intertwined with totemism, clearly shows that this entire culture belongs essentially to the totemic age.
Very different is the third stage of totemic culture. As was remarked above, this falls into two essentially distinct divisions of apparently very different origin. American culture, on the one hand, represents a remarkable offshoot of totemic beliefs; besides this there is the African culture, which, because of peculiar conditions, again connected with racial fusion, is, in part, far in advance of the totemic age, though in some details it clearly represents a unique development of it. To one who wishes to gain a coherent picture of totemic culture, nothing, indeed, is more surprising than the fact that foremost among the peoples who may be regarded as the representatives of this great epoch are the Australians. Strange to say, the condition of the Australians approximates to that of primitive man. On the other hand, the North American Indians, particularly those of the Atlantic Coast regions, may be classed among semi-cultural peoples, and yet they seem, at first glance, to have made exactly the same social application of totemic ideas as have the Australians. The typical tribal organization of the Australians and that of the Iroquois tribes who formerly lived in the present state of New York, are, in fact, so very similar that a superficial view might almost cause them to appear identical. This is all the more surprising since we have not the slightest ground for supposing any transference of institutions. That which makes the similarity so striking is primarily the fact that the single groups or clans are designated by animal names, that they entertain the conception of an animal ancestor, and that the regular tribal organization is based on the principle of dual division. Nevertheless, the more advanced culture of the Iroquois has already led to certain changed conditions. The animal ancestor recedes to some extent. In its stead, there are associated with the animal other conceptions, such as are connected with more systematically conducted hunting. The American Indian, in contrast to the Australian, no longer regards the totem animal as a wonderful and superior being, to be hunted only with fear and not to be used for food if this can possibly be avoided. He requires for his subsistence all the game available. Hence he does not practise the custom of abstaining from the flesh of the totem animal. On the other hand, he observes ceremonies of expiation, such as are unknown to the Australian. The totem ceremonies of the latter are chiefly objective means of magic designed to bring about the increase of the totem animals. This idea appears among the Indians likewise. Their totem ceremony, however, has also an essentially subjective significance and is concerned with the past no less than with the future. Its object is to obtain forgiveness for the slaying of the animal, whether this has preceded or is to follow the act of expiation. Connected with these customs is a further difference, which is seemingly insignificant but which is nevertheless characteristic. Whereas the Australian, in many regions, thinks of the totem animal as his ancestor, the Indian of the prairies speaks of the buffaloes as his elder brothers. Thus, among the Indian tribes, man and animal still stand on an equal footing. Hence the animal must be conciliated if it is to serve as food for man. In many of the myths of the American Indians, a man is transformed into an animal or, conversely, an animal assumes the human form. Hand in hand with this change in cult ideas and customs appear the richer forms of external culture. The weapons are perfected; dress becomes more complete; decoration of the body itself, though it does not disappear, more and more finds its substitute in the rich embellishment of the clothing. Social organization becomes stable, and advances beyond the original tribal limits. The tribes choose permanent chieftains and, in times of war, enter into group alliances with one another. Thus, tribal organization paves the way for the formation of States, though fixed rulership has not as yet been established. In so far, the democratic organization of North America later instituted by the Europeans, shows a trace of similarity to the free tribal alliances of the natives who had inhabited the country for centuries. For the most part, moreover, the Indians were familiar with agriculture, though, of course, in the primitive form of hoe-culture. Man himself tilled his field with the hoe, since plough and draught animals were wanting. But a firmer organization is revealed in the fact that the individual did not go to the field alone, followed by the woman who scatters the seed, but that the land was prepared by the common labour of the clan. This caused the rise of great vegetation festivals, with their accompanying ceremonies. In external details also these far surpassed the cult festivals which the Australians hold in connection with the adolescence of the youths or for the purpose of multiplying the animal or plant totems which serve as human food.
The conditions differ in the southern and, to some extent also, in the western portion of the great American continent. Closely related as the various tribes are, the old hypothesis that they migrated from Asia across Behring Strait is untenable. Moreover, in spite of their physical relationship and, in part also, of their linguistic similarities, their culture shows important differences. In the southern and central parts of America particularly, we find widely different cultural levels, ranging from the forest Indians of Brazil, who have made scarcely any essential advance beyond the primitive culture of the Veddahs or of the natives of Malacca, to the tribes of New Mexico and Arizona, who have obviously been influenced by the cultural peoples of the New World, and, under this influence, have undergone an independent development. All advances that they have made, however, clearly depend upon the development of agriculture. In addition to numerous elements of celestial mythology that have found their way from Mexico, we find vegetation cults and agricultural ceremonies. The latter are often closely fused with the borrowed mythology, particularly among the semi-cultural peoples of the central region of America. These cults—sometimes governed by totemic conceptions, while in other cases dominated by celestial mythology—underlie the development of art throughout the whole of America. Whereas the chief expression of the æsthetic impulse in Polynesia is the decoration of the body, particularly by means of tattooing, this practice is secondary, in the case of the American Indian, to the possession of external means of adornment. It is primarily the beautiful plumage of the bird kingdom that furnishes the decorations of the head and of the garment. At the ceremonies of the Zunis and other New Mexican tribes, the altars are decked with the feathers of birds. These festivals exhibit a wealth of colour and a complexity of ceremonial performances that have always aroused the astonishment of the strangers who have been able to witness them. The decoration of garments, of altars, and of festal places is paralleled in its development by that of the pictorial decoration of clay vessels. Here for the first time we have a developed art of ceramics which employs ornamentations, pictures of totemic animals, and combinations of the two or transitional forms. Originally, no doubt, these ornamentations were intended as means of magic, but they came more and more to serve the purposes of decoration. All of these factors exert an influence on the numerous cult dances. All over America, from the Esquimos in the north far down to the south, a very important part of the equipment of the dancers is the mask. This mask reproduces either animal features or some fantastic form intermediate between man and animal. Thus, this culture is of a peculiar nature. Even externally it combines the huntsman's culture with that of the tiller of the soil, although in its agriculture it has not advanced beyond the level of hoe-culture. As compared with Malayo-Polynesian culture, however, it presents an important additional factor. This consists in the community of labour, which is obviously connected with the more stable tribal organization and with the development of more comprehensive cult associations. It is this factor that accounts for those great cult festivals that are associated with sowing and harvest and that extend far down into the higher civilizations, as numerous rudimentary customs still testify.
The changes which we likewise find in mythological conceptions also carry us beyond the narrow circle of original totemism. Again there appear elements of a nature-mythology, particularly of a celestial mythology. These supplant the animal cult, but nevertheless retain some connection with the totem animal; the culture is one in which the totem animal never entirely loses its earlier significance. Thus, the vegetation festivals, especially those of North and Central America, exhibit many cult forms in which ideas that belong to a celestial mythology combine with the worship of animals and of ancestors. The conceptions of ancestors and of gods thus play over into one another, and these god-ancestors are believed to have their seat in the clouds and in the heavens above. However constantly, therefore, totemic ideas may be in evidence within the field of external phenomena, a much superior point of view is attained, by the American races, as regards the inner life.
Among the African peoples we find the second important form of culture belonging to this third stage—a culture which in many respects diverges from the one which we have just described. More clearly even than in the case of America has the idea been disproven that the inhabitants of the interior of Africa are essentially a homogeneous race that has developed independently of external influences. Even more than other peoples, the Africans show the effects of great and far-reaching external influences. Hamitic and Semitic tribes entered the country from the north at an early time; even from the distant south of Asia, probably from Sumatra and its neighbouring islands, great waves of immigration, crossing Madagascar in the distant past, swept on towards the west even to the Gold Coast, introducing elements of Papuan-Negritic culture into Africa. There were frequent fusions between these tribes and the negro peoples proper, as well as with the Hamites, the Semites, and also with those who were probably the original inhabitants of this region, remnants of whom are still to be found in the Bushmen. The negro race, which, relatively speaking, has remained the purest, lives in the Soudan region; the Bantus inhabit the south of Africa; the north is occupied mostly by Hamitic tribes, whose advent into this region was followed by that of a people of related origin, the Semites. Corresponding to the racial mixtures that thus arose, there are various forms of culture. As regards the Bantus, it is highly probable that they are a mixed people, sprung from a union of the Soudan negroes with the Hamites. That the Hamites pressed on, in very early times, into southern Africa, is proved by the Hottentot tribe, whose language exhibits Hamitic characteristics, and the colour of whose skin, furthermore, is lighter than that of the negro proper or that of the Bantu. The language of the Bantus shows traits resembling partly the negro idioms of the Soudan and partly Hamitic-Asiatic characteristics. The element of culture, however, which is peculiar to the Hamites and which was introduced by them into the northern part of the continent, is the raising of cattle and of sheep. There can be scarcely any doubt that the African cattle originally came from Asia. Probably, however, cattle were brought to Africa on the occasion of two different Hamitic migrations; this is indicated by the fact that two breeds of cattle are found in Africa. Moreover, it is clear that, at the time of their introduction, cattle were not totem animals, but had already gained a position intermediate between the totem and the breeding animal. The Hottentot, as well as the Bantu, prizes his cattle as his dearest possession. Since, however, he slaughters them only in times of extreme necessity, he has progressed only to the point of obtaining a milk supply. Yet even this represents an important advance. Owing to his efforts, the cow no longer merely provides the calf with milk, as in the natural state, but, long after the time of suckling has passed, places the milk at man's disposal. Everywhere in the interior of Africa the cow is still a common milk animal. As such, it is a highly prized source of nourishment, but it is not used for agricultural purposes. Thus, its position is midway between that of the original totem animal of cult and that of the draught animal. For the Hottentot, cattle are objects of supreme value. As such, they are accorded a certain degree of reverence. They are not utilized as beasts of burden nor for slaughter, but only as a source of such means of nourishment as do not cost their lives. South Africa, therefore, has remained on the level of hoe-culture. The boundary between these southern districts in which hoe-culture and the nomadic life prevail and the northern regions into which the Hamites and Semites have introduced plough-culture is, practically speaking, the desert of Sahara. It is only when the animal is used to draw the plough that it becomes in all respects a useful animal. Thenceforth it no longer merely gives its milk for food, but it performs the work that is too hard for man, and, finally, as an animal of slaughter, it takes the place of the gradually disappearing wild animal of the chase. Coincident with this development, totemic ideas and customs disappear. Though these have still left distinct traces in the south, particularly among the Bantus, it is, at most, isolated survivals that remain among the Hamitic population of the north.
Thus, the animal has come to be a breeding and a work animal throughout the whole of Africa, though this is particularly the case wherever the cultural influences of the immigrant peoples from the East have been operative. The relations of man to man have likewise undergone a change in this locality, due, in part, to migrations and tribal wars. No region so much as Africa has become the centre of despotic forms of government. It is this factor, together with the potent influence of ideas of personal property associated with it, that has contributed, on the one hand, to the origin of polygyny, and, on the other, to the rise of slavery. Long before Africa became the slave market of the New World it harboured an intertribal traffic in human beings. These changes in culture undermined the older cults, so that, with the dissolution of the totemic tribal organization, the original totem conceptions disappeared from all parts of this region. All the more marked was the progress of animism and fetishism, of which the former is closely connected, in its origin, with totem belief, while the latter is a sort of degenerate totemism. In certain regions, furthermore, as among the Bantus and the Hamitic tribes, another outgrowth of the cult of the dead—namely, ancestor worship—has gained great prominence alongside of elements of a celestial mythology.
To a far greater extent than in Africa, totemic culture has almost entirely disappeared throughout the entire Asiatic world. Only in the extreme north among the Tchuktchis, the Yakutes, and Ghilyaks, and in the far south among the Dravidian tribes of Hindustan who were pushed back by the influx of Hindoos, have remnants of totemic institutions survived. In addition to these, only scanty fragments of totemism proper may be found in Asia—the home of the great cultural peoples of the Old World. Surviving effects of totemic culture, however, are everywhere apparent, no less in the sacred animals of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Hindoos, Greeks, and the Germanic peoples, than in the significance attached by the Romans to the flight of birds and to the examination of entrails, and in the Israelitic law which forbids the eating of the flesh of certain animals.
In the light of all these facts, the conclusion appears highly probable that at some time totemic culture everywhere paved the way for a more advanced civilization, and, thus, that it represents a transitional stage between the age of primitive man and the era of heroes and gods.
[3. TOTEMIC TRIBAL ORGANIZATION.][1]
As has already been stated, the beginning of the totemic age is not marked by any essential change in external culture. As regards dress, decoration, and the acquisition of food, the conditions that we meet, particularly among the natives of Central Australia, differ scarcely at all from those of the primitive races of the pretotemic age. It is only in the weapons, which are already clearly indicative of tribal warfare, that we find an unmistakable external indication of deeper-going differences in social culture. At the same time, however, the totemic age includes peoples whose general manner of life we are accustomed to call semi-cultural. The greatest contrast occurs between the natives of Australia and of some of the portions of Melanesia, on the one hand, and those of North America, particularly of the eastern part, on the other. While the former still live the primitive life of the gatherer and the hunter, the latter possess the rudiments of agriculture, as well as the associated cult festivals, the beginnings of a celestial mythology, and richer forms of legend and poetry. Nevertheless, as regards the most universal characteristic of totemic culture, namely, the form of tribal organization, the two groups of peoples differ but slightly, although conditions in Australia have on the whole remained more primitive. This is most clearly shown by the fact that, among the Australian natives, the totem animal possesses the significance of a cult object, whereas in America, and particularly among the Atlantic tribes, whose totemic practices have received the most careful study, the totem animal has obviously come to be a mere coat of arms. The difference might, perhaps, be briefly stated thus: In Australia, the totem names signify groups of cult members within a clan; in America, they are the designations of clans themselves, but these as such possess no cult significance. In both regions, however, tribal organization follows the principle of dual division. The tribe first divides into two tribal halves (I and II); then each of these separates into two clans (A and B, C and D); finally, the latter again break up into subclans, so that eventually we may have eight tribal divisions. In certain cases, the division has not advanced beyond the dual form; the upper limit, on the other hand, seems to be eight distinct groups. The schemata representing tribal organization in Australia and in America are so similar that it is easy to
understand how most authors have come to regard conditions in the two countries as essentially identical. Yet the divergence in the nomenclature of the tribal divisions points to significant differences. The fact is that the clan names of the Australians are entirely different from the totem names. The former have, as a rule, become unintelligible to the present-day native, and, since many of them recur among distinct tribes who now speak different dialects, they probably derive from an older age. Words such as Ipai, Kumbo, Murri, Kubbi, etc., may originally, perhaps, have possessed a local significance. At any rate, clan names but rarely consist of the names of animals. On the other hand, such words as emu, kangaroo, opossum, eagle-hawk, and others, are the regular designations of the clans composing the totem groups. The case is otherwise among the North American Indians. Here the clans all have animal names. Nor can we anywhere find alongside of the clans any particular totem groups which might be regarded as cult alliances. The schema shown on p. 141 exhibits these relations. The tribal halves are designated by I and II, the clans by A, B, C, etc, and the independent totem groups existing within the individual clans by m, n, o, p, etc.
Owing to the external similarity of the tribal organizations, it has generally been thought that the totem groups of the Australians are merely clans or subclans, such as are, doubtless, the social groups of the American Indians, designated by similar totem names. This interpretation, however, has unquestionably led to serious confusion, particularly in the description of the tribal organization of the Australians. A study of the detailed and very valuable contributions of Howitt and of other early investigators of the sociological conditions of Australia, inevitably leaves the impression that, particularly as regards the interpretation of the various group names, the scholars were labouring under misconceptions which caused the relations to appear more complex than they really are. Such misconceptions were all the more possible because the investigators in question were entirely ignorant of the languages of the natives, and were therefore practically dependent upon the statements of their interpreters. Under these circumstances we may doubtless be allowed a certain degree of scepticism as to the acceptance of these reports, especially when they also involve an interpretation of phenomena; and we may be permitted an attempt to discover whether a different conception of the significance of the various group names may not give us a clearer picture of the phenomena, and one that is also more adequate when the general condition of the inhabitants is taken into account. The conditions prevalent among the American Indians are in general much easier to understand than are those of the Australians, particularly where the old tribal organization has been preserved with relative purity, as among the Iroquois. In this case, however, the totem names have obviously become pure clan designations without any cult significance. Now this has not occurred among the Australians; for them, the totem animal has rather the status of a cult object common to the members of a group. The fact that the Australians have separate names for the clans, as was remarked above, whereas the American Indians have come to designate clans by totem names, provides all the more justification for attributing essentially different meanings to the two groups that bear totem names. In attempting to reach a more satisfactory interpretation of totemic tribal organization, therefore, we shall consider those totem groups which are obviously in a relatively early stage of development—namely, the Australian groups—simply as cult associations which have found a place within the tribal divisions or clans, but whose original significance is of an absolutely different nature. In the above schema, therefore, A, B, C, D, etc., represent tribal divisions or clans, m, n, o, p, etc., cult groups. The latter are lacking in the part of the diagram which refers to the American Indians, since these have no cult associations that are independent of the tribal divisions; indeed, the old totem names have lost their former cult significance and have become mere clan names. Thus, the conception here advanced differs from the usual one in that it gives a different significance to the totem names on the two levels of development. In the case of the Australians, we regard them as the names of cult groups; in America, where the totem cult proper has receded or has disappeared, we regard them as mere clan names. But the extension of totem names to the entire clan organization in the latter case is not, as it were, indicative of a more developed totemism, but rather of a totemism in the state of decline. The totem animal, though here also at one time an object of cult, is such no longer, but has become a mere coat of arms. In support of this view of American totem names, we might doubtless also refer to the so-called totem poles. Such a pole consists of a number of human heads representing the ancestors of the clan, and is crowned by the head of the totem animal. This is obviously symbolic of the idea that this succession of generations has as its symbol the totem animal that surmounts it—that is, the totem pole is an enlarged coat of arms.
Because of the great regularity of its occurrence, the dual form of tribal division must be regarded as everywhere due to the same cause. Concerning its origin there can scarcely be any doubt. Obviously it has no real connection with totemism itself. This explains why the tribal divisions originally derived their names, not from the totem, but from localities or from other external sources, as the conditions among the Australians would seem to indicate. A phenomenon which recurs in widely distant regions with such regularity as does dual division, is scarcely intelligible except by reference to the general conditions attendant upon the spread of peoples. A tribe leading the unsettled life of gatherers and hunters must of inner necessity separate as its numbers increase or as the food-supply begins to fail. It is but natural that the tribe should first separate into two divisions on the basis of the hunting-grounds which the members occupy; the same process may then repeat itself in the case of each division. The fact that when deviations from the principle of dual division are found, they are most likely to occur in the subordinate groups, is also in harmony with the view that the divisions are due to the natural conditions of dispersion. For, in the case of the subordinate groups, one of the smaller units might, of course, easily disintegrate or wander to a distance and lose its connection with the tribe.
[1] The survey presented in this and in the following section aims to give only a general outline of the relations between totemism and tribal organization, as based particularly on several tribes of Central Australia. For a more detailed account of the conditions and of their probable interpretation, I would refer to a paper on "Totemism and Tribal Organization in Australia," published, in 1914, in Anthropos, an international journal.
[4. THE ORIGIN OF EXOGAMY.]
Though the dual organization of the tribe seems to admit of a comparatively simple and easy explanation, the totemic exogamy which is closely bound up with it offers great difficulties. As we have already seen, totemic exogamy is characterized by the fact that a member of one specific clan, or of a totem group belonging to the clan, may enter into marriage only with a member of another clan or totem group. This restriction of the marriage relationship is generally known as 'exogamy,' a term first introduced by the Scottish ethnologist and historian, McLennan. In order to distinguish this custom from later regulations of marriage, such, for example, as exist in present law, in the prohibition of the union of relatives by blood or by marriage, we may call it more specifically 'totemic exogamy.' Totemic exogamy clearly represents the earliest form of marriage restriction found in custom or law. The phenomena bound up with it may be regarded as having arisen either contemporaneously with the first division of the tribe or, at any rate, soon thereafter, for some of the Australian and Melanesian tribes practise exogamy even though they have not advanced beyond a twofold division of the tribe. On the other hand, the primitive horde of the pretotemic age remains undivided, and, of course, shows no trace of exogamy. True, marriages between parents and children seem to have been avoided as early even as in pretotemic times. But this could hardly have been due to the existence of firmly established norms of custom. Such norms never developed except under the influence of totemic tribal organization, and they are closely related to its various stages of development.
Taking as the basis of consideration the above-mentioned conditions in Australia, where an approximate regularity in the successive stages of this development is most clearly in evidence, we may distinguish particularly three main forms of exogamy. The first is the simplest. If we designate the two divisions of the tribe between which exogamic relations obtain, by A and B, and the various subgroups of A by l, m, n, o, and of B by p, q, r, s, we have, as this simplest form, unlimited exogamy. It corresponds to the following schema:—
This means: A man belonging to Class A may take in marriage a woman from any of the subgroups of Class B, and conversely. Marriage is restricted to the extent that a man may not take a wife from his own class; it is unrestricted, however, in so far as he may select her from any of the subgroups of the other class. This form of exogamy does not appear to occur except where the divisions of the tribe are not more than two in number. The marriage classes, A and B, then represent the two divisions of the tribe; the subgroups l, m, n, o, p,... are totem groups—that is to say, according to the view maintained above, cult groups. For the most part, marriage relationships between the specific cult groups meet with no further restrictions. A man of Class A may marry a woman belonging to any of the totem groups p, q, r, s, of Class B—it is only union with a woman belonging to one of the totem groups of Class A that is denied him. Nevertheless, as we shall notice later, we even here occasionally find more restricted relations between particular totem groups, and it is these exceptions that constitute the transitional steps to limited exogamy. Such transitions to the succeeding form of exogamy are to be found, for example, among the Australian Dieri, some of whose totem groups intermarry, only with some one particular group of the other tribal division.
The second form of exogamy occurs when a member of Class A is not allowed to take in marriage any woman he may choose from Class B, but only one from some specific sub-group of B. For example, a man of group n is restricted to a woman of group r.
Both forms of exogamy, the unlimited and the limited, observe the same law with respect to the group affiliation of children. If, as universally occurs in Australia, A and B are clans having exogamous relations, and l, m, n, o, p,... are totem groups within these clans, then, if maternal descent prevails, the children remain both in the clan and in the totem of the mother; in the case of paternal descent, they pass over to the clan and to the totem of the father. Of these modes of reckoning descent, the former is dominant, and was everywhere, probably, the original custom. One indication of this is the connection of paternal descent with other phenomena representing a change of conditions due to external influences—the occurrence of the same totem groups, for example, in the two clans, A and B, that enjoy exogamous relations. The latter phenomenon is not to be found under the usual conditions, represented by diagrams I and II. In the case of unlimited exogamy (I), no less than in that of limited exogamy, we find that if, for example, maternal descent prevails, and, the mother belongs to clan B and to totem group r, the children likewise belong to this group r. This condition is much simplified in the case of the American Indians. With them, totem group and clan coincide, the totem names having become the names of the clans themselves. The particular totem groups, l, m, n, o, p,... do not exist. Exogamous relations between clans A and B consist merely in the fact that a man of the one clan is restricted in marriage to women of the other clan. Wherever maternal descent prevails, as it does, for example, among the Iroquois, the children are counted to the clan of the mother; in the case of paternal descent, they belong to the clan of the father.
In the Australian system, however, which distinguishes clan and totem, and therefore, as we may suppose, still exemplifies, on the whole, an uninterrupted development, we find also a third form of exogamous relationship. This last form of exogamy seems to be the one which is most common in Australia, whereas, of course, it has no place in the pure clan exogamy of the American Indians. The system indicated in diagram II, in which children belong directly to the clan of the mother in maternal descent and to that of the father in paternal descent, may be designated as limited exogamy with direct maternal or paternal descent. There developed from this a third system, in which, while the children are counted to the clan of the parent who determines descent, they nevertheless become members of a different totem group. Thus arises a limited exogamy with indirect maternal or paternal descent, as represented in diagram III.
A man of clan A and totem group l may marry only a woman of clan B and totem group p; the children, however, do not belong to the totem p, but to another specifically defined totem group, q, of clan B.
The way in which these various forms of exogamy affect the marriage relations of the children that are born from such unions is fairly obvious. Turning first to form I—unlimited exogamy—it is clear that, in the case of maternal descent, which here appears to be the rule, none of the children of the mother may marry except into the clan of the father; in paternal descent, conversely, they may marry only into the clan of the mother. Marriage between brothers and sisters, thus, is made impossible. Nor may a son marry his mother where maternal descent prevails, or a daughter her father in the case of paternal descent. In the former case, however, the marriage of father and daughter would be permitted, as would that of mother and son in the latter. The marriage of a son or daughter with relatives of the mother who belong to the same clan is not allowed in the case of maternal descent. The son, for example, may not marry a sister of his mother, nor the daughter a brother of the mother, etc. Since it is maternal descent that is dominant in the case of unlimited exogamy, the most important result of the latter is doubtless its prevention of the marriage of brother and sister, in addition to that of a son with his mother. The system of paternal descent, of course, involves a corresponding change in marriage restrictions.
What, now, are the results of form II—limited exogamy with direct maternal or paternal descent? It is at once clear that such exogamy prohibits all the various marriage connections proscribed by unlimited exogamy. Marriage between brothers and sisters is rendered impossible, as is also, in the case of maternal descent, that between a son and his mother or the relatives in her clan. Marriage between father and daughter, however, is permitted. Where paternal descent prevails, these latter conditions are reversed. Although forms I and II are to this extent in complete agreement, they nevertheless show a very important difference with respect to the prohibitions which they place on marriage. In unlimited exogamy, a man is at liberty to marry into any totem that belongs to the clan with which his own has exogamous relations; in limited exogamy, however, he may marry into only one of the totems of such a clan. Thus, the circle within which he may select a wife is very materially reduced. Limited exogamy with direct maternal or paternal descent, accordingly, means a reapproach to endogamy. The wife must be chosen from an essentially smaller group, narrowed down, in the case of maternal descent, to the more immediate relatives of the father, or, in paternal descent, to those of the mother. Such a condition is not at all a strict form of exogamy, as is maintained by some ethnologists, but is, on the contrary, something of a return to endogamy. This point is of decisive importance in determining the motives of the remarkable institution of exogamy.
What are the conditions, finally, which obtain in form III—limited exogamy with indirect maternal or paternal descent? It is at once obvious that marriage between brother and sister is here also excluded. Furthermore, another union is prohibited which was permitted in form II. For son and daughter, in the case of maternal descent, no longer belong to the totem group of the mother, p, but pass over into another group, say q. Not only, therefore, is a son prevented from marrying his mother because they both belong to the same clan, but a father is forbidden to marry his daughter because he may take only a woman of group p, to which his wife belongs. No less true is this of the son, who now likewise belongs to group q, and may therefore no longer marry a female relative of his father's, since the group q into which he has entered has exogamous connections with another totem group of the paternal clan, say with m. With this change a step to a stricter exogamy is again taken; the earlier restrictions on marriage remain, and the possibilities of marriage between relations are further reduced by changing the totem of the children. Cousins may not marry each other. Thus, the limits of exogamy are here narrower than those, for example, which obtain in Germany. It is evident that such limitations might become a galling constraint, particularly where there is a scarcity of women, as is the case, for the most part, in Australia. This has led some of the Australian tribes to the remarkable expedient of declaring that a man is not to be regarded as the son of his father, but, in the case of maternal descent, as the son of his paternal grandfather—a step which practically amounts to transferring him into the totem of his father and allowing him to enter into marriage with his mother's relatives. This circumvention, reminding one of the well-known fictions of Roman law, may have its justification in the eyes of the Australians in the fact that they draw practically no distinction between the various generations of ancestors.
The three forms of exogamy, accordingly, agree in prohibiting the marriage of brothers and sisters and, in so far as maternal descent may be regarded as the prevailing system, the marriage of a son with his mother. Both these prohibitions, doubtless, and especially the latter, reflect a feeling which was experienced by mankind at an early age. The aversion to the marriage of a son with his mother is greater than that to the marriage of brother and sister or even that of father and daughter. Consider the tragedy of Œdipus. It might, perhaps, be less horrible were it father and daughter instead of son and mother who were involved in the incestuous relation. Marriages between brothers and sisters have, of course, sometimes occurred. Thus, as has already been remarked, the Peruvian Incas ordained by law that a king must marry his sister. In the realm of the Ptolemies, likewise, the marriage of brother and sister served the purpose of maintaining purity of blood, and even to-day such marriages occur in some of the smaller despotic negro states. The custom is probably always the result of the subjugation of a people by a foreign line of rulers. Indeed, even the Greeks permitted marriage between half-brothers and half-sisters.
Though these natural instincts were less potent in early times than in later culture, they may not have been entirely inoperative in the development from original endogamy to exogamy. Nevertheless, one would scarcely attempt to trace to the blind activity of such instincts those peculiar forms of exogamy that appear particularly among the Australian tribes. On the contrary, we would here also at once be inclined to maintain that the reverse is true, thus following a principle that has approved itself in so many other cases. The aversion to marriage with relatives has left its impress on our present-day legislation, not so much, indeed, in the positive form of exogamy, as in the negative form which forbids endogamy within certain limits. This aversion, however, is not the source so much as it is the effect—at least in great measure—of the exogamous institutions of early culture. All the more important is the question concerning the origin of these institutions. This question, in fact, has already received much attention on the part of ethnologists, particularly since the beginning of the present century, when it has become more and more possible to study the tribal organization of the Australians. Here, however, we must distinguish between the general theories that have been advanced concerning the causes of exogamy as such—theories which date back in part even to a fairly early period—and hypotheses concerning the origin of the various forms of exogamy.
Exogamy as such has generally been approached from a rationalistic point of view. It has been regarded as an institution voluntarily created to obviate the marriage of relatives, and is supposed to have arisen contemporaneously with another institution of like purpose, namely, tribal division. This view is championed, among other scholars, by the able American sociologist, Lewes Morgan, in his book "Ancient Society" (1870), and even by Frazer in his comprehensive work "Totemism and Exogamy" (1910), which includes in its survey all parts of the earth. Frazer says explicitly: 'In the distant past, several wise old men must have agreed to obviate the evils of endogamy, and with this end in view they instituted a system that resulted in exogamous marriage.' Thus, the determinant motive is here supposed to have been aversion to the marriage of relatives. According to Morgan's hypothesis—an extreme example of rationalistic interpretation—the aversion was due to a gradually acquired knowledge that the marriage of relatives was injurious in its effects upon offspring. The entire institution, thus, is regarded as a eugenic provision. We are to suppose that the members of these tribes not only invented this whole complicated system of tribal division, but that they foresaw its results and for this reason instituted exogamous customs. Were people who possess no names for numbers greater than four capable of such foresight, it would indeed be an unparalleled miracle. Great social transformations, of which one of the greatest is unquestionably the transition from the primitive horde to totemic tribal organization, are never effected by the ordinances of individuals, but develop of themselves through a necessity immanent in the cultural conditions. Their effects are never foreseen, but are recognized in their full import only after they have taken place. Moreover, as regards the question of the injurious effects resulting from the marriage of relatives, authorities even to-day disagree as to where the danger begins and how great it really is. That the Australians should have formed definite convictions in prehistoric times with reference to these matters, is absolutely inconceivable. At most, they might have felt a certain instinctive repugnance. Furthermore, if these institutions were established with the explicit purpose of avoiding marriage between relatives, the originators, though manifesting remarkable sagacity in their invention, made serious mistakes in their calculations. For, in the first place, the first two forms of exogamy only partially prevent a union which even endogamous custom avoids, namely, that between parents and children; in the second place, the transition from unlimited to limited exogamy with direct maternal or paternal descent does not involve an increased restriction of marriage between relations, but, as we have already seen, marks a retrogression, in the sense of a reapproach to endogamy.
The above view, therefore, was for the most part abandoned in favour of other, apparently more natural, explanations. Of these we would mention, as a second theory, the biological hypothesis of Andrew Lang. This author assumes that the younger brothers of a joint family were driven out by the stronger and older ones in order to ward off any want that might arise from the living together of a large number of brothers and sisters, and that these younger brothers were thus obliged to marry outside the group. Even this, however, is not an adequate theory of exogamy, since it does not explain how the custom has come to apply also to the older members of the family group. As a final hypothesis, we may mention one which may perhaps be described as specifically sociological. In its fundamental aspects it was proposed by MacLennan, the investigator who also gave us the word 'exogamy.' MacLennan does not regard exogamy as having originated in times of peace, nor even as representing voluntarily established norms of custom. He derives it from war, and in so doing he appeals to the testimony both of history and of legend. As is well known, even the Iliad, the greatest epic of the past, portrays as an essential part of its theme a marriage by capture. The dissension between Achilles and Agamemnon arose from the capture of Briseis, for whom the two leaders of the Achæans quarrelled with each other. According to MacLennan, the capture of a woman from a strange tribe represents the earliest exogamy. The rape of the Sabines is another incident suggesting the same conclusion. True, this is not an event of actual history. Nevertheless, legend reflects the customs and ideas of the past. Now, in the case under discussion, it is clear that marriage by capture involves a foreign and hostile tribe, for this is the relation which the Sabines originally sustained to the Romans. A significant indication of the connection between marriage by capture and war with hostile tribes occurs also in Deuteronomy (ch. xxi.), where the law commands the Israelites: 'If in war you see a beautiful woman and desire her in marriage, take her with you. Let her for several weeks bewail her relatives and her home, and then marry her. But if you do not wish to make her your wife, then let her go free; you shall not sell her into slavery.' This is a remarkable passage in that it forbids the keeping and the selling of female slaves, but, on the other hand, permits marriage with a woman of a strange tribe. A parallel is found in Judges (ch. xxi.), where it is related that the elders of Israel, being prevented by an oath to Jahve from giving their own daughters in marriage to the children of Benjamin, advised the latter to fall, from ambush, upon a Canaanitic tribe and to steal its maidens.
In spite of all these proofs, exogamy and the capture of women from strange tribes differ as regards one feature of paramount importance. In both legend and history the captured woman is universally of a strange tribe, whereas totemic exogamy never occurs except between clans of the same tribe. Added to this is a further consideration. The above-mentioned passage from Deuteronomy certainly presupposes that the Israelite who captures a wife in warfare with a strange tribe already possesses a wife from among his own tribe. This is his chief wife, in addition to whom he may take the strange woman as a secondary wife. We may refer to Hagar, the slave, and to Sarah, Abraham's rightful wife, who belonged to his own tribe. The resemblance between exogamy and the capture of women in warfare is so far from being conclusive that exogamy is permitted only between clans of the same tribal group; hence, in cases where there are four or eight subgroups, it is not even allowed between members of the two tribal halves. Indeed, the essential characteristic of exogamous tribal organization, marriage between specific social groups, is entirely lacking in the marriage by capture that results from war. Moreover, the woman married under exogamous conditions is either the only wife or, if she is the first, she is the chief wife; in the case of marriage by capture in war, the captured woman is the secondary wife.
[5. MODES OF CONTRACTING MARRIAGE.]
Though the theory that exogamy originated in the capture of women in warfare is clearly untenable, it has without doubt seized upon one element of truth. Marriage by capture may also occur within one and the same tribe, and under relatively savage conditions this happens very frequently. Indeed, it is precisely in the case of the Australians, to judge from reports, that such marriage is probably as old as the institution of exogamy itself, if not older. Early accounts, in particular, give abundant testimony to this effect. That later writings give less prominence to the phenomenon does not imply its disappearance. The decreased emphasis is due rather to the fact that in more recent years the attention of investigators has been directed almost exclusively to the newly discovered conditions of tribal organization. Even on a more advanced and semi-cultural stage we find struggles for the possession of a wife. The struggle, however, is regularly carried on, not between members of different groups, much less between entirely strange peoples of widely differing language and culture, but between members of one and the same tribe. Two or more members of a tribe fall into a quarrel for the possession of a woman who, though not belonging to their own clan, is nevertheless a member of a neighbouring clan of the same tribe. Such conditions are doubtless to be traced back to earliest times. The victor wins the woman for himself. The custom of marriage by capture has left its traces even down to the present, in practices that have for the most part assumed a playful character. Originally, however, these practices were without doubt of a serious nature, as were all such forms of play that originated in earlier customs. Just as ancient exogamous restrictions are still operative in the prohibitions which the statutes of all cultural peoples place on the marriage of relatives, so the influence of marriage by capture is reflected in some of the usages attending the consummation of marriage, as well as in various customs, such as the purchase of wives and its converse, the dowry, which succeeded marriage by capture. Moreover, the fact that marriage by capture occasionally occurs even in primitive pretotemic culture and that it is practised beyond that circle of tribal organization whose totemic character can be positively proved, indicates that it is presumably older than an exogamy regulated by strict norms of custom. It is just in Australia, that region of the earth where, to a certain extent, the various stages of development of exogamy still exist side by side, that we find other cultural conditions which make it practically impossible to hold that marriage by capture originated in warfare between tribes. Though the woman who is here most likely to become an object of dissension between brothers or other kinsmen may not belong to the same clan and the same totem as the latter, she is nevertheless a member of one of the totems belonging to one of the most closely related clans. A woman of their own clan is too close to the men of the group to be desired as a wife; a woman of a strange tribe, too remote. In the ordinary course of events, moreover, there is no opportunity for meeting women of other tribes. The slave who is captured in war and carried away as a concubine appears only at a far later stage of culture. The original struggle for the possession of a woman, therefore, was not carried on with members of a strange tribe, as though it were to this that the woman belonged. Doubtless also it was only to a slight degree a struggle with the captured woman herself—this perhaps represents a later transference that already paves the way for the phenomena of mere mock-struggles. The real struggle took place between fellow-tribesmen, between men of the same clan, both of whom desired the woman. There is a possibility, of course, that the kinsmen of the woman might oppose her capture. This aspect of the struggle, however, like the opposition of the woman herself, was probably unknown prior to the cultural stage, when the female members of the clan came to be valued, as they are among agricultural and nomadic peoples, because of the services which they render to the family. The theory just outlined, moreover, readily explains the further development of the conditions that precede the consummation of marriage, whereas the theory that marriage by capture originated in warfare is in this respect a complete failure. Valuable information concerning the later stages in the development of the marriage by capture which originates during a state of tribal peace, is again furnished by Australian ethnology. Among these peoples, the original capture has in many instances passed over into an exchange in which the suitor offers his own sister to the brother of the woman whom he desires for himself. If this proposal for exchange is accepted and he has thereby won the kinsmen of the woman to his side, his fellow-contestants may as well give up the struggle. Thus, exogamous marriage by capture here gives way to exogamous marriage by barter, an arrangement in entire harmony with the development of trade in general, which always begins with barter. At the same time, the form of this barter is the simplest conceivable: a woman is exchanged for a woman; the objects of exchange are the same and there is no necessity for estimating the values in order to equalize them.
There may be some, however, who do not possess sisters whom they may offer in exchange to the men of other clans. What then occurs? In this case also it is in Australia that we find the beginnings of a new arrangement. In place of offering his sister in exchange, the suitor presents a gift to the parents of the bride, at first to the mother. Gift takes the place of barter. Since there is no woman who may be bartered in exchange, a present is given as her equivalent. Thus we have exogamous marriage by gift, and, as the custom becomes more general and the gift is fixed by agreement, this becomes exogamous marriage by purchase. The latter, however, probably occurs only at a later stage of culture. The man buys the woman from her parents. Sometimes, as we know from the Biblical example of Jacob and from numerous ethnological parallels, he enters into service in order to secure her—he labours for a time in the house of her parents. In an age unfamiliar with money, one who has possessions purchases the woman with part of his herd or of the produce of his fields. Whoever owns no such property, as, for instance, the poor man or the dependent son, purchases the woman with his labour.
Marriage by purchase, however, does not represent the terminus of the development. On the contrary, it prepares the way for marriage by contract, an important advance that was already, to a certain extent, made by the Greeks, and later particularly by the Romans. Not purchase, but a contract between him who concludes the marriage and the parents of the woman—this is an arrangement which still finds acceptance with us to-day. Now, the marriage contract determines the conditions for both bride and groom, and eventually also the marriage portion which the man brings to the union, as well as the dowry of the wife. As soon, therefore, as property considerations come to be dominant within the field of marriage, marriage by contract opens the way for a twofold marriage by purchase. The man may either buy the woman, as was done in the case of the earlier marriage by purchase, or the woman may buy the man with the dowry that she brings. At first, in the days of marriage by capture, the struggle with fellow-clansmen or with strangers was of decisive importance; at a later time, however, differences in property, rank, and occupation came to be the determining factors in the case of marriage. Thus, if we regard marriage by gift as a mode of marriage by purchase, though, in part, more primitive, and, in part, more spontaneous, our summary reveals three main stages: marriage by capture, marriage by purchase, and marriage by contract. Between these modes of marriage, of course, there are transitional forms, which enable us to regard the course of development as constant. The fact, however, that the entire development bears the character of a more or less thorough-going exogamy, is due to the oldest of these modes of marriage—a mode which, as we may assume, was prevalent at the beginning of the totemic age. This is a form of marriage by capture in which the woman belonged, not to a strange tribe, but to a neighbouring clan of the same tribe, or to one with which there were other lines of intercourse. When capture disappeared, the exogamy to which it gave rise remained. The old customs connected with the former passed over, though more and more in the form of play, into the now peaceful mode of marriage by purchase; their survivals continued here and there even in the last form of marriage, that by contract.
[6. THE CAUSES OF TOTEMIC EXOGAMY.]
How does this general development of the modes of marriage account for those peculiar laws of exogamy which are universally characteristic of totemic culture, representing strict norms of custom that forbid all marriage except that between specific clans of a tribe, or even only between pairs of totem groups of different clans? Were these marriage ordinances, which have evidently arisen in various places independently of one another, intentionally invented? Or are they the natural outcome of totemic tribal organization, resulting from its inherent conditions, just as did the laws of dual tribal division from the natural growth and partition of the tribes?
Now, the forms of totemic exogamy unmistakably constitute a developmental series. In the simplest arrangement, there are no restrictions whatever upon marriage between members of one clan and those of another with which marriage relations exist. Such exogamy, however, is relatively rare in Australia, the land in which the developmental forms of exogamy are chiefly to be found. It seems to be limited to tribes that have merely a dual organization, in which event the clan coincides with one-half the tribe. Even in such cases we find transitions to the next form of exogamy. In this second system, exogamy is restricted to particular totems of the two clans of one and the same tribal division; and, just as in the first case, the children are, as a rule, born directly into the totem group of the mother, or, less commonly, into that of the father. Following this exogamy with direct maternal or paternal descent and undeniably proceeding out of it, we finally have, as the third main form, exogamy with indirect maternal or paternal descent. In this form of exogamy, as in the preceding ones, the children belong to the totem of the mother or to that of the father so far as birth is concerned; as respects their exogamous totem relation, however, they pass over into another totem of the same clan. Thus, birth-totem and marriage-totem are here distinct, and every member of a group belongs to two totems that differ in significance. Now, in the case of a marriage by capture in which the individuals belong to different clans, the question of the totem does not enter. When, therefore, this mode of marriage remains undisturbed by further conditions, we have exogamy of the first form. When a suitor seeks to win the favour of the clan by means of a gift presented to the parents or the kin, marriage by capture passes over directly and without further change into the simple marriage by purchase. The two more exclusive forms of exogamy, on the other hand, are obviously connected with the rise of totemism; they are the result both of the clan divisions which follow from tribal partition and of the accompanying separation into totem groups. The question, therefore, concerning the development of these forms of exogamy, dependent as they are both upon clan divisions and upon totem groups, is essentially bound up with the question concerning the temporal relation of the two important phenomena last mentioned. An unambiguous answer to the latter question, however, may be gathered precisely by a study of Australian conditions, at least so far as the development in these regions is concerned. If we recall our previous schema (p. 141), representing the tribal organization of the Kamilaroi, and here, as there, designate the totemic groups (emu, kangaroo, opossum, etc.) comprised within the clan by m n o p..., it is apparent that the totems must be at least as old as the division into the two tribal halves. Unless this were the case, we could not explain the fact that, with very minor exceptions, precisely the same totems exist in the two tribal divisions. The condition might be represented thus:—
It is also evident, however, that the totems could not have influenced this first division, otherwise their members would not have separated and passed over into the two tribal divisions, as they did in almost every case. Remembering that the totemic groups are also cult associations, we might express the matter thus: At the time of the first tribal division, the cult groups were not yet strong enough to offer resistance to the separation of the tribal divisions, or to determine the mode of division; therefore, members of totem m, for example, went here or there according as other external conditions determined. Conditions were quite different at the time of the second division, when the tribal half I separated into clans A and B, and II into C and D, according to the schema:—
These clans, as we see, separated strictly according to totems. The bond of cult association had now become so strong that all members of a particular totem regularly affiliated themselves with the same clan, though the grouping of the totem divisions within the clans of the two tribal halves proceeded along absolutely independent lines, as may be concluded from the fact that the totems composing the clans within the two tribal divisions are grouped differently. The formation of such cult or totem groups, thus, may already have begun in the primitive horde. At that time, however, these cult groups were probably loosely knit, so that when the horde split up, its members separated, each of the two tribal divisions, generally speaking, including individuals of all the various tribes. Not so in the case of those divisions of the tribe which originated later, after mankind had advanced further beyond the condition of the horde. By this time the totem unions must have become stronger, so that the members of a cult group no longer separated but, together with other similar groups, formed a clan. When the growth of the tribe, together with the conditions of food supply and the density of population, led to a separation of the tribe, certain totem groups invariably joined one division and others, the other, but the more firmly organized groups remained intact.
A further phenomenon of great importance for the development of exogamous marriage laws must here be mentioned—one that occurs throughout the entire realm of totemic culture but is particularly prominent among the Australian totem groups. This phenomenon consists in totem friendships. Certain totem groups regard themselves as in particularly close relations with certain other groups. Friendships similar to these, in a general way, are to be found even in connection with the highest forms of political organization. For modern States themselves enter into political alliances or friendships, and these, as is well known, are subject to change. Such alliances occur from the beginnings of totemism on up to the advanced plane of modern international culture. Though these affiliations eventually come to be determined primarily by the commercial relations of peoples, the determining factors at the outset were faith and cult. In both cases, however, the friendships are not of a personal nature, but are relations based on common interests. This common interest may consist, for example, in the fact that, as has been observed among some of the Australian totem alliances, the member of a totem may slay the totem animal in the hunt, but may not eat of it, though the member of the friendly totem may do so. Thus, the interest in cult becomes also a means for the satisfaction of wants, as well as a bond that unites more closely the particular totem groups.
These facts help to explain how the unlimited exogamy which first arises from marriage by capture comes to pass over into a 'limited exogamy,' as it does immediately upon the appearance of conditions that regulate the forceful capture and substitute for it the friendly exchange of women. These factors, however, always come into play whenever the intercourse between tribal members becomes closer, and particularly when the struggle with strange tribes keeps in check the strife between individuals of the same tribal association. In such cases, exchange, or, in later development, purchase, proves the means of putting an end to force. Thus, blood revenge, which persists into far later times, is displaced by the wergild which the murderer pays to the kin of his victim. This transition is precisely the same, in its own field, as that which occurs in the institution of marriage, for in the former case also the strife involves members of the same tribe. The passion, however, which causes the murder and which creates the demand for vengeance, sometimes prevented the introduction of peaceful means of settlement. In the case of marriage by capture, however, a marriage relationship, unrestricted and friendly in character, was doubtless first developed between the two clans, particularly wherever tribal division and clan were identical. And though marriage by capture was for a time still occasionally practised—since all changes of this sort are gradual—such marriages, nevertheless, more and more assumed a playful character. The actual capture everywhere finally gave way to exchange and later to the gift. When, however, the totem groups, and with them the cult associations that established a bond between clan and clan, gained the ascendancy, the totem groups naturally displaced the clan in respect to marriage arrangements; those totems who maintained close cult relations with one another, entered also into a marriage relationship. Thus, exogamy became limited; the members of a totem of clan A married only into the friendly totem of clan B, and this usage became an established norm whose violation might result in the death of the guilty person, unless he escaped this fate by flight. This transition of exogamy from clan to totem group, and from the unlimited to the limited form, came only gradually. This is clearly shown by the conditions among the Dieri. Certain of their totems have already entered upon the stage of limited marriage relationship, whereas others have not advanced beyond unlimited exogamy.
But even after the development had reached its final form and limited totemic exogamy was completely established, further changes ensued. For the basis of such exogamy, we may conjecture, is the fact that certain totem groups of associated clans enjoy particularly close relations with one another. Even on these primitive levels, however, the friendships of such groups are not absolutely permanent any more than are the political friendships of modern civilized states, though their degree of permanence is probably greater than that of the latter. Migrations, changes in hunting-grounds, and other conditions, were doubtless operative also in totemic culture, loosening the bonds between friendly totems and cementing others in their stead. This led to changes in the exogamous relations of totem groups. Instead of groups n and r of clans A and B, n and q might then come to have exogamous connections (see diagram III on p. 148). But the severance of the old connection did not immediately obliterate the tradition of the former relationship. The influence of the latter would naturally continue to be felt, not in connection with acts of a transitory nature, such as wooing and marriage, but in matters permanent in character and thus affecting the traditional organization of the tribe. Such a permanent relation, however, is totem affiliation. This explains how it happens that, even after the old totem connection gave way to the new, it nevertheless continued to exercise a claim on the totem membership of the children born under the new marriage conditions; hence also the recognition of the claim on the part of custom. In one respect, indeed, such recognition was impossible. More firmly established than any form of exogamy was the law that children belonged to the mother, or, in the case of paternal descent, to the father. This law could not be violated. Hence exogamous and parental tribal membership became differentiated. The latter ordained that children in every case belong to the totem of the parent who determines descent; the tradition of the former decreed that children belong, not to the parental totem, but to some other totem of the same clan. Such a condition of dual totem membership might, of course, arise from a great variety of conditions, just as may the similarly overlapping social relations within our own modern culture—such, for example, as the military and the so-called civil station of a man. The customary designation of the first two forms of limited exogamy as exogamy with direct maternal descent, and of the third as exogamy with indirect maternal descent, is plainly inappropriate and may easily give rise to misunderstandings. For it may suggest that the maternal totem disposes of its rights in respect to marriage arrangements to another totem group, and that eventually this even occurs in accordance with a definite agreement. But this is certainly not the case. For maternal descent or, speaking more generally, the fact that children belong to the parents, obtains invariably. It would be preferable, therefore, simply to distinguish the parental totem connection from the traditional exogamous connection, or one system in which the exogamous and the parental connections coincide, from a second in which they differ.
The conjecture, therefore, that a traditional marriage relation, differing from that based on parentage, grew up out of a previous totem friendship, is based primarily on the importance which totemic cult alliances in general possessed within the totemic tribal organization. Other causes, of course, may also have co-operated. Two further points must be noticed. In the first place, it is not at all likely that the transition from the parental exogamous relation to the traditional form occurred at the same time in all the totem groups. This is not only highly improbable in itself, but is also absolutely irreconcilable with the fact, shown by the example of the Dieri, that the earlier transition from unlimited to limited exogamy was gradual. Moreover, one must bear in mind that the transition from parental to traditional exogamy, represented by diagram III (p. 148), not only underwent several repeated transformations, but that, due to the power which tradition always exerts, a traditional exogamous union of two totems, after it once arose, may have persisted throughout several changing cult friendships. An existing marriage relation may not at all have corresponded to the cult friendship that immediately preceded it; it may have been based on any earlier friendship whatsoever that had been favoured by conditions and that had received a firm place in tradition. These facts show that the hypothetical 'wise ancestors' of the present-day Australians—sages who are said to have invented this complicated organization in the immemorial past for the purpose of avoiding endogamy—are just as superfluous as they are improbable. The phenomena arose in the course of a long period of time, out of conditions immanent in the life and in the cult of these tribes. The various forms of exogamy appearing in the course of this period were not the causes but the effects of the phenomena in question.
[7. THE FORMS OF POLYGAMY.]
Unless external influences have changed his mode of life, primitive man, as we have seen, is both monogamous and endogamous, the latter term being used in a relative sense as denoting a condition in which marriages are permitted between blood relations as well as between non-relations. As a result of the external conditions of life, however, particularly the common habitation of the same protective cave and the use of adjacent hunting-grounds, unions within a wider joint family generally predominate. Following upon the rise of exogamy, polygamy also regularly appears. These two practices give to the marriage and family relations of totemic society an essentially different character from that which they possess under primitive conditions. Even in the totemic era, indeed, polygamy is not universal; monogamy continues to survive. Monogamy, however, ceases to be a norm of custom. It is everywhere set aside, to a greater or less extent, in favour of the two forms of polygamy—polygyny and polyandry.
Now it is apparent that precisely the same conditions that underlie the development of the various forms of exogamy also generate polygyny and polyandry. From the standpoint of the general human impulses determining the relations of the sexes, both sorts of polygamy are manifestly connected very closely with the origin of exogamy. Here, again, the fact that exogamy originated in marriage by capture from within the tribe is of decisive importance. It is precisely this friendly form of the capture of brides, as we may learn from the example of the Australians and of others, that is never carried out by the individual alone, whether the custom be still seriously practised or exists only in playful survivals. The companions of the captor aid him, and he, in turn, reciprocates in similar undertakings. Thereby the companion, according to a view that long continued to be held, gains a joint right to the captured woman. Hence the original form of polygamy was probably not polygyny—the only form, practically, that later occurs—but polyandry. At first this polyandry, which originates in capture, was probably only temporary in character. Nevertheless it inevitably led to a loosening of the marriage bond, the result of which might easily be the introduction of polygyny. The man who has gained a wife for his permanent possession seeks to indemnify himself, so far as possible, for the partial loss which he suffers through his companions. Here, then, two motives co-operate to introduce the so-called 'group-marriage'—the dearth of women, which may also act as a secondary motive in the claim of the companions to the captured woman, and the impulse for sexual satisfaction, which is, in turn, intensified by the lack of women. Similarly, the right to the possession of a woman, even though only temporarily, also has two sources. In the first place, the helper demands a reward for his assistance. This reward, according to the primitive views of barter and exchange, can consist only in a partial right to the spoils, which, in this case, means the temporary joint possession of the woman. In the second place, however, the individual is a member of the clan, and what he gains is therefore regarded as belonging also to the others. Thus the right of the closest companions may broaden into a right of the clan. Indeed, where strict monogamy does not prevent, phenomena similar to marriage by capture persist far beyond this period into a later civilization. Thus, in France and Scotland, down to the seventeenth century, the lord possessed the right of jus primæ noctis in the case of all his newly married vassals. In place of the clan of an earlier period we here find the lord; to him has been transmitted the right of the clan. At the time when these phenomena were in their early beginnings, the temporary relation might very easily have become permanent. It is thus that group-marriage originates—an institution of an enduring character which not only survives the early marriage by capture but which is reinforced and probably first made permanent by its substitute, namely, marriage by purchase. In this instance again, Australian custom offers the clearest evidence. In the so-called 'Pirrauru marriage' of Australia, a man, M, possesses a chief wife, C1, called 'Tippamalku.' Another man, N, likewise has a chief wife, C2. This wife, C2, is, however, at the same time a secondary wife, S1, or 'Pirrauru' of M. In like manner the chief wife, C1, may, in turn, be a secondary wife, S2, of N. This is the simplest form of group-marriage. Two men have two wives, of whom one is the chief wife of M and the secondary wife of N, and the other is the chief wife of N and the secondary wife of M. Into such a group yet a third man, O, may occasionally enter with a chief wife, C3, whom he gives to M as a secondary wife, S3, and eventually to N as a secondary wife, S4, without himself participating further in the group. In this way there may well be innumerable different relations. But the marriage is a 'Pirrauru marriage' whenever a man possesses not only a chief wife but also one or more secondary wives who are at the same time the wives of other men. 'Pirrauru marriage' is a
form of group-marriage, for it involves an exchange of women between the men of a group according to the reciprocal relation of chief and secondary wives. The very manner in which 'Pirrauru marriage' originates, however, indicates that in all probability its basis is monogamy, and not, as is supposed by many ethnologists and sociologists, 'promiscuity,' or the total absence of all marriage. In harmony with this interpretation is the fact that in numerous regions of Australia, especially in the northern districts, it is not group-marriage but monogamy that prevails. There is also, of course, a form of group-marriage that differs from 'Pirrauru marriage,' and is apparently simpler. In it, the differences between chief and secondary wives disappear; several men simply possess several wives in common. Because this form of group-marriage is the simpler, it is also usually regarded as the earlier. This view, however, is not susceptible of proof. The supposition rests simply and alone upon the consideration that, if a state of absolutely promiscuous sexual intercourse originally prevailed, the transition to an undifferentiated group-marriage without distinction of chief and secondary wives would be the next stage of development. The reverse, however, would obtain were monogamy the original custom. For the group-marriage with chief and secondary wives is, of course, more similar to monogamy than is undifferentiated group-marriage. Moreover, this order of succession is also in greater consonance with the general laws underlying social changes of this sort. As a matter of fact, it would scarcely be possible to find grounds for a transition from undifferentiated group-marriage to the 'Pirrauru system.' If we assume that there was a growing inclination for single marriage, it would be difficult to understand why the circuitous path of 'Pirrauru marriage' should have been chosen. On the other hand, it is very easy to see that the distinction between chief and secondary wives might gradually disappear. Indeed, this is what has almost universally happened wherever pure polygyny prevails. Wherever polygyny may be traced back to its beginnings, it always seems to have its origin in the combination of a chief wife with several secondary wives. Later, however, when the wife comes to be regarded as property, we find a formal co-ordination of the wives. Or, there may be a distinction that arises from the accidental preference of the husband, as in the case of the Sultan's favourite wife, though in modern times such choice has again been displaced by a law of more ancient tradition. The latter change, however, was the result of the external influence of the culture of Western Europe. Such a retrogressive movement, in the sense of a reapproach to monogamy, is foreign to the motives immanent in the development itself. Furthermore, 'Pirrauru marriage' is very easily explicable by reference to the same condition that best explains the origin of exogamy, namely, the custom of marriage by capture as practised between groups enjoying a tribal or cult relationship. The captured wife is the Tippamalku, or chief wife, of the captor; to the companions who assist the latter she becomes a Pirrauru, or secondary wife. This latter relation is at first only temporary, though it later becomes permanent, probably as a result, in part, of a dearth of women. By rendering his companions a similar service, the original captor in turn gains the chief wives of the former as his secondary wives. As frequently happens, the custom which thus arises outlives the conditions of its origin. This is all the more likely to happen in this case, because the general motives to polyandry and polygyny persist and exercise a constant influence.
Proof that this is the forgotten origin of group-marriage may perhaps be found in a remarkable feature of the customs of these tribes—one that is for the most part regarded as an inexplicable paradox. Marriage with the chief wife is not celebrated by ceremonies or festivals, as is the union with the secondary wife. Thus, the celebration occurs, not in connection with that marriage which is of primary importance even to the Australian, but, on the contrary, on the occasion of the union which is in itself of less importance. The solution of this riddle can lie only in the origin of the two forms of marriage. And, in fact, the two result from radically different causes, if it be true that capture from a friendly clan is the origin of the Tippamalku marriage and that assistance rendered to an allied companion underlies Pirrauru marriage. Capture is an act which precludes all ceremony; alliance with a companion is a contract, perhaps the very first marriage contract that was ever concluded—one that was made, not with the woman or with her parents, but with her husband. The consummation of such a contract, however, is an act which in early times was always accompanied by ceremonial performances. These accompanying phenomena may also, of course, persist long after their source has been lost to memory. Thus, the difference between the two forms of primitive group-marriage also indirectly confirms the supposition that monogamy lies at the basis of group-marriage in general.
After a man has won one or more secondary wives in addition to his chief wife, in Pirrauru marriage, there will doubtless be a tendency for him to seek additional chief wives. This will be particularly apt to occur where, on the one hand, marriage by capture gives way to marriage by barter and later to marriage by purchase, and where, on the other hand, group-marriage is on the wane. Custom may then either recur to monogamy, or it may advance to a polygyny which is pure and not, as in the case of group-marriage, combined with polyandry. Whether the former or the latter will occur, will depend, now that marriage by purchase has become predominant, upon might and property. Since these are also the factors which insure man's supremacy within the family, the older forms of combined polyandry and polygyny almost universally (with few exceptions, conditioned by the dearth of women) give way, with the advance of culture, to simple polygyny, which is then practised alongside of monogamy. This polygyny, in turn, also finally recedes in favour of monogamy. The circle of development, accordingly, may be represented by the following diagram:—
As an intermediate stage between monogamy and group-marriage, pure polyandry, it should be remarked, is doubtless a very transitory phenomenon. Nevertheless, it has a priority over polygyny in so far as it first furnishes the motives for the additional practice, and thus for the very origin, of the latter.
As a matter of fact, the ethnological distribution of the forms of marriage entirely confirms, as a general rule, the truth of this diagram. Even in Australia the phenomena of Pirrauru and of group-marriage are confined particularly to the southern regions. In the northerly regions, where immigration and racial fusion have played a greater rôle, both monogamy and polygyny may be found. The same is true of America and of Africa, monogamy decidedly predominating in the former and polygyny in the latter. The influence of marriage by purchase then constantly becomes stronger, with the result that the woman comes to be regarded from the point of view of property. The rich man is able to buy more wives than the poor man. In all polygynous countries and fields of culture, therefore, even in the present domain of Islamism, the poor man, as a rule, lives in monogamy, the rich man in polygyny. Only the wealthiest and most aristocratic allow themselves a real harem with a considerable number of wives.
Linked with these influences is yet a further change. Its beginnings are to be found as early as Australian culture; in America, it has progressed somewhat farther; in the other regions of totemism, it has finally succeeded in crowding out the original conditions with the exception of meagre remnants and survivals of customs. The change to which I refer is the transition from maternal descent, which, in all probability, was originally universal, to paternal descent. Maternal descent is in direct harmony with the natural feeling that the children who are born of the mother, and whose early care rests with her alone, should also belong to her. In this sense, mother-right represents the earliest of all conceptions of property. At the same time it precludes the possibility of that marriage which was avoided even by primitive man, and which, on higher cultural levels, is abhorred beyond all the other unions forbidden by the exogamous norms of custom—marriage between son and mother. The decisive external factor in connection with maternal descent, however, is the subordinate position of the family as compared with the association of the age-companions of the same sex, particularly the men's club. Because of its tribal struggles, whose increasing importance is externally reflected in the character of the weapon, it is precisely the totemic era that tends to loosen the natural family ties of the preceding primitive age, and, as a result, to allot the child to the mother. This tendency is clearly expressed in certain transitional phenomena that may occasionally be observed; they occur more frequently in Melanesia and America, however, than in Australia. The child, in these cases, inherits the totem of the mother as well as that of the father; or the son, though continuing to inherit the totem of the mother, nevertheless passes over into the clan of the father. These are intermediate phenomena, preparatory to the general transition from maternal to paternal descent. At the same time, the fact that membership is inherited in the paternal clan, in spite of the custom whereby the mother determines the totem, directly suggests that the bond uniting the men may become a force which counteracts maternal descent and then readily leads to paternal descent. This transition is bound to occur, particularly under the co-operation of other favouring conditions. Such conditions, as a matter of fact, are present; for social organization gains an increasing influence upon the whole of life's relations. There are primarily three factors that militate against the original custom of maternal descent. The first of these consists in the increasing authority of the man over his family, particularly over the son, who was generally subject to stricter regulations than was the daughter. This authority begins to manifest itself at that time, especially, when the man's relations with his family again become closer, and the associations which originally embraced, without exception, all the men of the clan, are displaced by family groups subject to the control of a family elder. Coincident with these changes and with the resulting transition to a patriarchal order, there occurs also the gradual dissolution of the general system of totemic tribal organization. Now, the system of maternal descent was closely bound up with totemic tribal organization from the very beginning. With the disappearance of the latter, therefore, the former loses its power of resistance against the forces making for its destruction. Finally, as a third factor, there is the gradually increasing prominence of personal property. Just as the wife becomes the property of the man, so also does the child. So great was this emphasis of the property conception, combined with the notion of authority, that even among the Romans the pater familias had power extending over the life of his children. Beginnings of such conceptions, however, are to be found even in more primitive societies. Polynesian custom, for example, permitted the murder of new-born children, and free advantage was taken of the permission. Only after the child had lived for a short time was infanticide prohibited. The decision, however, as to whether or not the child should be allowed to live rested primarily with the father.
[8. THE DEVELOPMENTAL FORMS OF TOTEMISM.]
Our discussions thus far have been restricted to those aspects of totemism which are directly related to tribal organization. But however important these phases may be, particularly in so far as they affect marriage regulations, they are, after all, but an external indication of the all-pervading influence of totemism upon life as a whole. Moreover, tribal totemism leaves many things unexplained, especially the origin of totemic belief. At any rate, the fact that totem groups were originally cult associations unmistakably points to inner motives of which the influence of totemism upon tribal organization and upon exogamy is but the outer expression. To answer the question concerning the nature of these motives, however, we must first call to mind the various sorts of totemic ideas. An analysis of these ideas may proceed in either of two directions. It may concern itself either with the social unit that regards itself as in relation to the totem or with the nature of the object that constitutes the totem. So far as the social unit is concerned, it may be a particular group of individuals—whether constituting a cult association independent of the real tribal organization, as in Australia, or, as in America, representing one of the tribal divisions themselves—that takes the name of a particular animal or, less frequently, of a plant for its totemic designation. The individual, however, may also possess a personal totem. Furthermore, the totemic idea may be associated with the birth of an individual, conception being regarded as an act in which the totem ancestor passes over into the germ as a magic being. This particular form of totemic belief is generally known as conception totemism. It supposes either that the totem ancestor co-operates with the father in the begetting of the child or that the father has no connection with procreation, the child being the direct offspring of the mother and the totem ancestor. There is, finally, also a fourth, though a relatively uncommon, form of totemism, generally called 'sex totemism.' Sex totemism also is social in nature, though in this case it is not different cult or tribal associations that possess separate totems, but the sexes, the men and women of a tribe or clan. The men have a totem, as have also the women, or there may be several totems for each sex.
Intercrossing with this classification based on the social factor, on whether the totem is associated with the tribe, the individual, or the procreation of the individual, there is a second classification. The latter concerns itself with the nature of the objects that are regarded as totems. These objects are of various sorts. Here again, moreover, we must doubtless recognize a development in totemic conceptions. The original totem, and the one that is by far the most common, is the animal. Numerous peoples possess no totems except animals. In many communities, however, plant totems have been adopted, and in certain regions they have gradually become predominant. Of the plant totems, the most important are the nutritious plants. In addition to these two classes of totemic objects, there is, finally, another, though an exceedingly rare, sort of totem. The totem that is conceived as an animal ancestor may give way to other fanciful ancestral ideas or may intercross with them. Various forms of such phenomena are to be found, particularly in Australia. In this region, such ancestors, which, doubtless, are for the most part regarded as anthropomorphic, are sometimes called Mura-mura or also Alcheringa. They are apparently imaged as mighty human beings possessed of magic powers. They are believed to have introduced totemism and to have instructed the forbears of the Australians in magic ceremonies. Mura-mura is the name that occurs especially in Southern Australia; the term, Alcheringa, prevails in the north, where the age of these mythical ancestors is often directly referred to as the Alcheringa age. At times, apparently, it is believed that these ancestors merely singled out as totems certain already existing animals. In other cases, however, animals, as well as mankind, are held to have been created by the magic-working beings out of formless matter, doubtless earth. It is commonly believed that the creatures that were thus created were at first lifeless, but became animals and men when placed in the sun. These various ideas are for the most part so intertangled in Australian legend that no coherent history of creation is anywhere discoverable. The legends plainly embody merely a number of detached fanciful ideas.
Closely connected with these original ancestors there is a third sort of totem or of totemic objects which we may briefly designate as inanimate. The objects are regarded as possessing magical powers and as having been bequeathed by the original ancestors, thus representing a legacy of the magical Alcheringa age. It is particularly stones and pieces of wood that are held to be the abode of these totemic spirits and that are represented by legend as having at one time been entrusted to the custody of the forefathers. These ideas abound particularly in northern Australia, where the magical objects are called churingas (or tjurungas). Churingas play an important rôle in the ceremonies of the totem festivals. For the most part, they consist of symmetrically shaped stones, somewhat similar to the boomerang; yet other objects also may be found, particularly such as are somehow striking in form. These churingas are also associated with other totemic ideas, particularly with conception totemism. The original ancestor is supposed to continue his existence, as it were, in the churinga, so that when this comes into contact with the mother he may pass over directly into the child.
If, now, we compare with each other the two extreme forms of the first class of totemic ideas—namely, tribal and individual totemism—we at once face the question, Which is the earlier, the original form? The ideas connected with the individual totem are certainly much more widely disseminated than is tribal totemism. Guardian spirits, particularly demoniacal, protective animals, may be found in many regions of the earth where there is little or no trace of the tribal totem. This is true especially of many regions of North America and of southern Africa, and likewise of numerous islands of Oceania. In these localities the individual totem is sometimes regarded as a sort of double of the individual person. If the totem animal dies, the man whose totem it is must also die. Closely related to this conception are a vast number of ideas reaching far down into later mythology, particularly into Germanic lore—ideas according to which the soul of a man lies hidden in some external object, perhaps in a plant or in an animal, and, when this vehicle of the soul is destroyed, the man, or the god or demon who has assumed human form, must die.
In these various modifications, individual totemism is doubtless more widespread than is tribal totemism. Nevertheless, this by no means implies that the latter developed from the former. On the contrary, both may possibly be equally original, grounded as they are in universal human motives that run parallel and independent courses. For this very reason, however, it is also possible that tribal totemism is the older form, for on somewhat higher cultural levels it recedes in favour of the belief in protective spirits of individuals. In questions such as this it is helpful to adduce parallels from later cults whose mode of origin is more familiar. In the present instance, leaving out of account the animal ideas, the two forms of totemism are closely analogous to the Roman Catholic worship of saints. The saints also are regarded partly as guardians of communities and partly as personal protectors. Thus, on the one hand, we have the patrons of cities, of monasteries, of vocations, and of classes; on the other hand, the individual also may possess a particular patron saint. We know of a certainty, however, that the patron saints of individuals did not antecede those of the Church itself. It was this most inclusive community that first elected the saints, whereupon smaller groups and finally individuals, guided by motives that were frequently quite external, selected specific patron saints from among the number of ecclesiastical saints. When the Church set apart a certain day of the year for the particular worship of one of its saints, this day was called by the name of the saint; to those individuals who were named after him, the day became sacred. Thus, the patron saint of the individual appeared later than the more universal saint. This order of development, moreover, is in harmony with the general nature of custom, language, and myth, according to which the individual succeeds the universal; only secondarily may the process occasionally be reversed. Usually, however, it is cult associations and their common cult objects that are first in origin. Our contention is unaffected by the fact that individual cult objects, as well as individual totems, may continue to survive after tribal cults and tribal totems have disappeared. For the need of a personal protector is generally much more permanent than are the social conditions that gave it birth. Again we may find verification in the analogous development of saint worship. Nowadays the patron saints of the vocations, classes, and cities have more and more passed into oblivion. Among the Roman Catholic rural population, however, the individual still frequently has his patron saint, and, even where the saint has disappeared, the celebration of the 'name-day' has been retained. It is particularly in the religious realm that personal need gains a greater and greater ascendancy over community need. Everything seems to indicate that such a change took place even within totemism, especially under the influence of the gradual dissolution of the original totemic tribal organization—a change analogous to that which occurred in the case of saint worship as a result of the decay of mediæval guilds. These arguments, of course, cannot lay claim to more than probability. No one can show how the individual totem developed out of the group totem. Certain indications, however, suggest that the above was the course of development. In Australia, the stronghold of original tribal totemism, a youth is frequently given a personal totem, in addition to the tribal totem, upon the occasion of his initiation into manhood. The personal totem is frequently a matter of secrecy, being known only to the medicine-men or to the elders of the tribe. The fact that this is true indicates that such a personal totem possesses no public significance and, moreover, that it is probably bound up with the idea that the real essence of a man is contained in his name, just as it is in his picture, so that the mere speaking of the name might bring harm to the person. It is doubtless probable, therefore, that, after groups came to be formed within the primitive horde, they were at once bound together by relations of cult. As Australian conditions indicate, the origin of totems in the sense of cult groups is at least as old as tribal organization, if not older.
The same cannot be said of the much more remarkable, though also rarer, forms of totemism, conception and sex totemism. The former of these may be regarded as a modification of individual totemism, inasmuch as it relates to the procreation of the individual. However, it also forms a sort of intermediate stage between tribal and individual totemism. A woman receives the totem of the child on a specific occasion, of which she usually has knowledge. Among the Aranda, the conception may occur at any place whatsoever; among the Warramunga, the woman retires to a certain spot, the totem place, where the ancestral spirits dwell. Either during the day or, especially, during the night and in sleep, the spirit of the ancestor passes over into her. The word 'spirit,' which is employed by English writers, is not, of course, an accurate rendering of the Australian term, and may easily lead to a misconception. The German missionary Strehlow has probably done better in using the word 'germ.' The germ of the child is thought to pass over into the body of the mother independently of any act of the father, or, at most, the participation of the latter is held to be merely secondary, and not essential.
Adherents of the theory of original promiscuity have interpreted these ideas also as a survival of unrestrained sexual conditions, and thus as indicative of the fact that paternity was at one time unknown. A closer acquaintance with the phenomena, however, shows that this can scarcely be the case. Thus, the idea of the Warramunga that it is the totem ancestors of a woman's husband and not those of any other man that pass over into her, clearly presupposes a state of marriage, as does also the further fact that these same tribes reckon descent in the line of the father and not in that of the mother. Moreover, the passing of the totem ancestor into the woman is generally accompanied by magical ceremonies, such as the swinging of bull-roarers, or contact with churingas. Or, the totem ancestor may appear to the woman in sleep or in a waking vision. On the Banks Islands, strange to say, we find conception totemism without any trace of tribal totemism. The manner of reception of the totem ancestor also differs; the woman eats of the flesh of her husband's totem animal, which, since there is no tribal totemism, is in this case a personal, protective totem. Thus, conception totemism represents something of an exception in that the eating of the totem is not forbidden, as it generally is, but rather constitutes a sort of cult act, as it also does in certain other cases. In Australia, moreover, conception totemism is to be found only among several of the northern tribes, to whom it may at one time have come from Melanesia. Because of the primitive nature of the ideas connected with conception totemism, particularly when, as among the Aranda, the husband is ignored and it is believed that conception is mediated only by the totem ancestor, the northern tribes just referred to have sometimes been regarded as the most primitive. There are some writers, on the other hand, by whom the possibility of such ideas is denied on the ground that these very tribes must be familiar with the process of procreation in the animal world. But this does not prove the case. When, however, we learn that the older men of the tribe themselves no longer entertain the belief in magical generation, particularly as the exclusive factor, whereas, on the other hand, this is still taught to the young men, and especially to the children, we may well call to mind our own childish notions about the stork that brings the babies. Why might something similar not occur among the Australians, and the belief possibly retain credence somewhat beyond the age of childhood?
Sex totemism, similarly to conception totemism, is also of somewhat limited distribution, and seems to occur principally in those regions where tribal totemism proper is lacking or is at least strongly recedent. Among the Kurnai of southern Australia, for example, no tribal totemism has been discovered, though sex totemism occurs and actually forms the basis of certain marriage ceremonies. Sex totemism probably has its origin in the individual totem, especially in the appearance of this totem in dreams. If, after such a totem has appeared to an individual man or woman, it is then adopted by others of the same sex, specific sex totems may well come into being, particularly under the influence of the separate associations of men and women. It is also significant that in the case of sex totemism nocturnal animals predominate. The totem of the women is usually the bat; that of the men, the owl. This fact is indicative of a dream origin and of a genesis from the individual totem. Diurnal birds may, of course, also appear in dreams. Whether or not this occurs depends solely upon concomitant circumstances. At the stage of culture, however, when man is accustomed to sleep in the open, it is probable that the nocturnal birds which circle about him will also appear in his dreams. A further characteristic phenomenon of the regions where sex totemism prevails, is the manner in which marriage is consummated. In this case also, the woman eats of the totem of the man. This causes a struggle between the man and the woman, which is really a mere mock-fight ending with an offer of reconciliation on the part of the man. With this, the marriage is concluded. Such customs likewise point back to individual totemism as their original source, and probably also to marriage by capture. The fact that tribal totemism everywhere receded with the dominance of individual totems, explains why sex and tribal totemism seem to be mutually exclusive. Of the two rare forms of totemism, accordingly, it is probable that conception totemism was the earlier, and that sex totemism belongs to a relatively late stage of development. A further indication of the primitive nature of conception totemism is to be found in the fact that the Aranda possess a tribal organization in which the grouping of totems to form clan divisions follows a principle which elsewhere obtains only in the case of the two tribal halves. Two clans, A and B, that enjoy exogamous relations with each other, do not have different totem groups, as they do among all other tribes; their totem groups are largely the same. Among the Aranda, therefore, a man of one totem may, under certain circumstances, marry a woman of the same totem, provided only she belongs to the other clan. True, phenomena are not lacking—such particularly as those of plant totems, to be mentioned below, and the ceremonial festivals connected with them—which indicate that these northern tribes were affected by Papuan immigrations and by race-mixture. But influences of this kind are the less apt to lead to the submergence of primitive views and customs according as they are instrumental, particularly when they are operative at an early age, in maintaining conditions which might otherwise possibly disappear as a result of further development.
The second mode of classifying the forms of totemism is based on the objects which are used as totems and leads to an essentially different analysis of totem beliefs. Each of the forms which the classification distinguishes is, of course, also subsumable under one of the kinds of totemism already discussed. The earliest totem objects, as has already been mentioned, are without doubt animals. In America, as in Australia, there are practically no totems except animals; in other places also it is the animal that plays the principal rôle in totemic mythology. In part, the animal continues to remain predominant even after the age of actual totemism has passed. Nevertheless, plant totemism has found its way into certain regions. Here also the facts are most clearly traceable in Australia, our most important source of information regarding the history of the development of totemic ideas. In southern Australia, there are no totems except animals; towards the north, plant totems gradually begin to make their appearance, until finally, among the most northerly peoples of central Australia, such totems have the dominance. Plant totems, moreover, are also found particularly in Melanesia, from which place they might easily have come to Australia across the chain of islands which extends from New Guinea to the north coast of the island-continent. That plants play an unusually large rôle in the regions of Oceania, in connection with totemism as well as otherwise, is directly due to external conditions. These islands are poor in fauna; true, they possess great numbers of birds, but these are of little value to the hunter. On the other hand, they have a luxuriant flora. From early times on, therefore, it is chiefly the plant world that has been the centre of interest and that has left its stamp upon myth and custom. Clearly, plant totemism had its origin on these islands. From them it was introduced into Australia, where it combined with animal totemism. But the regions into which plant totemism was introduced underwent a great change in their totemic cults. It is probably only with the appearance of plant totems that those cult ceremonies arose which are celebrated, not, as the festivals of tribal totemism originally were, mainly at the adolescence of youths, but primarily for the sake of effecting a multiplication of the totems. Annually, at stated times, the members of allied clans unite in magical ceremonies and cult dances, the well-known 'corroborees,' as they are called by those who practise them. The primary aim of such cults is to bring about by magical means an increase of the totem plants and animals. Doubtless we may regard it as highly probable that this ceremony represents a borrowing on the part of animal totemism from plant totemism. For the hunter, similarly, desires that there be a very great abundance of game animals. Yet it is mainly plants that are the object of concern—a concern caused by the changes in weather, with its incalculable oscillations between life-bringing rain and the withering glare of the sun. These are the motives that find expression in the festivals designed for the multiplication of the totems, the 'Intichiuma' festivals. The motives to these ancient cults still frequently find their counterparts in the customs of the cultural peoples of the present. When, in times of a long drought, processions pass over the fields and supplicate Heaven for rain, as occurs even to-day in some regions, we certainly have an analogous phenomenon. The only difference is that the Australian tribes invoke their totems instead of Heaven; they call upon the plants which are to increase and upon the animals which are to be available for hunting, with the aim of thus exercising a magical influence upon them.
In connection with the Australian ceremonies designed to multiply the food plants and game animals, we come upon still a third kind of totem objects. They differ from those of the two preceding classes in that they are not regarded as independent totems, but merely as vehicles of the same sort of magical power as is possessed by animal and plant totems. In distinction from the latter, we may briefly call them inanimate totems. They consist of stones and sticks. These are utilized as magical objects in the Australian Intichiuma festivals, and also, under the above-mentioned name of 'churingas,' in connection with conception totemism. They differ from animate totems in that the latter are in themselves endowed with magical properties, whereas the former are always held to derive these powers from living magicians, from the anthropomorphic or zoömorphic ancestors of antiquity. These magicians are thought to have transmitted the objects to later generations for the use of the latter in the practice of magic. Thus, the churingas have a peculiar status, intermediate between magical beings and magical implements. They are carefully preserved because—as is indicated by their use in connection with conception totemism—they are regarded as legacies left by ancestors; moreover, they are also supposed to harbour the demoniacal power of these ancestors. One of the factors determining the selection of these objects is doubtless generally their shape, which is frequently of a striking nature, such as to arouse astonishment. Ejected into the object itself, this astonishment becomes a wonder-working power. Later, the desire to secure such magical means of aid may become a supplementary factor in the selection of these objects, and, as widespread phenomena of a similar nature show, may eventually suffice of itself to constitute an object the bearer of magical powers. Thus, it is these inanimate vehicles of a magic derived from totem ancestors, that form the transition from the totem object to the so-called fetish.
Each of the three kinds of totem objects just described, the plant totem, the animal totem, and the totemic fetish, may assert itself in connection with the three above-mentioned social forms of totemism. Moreover, the three kinds of objects may also, to a certain extent, combine with one another. For, though the animal is very commonly the only totem, plant totems never occur except in connection with animal totems, even though there are certain conditions under which they attain the dominance. Finally, the totemic fetish is always associated in totemic regions with animal and plant totems, and is also closely connected with the idea, even here permeating totemic belief, that there were anthropomorphic ancestors who left these fetishes as magic-working legacies. Thus, totemism passes over, on the one hand, into ancestor-worship, and, on the other, into fetishism, with which it combines, particularly in the 'Intichiuma' festivals, to form a composite cult. Tribal totemism is the source of the individual totem; the latter, probably as a result of animistic ideas that displace tribal totemism, gives rise, as an occasional offshoot, to the sex totem. This is the conclusion to which we are led by the fact that the choice of the sex totem is influenced by the dream. The last important product of individual totemism, in combination with tribal totemism, is an incipient ancestor worship, which is accompanied by peculiar forms of fetishism. In view of its origin, we may perhaps refer to this cult as 'totemic fetishism.' The following diagram illustrates this genetic relationship:—
[9. THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMIC IDEAS.]
We have attempted to trace the succession of the various forms of totemism by reference to the characteristics which these forms reveal. Closely connected with this problem is the question concerning the origin of totemic ideas. With respect to this question, however, widely different hypotheses have been proposed. Of these, those that belong to an earlier stage of our ethnological knowledge concerning this subject can here receive but brief mention. Herbert Spencer held that the entire institution of totemism arose out of the totem names of individuals, such, for example, as wolf, deer, eagle, or, among the Australians, emu, kangaroo, etc. These animal names, according to him, were at first perhaps nicknames, such as are occasionally to be found even to-day. Out of the individual totem arose the tribal totem. The name then became identical with the thing itself—that is, with the animal, which thus became a protective and ancestral animal. Though rejecting the idea that the origin of totemism is to be found in nicknames and epithets, Andrew Lang retained the belief that the name was primary, and that the substitution of the animal or the plant for the name occurred only later. This theory is not so strange as it might appear. As a matter of fact, it is quite characteristic of primitive thought closely to associate a name and its object. Primitive man regards his name as a part of himself; this idea is similar to that which underlies the terror that he sometimes manifests when a sketch is made of him, a terror due to the belief that a part of his soul is being carried away in the picture of the artist. And yet there is prima facie little probability that a phenomenon so widely prevalent and so highly ramified as totemism could have its source in a fact of this kind, which is, after all, only incidental. Moreover, in one of the chief centres of tribal totemism, in the eastern part of North America, as, for example, among the Iroquois, we find very clearly defined personal names. These names, however, are never identical with those of the totems, nor even, as a rule, with those of animals. Sometimes they are borrowed from the names of flowers, although there are no plant totems in America; or, they are flattering appellatives such as we still find in higher civilizations. Moreover, there is no indication that they ever came to be used for the designation of totems.
The view held by Howitt and by Spencer and Gillen, scholars deserving of high esteem for their knowledge of Australian totemism, is an essentially different one. In their opinions, it is the conditions of a hunting life that are reflected in totemic beliefs. They maintain that the animals of the chase were the first to become totem animals. Wherever plant food gained great importance, plant totems were then added. The evidence for this view is based mainly on those Intichiuma ceremonies and festivals by means of which the Australians aim to secure a multiplication of the totems. In these festivals, for example, grass seed is scattered broadcast by members of the grass seed totem, or a huge lizard is formed of clay by the members of the lizard totem, and pieces of it are strewn about. These are magic ceremonies that, in a certain sense, anticipate the sowing and harvest festivals of later times. The only difference consists in the fact that these primitive magic usages are not directed to the rain-bringing clouds or to celestial deities in petition for a blessing upon the crops, but to the objects themselves, to the animals and plants. Magic powers are ascribed to the latter; by virtue of these powers they are to multiply themselves. In regions where sowing and harvest do not as yet exist, but where man gains his food solely by gathering that which the earth of itself brings forth, such festivals and ceremonies are to a certain extent the natural precursors of the later vegetation festivals.
In view of these facts, the hypothesis of the above-mentioned investigators seems to have much in its favour. There is a very important consideration, however, that obviously speaks against it. It is highly probable that these very ceremonies for the multiplication of totem objects are not indigenous to Australia, the chief centre of totemism, but that they, along with the plant totem, were introduced from without. These plant totems, as was remarked above, appear to have come from the Melanesian Islands, where the animal totem plays a small rôle, because the fauna is meagre and man is dependent in great measure upon plant food. Besides animal and particularly bird totems, therefore, which also occur on the Melanesian Islands, we find plant totems throughout the whole of northern Australia. These totems, as we may suppose, are the result of Papuan immigrations, to which are due also other objects of Melanesian culture to be found in the Australian continent. In the south, where there are no totems other than animals, Intichiuma ceremonies receive small emphasis. In entire harmony with our contentions are the conditions in America, where no festivals of this sort are connected with the totems themselves; an analogous significance is gained only later by the great vegetation festivals, and these presuppose agriculture, together with the beginnings of a celestial mythology.
In more recent times, therefore, Frazer, whose great work, "Totemism and Exogamy," has assembled the richest collection of facts concerning totemic culture, has turned to an essentially different theory. He traces all forms of totemism back to conception totemism. Since the latter, as we have already stated, probably arose out of individual totemism, we are again confronted by an individualistic view, much as in the hypothesis of the origin from names. Frazer derives conception totemism from the dreams which mothers are supposed occasionally to have experienced before the birth of a child. The animal appearing in such a dream is thought to have become the totem or guardian animal of the child. But, though conception totemism, as well as sex totemism, may possibly have some connection with such phenomena—the fact that the animals here concerned are chiefly nocturnal animals suggests that such may be the case—totemism as a whole may, nevertheless, scarcely be derived from dreams. Still less can this hypothesis be harmonized with the fact that conception totemism is an anomaly. The ideas centred about it are but of rare occurrence within the system of totemic culture as a whole. Moreover, as Frazer also has assumed, they never appear except as an offshoot of individual totemism, and this in turn, when viewed in all its phases, cannot be regarded otherwise than as a product of tribal totemism. In its reference to the dream, however, this hypothesis may perhaps contain an element of truth, inasmuch as it involves ideas that obviously play an important rôle in totemism. This is shown particularly by reference to the totem animals that are found most commonly in Australia, and that suggest a relation between totemism and animistic ideas of the soul.
As a matter of fact, the totem is already itself the embodiment of a soul. Either the soul of an ancestor or that of a protective being is regarded as incorporated in the animal. The other totems, such as plants or totem fetishes (churingas), are obviously derivative phenomena, and the same is true of those legendary beings that inhabit the churingas as spirits, or that gave them to the ancestors for the purposes of magic. Now, originally, the totem was probably always an animal. But a survey of the great mass of animistic conceptions prevalent in all parts of the world shows that in this case also it is particularly the animal that is represented as capable of becoming the receptacle of a human soul after death. Animals, of course, are not all equally suited to this purpose. Some are more apt than others to be regarded as soul animals, particularly such as are characterized by rapid movement, flight through the air, or by other features that arouse surprise or uncanny dread. Thus, even in the popular belief of to-day, it is especially the snake, the lizard, and the mouse, in addition to the birds, that are counted among the soul animals. If, now, with these facts in mind, we cast a glance over the list of totem animals, we are at once struck by the fact that the most common among them are soul animals. In Australia, we find the hawk, the crow, and the lizard; in America, the eagle, the falcon, and the snake.
In respect to these ideas, the totemic age marks an important turning-point in the history of soul conceptions. Primitive man regards that which we have succinctly called the 'corporeal soul' (p. 82) as the principal, and perhaps originally as the only, soul. At death, the soul is believed to remain in the body, wherefore primitive man flees in terror from the corpse. Even at this stage, of course, we occasionally find traces of a different idea. The soul may also be regarded as active outside of the body, in the form of a demoniacal being. But as yet these ideas are generally fluctuating and undefined. There then comes a change, dependent, just as are the other cultural transformations, on the strife and warfare arising as a result of tribal migrations. This change, as we may suppose, is due to the fact that tribal struggles bring with them the impressive spectacle of sudden death. One who is killed in battle exhibits the contrast between life and death so directly that, even though the belief in the continued existence of the soul within the body still survives, it nevertheless permits the co-presence of other more advanced conceptions. Thus two sets of ideas come to be developed. On the one hand, the soul is believed to depart with the blood. In place of the entire body, therefore, the blood comes to be the chief vehicle of the soul. Blood magic, which by itself constitutes an extensive chapter in the history of magic beliefs, and which is prevalent in all periods of culture, has its source in this conception. Further factors then enter into the development. In addition to the blood, the inner parts of the body, which are exposed in cases of violent death, become vehicles of the soul. The idea of the sudden departure of the soul is then transferred from the one who is killed to the dying person in general. With the exhalation of his last breath, his soul is thought to depart from him. The soul is therefore conceived as a moving form, particularly as an animal, a bird, a rapidly gliding snake, or a lizard.
In dealing, later, with the soul conceptions of the totemic age, we will consider these several motives in their independent influence as well as in their reciprocal action upon one another. Here we can touch upon them only in so far as they harbour the sources of totemism itself. But in this connection two facts are of decisive importance. In the first place, the original totem, and the one which continues to remain most common, is the animal; and, secondly, the earliest totem animals are identical with soul animals. But in addition to soul animals, other animals also may later readily come to be regarded as totems, particularly such as continually claim man's attention, as, for example, game animals. Thus, the soul motives are brought into interplay with other influences, springing in part from the emotions associated with the search for daily food, though primarily with success or failure in the chase. As a result, the soul motives obviously become less prominent, and the totem animal, freed from this association, acquires its own peculiar significance, which fluctuates between the ancestral idea and that of a protective demon. The concern for food, which was at first operative only as a secondary motive, was heightened in certain localities where the natural environment was poor, and, with the influx of immigrant tribes, it assumed ever greater prominence. In this way, plant totems came to be added to animal totems; finally, as a result of certain relations of these two totems to inanimate objects, there arose a fetishistic offshoot of totemism. This again brought totemism into close connection with ancestor ideas, and contributed also towards the transition from animal to human ancestors.
Thus, then, totemic ideas arise as a result of the diremption of primitive soul ideas into the corporeal soul and the breath- and shadow-soul. That the two latter are associated, is proven also by the history of totemism. Folk belief, even down to the present, holds that the soul of the dying person issues in his last breath and that it possesses the form of an animal. The soul of one who has recently died, however, appears primarily in dreams and as a phantom form. Now, the totem animal has its genesis in the transformation of the breath-soul into an animal. The shadow-soul of the dream, moreover, exercises an influence on individual totemism, as it does also on conception totemism and on sex totemism.
Thus, totemism is directly connected with the belief in souls—that is to say, with animism. It represents that branch of animism which exercised a long-continuing influence on the tribal organization as well as on the beliefs of peoples. But before turning to these final aspects of totemism and their further developments, it is necessary to consider another group of ideas which, in their beginnings, occupied an important place within the circle of totemic beliefs. The ideas to which I refer are those connected with the custom of taboo.
[10. THE LAWS OF TABOO.]
It is a significant fact that 'totem' and 'taboo' are concepts for which our cultural languages possess no adequate words. Both these terms are taken from the languages of so-called natural peoples, 'totem' from an idiom of the North American Indians, and 'taboo' from the Polynesian languages. The word 'totem' is as yet relatively uncommon in literature, with the exception of books on ethnology and folk psychology; the word 'taboo,' on the other hand, is much in use. A thing is called taboo when it may not be touched, or when it must be avoided for some reason, whether because of its peculiar sanctity or contrariwise because its harmful influence renders it 'impure,' defiling every one who comes into contact with it. Thus, two opposing ideas are combined in the conception of taboo: the idea of the sacred as something to be avoided because of its sanctity, and that of the impure or loathsome, which must be avoided because of its repulsive or harmful nature. These ideas combine in the conception of fear. There is, indeed, one sort of fear which we call awe, and another termed aversion. Now, the history of taboo ideas leaves no doubt that in this case awe and aversion sprang from the same source. That which aroused aversion at a later age was in the totemic period chiefly an object of awe, or, at any rate, of fear—that is, of a feeling in which aversion and awe were still undifferentiated. That which is designated by the simplest word [Scheu] is also earliest in origin; awe [Ehrfurcht] and aversion [Abscheu] developed from fear [Scheu].
If, now, we associate the term 'taboo' in a general way with an object that arouses fear, the earliest object of taboo seems to have been the totem animal. One of the most elemental of totemic ideas and customs consists in the fact that the members of a totem group are prohibited from eating the flesh of the totem, and sometimes also from hunting the totem animal. This prohibition, of course, can have originated only in a general feeling of fear, as a result of which the members of a totemic group are restrained from eating or killing the totem animal. In many regions, where the culture, although already totemic, is, nevertheless, primitive, the totem animal appears to be the only object of taboo. This fact alone makes it probable that totemism lies at the basis of taboo ideas. The protective animal of the individual long survived the tribal totem and sometimes spread to far wider regions. Similarly, the taboo, though closely related to tribal organization in origin, underwent further developments which continued after the totemic ideas from which it sprang had either entirely disappeared or had, at any rate, vanished with the exception of meagre traces. This accounts for the fact that it is not in Australia, the original home of the totem, that we find the chief centre of taboo customs, nor in Melanesian territory, where the totem is still fairly common, nor in North America, but in Polynesia.
It is in Polynesia, therefore, that we can most clearly trace the spread of taboo ideas beyond their original starting-point. The taboo of animals is here only incidental; man himself is the primary object of taboo—not every individual, but the privileged ones, the superiors, the priest, the chieftain. Closely related to the fact that man is thus held taboo, is the development of chieftainship and the gradual growth of class differences. The higher class becomes taboo to the lower class. This fear is then carried over from the man himself to his possessions. The property of the nobleman is taboo to every other person. The taboo has not merely the force of a police law, similar to that whereby, in other localities, men of superior rank prohibit entrance to their parks; it is a religious law, whose transgression is eventually punished by death. It is particularly the chief and his property that are objects of taboo. Where the taboo regulations were strict, no one was allowed to venture close to the chief or even to speak his name. Thus, the taboo might become an intolerable constraint. In Hawaii, the chief was not allowed to raise his own food to his mouth, for he was taboo and his contact with the food rendered this also taboo. Hence the Hawaian chief was obliged to have a servant feed him. The objects which he touched became taboo to all individuals. In short, he became the very opposite of a despotic ruler, namely, the slave of a despotic custom.
From the individual person, the taboo was further extended to localities, houses, and lands. A member of the aristocratic class might render taboo not only his movable property but also his land. The temple, in particular, was taboo, and, together with the priests, it retained this character longer than any other object. The taboo concerned with the eating of certain animals, however, also remained in force for a long time. Though these animals were at first avoided as sacred, the taboo of the sacred, in this case, later developed into that of the impure. Thus, this conception recurs, in a sense, to its beginning. For the fear that is associated with the animals which the totem group regards as sacred, is here combined with the fear that the eating of the flesh is harmful. Sickness or even death is believed to follow a transgression of such a taboo regulation. Even in its original home, however, the taboo assumes wider forms. It subjects to its influence the demon-ideas that reach back even to pretotemic times. The corpse particularly, and the sick person also, are held taboo because of the demoniacal magic proceeding from them. Likewise the priest and the chief are taboo, because of their sacredness. Thus, the taboo gains a circle of influence that widens according as totemic ideas proper recede. The taboo which the upper classes placed upon their property had come to be such a preponderant factor in Polynesian custom that the first investigators of these regions believed the taboo in general to be chiefly an institution whereby the rich aimed to protect their property by taking advantage of the superstition of the masses.
One of the most remarkable extensions of the scope of taboo is the taboo which rests on relations by marriage. The history of exogamy, whose earliest stages are represented by the totemic marriage laws of the Australians, clearly teaches that the aversion to marriage between blood relations was not the cause but at most, to a great extent, the effect of exogamous customs that everywhere reach back into a distant past. But there is a second class of marriage prohibitions, and this likewise has found a place even in present-day legislation—the prohibition of unions between relations by marriage. Such prohibitions are from the very beginning outside the pale of exogamous laws. Indeed, it is clear that all unions of this sort—such, for example, as are forbidden by our present laws—were permitted by the totem and clan exogamy of the Australians and that of the American Indians. In the case of maternal descent, the group from which a man must select his wife included his mother-in-law as well as his wife. Similarly, in the case of paternal descent, the husband and father-in-law were totem associates. There is another set of customs, however, which is generally connected with even the earliest forms of exogamy, and which fills out in a very remarkable way the gap that appears in the original totemic exogamy when this is compared with present-day legislation. These customs are no other than the laws of taboo. One of the earliest and most common of these regulations is the taboo of the mother-in-law. Corresponding to it, not so common and yet obviously a parallel phenomenon occasionally connected with it, is the taboo of the father-in-law. The relative distribution of the two taboos is analogous to that of maternal and paternal descent in the primitive condition of society, for it is maternal descent that is dominant. This is not at all meant to imply that there is any casual[1] relation between these phenomena. Rather is it true, probably, that they are based upon similar motives, and that these motives, just as in the case of marriage between relations, are more potent in the case of the mother than in that of the father. In general, however, the taboo of parents-in-law signifies that the husband must so far as possible avoid meeting his mother-in-law, and the wife, her father-in-law. Now, it is evident that in so far as this avoidance excludes the possibility of marriage, the custom is, in a way, supplementary to exogamy. Wherever maternal descent prevails, no one may marry his mother; and, where taboo of the mother-in-law exists, no one may marry his mother-in-law. The same holds of father and daughter, and of father and daughter-in-law, in the case of paternal descent. This analogy may possibly indicate the correct clue to the interpretation of the phenomena. It would certainly be erroneous to regard the taboo of the mother-in-law as a regulation intentionally formulated to prevent unions between direct relations by marriage. Yet there is evidence here of a natural association by virtue of which the fear of marriage with one's own mother, which, though not caused by the exogamous prohibition, is nevertheless greatly strengthened by it, is directly carried over to the mother-in-law. Between a woman and the husband of her daughter there thus arises a state of taboo such as is impossible between mother and son because, from the time of his birth on, they are in close and constant relation with each other. In consequence of the above-mentioned association, mother and mother-in-law, or father and father-in-law, form a unity analogous to that which obtains between man and wife. What is true of the husband, is also true in the case of the wife; similarly, what holds for the mother of the husband holds no less for the mother of the wife.
Striking evidence of the effect of an association of ideas that is perfectly analogous to the one underlying the taboo of the mother-in-law, is offered by a custom which is doubtless generally only local in scope and yet is found in the most diverse parts of the earth, thus showing plainly that it is autochthonous in character. I refer to the custom of so-called father-confinement or 'couvade.' This custom prevails in various places, occurring even in Europe, where it is practised by the Basques of the Pyrenées, a remarkable fragment of a pre-Indo-Germanic population of Europe. Due, probably, to the heavier tasks which these people impose upon women, it here occasionally occurs in an exaggerated form. Even after the mother has already begun to attend to her household duties, the father, lying in the bed to which he has voluntarily retired, receives the congratulations of the relatives. Custom also demands that he subject himself to certain ascetic restrictions, namely, that he avoid the eating of certain kinds of food. The custom of couvade is clearly the result of an ideational association between husband and wife—one that is absolutely analogous to that between the two mothers of the married couple. The child owes its existence to both father and mother. Both, therefore, must obey the regulations which surround birth, and thus they are also subject to the same taboo. Just as there is very commonly a taboo on the mother and her new-born child, so also, in the regions where couvade exists, is this transferred to the husband.
As is well known, the last vestiges of the taboo of the mother-in-law have not yet disappeared, though they survive only in humour, as do many other customs that were once seriously practised. In fact, there is no other form of relationship, whether by blood or by marriage, that is so subjected to the satire of daily life as well as to the witticisms and jokes of comic papers as is that of the unfortunate mother-in-law. Thus, the primitive taboo resting on the mother-in-law and also, even though in lesser degree, on the father-in-law, has registered itself in habits that are relatively well known. Graver results of the regulations of ancient custom are doubtless to be found in those prohibitions of union between relatives by marriage that still constitute essential elements of present-day laws. This, of course, does not mean that these prohibitions are unjustifiable or that they do not reflect natural feelings. They but exemplify the fact that every law presupposes a development which, as a rule, goes back to a distant past, and that the feelings which we to-day regard as natural and original had a definite origin and assumed their present character as the outcome of many changes.
Alongside of these later forms of the taboo, and outlasting them, we have its most primitive form. This is the taboo which rests on the eating of certain foods, particularly the flesh of certain animals, though less frequently it applies also to occasional plants. The latter, however, probably represents a transference, just as does plant totemism. A particular example of such a taboo is the avoidance of the bean by the Grecian sect of Orphians and by the Pythagoreans whom they influenced. The taboo of certain animals survived much longer. But it was just in this case that there came an important shift of ideas which gave to the taboo a meaning almost the opposite of that which it originally possessed. Proof of such a change is offered by the Levitical Priests' Code of Israel. The refined casuistry of the priests prescribed even to details what the Israelite might eat and what was taboo for him. For the Israelite, however, this taboo was not associated with the sacred but with the unclean. The original taboo on the eating of the flesh of an animal related, in the totemic period, to the sacred animal. This is the taboo in its original form. The Australian shrinks from eating the flesh of his totem animal, not because it is unclean, but because he fears the revenge of demons if he consumes the protective animal of his group. In the Priests' Code, the sacred object has become entirely transmuted into an unclean object, supposed to contaminate all who eat of it. It is a striking fact, however, that the animals which are regarded as unclean are primarily the early totem animals—the screech-owl, the bat, the eagle, the owl, etc. Of the animals that live in or near the sea, only those may be eaten that have scales, that is, only fish proper, and not the snake-like fish. The snake itself and the snake-like reptiles are taboo, as well as numerous birds—all of which were at a very early period totem animals. Heading the list of the animals that may be eaten, on the other hand, are the ox, the sheep, the goat—in short, the animals of an agricultural and sheep-raising culture. Thus, as the original magical motives of taboo disappear, their place is taken by the emotion of fear, which causes the object arousing it to appear as unclean. Whoever touches such an object is polluted in a physical as well as a moral sense, and requires a cleansing purification according to rites prescribed by cult. We cannot avoid the impression, accordingly, that the unclean animals held to be taboo by the Priests' Code, are the same as those which this same people regarded as sacred soul and totem animals at an earlier stage of culture. Thus, these prohibitions with reference to food are analogous to the impassioned preaching against false idolatry—both refer back to an earlier cult. In this category belongs also the prohibition of consuming the blood of animals in the eating of their flesh. This likewise is the survival of a very common belief—certainly prevalent also among the Israelites at one time—that with the blood of an animal one might appropriate its spirit-power. The priestly law transforms this motive into its direct opposite. For the text expressly says: "In the blood is the life; but ye shall not destroy the life together with the flesh."
Thus, the significance of the taboo shifts from the sacred, which evokes man's fear, to the unclean and demoniacal, which also arouse fear but in the form of aversion. Closely related to this change is a group of views and customs resulting from this last form of taboo and reaching down, as its after-effects, far into the later religious development. These are the purification rites connected with the ideas of clean and unclean. The word lustratio, by which the Romans designated these rites, is really more appropriate than the German word Reinigung, since it suggests more than merely the one aspect of these usages. Indeed, the idea of purification is not even primary, any more than the conception of the unclean is the initial stage in the development of the taboo. On the other hand, the idea that a man might be exposed to demoniacal powers by touching an object or by eating a certain food, such, for example, as the flesh of certain animals, is in entire accord with such primitive notions as are expressed in the fear of the corpse and of sickness, as well as in other similar phenomena. The essential thing is to escape the demon who is harboured in the particular object of concern. This impulse is so irresistible that, whenever the idea of taboo arises, the conception of lustration, of a magic counteraction to the demoniacal power, is also evolved. Thus, magic and counter-magic, here, as everywhere, stand in antithesis. The means of such counter-magic are not only very similar throughout the most remote parts of the earth, but externally they remain the same even throughout the various stages of culture. There are only three means by which an individual may free himself from the effects of a violation of taboo—water, fire, and magical transference.
Of these means, the one which is the most familiar to us is water. Just as water removes physical uncleanness, so also does it wash away soul or demoniacal impurity—not symbolically, for primitive man has no symbols in our sense of the word, but magically. As water is the most common element, so also is it the most common magical means of lustration. Besides water, fire also is employed; generally it is regarded as the more potent element—in any event, its use for this purpose anteceded that of water. Fire, no less than water, is supposed to remove the impurity or the demoniacal influences to which a man has been exposed. It is especially peculiar to fire, however, that it is held not only to free an individual from an impurity which he has already contracted, but also to protect him from the possibility of contamination. This preventive power, of course, later came to be ascribed to water also. Indeed, all the various means of lustration may come to be substituted for one another, so that each of them may eventually acquire properties that originally belonged exclusively to one of the others. The third form of purification, finally, consists in a magical transference of the impurity from man to other objects or to other beings, as, for example, from a man to an animal. Closely associated with such a transference are a considerable number of other magic usages. These have even found their way down into modern superstition. We need but refer to the above-mentioned cord-magic, by which a sickness, for example, is transferred to a tree by tying a cord around it.
In the primitive cult ceremonies of the Australians, lustration is effected almost exclusively by fire. In America also fire still plays an important rôle, particularly in the cult ceremonies of the Pueblo peoples. They kindle a great fire, about which they execute dances. In the initiation ceremonies of the Australians, the youths must approach very close to the fire or, at times, leap over it. In this way they are made proof against future attacks. Such fire-magic reaches down even into later civilizations. A survival of this sort is the St. John's fire still prevalent in many regions of Europe and, in view of its origin, still frequently called 'solstice fire' in southern Germany. On these occasions also, the young men and maidens leap over the fire and expose themselves to the danger of its flames, in the belief that whatever they may wish at the time will come to pass. Here again, as in the Australian initiation ceremonies, lustration by fire signifies a magic act having reference to the future.
Water is a far more common means of lustration than fire. It everywhere gained the ascendancy and at the same time very largely preserved its original significance. From early times on it combined the power of removing the impurities resulting from the violation of a taboo, or, more widely applied, of cleansing from guilt, with the power of protecting against impending impurity and guilt. Thus, even in the beginnings of taboo usages, the bath, or ablution, was a universal means of purification. The sprinkling with water, on the other hand, which has held its place even in Christian cult, is a means of purification directed primarily to the future. In the so-called Jordan festivals of the Greek Catholic Church, ordinary water is changed into Jordan water by the magic of the priest. The believer is confident that if he is sprinkled with this water he will commit no sin in the course of the following year.
Less common, on the whole, is the third form of lustration, that by magical transference. Israelitic legend affords a striking example of such lustration in the goat which, laden with the sins of Israel, is driven by Aaron into the wilderness. He takes the goat, lays both his hands on its head, and whispers the sins of Israel into its ear. The goat is then driven into the wilderness, where it is to bury the sins in a distant place. An analogous New Testament story, moreover, is related in St. Matthew's Gospel. We are here told that, in Galilee, a man who was possessed of many demons was freed from them by Jesus, who commanded them to pass into a herd of swine that happened to be near by. Since the demons had previously begged Jesus not to destroy them, they were banished into these animals. The swine, however, plunged into an adjacent sea, and thus the demons perished with them.
Totem, taboo, lustration, and counter-magic, accordingly, were originally closely related to one another, though each of them proved capable of initiating new tendencies and of undergoing a further independent development. The totem, for example, gave rise to numerous sorts of protective demons; the taboo was transferred to the most diverse objects, such as aroused feelings of fear and aversion; lustration led to the various counter agencies that freed men's minds from the ideas of contamination and guilt. These institutions, however, were themselves based upon certain more elementary ideas whose influence was far from being exhausted in them. On the one hand, totemic belief grew out of the belief in souls; on the other hand, totemic ideas were the precursors of further developments. The activity of totem ancestors was associated with certain inanimate objects, such as the Australian churingas, to which magical powers were held to have been transmitted. Inasmuch as the totem animal was also an ancestral animal, it formed the transition to the elevation of human ancestors into cult objects, first on a par with animal ancestors and later exalted above them. Thus, there are three sets of ideas which, in part, form the bases of totemism, and, in part, reach out beyond it, constituting integral factors of further developments of the most diverse character. These ideas may be briefly designated as animism, fetishism, and ancestor worship. Animism, as here used, refers to the various forms of the belief in souls. By fetishism, on the other hand, is universally meant the belief in the demoniacal power of inanimate objects. Ancestor worship, finally, is the worship in cult of family or tribal ancestors. The original totemism passes over into the higher ancestor worship, which, in turn, issues in hero cult, and finally in the cult of the gods.
[1] transcribers' note: "causal" is probably meant here.
[11. SOUL BELIEFS OF THE TOTEMIC AGE.]
Soul ideas, as we have already noted, constitute the basis of totem belief, and may thus be said to date back into the pretotemic age, even though it is obviously only within the totemic period that they attain to their more complete development. If we include the whole of the broad domain of soul belief under the term animism, the latter, in its many diverse forms, may be said to extend from the most primitive to the highest levels of culture. It is fitting, however, to enter upon a connected account of animism at this point, because the development of the main forms of soul belief and of their transformations takes place within the totemic age. Moreover, not only is totemism closely dependent from the very beginning upon soul conceptions, but the development of soul conceptions is to an equal degree affected by totemism.
Soul belief, thus, constitutes an imperishable factor in all mythology and religion. This accounts for the fact that there are some mythologists as well as certain psychologists of religion who actually trace all mythology and religion to animism, believing that soul ideas first gave rise to demon and ancestor cults, and then to the worship of the gods. This view is maintained by Edward Tylor, Herbert Spencer, Julius Lippert, and a number of others. Undeniable as it is that soul belief has exerted an important influence upon mythological and religious thought, it nevertheless represents but one factor among others. For this very reason, however, we must consider separately its own peculiar conditions, since it is thus alone that we can gain an understanding of its relation to the other factors of mythological thought. The fittest place for examining this general interconnection is just at this point, where we are in the very midst of totemic ideas, and where we encounter the transformations of soul ideas in a specially pronounced form. Everything goes to show that the most important change in the history of the development of soul belief falls within the totemic period. This change consists in the distinction between a soul that is bound to the body, and which, because of this permanent attachment, we will briefly call the corporeal soul, and a soul which may leave the body and continue its existence independently of it. Moreover, according to an idea particularly peculiar to the totemic age, this latter soul may become embodied in other living beings, especially in animals, but also in plants, and even in inanimate objects. We will call this soul psyche, the breath or shadow soul. It is a breath soul because it was the exhalation of the breath, perhaps, that first suggested these ideas; it is a shadow soul since it was the dream image, in particular, that gave to this soul the form of a shadowy, visible but intangible, counterpart of man. As a fleeting form, rapidly appearing and again disappearing, the shadow soul is a variety of breath soul. The two readily pass over into each other, and are therefore regarded as one and the same psyche.
There is ground for the conjecture that the distinction between these two main forms of the soul, the corporeal and the breath or shadow soul, is closely bound up with the changed culture of the totemic age. Primitive man flees from the corpse—indeed, even from those who are sick, if he sees that death is approaching. The corpse is left where it lies, and even the mortally ill are abandoned in their helpless condition. The living avoid the places where death has entered. All this changes in an age that has become familiar with struggle and death, and particularly with the sudden death which follows upon the use of weapons. This is exemplified even by the natives of Australia, who are armed with spear and shield. The warrior who falls before the deadly weapon, whose blood flows forth, and who expires in the midst of his fellow-combatants, arouses an entirely different impression from the man of the most primitive times who dies in solitude, and from whose presence the living flee. In addition to the original ideas of a soul that is harboured in the body, and that after death wanders about the neighbourhood as an invisible demon, we now have a further set of ideas. The soul is believed to leave the body in the form of the blood. But it may take an even more sudden departure, being sometimes supposed to leave in the last breath. In this case, it is held to be directly perceptible as a small cloud or a vapour, or as passing over into some animal that is swift of movement or possesses such characteristics as arouse an uncanny feeling. This idea of a breath soul readily leads to the belief that the psyche, after its separation from the body, appears in the dream image, again temporarily assuming, in shadowy form, the outlines of its original body.
Now the most remarkable feature of this entire development is the fact that the idea of the corporeal soul in no wise disappears, as one might suppose, with the origin of the breath or shadow soul. On the contrary, both continue to exist without any mutual interference. This is noticeable particularly in the case of death in war. The belief that the soul leaves the body with the blood may here be directly combined with the belief that it departs with the breath, though the two ideas fall under entirely different categories. Even in Homer this combination of ideas is still clearly in evidence. The breath soul is said to descend to Hades, there to continue its unconscious existence as a dreamlike shadow, while at the same time the corporeal soul is thought to inhere not only in the blood but also in other parts of the body. Certain particular organs of the body are held to be vehicles of the soul; among these are the heart, the respiratory organs, and the diaphragm, the latter probably in connection with the immediately adjacent kidneys, which these primitive soul ideas usually represent as an important centre of soul powers. The believer in animism was not in the least aware of any contradiction in holding, as he did for a long time, that these two forms, the corporeal soul and the breath soul, exist side by side. His concern was not with concepts that might be scientifically examined in such a way as to effect a reconciliation of the separate ideas or a resolution of their contradictions. Even the ancient Egyptians, with their high civilization, preserved a firm belief in a corporeal soul, and upon this belief they based their entire practice of preserving bodies by means of embalmment. The reason for leaving the mouth of the mummy open was to enable the deceased person to justify himself before the judge of the dead. That the mummy was very carefully enclosed in its burial chamber and thus removed from the sphere of intercourse of the living, indicates a survival of the fear of demoniacal power which is characteristic of the beginnings of soul belief. The Egyptians, however, also developed the idea of a purely spiritual soul. The latter was held to exist apart from the body in a realm of the dead, from which it was supposed occasionally to return to the mummy. It was by this simple expedient of an intercourse between the various souls that mythological thought here resolved the contradiction between unity and multiplicity as affecting its soul concepts—a contradiction which even later frequently claimed the attention of philosophy.
When, on a more advanced cultural level, the structure of the body came to be more closely observed, a strong impetus was given towards a progressive differentiation of the corporeal soul. Certain parts of the body, in particular, were singled out as vehicles of the soul. Those that are separable from the body, such, for example, as certain secretions and the products of growth, received a sort of intermediate position between the corporeal soul proper and the breath soul. Chief among these was the blood. Among some peoples, particularly the Bantus of South Africa, the saliva rivals the blood in importance, possibly because of the readily suggested association with the soul that departs in the vapour of the breath. The blood soul, however, is by far the most universal and most permanent of these ideas. In its after-effects it has survived even down to the present. For, when we speak of a 'blood relationship' uniting those persons who stand close to one another through ancestry, the word 'blood' doubtless represents a sort of reminiscence of the old idea of a blood soul. To the dispassionate eye of the physiologist, the blood is one of the most unstable elements of the body, so that, so far as the blood is concerned, the father and mother certainly transmit nothing of a permanent nature to their descendants. More stable parts of the organism are much more likely to be inherited. But, in spite of the fact that blood is one of the most transitory of structures, it continues to be regarded as the vehicle of the relationship existing between members of a family, and even between tribally related nations. More striking expressions of the idea of a blood soul are to be found on primitive levels. In concluding the so-called blood brotherhood, the exchange of blood, according to prevalent belief, mediates the establishment of an actual blood relationship. In accordance with a custom which probably sprang up independently in many different parts of the earth, each of the two parties to the compact, upon entering this brotherhood, took a drop of blood from a small, self-inflicted wound and transferred it to the corresponding wound of the other. Since the drop of exchanged blood represents the blood in general—not merely symbolically, as it were, but in real actuality—the two who have entered into the alliance have become nearest blood relatives, and thus brothers.
The idea that a soul exists in the blood, however, has also a converse aspect. This consists in the fear of shedding blood, since the wounded person would thus be robbed of his soul. The belief then arises that one who consumes the blood of a sacrificed person or animal also gains his soul powers—an idea which likewise comes to have reference to other parts of the body, particularly to the specific bearers of the soul, such as the heart and the kidneys. Thus, between fear, on the one hand, and this striving for power, on the other, a conflict of emotions may arise in which the victory leans now to the one and now to the other side. But the striving to appropriate the soul which is contained in the blood tends to become dominant, since the struggle which enkindles the passion for the annihilation of the enemy is also probably the immediate cause for acting in accordance with this belief concerning the blood. To drink the blood of the slain enemy, to consume his heart—these are impulses in which the passion to annihilate the foe and the desire to appropriate his soul powers intensify each other. These ideas, therefore, also probably represent the origin of anthropophagy. Anthropophagy is not at all a prevalent custom among primitive tribes, as is generally believed. On the contrary, it is just among primitive peoples that it seems to be entirely lacking. It appears in its primary forms, as well as in its modifications, only where weapons and other phenomena point to intertribal wars, and the latter do not occur until the beginning of the totemic age. The totemic age, however, is the period which marks the development not only of the idea of the blood soul but of other soul ideas as, well. Accordingly, anthropophagy is, or was until recently, to be found, not among the most primitive peoples such as have not attained to the level of totemism, but precisely within the bounds of totemic culture, and, in part, in connection with its cults. In these cults, man, as well as the animal, becomes an object of sacrifice in the blood offering. Human sacrifice of this sort continues to be practised under conditions as advanced as deity cult. In the latter, anthropophagy even finds a temporary religious sanction, inasmuch as the priest, particularly, is permitted to eat of the flesh of the sacrifice. Of course, the perpetuation and extension of anthropophagy was not due merely to magical motives; even at a very early period, the food impulse was a contributing factor. The very fact of the relatively late origin of the custom, however, makes it highly improbable that the food impulse would, of itself and apart from magical and cult motives, ever have led to it, though such an explanation has been offered, especially as regards the regions of Oceania where animals are scarce.
In the course of religious development, human sacrifice gave way to animal sacrifice, and cult anthropophagy was displaced by the eating of the flesh of the sacrificial animal. Inasmuch as the latter cult was not only more common than the former but everywhere probably existed prior to the rise of human sacrifice, this later period involved a recurrence of earlier conditions. Nevertheless, there were phenomena which clearly indicated the influence of the fear of the blood, and this militated against the appropriation of the blood soul. Of extreme significance, for example, was the injunction of the Israelitic Priests' Code against partaking of the blood of animals. The original motive for drinking the blood became a motive for abstaining from it—a counter-motive, in which the prohibition, as in many other cases, may also indicate an intentional abandonment of an earlier custom. Among the Israelites, as among many other Semitic tribes, the blood of the animals was poured out at the sacrificial altar. That which was denied man was fitly given to the gods, to whom the life of the animal was offered in its blood.
In early ages, reaching down probably into the beginnings of totemic culture, two organ complexes, in addition to the blood, were held, in an especial degree, to be vehicles of the corporeal soul—the kidneys with their surrounding fat, and the external sexual organs. The fact that, in many languages, kidneys and testicles were originally denoted by the same name, indicates that these two organs were probably regarded as essentially related, a view that may possibly be due to the position of the urethra, which apparently connects the kidneys with the sexual organs. The Bible also offers remarkable testimony in connection with the history of the belief that soul powers are resident in the kidneys and their appended organs. In the earlier writings of the Old Testament, the kidneys, as well as the heart, are frequently referred to as bearers of the soul. It is said of God that he searches the heart and tries the reins; and Job, afflicted with sorrow and disease, complains, "He cleaveth my reins asunder and doth not spare." The sacrificial laws of the Israelites, therefore, state that, in addition to the blood, the kidneys with their surrounding fat are the burnt offering which is most acceptable to God. Rationalistic interpretation has sometimes held that man retains the choice parts of the flesh of the sacrificial animal for himself and devotes the less agreeable parts to the gods. Such motives may have played a rôle when sacrificial conceptions were on the wane. The original condition, however, was no doubt the reverse. The most valuable part belonged to the gods, and this consisted of the organs that were pre-eminently the vehicles of the soul. Though man first aimed to appropriate the soul of the sacrifice for himself, the developed religious cult of a later period made this the privilege of the deity.
It was only in early custom and cult, however, that the kidneys played this rôle. Indeed, as already indicated, it is not improbable that they owe their importance to the fact that their position led to the belief that they are a central organ governing particularly the sexual functions. That this is the case is corroborated by the fact that, in the further development of these ideas of a corporeal soul, the kidneys more and more became secondary to the external sexual organs, and that the latter long continued to retain the dominant importance. Thus, the phallus cult, which was prevalent in numerous Oriental countries and which penetrated from these into the Greek and Roman worlds, may doubtless be regarded as the last, as well as the most permanent, expression of those ideas of a central corporeal soul that were originally associated with the kidneys and their surrounding parts. At the outset, the representation of the phallus was held to be not a mere symbol, as it were, but the very vehicle of masculine power. As a productive, creative potency, it was regarded as very especially characteristic of the deity, and, just as the attributes of deities were supposed to be vested in their images, so also was this divine power thought to be communicated to the phallus. In addition to and anteceding these ideas relating to gods, the phallus was held to be the perfect embodiment of demons, particularly of field-demons, who cause the ripening and growth of the seed. The belief in phallus-bearing demons of fertility probably dates back to the totemic age. The cults, however, to which such ideas of the corporeal soul gave rise, reached their mature development only in the following period. It was then that deity belief was elaborated, and it was in connection with the latter that the phallus became a universal magic symbol of creative power. With the decline of these cults, the symbol, according to a law observable in the case of other phenomena also, was again relegated, for the most part, to the more restricted field of its origin.
Vestiges and survivals of the primitive forms of the corporeal soul extend far down into later culture. Nevertheless, the second main form of soul-belief, that of the psyche, comes to gain the prepondering influence, at first alongside of the corporeal soul, and then more and more displacing it. In this case, the earliest form of the belief, that in a breath soul, proves to be also the most permanent. The idea that the soul leaves the dying person in his last breath, and that the breath, therefore, exercises animating or magical effects, or that in it the soul may pass over from one person to another, is a very common belief. Probably, moreover, it arose independently in many different localities. Some primitive tribes have the custom of holding a child over the bed of a dying person in order that the soul may pass over into it; or, a member of the family stoops over the expiring one to receive his soul. Virgil's Æneid contains an impressive account relating that upon Dido's death her sister attempted to catch the soul, which, as she assumed, roams about as an aerial form, while she also carefully removed the blood from the wound in order that the soul might not remain within the body. Thus, the blood soul and the breath soul are here closely connected.
In the further destinies of the breath soul, a particularly important incident is its passage into some swiftly moving animal, perhaps a bird hovering in the air, or, again, some creeping animal, such as the lizard or the snake, whose manner of movement arouses uncanny fear. It is these animals, chiefly, that are regarded as metamorphoses of the psyche. Remarkable evidence that the bird and snake in combination were regarded as vehicles of the soul may be found in the pictorial representations of the natives of northwestern America. The escape of the soul from the body is here portrayed as the departure of a snake from the mouth of a human figure seated in a birdlike ship. This picture combines three ideas, which occur elsewhere also, either singly or in combination, in connection with the wandering of the soul. There is, in the first place, the soul-bird; then the soul-ship, readily suggested by association with a flying bird, and recurring in the ship which was thought in ancient times to cross the Styx of the underworld; finally, the soul-snake, representing the soul in the act of leaving the body. This very common idea of the soul as a snake and, by further association, its conception as a fish, may be ascribed not only to the fear aroused by the creeping snake, but also to the circumstances attending the decomposition of the corpse. The worm which creeps out of the decaying body is directly perceived as a snake. Thus, corporeal soul and psyche are again united; in this union they mediate the idea of an embodied soul, which, in a certain sense, of course, is a psyche retransformed into a corporeal soul.
With the appearance of these ideas of an embodied soul, totemism merges directly into soul-belief. Under the influence of the remaining elements of totemism, however, the soul-ideas come to be associated with more and more animals. The soul is no longer held to be embodied merely in the earliest soul-animals—bird, snake, and lizard—but other animals are added, such particularly as those of the chase, which have a closer relation to the life of man. Following upon this change are also the further developments mentioned above. When interest in the production of vegetable food is added to that of the chase, the same ideas become associated with plants. Their sprouting and growth continue to suggest soul-powers; and, even though the ancestor idea characteristic of the animal totem cannot attain to prominence because of the greater divergence of plants from man, this very fact causes the phenomena of sprouting and growth all the more to bring into emphasis the magical character of these vegetable totems. Hence it is mainly the plant totem that gives rise to those ceremonies and cult festivals which are designed for the magical increase of the totems. With the wane of the soul-beliefs connected with animal totemism, it is not only plants to which demoniacal powers are ascribed. Even inanimate objects come to be associated with magical ideas, either because of certain peculiar characteristics or because of the function which they perform. It is in this way that the introduction of the plant into the realm of totemic ideas mediates the transition from the totem to the fetish. On the other hand, as the totem animal comes more and more to be an ancestral animal, and as the memory of human forefathers gains greater prominence with the rise of culture, the animal ancestor changes into the human ancestor. Thus, fetishism and ancestor worship are logical developments of totemism. Though differing in tendency, they nevertheless constitute developmental forms which are not at all mutually exclusive, but which may become closely related, just as is the case with the animal and the plant totems from which they have proceeded.
Before turning to these later outgrowths of totemic soul-belief, however, we must consider their influence upon the important customs relating to the disposition of the dead. These customs give expression to the ideas of death and of the destiny of the soul after death. Hence the changes that occur at the beginning and in the course of the totemic age as regards the usages relative to the disposal of the corpse, mirror the important transformations which the latter undergoes. Primitive man, as we have seen, flees from the corpse. Dominated solely by his fear of escaping demons, he allows the dead to lie where they have died. Thus, no attempt whatsoever is made to dispose of the dead, or at most there are but slight beginnings in this direction. It is not the dead who vacate the premises in favour of the living, but the latter accommodate themselves to the dead. Totemic culture, accustomed to armed warfare and sudden death, begins from the outset gradually to lose its fear of the dead, even though not the fear of death, and this reacts upon the disposal of the corpse. Of course, the early custom of depositing the corpse in the open air near the place where death has occurred, does not entirely disappear. This locality, however, is no longer avoided; on the contrary, anxious expectation and observation are now fixed upon the corpse. Just as totemic man drinks the blood of those who are slain in battle, in order to appropriate their power, so also in the case of those who die of disease does he wish to acquire their souls the moment they leave the body. Traces of such a custom, indeed, occur even in much later times, as is shown in Virgil's above-mentioned account of the death of Dido. Within the sphere of totemic ideas, however, where the belief in a corporeal soul is still incomparably stronger, though already intercrossing with the belief in animal transformations of the psyche, the custom of depositing the dead in the open indeed continues to be practised, yet the disposition of the corpse changes, becoming, in spite of an external similitude, almost the very opposite. The corpse is no longer left at the place of death, but is stretched out on a mound of earth. This is the so-called 'platform' method of disposal, which, as is evident, forms a clear transition to burial, or interment. Before the mound of earth covers the body, it forms a platform upon which the corpse is laid out to be viewed, a primitive catafalque, as it were. This manner of disposing of the corpse has been regarded as a custom characteristic of the dominance of totemic culture. This is going entirely beyond the facts, since other modes of disposal are also to be found even in Oceania and Australia, the chief centres of totemism. Nevertheless, the phenomena connected with exposure on a platform indicate that a fusion with soul-ideas has now taken place. Decomposition follows relatively soon after death, particularly in a damp, tropical climate. On the one hand, the liquid products of decomposition that flow from the corpse are interpreted as a departure of the soul analogous to that which occurs, in the case of death by violence, in the loss of blood. As the blood is drunk to appropriate the soul of the deceased, so also do the relatives now crowd in to partake of the liquid products of decomposition—a transference similar to that which sometimes occurs when the powers of the blood are ascribed to the saliva or to other secretions. On the other hand, the first worm of decomposition to leave the corpse is held to be the bearer of the soul. Thus, corporeal soul and psyche are here closely fused. The liquid products that leave the body are in themselves elements of the corporeal soul, but in their separation from the body they resemble a psyche incorporated in an external object; conversely, the worm of decomposition is an embodiment of the psyche, which is itself represented as proceeding directly from the corporeal soul.
This interplay of soul-forms appears also when we consider the other modes of disposing of the dead that are practised in regions where totemic culture or its direct outgrowths prevail. Among some of the North American Indian tribes, for example, the corpse is buried, but a small hole is pierced in the mound of earth over the grave, in order to allow the psyche an exit from the body or also a return to it. This view of the relation between body and psyche passed down, in a more developed form, even into the other-world mythology of the ancient Egyptians. The mummification practised in Egypt was also anticipated, for the idea of the connection of the soul with the body early led to the exsiccation of the corpse in the open air. According to another usage, observed particularly in America, the corpse was first buried, but then, shortly afterwards, exhumed for the purpose of preserving the skull or other bones as vehicles of the soul. The fundamental idea seems to have been that the soul survives in these more permanent parts of the body; in the case of the skull, an appreciation of the importance which the various organs of the head possess for the living person may also have played a rôle. Possibly these ideas likewise lie at the basis of the discreditable head-hunting practised by the Indians, even though it be true that the skull, which is preserved and utilized as a favourite adornment of the exterior of the hut, and also the representative of the skull, the scalp, have long been mere trophies of victory, similar to the antlers of the stag and the deer with which our huntsmen decorate their dwellings. Of the various forms of disposing of the dead that are peculiar to the totemic age, however, it is interment, the very opposite of platform disposal, that finally comes to be adopted in many places. The reason is evidently the same as that which impelled primitive man to flee from the corpse. The demons of the dead are to be banished into the earth, so that the living may pursue their daily activities undisturbed. That this is the aim is shown by many accompanying phenomena—such, for example, as the custom of firmly stamping down the earth upon the grave, or of weighting the burial-mound with stones. Moreover, the custom of burying the corpse as soon as possible after death—ordained even at the time of the Israelitic law—can hardly have originated as a hygienic provision. It is grounded in the fear of demons. When the living themselves no longer flee from the dead, this fear all the more necessitates the speedy removal of the corpse to the secure protection of the earth. The fear of demons is likewise expressed in the fact that prior to burial the arms and legs of the corpse are bound to the body. This obviously points to a belief that the binding constrains the demon of the dead, which is thereby confined to the grave just as is the fettered corpse. Herein lies the origin of the so-called 'crouching graves,' which are still to be found among the Bushmen, as well as among Australian and Melanesian tribes. Gradually, however, a change took place in that the binding was omitted, though the position was retained—doubtless a sign that fear of the demon of the dead was on the wane.
Under the influence of the profuse wealth of old and new soul-ideas, therefore, the totemic age developed a great number of modes of disposing of the dead. Of these modes, interment alone has survived. It is simpler than the others and may be practised in connection with the most diverse ideas of the destiny of the soul. Cremation was the only form of disposing of the dead that was unknown, at least in large part, to the totemic age. And yet the motives underlying cremation belong to the same circle of ideas as those that find expression in the customs of taboo and lustration. It is not impossible, therefore, that cremation may itself date back to the totemic age. Yet interment is universally the earlier mode of disposal; in most parts of the earth, moreover, it has also enjoyed a greater permanence. Only in isolated districts has interment been displaced by cremation. Even in early times it was chiefly among Indo-Germanic peoples that cremation was practised, whereas the Semites everywhere adhered to interment. If, therefore, cremation occurred in ancient Babylonia, as it appears to have done, it probably represents a heritage from the Sumerian culture preceding the Semitic immigration. But even among Indo-Germanic peoples interment was originally universal. In Greece, it existed as late as the period of Mycenian culture. By the time of Homer, on the other hand, cremation had already become the prevalent mode of disposition of the corpse. Cremation was likewise practised very early by the Germans, the Iranians, and the peoples of India. But it was always conditioned by one fact which, as a rule, would seem to carry us beyond the boundaries of the totemic era. It is significant that prehistoric remains show no traces of cremation prior to the beginning of the bronze age—a period in which man was capable of utilizing the high degrees of heat necessary to melt metals. The tremendous heat required for the melting of bronze might well have suggested the idea of also melting man, as it were, in the fire. Nevertheless, external circumstances such as these played but a secondary rôle. They leave unanswered the decisive question regarding the motives that led to the substitution of cremation for interment. This, then, remains our unsolved problem, inasmuch as the economic motives at the basis of the present endeavour to reintroduce cremation were certainly not operative at the time of its origin. With reference to the origin of cremation, only psychological probabilities are possible to us. These are suggested particularly by the ceremonies which accompany cremation in India—the country where this custom has continued to preserve an important cult significance down to the very present. Indeed, even in our own day it has hardly been possible to eradicate from India the custom of burning the widow of the deceased. In particular, two different motives to the custom suggest themselves. In the first place, as we shall presently see, sacrificial usages, and especially the more advanced forms of the sacrifice to the deceased, are closely connected with the taboo and purification customs. Purification from a taboo violation, however, was attained primarily by two means, water and fire. The latter of these means was employed even in very primitive times. Now, the corpse, above all else, was regarded as taboo; contact with it was thought to bring contamination and to demand the rites of lustration. The one who touched a corpse was likewise held to be taboo, and as a result he himself might not be touched before having undergone lustration. By one of those associative reversals which are common in the field of mythology, this then reacted upon the corpse itself. The corpse also must be subjected to a lustration by which it is purified. Such a purification from all earthly dross is mediated, according to the ideas of India, by fire. When the body is burned, the soul becomes pure. But connected with this belief, as we may conjecture, is still a second idea. The soul or psyche departs in the smoke which ascends from the body as this is burned. The body remains below in the ashes, while the soul soars aloft to heaven in the smoke. In this way, the burning of the corpse is closely connected with celestial mythology, which, indeed, was likewise developed relatively early among the Indo-Germanic peoples, with whom cremation had its centre. The customs of the Semitic peoples were different. They adopted the idea of a celestial migration of the soul only at a late period, probably under Indo-Aryan influences; but even then they continued to practise the ancient custom of burial. Amid these differences, however, there is a certain similarity. For, the Semitic peoples believed that the celestial migration of the soul would occur only after its sojourn under the earth, following upon its resurrection, which, it was thought, would take place only at the end of time. It was in this form, as is well known, that Christianity took over into its resurrection belief the ideas developed by Judaism, and, with them, the custom of interment.
[12. THE ORIGIN OF THE FETISH.]
If, as is customary, we employ the term 'fetish' to mean any natural object to which demoniacal powers are ascribed, or, as the word itself (Fr. fétiche from Lat. facticius, artificially constructed) indicates, an artificial, inanimate object of similar powers, a wide gulf appears at first glance to separate the fetish from the psyche. Nevertheless, the two are very closely related, as is indicated by the totemic origin of certain primitive forms of fetishes. In the cults of totemic clans, magic stones and pieces of wood are reverenced and preserved, being regarded as powerful instruments that were originally fashioned, according to legend, by magic beings of a distant past. Into the objects has passed the magic power of these ancestors. By their agency, the plants and animals which man utilizes as food may be increased; through them, evils may be averted and, in particular, diseases may be cured. The universal characteristic of the fetish, however, over and above this special mode of origin, is the fact that it is supposed to harbour a soul-like, demoniacal being. In fact, most of the phenomena of so-called fetishism, and those which are still regarded as typical of it, are to be found outside of totemic cult. It is primarily African fetishism, a cult form which is apparently independent of totemism, that has given its characteristic stamp to the conception of the fetish. Among the Soudan negroes, fetishes generally consist of artificially fashioned wooden objects, not infrequently bearing a grimacing likeness of a human face. As regards the possession of magical powers, however, they do not differ from the so-called churingas of the Australians, although the latter are, as a rule, natural objects that have been picked up accidentally and that differ from ordinary stones and pieces of wood only in their striking form. It is clearly the form, both in the case of the artificial as well as of the natural fetish, that has caused the inanimate object to be regarded as a demoniacal vehicle of the soul. Yet it is not a lifeless object as such that constitutes a fetish, but the fact that a demoniacal, soul-like being is believed to lurk within it as an agency of magical activities.
At the time of its origin, which was probably totemic, fetishism possessed a more restricted meaning than that just given. Defined in this broader way, however, fetishism may be said to be disseminated over the entire earth. It is a direct offshoot of the belief in a corporeal soul, according to which magical powers are resident in certain parts of the human body. In Australia and elsewhere, the kidneys, particularly, are held to possess magical powers. The same, however, is true of the blood—also of the hair, which, as the Biblical legend of Samson serves to show, was supposed to be an especial centre of demoniacal power, and is still regarded by modern superstition as a means of magic. Thus, the transference of the properties of the soul to inanimate objects of nature appears, on the one hand, to be closely related to the activity of the soul in certain parts of the body; on the other hand, it is closely connected with the fact that certain independent beings, particularly such as arouse the emotions of surprise or fear by their form and behaviour, were believed to embody souls. The greater the difference between the object in which such a demon takes up his abode and the familiar sorts of living beings, the more does its demoniacal activity become a pure product of the emotions, which control the imagination that ascribes life to the object. Thus, while the characteristics of the totem animal and, to a certain extent, even those of the totem plant, continue to be determined by their own nature, the fetish is solely the product of the mental activities of the fetish believer. Whereas the totem, particularly the totem animal, retains in great part the nature of a soul, the fetish completely assumes the character of a demon, differing from the demons resident in storms, solitary chasms, and other uncanny places only in the fact that it is inseparable from the discovered or artificially fashioned object. Hence it all the more becomes the embodiment of the emotions of its possessor, of his fears and of his hopes, ever adapting itself to the mood of the moment.
The development of magical ideas is in an especial measure due to the incorporation of demoniacal beings in inanimate objects. Such objects circulate freely and may even survive the individual who owns them, gaining by their permanence an advantage over the animate objects to which soul-like demoniacal powers are ascribed. Inanimate objects may embody the magical beliefs of whole generations. This is exemplified even in the age of deity beliefs, for a sanctuary acquires increasing sacredness with age. And yet the fetish is never valued on its own account, as is the totem animal—in part, at least—or the organ containing the corporeal soul. The fetish is merely a means for furthering purposes of magic. It is especially the fetish, therefore, that represents the transition from soul-beliefs to pure magic-beliefs. For this reason we may speak of a 'cult of the fetish' only in so far as external ceremonies are employed for the purpose of arousing the fetish to magical activity. Such a fetish cult does not include expressions of reverence and thanksgiving, as do the soul and totem cults and later, in a greater measure, the deity cult. A fetishism of this sort, purely magical in purpose, may be found particularly in the Soudan regions of Africa. Fetishistic magic-cult here prevails in its most diverse forms, having, to all appearances, practically displaced the original soul and totem beliefs, though traces of the latter are everywhere present. Frequently it is an individual who calls upon his fetish, perhaps to free him from a sickness, or to protect him from an epidemic, or also to aid him in an undertaking, to influence distant objects, injure an enemy, etc. But an entire village may also possess a fetish in common, committing it to the care of the medicine-man. When exigencies arise, a threatening war or a famine, such a village fetish is particularly fêted in order that he may be induced to avert the disaster.
Among cult objects the fetish occupies a low place. Nevertheless, it is precisely because the demoniacal powers were supposed to be harboured in an inanimate object that the fetish prepared the way for the numerous transitions that led to the later cult-objects in the form of divine images. The fetish, as it were, was a precursor within the totemic age of the divine image of later times. For in the case of the latter also, the deity was supposed to be present and immediately operative; the image, therefore, was called upon for assistance just as was the god himself. Originally, all worship involved an image that was supposed to embody the deity. The divine image, of course, differed in essential respects from the fetish, for it incorporated, as the personal characteristics of the god, those traits that were gradually developed in cult. The fetish, on the other hand, was impersonal; it was purely a demon of desire and fear. Because its activity resembled that of human beings, it was generally given anthropomorphic features, though occasionally it was patterned after animals. Sometimes no such representation was attempted, but, as in the case of the Australian churingas, an object was left just as it was found, particularly if it possessed a striking form. Nor did the divine image come of a sudden to its perfected form. Just as it was only gradually, in the development of the religious myth, that the god acquired his personal characteristics, so also did art search long in every particular case for an adequate expression of the divine idea. In so doing, art not merely gave expression to the religious development, but was itself an important factor in it. The development, however, had its beginning in the fetish. Moreover, so long as the god remains a demoniacal power without clearly defined personal traits, the divine image retains the indeterminate character of the fetish image. Even among the Greeks the earliest divine images were but wooden posts that bore suggestions of a human face; they were idols whose external appearance was as yet in nowise different from that of fetishes. The same is true of other cultural peoples in so far as we have knowledge of their earliest objects of religious art.
But there may be deterioration as well as advance. Wherever artistic achievement degenerates into the crude products of the artisan, the divine image may again approximate to the fetish. Religious cult may suffer a similar relapse, as is shown by many phenomena of present-day superstition. When religious emotions are restricted to very limited desires of a magical nature, the cult also may degenerate into its earliest form, so that the image of the deity or saint, reverting into a fetish, again becomes a means of magic. It is primarily such degenerate practices, or, as they might also be called, such secondary fetish-cults, that give the phenomena of so-called fetishism their permanent importance in the history of religion. The complexity of this course of development has led psychologists of religion to conflicting views in their interpretations of fetishism. On the one hand, the primitive nature of fetishes, and the fact that the earliest divine images resemble fetishes, have led to the assertion that fetishism is the lowest and earliest form of religion. On the other hand, fetishism has been regarded as the result of a degeneration, and as universally presupposing earlier or contemporary religious cults of a higher character. The latter of these views particularly, namely, the degeneration theory, is still maintained by many historians of religion, especially by those who believe that monotheism was the original belief of all mankind. The evidence for this theory is derived mainly from cultural phenomena of the present. The image of a saint, as is rightly maintained, may still occasionally degenerate into a fetish, as occurs when it is regarded as the seat of magical powers, or when its owner believes that he possesses in it a household idol capable of bringing him weal or woe. It was particularly Max Müller who championed the degeneration theory. Even in his last writings on mythology he held firmly to the view that fetishism is a phenomenon representing the decay of religious cults. But if we take into account the entire course of development of the fetish, this view collapses. Though substantiated by certain events that occur within higher religions, it leaves unconsidered the phenomena that are primitive. The earliest fetishistic ideas, as we have seen, go far back into the period of soul and demon beliefs. Developing from the latter, they were at first closely bound up with them, though they later attained a relative independence, as did so many other mythological phenomena. To think of fetishism as a degeneration of religious cults is inadmissible for the very reason that, in so far as such cults presuppose deity ideas, they cannot as yet be said to exist. A striking proof of this contention is offered particularly by that form of fetish cult, the churingal ceremony of the Australians, in which the connection with related primitive ideas may be most clearly traced. The churingal ceremony falls entirely within the development of totemism, and arises naturally under certain conditions; it is no more the product of degeneration than is the appearance of plant totemism in place of animal totemism. The basal step in the development of the fetish is the incorporation of soul-like demoniacal powers in inanimate objects, whether these be objects as they are formed by nature or whether they are artificially constructed. Such objects may result from a deterioration of religious art, but this is by no means the only alternative. In their original forms, they are allied to far more primitive phenomena, such as antedate both religious art and even religion itself, in the true sense of the word. For, of the many forms of the fetish, the most primitive is obviously some natural object that has been accidentally discovered. Such are the churingas of the Australians, and also many of the fetishes of the negroes, although others are artificially fashioned. The selection of such a fetish is determined in an important measure by the fact that it possesses an unusual form. The man of nature expects to find symmetry in animals and plants, but in stones this appears as something rare. Astonishment, which, according to circumstances, may pass over into either fear or hope, causes him to believe some soul-like being to be resident in the inanimate object. This accounts for the existence of such legends as those that have survived among some of the Australian tribes, in which fetishes, or churingas, are represented as the legacy of certain fantastically conceived ancestors. From the natural to the artificial fetish is but a short step. When natural objects are not to be found, man supplies the want. He constructs fetishes, intentionally giving them a striking form resembling that of a man or of some animal. Such fetishes are then all the more regarded as abodes of soul-like beings.
Hence we must also regard as untenable that theory which, in contrast with the degeneration theory, represents fetishism as a primitive mythology or even as the starting-point of all mythology and religion. The fetish is not at all an independent cult-object characteristic of some primitive or more advanced stage of development. It always represents a secondary phenomenon which, in its general significance as an incorporation of demoniacal powers of magic, may occur anywhere. If, however, we inquire as to when fetishistic ideas make their first appearance, and where, therefore, they are to be found in their relatively primitive form, we will find that they are rooted in totemic ideas. Hence it is as a particular modification of such ideas that fetishism must be regarded. In the metamorphosis, of course, some of the essential traits of the original totem disappear. The fetish, consequently, acquires a tendency toward independence, toward becoming, apparently, a separate cult-object. This is illustrated by the fetish cult of many negro tribes. To however great an extent such independent cults may frequently have displaced the totemism from which they sprang, they nevertheless belong so properly to the totemic world of demons and magic that fetishism, in its genuine form, may unquestionably be regarded as a product of the totemic age.
Further verification of this contention may be found in the history of certain incidental products of fetishistic ideas, the amulet and the talisman. These occur at all stages of religious growth, but their development falls principally within the totemic period. The two objects are closely related, yet they differ essentially both from one another and from their parent, the fetish. It has, of course, been denied that a distinction may be drawn between these various objects of magic belief. From a practical point of view, this may doubtless sometimes be true, one and the same object being occasionally used now as a fetish and then again as an amulet or a talisman. But it is precisely their use that distinguishes these objects with sufficient sharpness from one another. The amulet and talisman are purely magical objects, means by which their possessor may produce magical effects. The fetish, however, is a magic-working subject, an independent demoniacal being, which may lend aid but may also refuse it, or, if hostilely disposed, may cause injury. The amulet, on the other hand, always serves the purpose of protection. Not infrequently amulets are held to ward off merely some one particular disease; others are designed to avert sickness in general. In a broadened significance, the amulet then comes to be regarded as a protection against dangers of every sort, against the weapon no less than against malicious magic. Nevertheless, the amulet is always a means of protection to its possessor. It is its passive function, that of protection, which differentiates the amulet from the talisman. The latter, which is far less prominent, particularly in later development, and which is finally to be found only in the world of imaginal tales, is an active means of magic. By means of a talisman, a man is able to perform at will either some one magical act or a number of magical feats. The philosopher's stone of mediæval superstition exemplifies such a means of magic. In this case, the ancient talisman-idea captured even science. The philosopher's stone was supposed to give its possessor the power to unlock all knowledge, and thus to gain control over the objects of nature. This illustrates the talisman in its most comprehensive function. In its restriction to a particular power, it makes its appearance in hero and deity legend, and even to-day in the fairy-tale. Such an active means of magic is represented by the helmet of invisibility, by the sword which brings death to all against whom it is turned, or, finally, by the Tischlein-deck-dich.
The two magical objects are generally also sharply distinct in their mode of use. The amulet is designed to render protection as effectively as possible against external dangers; it must be visible, for every one must see that its bearer is protected. Hence almost all amulets are worn about the neck. This was true of primitive man, and holds also of the survivals of the ancient amulets—women's necklaces, and the badges of fraternal organizations worn by men. The fact that a simple cord was used among primitive peoples and still prevails in present-day superstition, makes it probable that the original amulet was the cord itself, fastened about the neck or, less frequently, about the loins or the arm. Later, this cord was used to support the amulet proper. Even the Australians sometimes wear a piece of dried kidney suspended from a cord of bast—we may recall that the kidney is one of the important seats of the corporeal soul. The hair, teeth, and finger-nails of the dead likewise serve as amulets, all of them being parts of the body which, because of their growth, might well give rise to the idea that they, particularly, possessed soul-like and magical powers. The custom of attaching hair, or a locket containing hair, to a necklace, has survived even down to the present, though, of course, with a far-reaching change of meaning. The magical protection of earlier ages has become a memorial of a loved one who has died. But here likewise we may assume that the change was gradual, and that the present custom, therefore, represents a survival of the primitive amulet. There are other objects also that apparently came to be amulets because of their connection with soul-ideas. Of these, one of the most remarkable is the scarab of the ancient Egyptians, which likewise continues to be worn even to-day. This amulet is a coloured stone shaped like a beetle—more specifically, the scarab. This beetle, with its red wing-coverings, has approximately the form of a heart; for this reason, both it and its representation were thought to be wandering hearts. As an amulet, however, its original significance was that of a vehicle of the soul, designed to protect against external dangers.
Whereas the amulet is worn so as to be visible, the talisman, on the contrary, is hidden so far as possible from the observing eye. It is either placed where it is inconspicuous, as is, for example, the finger ring, or it possesses the appearance of a familiar object. The magical sword gives no visible evidence of its unusual power; the helmet of invisibility resembles an ordinary helmet; the Tischlein-deck-dich of the fairy-tale is in form not unlike any other table. It is with much the same idea that the Soudan negro who sets out upon an undertaking still takes with him some peculiar and accidentally discovered stone, in the hope that it will assist him in danger. This also is an example of a talisman, and not of a fetish.
[13. THE ANIMAL ANCESTOR AND THE HUMAN ANCESTOR.]
The ideas fundamental to the cult of human ancestors, though also connected with soul-beliefs, are radically different from those that gave rise to the fetish. Whereas some mythologists have been inclined to regard fetishism as the primitive form of religion, others have made this claim for ancestor worship. The latter have believed that ancestor worship could be traced back to the very beginnings of culture, and that the god-ideas of the higher religions were a metamorphosis of ancestor ideas. This is corroborated, in their opinion, by the fact that in the age of natural religions the ruler or the aristocracy very generally claimed descent from the gods, and that the ruler and the hero were even worshipped as gods. The former is illustrated by the genealogy of Greek families; the latter, by the Roman worship of emperors, which itself but represented an imitation of an Oriental custom that was once very common. All these cases, however, are clearly secondary phenomena, transferences of previously existing god-ideas to men who were either living or had already died. But even apart from this, the hypothesis is rendered completely untenable by the facts with which the history of totemism and of the earlier, more primitive conditions has made us familiar. Not a trace of ancestor worship is to be found among really primitive men. We have clear proof of this in their manner of disposing of the dead. So far as possible, the dead are left lying where they happen to be, and no cult of any kind is connected with them. Totemism, moreover, gives evidence of the fact that the cult of animal ancestors long anteceded that of human ancestors. Thus, then, the theory that ancestor worship was the primitive religion belongs essentially to an age practically ignorant of totemism and its place in myth development, as well as of the culture of primitive man. This era of a purely a priori psychology of religion still entertained the supposition, rooted in Biblical tradition, of an original state of pure monotheism. In so far as this view was rejected, fetishism and ancestor worship were generally rivals as regards the claim to priority in the succession of religious ideas. The only exception occurred when these practices were regarded as equally original, as they were, essentially, in the theories of Herbert Spencer, Julius Lippert, and others. In this event, the original form of the fetish was held to be an ancestral image which had become an object of cult.
True, along with the totemic ideas of animal ancestors we very early find indefinite and not infrequently grotesque ideas of human ancestors. In the 'Mura-mura' legends of southern Australia these ideas are so interwoven that they can scarcely be untangled. These Mura-mura are fanciful beings of an earlier age, who are represented as having transmitted magical implements to the generations of the present era and as having instructed the ancestors of the Australians in magical ceremonies. A few of the legends relate that the Mura-mura also created the totem animals, or transformed themselves into the latter. Here, then, we already find a mutual interplay between ideas of human and conceptions of animal ancestors. As yet, however, no clear-cut idea of a human ancestor has been formed. This never occurs—a fact of prime importance as concerns its development—until the totem ancestor has lost his significance, and the original tribal totemism has therefore become of subordinate importance, even though totemism itself has not as yet completely disappeared. Under such circumstances the totem animal becomes the protective animal of the individual; the animal ancestor is displaced by the demon which mysteriously watches over the individual's life. This transition has already been touched upon in connection with the development of totemic ideas. Coincident with it, there is an important change with respect to the character of the totem animal. The tribal totem is an animal species. The Australian, whose totem, let us say, is the kangaroo, regards all kangaroos which he meets as sacred animals; he may not kill them, nor, above all, eat of their flesh. In the above-mentioned development of totemism (which is at the same time a retrogression) the totem animal becomes individualized. The protective animal—or the animal of destiny, as we might refer to it, in view of its many changes in meaning—is but an individual animal. A person may possibly never have seen the animal that keeps guard over him; nevertheless, he believes that it is always near at hand. The unseen animal which thus accompanies him is therefore sometimes also called his 'bush soul'; it is hidden somewhere in the bushes as a sort of animal double. Whatever befalls the person likewise happens to it, and conversely. For this reason it is very commonly believed that, if this animal should be killed, the person also must die. This makes it clear why the North American Indian calls the animal, not his ancestor, but his 'elder brother.'
In South African districts, especially among the Bantus where the bush soul is common, and in North America, where the tribal totem has become a coat of arms, and fable and legend therefore continue all the more to emphasize the individual relation between a person and an animal, the idea of a human ancestor receives prominence. The totemic tribal organization as a whole, together with the totemic nomenclature of the tribal divisions, may continue to exist, as occasionally happens among the Bantus and in North America, even though the tribal totems proper have disappeared and become mere names, and the animal itself possesses no live importance except as a personal protector. But since the totemic tribal organization perpetuates the idea of a succession of generations, the human ancestor necessarily comes to assume the place of the animal ancestor. This change is vividly represented by the totem poles of the Indians of northwestern America. These totem poles we have already described. The head of the animal whose representation has become the coat of arms here surmounts a series of faces of human ancestors. Such a monument tells us, more plainly than words possibly could: These are the ancestors whom I revere and who, so far as memory reaches back, have found the symbol of their tribal unity in the animal which stands at their head. But totem poles do more than merely to directly perpetuate this memory. Though probably without the conscious intention of the artists who fashioned them, they also suggest something else, lost to the memory of living men. In the belief of earlier ages, this human ancestor was preceded by an animal ancestor to whom the reverence which is now paid to the human ancestors was at one time given. Thus, the animal ancestor was not only prior to the human ancestor from an external point of view, but gave rise to him through a necessity immanent in the course of development itself.
The transition from animal to human ancestors, furthermore, is closely bound up with coincident transformations in tribal organization. Wherever a powerful chieftainship arises, and an individual, overtowering personality obtains supremacy over a tribe or clan—such supremacy as readily tends to pass down to his descendants—it is particularly likely that a cult will be developed in his honour, and, upon his death, to his memory. Since the memory of this personality outlasts that of ordinary men, the individual himself is held to live on after death, even in regions where there is no belief in a universal immortality. Hence, according to a belief prevalent particularly among the negro peoples, the ordinary man perishes with death; the chieftain, however, or a feared medicine-man, continues to live at least until all memory of him has vanished. In some parts of Africa and Oceania, moreover, the cult of the living chieftains not only involves manifestations of a servile subjection but, more characteristically still, causes even his name to be tabooed. No one is allowed to speak it, and whoever bears the same name must lay it aside when the chieftain assumes control.
As a result of the change in totemic tribal organization induced by the growing significance of chieftainship, the cult of living ancestors, as we may conclude from these phenomena, takes precedence over that of the just deceased, and still more over that of the long departed. In comparison with the importance which the man of nature attributes to living persons, that attaching to the dead is but slight, and diminishes rapidly as the individuals fade from memory. Individual rulers, whose deeds are remembered longer than those of ordinary men, may lay the foundations for an historical tradition. Nevertheless, the present long continues to assert a preponderating claim in belief as well as in cult. So long as man himself lives only for the present, having little regard for the future and scarcely any at all for the past, his gods also—in so far as we may apply this name to the supersensuous powers that shape his life—are gods of the present. True, the totem animal is secondarily also an animal ancestor. And yet it is only the living totem animal that is the object of cult and is believed to possess protective or destructive powers; compared with it, the ancestor idea fades into nebulous outlines, gaining a more definite significance only in so far as it is an expression of the tribal feeling which binds the members of the community to one another.
A further important factor enters into this development. This is the cult ceremony connected with the disposition of the dead. In this case, the departed one to whom the ceremony is dedicated is still directly present to memory. He holds, as it were, an intermediate position between the realm of the living and that of the dead. The memorial ceremony held in his honour also restores to memory older generations of the departed, even though this may cause their specific features to fade into indefiniteness and to assume outlines whose vagueness renders them similar. The American totem poles furnish a concrete portrayal of such a series of ancestors in which individual characteristics are totally lacking. Nevertheless, even under very diverse circumstances, we find that the ceremony in honour of one who has just died comes to develop into a general festival of the dead, and thus to include more remote generations. The circle of those who are honoured is likewise extended; the cult comes to be one that commemorates not merely chieftains but all tribesmen. As the wider tribal bonds dissolve, the clan, and then later the family, pay their homage to the departed on the occasion of his funeral, and to earlier generations of the dead on specific days dedicated to such memories. This is the course of development in which the ancestor festivals of the Chinese and Japanese have their origin, as well as the cults of the Roman dii manes; it has introduced elements, at least, of ancestor worship into the beginnings of all religions, even though this cult but rarely attained the pre-eminent importance which it possessed among the cultural peoples of the Orient.
But whatever may have been the character of this earlier strain of ancestor worship in religious development, the beginning of a true ancestor cult is closely bound up with the universalization due to its having become the cult of the hearth and the family. As it is the human ancestor who displaces the animal ancestor in this cult, so the transition by which the family comes to be the central factor in social organization is an external indication of the dissolution of totemic culture and the dawning of a new era. In view of the predominant mythological and religious creations of this period, it might be called the age of heroes and gods. Ancestor worship itself is at the turning-point of the transition to the new era. In origin, it belongs to totemic culture: in its later development, it is one of the most significant indications of the dissolution of totemism, preparing the way for a new age in which it continues to hold an important place. At the same time, ancestor worship, no less than its rival, fetishism, constitutes but one factor among others in the development of mythological thought as a whole. In certain localities, as in the civilizations of eastern Asia, it may become sufficiently prominent to be one of the principal elements of religious cult. But even in such cases, ancestor worship is never able entirely to suppress the remaining forms of cult; still less can it be regarded as having given rise to the other fundamental phases of religious development—these rest on essentially different motives. Moreover, in connection with the relation of totemism to the ancestor worship which is rooted in the former and at the same time displaces it in one line of development, it is important to notice that in a certain sense the two follow opposite paths. As we have seen, the original totem—that is, the tribal totem—is the animal species in general; the last form of totem is the protective animal, which is an individual animal. Ancestor worship, on the other hand, begins with the adoration of humanly conceived benefactors and prominent tribesmen. It ends with a worship in which the individual ancestor gives way to the general idea of ancestor, in whom the family sees only a reflection of its own unity and an object in terms of which reverence is paid to past generations. The fact that ancestor cult centres about impersonal beings betrays a religious defect. Herein also is evidenced the continuing influence of the totemic age, for it was in this period that ancestor worship had its rise. The defect just mentioned was first overcome with the origin of god-ideas. One of the essential characteristics of gods is precisely the fact that they are personal beings; each of them is a more or less sharply defined individuality. This of itself clearly indicates that ancestor worship is at most a relatively unimportant factor in the origin of gods.
14. THE TOTEMIC CULTS.
The primitive stage of human development, discussed in the preceding chapter, possessed no real cults in the strict sense of the term. Occasional suggestions or beginnings of cult acts were to be found, in the form of a number of magical customs. Such, particularly, were the efforts to expel sickness demons; also, the ceremonial dances designed to bring success to joint undertakings, as, for example, the above-mentioned dance of the Veddah about an arrow, whose purpose, perhaps, was to insure a successful hunt, if we would judge, among other things, from the fact that the dancers imitated the movements of animals.
In contrast to these meagre magical usages, which, for the most part, served individual purposes, the totemic age developed a great variety of cults. Just as the totemic tribal organization is an impressive phenomenon when compared with the primitive horde, so also do we marvel at the rich development of cults with which we meet as we pass to the totemic age. These cults are associated not only with the most important events of human life but also with natural phenomena, though, of course, only in so far as the latter affect the interests of man, the weal or woe that is in store for the individual or for the tribal community. Generally speaking, therefore, these cults may be divided into two great classes. Though these two classes of cults are, of course, frequently merged and united—for the very reason that both spring from the same emotions of hope, of desire, and of fear—they are nevertheless clearly distinguishable by reference to the immediate purpose which the magic of the cult aims to serve. The first of these classes includes those cults which relate to the most significant events of human life; the second, those concerned with the natural phenomena most important to man.
Human life furnishes motives for cult acts in its origin as in its decline, in birth and in death. Other motives are to be found in significant intervening events, such primarily as the entrance of the youth into manhood, though in the case of the maiden, ceremonies of this sort are very secondary or are entirely lacking. Of these most important events of life, that of birth is practically removed from present consideration. No ceremony or cult is connected with it. Not infrequently, however, the idea prevails that the child becomes capable of life only on condition that its parents endow it with life a second time, as it were, by an express act of will. Thus, many Polynesian tribes allow parents to put to death a new-born infant. Only after the child has lived several hours has it gained a right to existence and does the duty of rearing it devolve upon the parents. There is a survival of similar ideas in the older usages of cultural peoples, though they have not led to the widespread evils of infanticide as they have among many peoples of nature. But even among the early Germans, Romans, and Greeks, the life of a new-born child was secure only after the father had given recognition to it in a symbolical act—such, for example, as lifting it from the earth. On the other hand, the previous act of laying the child on the ground frequently came to be symbolical of the idea that it, as all living things, owes its existence primarily to mother earth. With this act of an express recognition of the child, moreover, there is also bound up the unconditional obedience which the child, even down to a late period, was held to owe to its parents.
The fewer the cult acts connected with entrance upon life, the greater is the number that attend departure from it. Almost all cults of the dead, moreover, originate in the totemic age. Wherever traces of them appear at an earlier stage, one can hardly avoid the suspicion that these are due to the influences of neighbouring peoples. Now, the totemic cults of the dead are closely interrelated with the above-described usages relating to the disposition of the corpse. They make their appearance particularly when the original signs of fear and of flight from the demon of the dead begin to vanish, and when reverence comes into greater and greater prominence, as well as the impulse to provide for a future life of the dead—a life conceived somehow as a continuance of the present. The clansmen solemnly accompany the corpse to its burial; death lamentations assume specific ceremonial forms, for whose observance there is very commonly a special class of female mourners. The cries of these mourners, of course, still appear to express the emotion of fear in combination with that of grief. The main feature of the funeral ceremonies comes to be a sacrifice to the dead. Not only are the usual articles of utility placed in the grave—such, for example, as a man's weapons—but animals are slaughtered and buried with the corpse. Where the idea of rulership has gained particular prominence—as, for example, among the Soudan and Bantu peoples of Africa—slaves and women must also follow the deceased chieftain into the grave. Evidently these sacrifices are intended primarily for the deceased himself. They are designed to help him in his further life, though in part the aim is still doubtless that of preventing his return as a demon. In both cases, these usages are clearly connected with the increased importance attached to the psyche, for they first appear with the spread of the belief in a survival after death and in soul migration. These sacrifices are doubtless regarded partly as directly supplying the necessary means whereby the soul of the dead may carry on its further existence and partly as magical instruments that make it possible for the deceased to enjoy a continuance of life. Thus, these sacrifices already involve ideas of a beyond, though, generally speaking, the latter did not as yet receive further development.
At this point, sacrifice to the dead undergoes further modifications, as a consequence of which there are also changes in the accompanying cult acts. The sacrifice of food dedicated to the use of the deceased and the bloody sacrifice designed to equip him with magical power, are no longer offered merely to the departed. As soon as god-ideas begin to emerge, the sacrifice is brought, in first instance, to these higher beings, who are implored to furnish protection to the deceased. As this latter motive gains the ascendancy, the slaughtered animals are no longer placed in the grave along with the deceased, but their blood is poured out upon it; of their flesh, moreover, only a part is thrown upon the grave as the portion of the dead, while the rest is consumed by the mourners. The feelings of reverence, thus expressed, issue, in the later development of these cults to the dead, in general ancestor worship. Not only the deceased himself and those who have assembled, but particularly the gods under whose protection the deceased is placed, receive a portion of the sacrifice. When this occurs, the offering, which had been devoted to the deceased, becomes sacrifice proper. The offering was given solely to the one who had died; at first, its purpose was to keep him in his grave, later, to afford him aid in his further life. Real sacrifice to the dead involves three parties—the deceased person, the deity, and the survivors. The deceased gains new life from the blood and flesh of the sacrificial animal; the deity is subjected to a magical influence which is to incline him favourably toward the departed; those who bring the sacrifices participate in this favour, since they enter into a magical union both with the deceased and with the protecting deity. In part, these developments extend on beyond the totemic age; their beginnings, however, are already everywhere present. True, in this early sacrifice to the dead the attempt to exercise a magical influence upon the deity—later, as we shall see, the essential feature of the sacrificial idea—is still in the background. Nevertheless, this magical feature, which characterizes sacrifice at the height of its development, has already made its appearance. Because of it, the original sacrifice to the dead possesses a significance intermediate between the two distinct concepts of a gift which sacrifice has been held to embody. Though originally a gift to the deceased, an offering laid beside him, sacrifice became a means of protective magic for him and for the survivors. When the deity came to constitute a third member of this magical group, and as he gradually gained the dominant place, the idea of a gift again began to displace the purely magical idea. The gift, however, was now a gift to the deity. This was the final stage in the development of sacrifice and represents the basis of the ordinary rationalistic interpretation. Originally, however, sacrifice possessed a different significance. It was purely a magical act, as is shown by the further circumstance that it is precisely the sacrifice to the dead which was already practised at a time when there were as yet no gods but merely a belief in demons. Additional evidence may be found in the nature of the sacrificial gifts which are deposited in the graves, particularly where ancestor worship prevails—as, for example, in the realms of East Asiatic culture. In these regions, it is not the objects themselves with which the deceased is to be equipped for his future life that are buried, but miniature paper representations of them. These representations are really not symbols, as is generally held—or, at any rate, this is only a later and retrogressive form of the idea—but they are sensuously embodied desires originally regarded as means of magic. In this case also, we may detect the influence of soul-ideas, which lie at the basis of all beliefs of this sort. As the psyche of the dead is supposed to reincarnate itself in a new organism, so likewise are the object-souls incorporated in these representative miniatures to transform themselves, by means of the magical power attaching to their shape, into corresponding real objects. But in this instance again, the further modifications in the sacrifice to the dead lead on into deity cult. Hence it is not until our next chapter, when we discuss deity cults, that we will deal with the sacrificial idea in its total development.
Connected with another life-event to which this age attaches particular importance is a further significant group of totemic cults. This consists in the celebration of the adolescence of youths in the so-called initiation ceremonies. In a period such as this, when intertribal struggles are a matter of increasing concern, the reception of a youth into the association of men, into the community of the hunt and of war, represents the outstanding event of his life. Beginnings of such celebrations were transmitted by the primitive age to the totemic era, but it is only at this later period that they are developed into great cult festivals. It is these festivals, particularly, which everywhere recur in essentially the same form among all the tribes of Australia. They are great folk festivals, frequently assembling the clans of friendly tribes. Their celebration consists of dances and songs, though primarily of ceremonies centring about the youths who are reaching the age of maturity. For a considerable period these youths have been prepared for the festival by the older men. They have been subjected to a strict asceticism for weeks beforehand; meanwhile they have also been trained in the use of weapons, and instructed in certain matters of which the young are kept in ignorance. The actual celebration, which always occurs at night, includes ceremonies which, in part, involve extreme pain to the novices. The youths are obliged to stand very close to a fire kindled in the centre of the ceremonial ground. The older men, with painted faces, then execute dances, in which the women are forbidden to participate. An important feature of these dances is the imitation of totem animals. This also provides an opportunity for humorous episodes. During these pranks, however, the youths are compelled to remain serious. Moreover, they must give evidence of fortitude by fearlessly leaping over the fire. In many of these regions, there is a further ceremony, which is extremely peculiar and of uncertain significance. This consists in the knocking out of teeth. Generally the operation is performed by the medicine-man or, as he ought perhaps to be called in this capacity, the priest. The latter presses the teeth of his own lower jaw against one of the incisors of the upper jaw of the novice, thus loosening the tooth so that it may easily be knocked out with a stone hammer. This is the most primitive form of tooth deformation, a practice common to numerous peoples of nature as a means of beautification. That the original purpose was not cosmetic is clear. Whatever other end it was intended to serve, however, is uncertain, though it was doubtless connected with cult. Perhaps its meaning is suggested in the fact that, before marriage, girls also were frequently deprived of a front tooth, and that the idea prevailed, possibly in connection with this custom, that the exchange of breath, and thus the breath-soul, may play a part in the act of procreation. It is not unreasonable to suppose that these ideas may represent the origin of the kiss. At any rate, as Preusz has pointed out, ancient Mexican pictures represent two deities engaged, apparently, in the act of kissing while (perhaps in reminiscence also of the blood-soul) red smoke passes from the mouth of the one to that of the other. Moreover, it may well be that this exchange of souls in the kiss has its analogue in many regions, particularly in Melanesia, in the exchange of breath through the nose—the so-called nose-greeting which might therefore better be called the nose-kiss. That this exchange is mediated through the nose may be due to the fact that among many of these tribes kissing with the lips is impossible because of mouth-rings, lip-blocks, and other deformations, doubtless originally intended as means of magic. Similar ideas concerning the mouth and the nose, moreover, and their relation to the psyche, are suggested even by the Biblical history of the Creation, according to which God rouses Adam to life by breathing a soul into him through his nose. Through the mouth, man breathes out his soul; through the nose, he received it.
Though the festival of initiation into manhood was once associated with magical acts of cult, as the above ceremony seems to show, the meaning of this magic has for the most part been lost to the memory of the natives. For this reason they generally regard the ceremonies, including that of striking out the teeth, as a means of testing the fortitude of the young men. This was doubtless a secondary motive even at a very early time, and when the magical significance dropped out, it remained as the sole purpose. Nevertheless, the character of these alleged tests is much too peculiar to be intelligible on the hypothesis that they were originally intended merely to arouse fear or pain. And so, in view of the widely prevalent use of fire as a means of lustration, we may be allowed to regard also the fire-test, which occupies a central place in these cult forms, as having originally been a means of magical purification.
The second class of ceremonial festivals and cults, as above remarked, is associated with certain objective natural phenomena which exercise a decisive influence upon human life. The natural phenomena most likely to originate a cult, because representing the most important objects of desire and fear, are those connected with the need for food, with the growth of plants, and with the increase of animals, particularly the animals of the chase. For this reason vegetation cults date back to the very beginnings of the totemic period. Very probably they originated in the desire for plant food. Under relatively primitive conditions there was seldom a lack of game, though there was probably a scarcity of the vegetables necessary to supplement the food derived from animals. For plants frequently suffer from unfavourable weather, whether it be from the heat of the sun and from drought, as in tropical and sub-tropical regions, or from deluging rains, as in the temperate zones. Our interpretation of vegetation cults is supported particularly by the conditions prevailing in the original home of totemism, Australia. These cults here occur chiefly in the northern districts, into which there were early Melanesian immigrations; towards the south, they have gained but a relatively small foothold. The more northerly regions, as we have seen, are the very ones in which plant totems also are numerous, whereas they are lacking in the south. The cults of which we have been speaking are called Intichiuma ceremonies—an expression of Australian derivation. These ceremonies, moreover, involve the magical use of churingas, the Australian fetishes.
The character of these vegetation festivals is always very much the same. They include dances, in which, in essential distinction from those of the initiation ceremonies, women are generally allowed to participate; their central feature consists of specific magical acts designed to effect an increase of the food supply. In Australia, these acts, in part, take the form of ceremonies in which pieces of artificial animals are strewn about. We speak of them as artificial, of course, only from our own standpoint; to the Australian the material that is scattered represents an actual living being. Thus, for example, a heap of sand is moulded into the form of a large lizard, and, of this, various parts are thrown into the air by those who participate in the festival. The animal germs thus scattered are supposed to effect an increase in the animals of the lizard totem. These vegetation festivals, therefore, are also totem festivals, and their celebration has the secondary significance of a cult dedicated to the totem. The celebration connected with a fish totem is similar to the above, though somewhat more complicated. A member of the clan, whose arms or other parts of the body have been bored through with bone daggers, descends into the water and allows his blood to mingle with it. The totem germs that are to bring about an increase in fish are supposed to emanate from the blood.
In the case of plant totems, the cults are of a simpler nature. The plants themselves, or sometimes their seeds, which, moreover, also serve directly as food, are strewn to the winds. The grass-seed totem, for example, is particularly common in Australia. The seeds of the Australian grasses are gathered in large quantities and constitute an important part of the vegetable food. Thrown into the air, they are supposed to bring about an increased supply of these grasses. Externally regarded, this magical ceremony, primitive as it is, completely represents an act of sowing. It would be incorrect, however, as yet to speak of it as such, in the sense of the later tiller of the soil; the significance of the ceremony is purely magical. An age which merely gathers wild seeds and fruits does not prepare the soil in the way that sowing presupposes. Nevertheless, the magical cult involves an act which later forms an important part of agricultural tasks. Indeed, it is not at all improbable that these magical ceremonies, which in any event already involve the recognition that the strewing of seed conditions the increase of plants, have elsewhere constituted a preparatory step to the development of agriculture. In general it may be said that the ceremony probably originated in connection with plant totems, where the idea of such an increase is very especially apt to suggest itself; doubtless it was only later connected, through a process of external association, with animal totems. In harmony with such a view is the fact that Intichiuma festivals are chiefly prevalent in the regions of plant totemism.
The vegetation cults which preceded the rise of agriculture were finally superseded by true cults of the soil. The latter presuppose the preparation of the soil by the efforts of man. This is clear from the fact that they occur more regularly, and at definite seasons of the year; moreover, they are of a more complex character, serving in part a number of other purposes. Typical of the transition are the vegetation festivals of the natives of Central America. These festivals are unique in that they embody elements of celestial mythology; thus they constitute important transitional stages between the demon cults of the totemic era and deity cults. The relation which the seeds are supposed to bear to the sprouts of the various grains is now no longer merely of a magical nature. The hoe-culture, to which the American Indian has attained, has taught him the dependence of the growth of plants upon the act of sowing. But here also there can be no cult until there is community labour. The original hoe-culture carried on by the individual about his hut no more tends to originate a cult than does the erection of the hut, the weaving of baskets, or the other tasks set by the needs of daily life. Individuals, however, frequently till the soil even prior to the rise of systematic agriculture, as occurs in certain regions of Melanesia, among the prairie peoples of North America, and elsewhere. Besides leading to more advanced ideas concerning the processes of germination and growth, these beginnings of agriculture, which still form part of the household duties of individuals, serve to engender what proves to be a permanent and basal factor in all further development—namely, provision for the future. However primitive may be the hoe-culture which the individual carries on about his hut, it is not concerned exclusively with the immediate present, as is the mere gathering of food, but it aims to satisfy a future need. True, even in this case, the beginnings may be traced back to the preceding age. Even such ceremonies as the Intichiuma festivals, in which the totems are strewn about in order magically to influence their growth and increase, are already thoroughly inspired by a regard for the future. Perhaps all human action concerned with the distant future was at first magical in aim.
The establishment of a cult, however, is due not merely to the foresight which provides for a future harvest by the tilling of the soil; it is conditioned also by a second factor—namely, community labour. Just as entrance into manhood gives rise to initiation cults only when it becomes of tribal importance, precisely so is the development of cults of the soil dependent upon the association of members of a tribe or a mark in common labour. Moreover, initiation into manhood early came to be of common concern because of the community life of age-associates and of the need for military training created by tribal warfare; the same is true, though at a later stage and, of course, for essentially different reasons, of the tilling of the soil. The most important factor in the latter case is the fact that because the natural conditions are common to all, all are obliged to select the same time both for the sowing and later for the harvest. This is of little moment so long as the population is sparse and the property of one individual is separated from that of the others by wide stretches of uncultivated land. The more closely the members of the mark live together, however, the more do they share in common labour. Whenever a migrating tribe takes possession of a new territory, moreover, there is a further decisive consideration, namely, the fact that at the outset the soil is common property. In this case, not merely the natural conditions, but also the very ground on which the work of the field is performed, is identical for all the members of a mark. Added to this objective factor there more and more comes to be one of a subjective nature. In common labour, the individual determines his activities by reference to a common end; moreover, he regulates these activities, as to rhythm, tempo, and the accompanying expressive movements, so as to conform to the group in which he finds himself. Since, moreover, the activity of sowing and the subsequent growth of the crop preserve the magical character acquired in an earlier period, the work itself comes to be a cult activity. Just as initiation rites are not merely a declaration of manhood but a cult, designed magically to equip the novice with manly power and fortitude, so the tilling of the soil becomes a cult act through whose inherent magical power the prosperity of the crop is supposed to be secured. There are two factors which are of prime importance for the beginning of agricultural cults, and which give to their further development its peculiar stamp. In the first place, the labour whose performance in common engenders the cults of the soil is always connected with hoe-culture, the initial stage of agriculture. It is only because they work with the hoe that the members of the mark come into such close relations that they easily fuse into a cult community. When the plough, which is drawn by an animal, comes into use, the individuals are again separated. For the field which is tilled is larger, and, furthermore, the activity of the ploughman is confined to the guidance of his animals and implements, so that he personally is no longer directly concerned with the soil as in the case of hoe-culture. Moreover, since hoe-culture demands a very much greater expenditure of human energy, it arouses stronger emotions. The plough trains to reflection and brooding; the hoe stirs violent emotions. Furthermore, it is only when hoe-culture becomes common labour on a common field that the sexes are brought together. The early hoe-culture carried on about the hut of the individual generally devolves upon the woman alone, who thus merely continues the duty of food-getting which rested with her, as the gatherer of food, under still more primitive economic conditions. With the appearance of more intensive hoe-culture the labour is divided. Man cuts up and loosens the soil with his hoe; woman follows after, strewing the seed between the clods. With the invention of the plough, agriculture finally becomes the exclusive concern of man. The furrowing and loosening of the soil is now done by means of an implement, and man, freed from this labour, assumes the duty of strewing the seed.
This twofold community of labour, that on the part of the holders of common property and that of the two sexes, undoubtedly underlies the peculiar character which the cults of the soil continue to preserve long after the period of their origin. On the one hand, the work of the field itself assumes the character of a cult act; combined with it, on the other hand, there come to be additional ceremonies. That which brings the men and women together and converts the labour into a cult act is primarily the dance. The fertilization and growth of plants are regarded as processes resembling the procreation of man. When the cult members give themselves up to ecstatic and orgiastic dances, therefore, they believe that they are magically influencing the sprouting and growth of the seeds. According to their belief, sprouting and growth are due to the demons of the soil. These demons the orgiastic cult arouses to heightened activity, just as the labourers and dancers mutually excite one another to increased efforts. In this ecstasy of the cult, man feels himself one with external nature. His own activity and the processes of nature become for him one and the same magical potency. In addition to the terrestrial demons of growth, there are the celestial demons, who send fructifying rains from the clouds to the soil. Particularly in regions such as New Mexico and Arizona, where a successful harvest depends in large measure upon the alternation of rains with the withering heat of the sun, these vegetation festivals are combined with elements of celestial cults. The latter, of course, are also essentially demon cults, yet they everywhere exhibit distinct traces of a transition into deity cults. Particularly typical are the cults of the Zuni and Hopi, described in detail by various American scholars. The direction of these cult festivals is vested in a body of rain-priests, in conjunction with other associations of priests, named for the most part after animals, and with secret societies. In the vegetation ceremonies of the Hopi, the members of the rain-group, naked and with faces masked to represent clouds, parade through a neighbouring village and thence to the festival place. In their procession through the village, the women throw water over them from the windows of the houses. This is a magical ceremony intended to secure the blessings of rain upon the crops. The investigations of W. Mannhardt concerning the field cults of ancient and more recent times have shown that survivals of such conceptions are still present in the sowing and harvest usages of modern Europe. Mannhardt's collection of customs deals particularly with East Prussia and Lithuania. In these localities it is customary for the maid-servants to return from the harvest earlier than the men, and to drench the latter with water as they enter the house. Though this custom has become a mere form of play, it nevertheless still vividly recalls the very serious magical ceremonies of earlier vegetation cults. But over and above this change from the serious to the playful, of which there are beginnings even in the festival celebrations of early cultural peoples, there is still another important difference between the earliest vegetation cults and their later recrudescences. The former are connected particularly with sowing, the latter primarily with the harvest. This again reflects the difference between hoe-culture and plough-culture. Hoe-culture unites the members of the mark in the activity of sowing, whereas labour with the plough separates them and imposes the work exclusively on the men. Harvesting the grain, on the other hand, long continues to remain a task in which individuals work in groups, women and men together. Moreover, as the magical beliefs associated with the activity of sowing gradually disappear, their place is taken by joy over the assured harvest. This also factors towards changing the time of the main festival from the beginning to the end of the season.
Since both earth and heaven must co-operate if the sowing is to be propitious and the harvest bountiful, vegetation festivals are intermediate between demon cults and celestial cults. In respect to origin, they belong to the former; in the degree in which more adequate conceptions of nature are attained, they give rise to the latter. In many cases, moreover, elements of ancestor cult still exercise an influence towards bringing about this transition. The cloud that bestows rain and blessing is regarded as dependent upon a controlling will. Back of the clouds, therefore, according to the ideas of the Zuni and other Pueblo tribes, dwell the ancestors. The prayer of the priests to the clouds is also a prayer to the ancestors for protection and aid. The procession of the rain-priesthood through the village is a representation of the ancestors who are hidden behind the mask of clouds, and is supposed to exercise a magical influence. These cult festivals also include invocations to the sun, whose assistance is likewise necessary to the prosperity of the crop. Thus, in the ceremonial customs of the Navajos, who occupy the same territory, the yellow sand that covers the festival place represents the coloured expanse of the rainbow, the sun, and the moon. All the heavenly forces are to co-operate in bringing about the ripening of the harvest. In this wise it is possible to trace an advance, stage by stage, from the cults of terrestrial demons, who dwell within the growing grain itself, to celestial cults. The fact that the aid of the heavens is indispensable draws the attention upwards. If, now, there are other causes such as give rise to the idea of a celestial migration of the souls of departed ancestors, the cloud demons become merged with ancestor spirits, and there are combined with them the supra-terrestrial powers that are conceived as inherent in the other celestial phenomena.
It is due to this synthesis of vegetation cults with celestial cults that these festivals, which are the most highly developed of any in the totemic age, continue to become more and more complex. They gradually incorporate other cults in so far as these are not associated with specific, undeferable circumstances, as are the death cults. Among the Zuni and Navajos, the most important ceremony thus incorporated into these festivals is the initiation of youths into manhood and their subsequent reception into the community of men. There are analogous ceremonies for the women. In this complex of cult elements, the emphasis more and more falls on the celestial phenomena, of which the more important force themselves upon the observation and therefore determine the time at which these festivals are held. Instead of at seedtime and harvest, which vary somewhat with weather conditions, the two main festivals are held at fixed dates corresponding to the summer and winter solstices. Thus, the cults become independent of variable circumstances. All the more are they able to assimilate other cults. Among the Zuni, for example, there is a ceremony which, though analogous to the declaration of manhood, is not held at the time when the youths reach manhood or the maidens arrive at the age of puberty, but occurs much earlier, and signifies reception into the cult community. This first consecration, which might be compared to our baptism, does not take place immediately after birth, but when the child is four or five years of age. Following upon this consecration, in the course of the same festival, comes the celebration of the adulthood of fully matured youths and maidens, set for the fourteenth or fifteenth year of life. In this ceremony the youths and maidens are beaten with consecrated rods. The present generation, which has no knowledge concerning the origin of this practice, generally regards these blows as a test of hardihood and courage. But the fact that specially consecrated rods are used by the priests shows unmistakably that their original purpose was to exercise a magical influence upon those who were being initiated. Indeed, the fact that many adults crowd in to receive some of the blows, in the belief that these possess a protective influence, proves that the original meaning of the ceremony has maintained itself to a certain extent even down to the present. In addition to these features of the cult-celebration, which are connected in general with the tribal or mark community as such, there are other ceremonies that are designed for the satisfaction of the wants of individuals. Sick persons drag themselves painfully to the festival, or are brought to it by their relatives, in search of healing. In America, the desire for magical healing has very commonly given rise to so-called sweat-lodges, which are located near the festival places. These lodges serve a twofold purpose. The primary aim of the sweat cure is to expel sickness demons. But healthy persons also subject themselves to the treatment. In this case the sole purpose of the sweating is obviously that of lustration. Just as we ourselves occasionally experience relief from the flow of perspiration, so also may the one who has passed through the ceremony of the sweat-lodge feel himself reborn, as it were. This would tend to strengthen the naturally suggested association between this ceremony and lustration by water. The ceremony, therefore, serves the same purpose as the other forms of lustration. The individual wishes either to purify himself from a guilt which he has incurred, or, if there is no particular element of guilt, to protect himself against future impurities. The custom thus acquires the significance of a sanctification ceremony, similar to baptism or to the bath of the Brahman. Because of the combination of these various cult motives and cult forms, the cult association which unites in the performance of the vegetation festivals comes to be the representative of the cult, as well as of the belief, of the tribal community in general. This likewise prepares the way for the transition from totemic to deity cults, as is indicated, among other things, by the sacrificial activities of these cult festivals. Sacrifice itself, as has already been mentioned, probably originated as sacrifice to the dead. Its further development occurs primarily in connection with the higher forms of vegetation cults. The Zuni and Navajos erect altars for their festivals. These they adorn with gaily coloured cloths and with the gorgeous plumage of birds. On them they place the plants and grains which the cult is designed to prosper. This is the typical form of the vegetable sacrifice as it passes on from these early practices into all higher cults. The sacrifice consists in offering the particular plants and grains whose increase is desired. At the outset, its character is exclusively magical; it is not a gift to the deity. Just as rain-magic is supposed to result from drenching the rain-association with water, so this offering of grains is held to have a magic effect upon the prosperity of the same sorts of grains. There is no indication or suggestion that the sacrifice represents an offering to the gods. This idea arises only later, when the magical sacrifice of grains, as well as that of animals, is connected with a further conception whose origin is apparently also to be found in sacrifice to the dead. The dead are presented with gifts, which they carry along into a world beyond. Similarly, the magical sacrifice connected with vegetation festivals and their associated cults more and more ceases to be regarded as purely magical in nature and comes to be an offering to the deity whose favour is thereby sought.
Coincident with these changes in sacrificial usages, the cult community which develops in the course of the transitional stages of cult—the best representatives are the semi-cultural peoples of America—undergoes a more thorough organization. Separate associations are formed within the wider circle of cult membership. These severally assume the various functions involved in the cult; as a rule, they are under the guidance of priests. Even apart from their connection with these cult festivals, the priests serve as magic-priests and magic-doctors, and it is they who preserve the traditions of the general cult ceremonies as well as of the means requisite on the part of the individual for the exercise of this twofold profession. This represents the typical figure of the medicine-man. He is to be found even in primitive culture, but his function more and more changes from that of the ordinary magician into that of the priest. As such, he attains to a position of authority that is publicly acknowledged and protected. Associated with him is a restricted group of those cult members who are most familiar with the secrets of the cult, and are his immediate assistants in the festal ceremonies. It is these individuals that compose the secret societies. These societies occur even among the tribes of the northern parts of America, and have their analogues particularly on the semi-cultural level which forms the threshold of the totemic age. Presumably they derive from the more primitive institution of men's clubs, within which the male members of a clan are united into age-groups. Membership in secret societies also continues to be limited to men, more especially to such as have reached a mature age. As tribal organization developed, and particularly as family bonds became firmer, age associations were dissolved. The association which originally included all men gave way to more restricted societies. Besides this numerical limitation, there was naturally also a qualitative restriction. In the first place, those who thus deliberately segregated themselves from the total body were the privileged members of the tribal community, or at least such as laid claim to special prerogatives; these associations, furthermore, were formed for certain more specialized purposes connected with the particular needs of their members. The first of these considerations accounts for the respect, occasionally mingled with fear or reverence, which was accorded to these societies, a respect which was heightened by the secrecy in which they shrouded themselves. The fact that certain customs and traditions were surrounded with secrecy caused every such association to be organized into various ranks, graded according to the extent with which the individuals were familiar with the secret doctrines. This type of organization occurs as early as the associations of medicine-men among the Africans and the American Indians; later, it is to be found in connection with the Eleusynian and Orphic mysteries; it is represented also by the Christian and Buddhistic orders, and by their various secular counterparts, such as the Rosicrucians and the Freemasons. Not infrequently these societies, in contradiction to their secrecy, have special emblems indicative of membership and of rank. Among the American Indians, this purpose is generally served by special drawings on the body; in other places, by specific tattooings as well as by the wearing of distinctive dress. The second restriction of membership on the part of the secret society is connected with the limited purpose which the society serves. The men's club includes all the interests of the clan or tribal community; the secret society is held together by a specific aim or by a limited circle of related tasks. Here also it is universally true that these tasks are connected with cult, and are thus of a religious nature. Even the Greek phratries underwent a change of purpose analogous to that which occurred in the transition from the age-group to the secret society, for, after losing their earlier political significance, they continued to exist as cultural associations.
The men's group belongs exclusively to the totemic age. Secret societies, however, are organizations which, together with the cults that they maintain, belong to a stage transitional between totemic and deity cults. The emblems worn by the cult members are for the most part totemic; totemic also are the cult usages, and likewise, particularly among the American Indians, the name which the group adopts. The feathers of birds and the hides of other totem animals—the same as those which also adorn the festival altars—constitute a chief part of the dress. In addition to the general tribal festival in which they co-operate, these societies also maintain their special cults. It is particularly in these latter cults that ancient totemic survivals are in evidence. A remarkable example of such a totem group is the snake society of the Hopi Indians, who dwell, as do the Zuni and Navajos, in the regions of New Mexico. The totem animal of this society is the rattlesnake. In the snake festival, a procession is formed in which every member participates; each carries a rattlesnake in his mouth, holding it in his teeth directly back of its head. It is firmly believed that no snake will kill a member of the society which holds it sacred. Of course, as observers of the festival have noticed, an ingenious expedient is employed to avert the danger. Each snake-bearer is followed by an associate who diverts the attention of the snake by continually tickling its tail with a small stick. If a snake-bearer is bitten, as rarely occurs, his companion always sucks out the wound, by which act, as is well known, the snake-bite is rendered relatively innocuous.
[15. THE ART OF THE TOTEMIC AGE.]
The most prominent of the artistic activities of the totemic age is formative art. In this field, the lowest stages of totemic development show little advance beyond the achievements of primitive man. True, even Australia possesses cave drawings which, perhaps have some sort of cult significance. As yet, however, we have not succeeded in interpreting these drawings. With this exception, the formative art of the totemic period is limited to carvings upon weapons or other implements—obviously thought, just as in primitive times, to possess magical potencies—and to the painting of the face on the occasion of cult festivals.
In the regions of Oceania, particularly the Polynesian Islands, we find a far richer development of that form of pictorial art which aims at the adornment of the body, or, as we ought rather to say with reference to the beginnings of this artistic practice, at the exercise on the part of the body of a magical influence upon external things. Polynesia is the chief centre of artistic tattooing. Throughout these regions this practice has universally taken the form of prick tattooing. By means of separate, close-lying prick points filled with colour, various symmetrical designs are formed. This tattooing is the only art whose highest perfection is reached at the beginning of culture. As soon as clothing appears, the decoration of the body itself gives way to that of dress. On particular occasions, as, for example, in connection with certain cult practices of the American Indians, custom may continue to demand entire nakedness. Under these circumstances, there is a sort of retrogressive development in which the painting necessitated by the festivals takes the place of tattooing. This occurs even among the Australians. Moreover, even after clothing has appeared, it long remains a favourite custom to tattoo certain exposed parts of the skin, particularly the face and the arms and hands. Even to-day, indeed, the arms are sometimes tattooed. The fact that tattooing is now practised almost exclusively by criminals and prostitutes, and, occasionally, by sailors, finds its explanation in a circumstance which was also of influence at the time when tattooing was in its first flower, namely, in the interruption of occupational activity by long periods of leisure.
There is an additional factor which obviously favours the development of the art of tattooing, particularly in the territory of the Polynesian Islands. I refer to the combination of totemism with celestial mythology, which is peculiar to these peoples, and to the consequent recedence of totemism. Particularly illuminative as regards this point is the tattooing of the Maoris. The mythology of this people gives an important place to the sun, and their bodily decorations frequently include pictures of this celestial body, in the form of spiral ornamentations. Some two years ago travelling investigators brought back copies of the tattooing of other islanders, particularly those of the Marquesas group. These tattoo-patterns contain many significant elements of a celestial mythology; those of to-day, however, in so far as the custom has not been entirely effaced by the Europeans, consist almost entirely of simple geometrical ornamentations. The tattooings of early times frequently included also representations of animals. Plants were less common, as might be expected from the fact that it was only later that they acquired importance for totemic cults. At the same time, it is evident that a sort of reversal took place as regards the pictorial representation of objects. This is even more striking in the tattooing of the American Indians, a tattooing restricted to certain parts of the body. In the preceding chapter the fact has already been noted that, among the primitive peoples of the pretotemic age, as, for example, the Semangs and Senoi of Malacca, the multiplication of simple parallel lines, triangles, arcs, etc., gives rise to plant-like and animal-like forms. Doubtless the primitive artist himself discovers such figures in his drawings and then sometimes consciously sets about to imitate more closely the actual forms of the natural objects. At the stage of development now under discussion, we find, conversely, that animal forms, particularly, are retranslated into geometrical objects in that they become, as we would to-day express it, more and more conventionalized. Since only the simplest outlines of the objects are retained, it may eventually become a matter of doubt whether these really are schematic representations of natural objects, and whether they are not, even from the very beginning, geometrical ornamentations. Nevertheless the fact that there are continuous transitions from the developed animal form to the geometrical ornament, as occurs particularly in America, is incontrovertible proof that such a conventionalization took place, though in many cases, doubtless, very slowly. This process of conventionalization, however, may be more clearly traced in connection with a different art, one that is related to tattooing but whose development is not limited, as is that of the latter, and destined from the very outset to become obsolete. I refer to ceramics, the art of decorating the vessels which were at first intended for the preservation, and later for the preparation, of food.
Even though the art of making pottery is not to be found in primitive culture proper, it nevertheless dates back to a very early age. It is not impossible that this age coincides approximately with the beginning of the totemic period. At any rate, it was totemic cult which, from earliest times on, furnished the motives for the decoration or—as is here also doubtless generally true of the early beginnings—for the magical protection of the vessels, or for the imparting of magical potencies to their contents. Doubtless the clay vessel was originally modelled partly after the natural objects that were used for storing food, and partly after the woven basket. The latter, in turn, may, in its beginnings, have been copied from the bird's nest. When it was discovered, probably accidentally, that clay is hardened by fire, the clay vessel came to be used not merely for the preservation of food but also for its preparation by means of fire. Or, perhaps it would be truer to say that the attempt to accomplish this latter purpose with the unhardened clay vessel led to the art of baking clay. Now, even before the art of making pottery was known, implements, weapons, women's combs, and even the body itself were marked with simple and regular linear drawings to which a magical significance was attached. These geometrical forms, which arose semi-accidentally, were, even from very early times, apperceived as the outlines of animal or plant forms, and it was under the influence of these ideas that they attained a further development. Precisely the same process was repeated in the case of ceramics, only, as it were, upon a broader scale, challenging a richer play of imagination. It is precisely here, however, particularly in the ceramics of the American Indians, that we can trace the ascending and the descending developments of primitive linear drawings, first into completely developed animal designs with meagre suggestions of attempts at plant ornamentation, and then regressively, through a continued conventionalization, into purely geometrical figures. At the same time, it was ceramics, especially, that developed a combination of these two designs, the systematic arrangement of which marks the perfection of this art. Thus arose representations of natural objects framed in by geometrical ornamentations. In this respect also, tattooing furnished a preparation, even though imperfectly, for ceramics. In inner significance, moreover, the latter was a direct outgrowth of the former. By tattooing, man originally guarded his own person with protective magic; in ceramics, this magic was brought into connection with man's utensils, with the food necessary for his life, and with its preparation. In ceramics, therefore, just as in tattooing, the animals represented were at first primarily totem animals. Among them we find particularly snakes, fish, and birds, and, in America, the alligator. Especially characteristic of the totemic age is the fact that the decorations scarcely ever include the representation of the human figure. It is by this mark that the art products, even of the earliest age of Greece, may be distinguished at first glance from those of totemic culture. In the former case, the human figure is introduced, either along with that of the animal or even alone; in the latter case, only animal representations occur. Strange to say, it is in only one respect that the ceramics, more particularly of the American Indians, copy man—the vessel as a whole represents a head or a skull. Doubtless this is connected with the obnoxious custom of head-hunting. Just as the Indian adorns the roof of his hut with the heads of his conquered foes, so he perpetuates the memory of his feats of war in his ceramic objects. No portrayal of activities in which human beings participate, is to be found in the totemic age.
Connected with this, no doubt, is the lack of any real sculpture, with the exception of crude idols representing animal or human forms. These idols, on the whole, are of the nature of fetishes, and as such may, of course, be regarded as the precursors of the divine images of a later period. As there is no sculpture, so also is there, strictly speaking, no architecture. In this respect, again, there is a wide difference between this age and the succeeding one. In its higher forms, architecture presupposes gods who are worshipped in a temple. In the totemic period, however, there are no temples. True, the Australian preserves his magic wands and pieces of wood, the churingas, in caves or huts, but the latter differ in no wise from other huts. In the totemic age, therefore, man alone has a dwelling-place. Of such structures there are, in general, two types, the conical and the spherical. The conical hut apparently had its origin in the tent. The rounded or beehive hut, as it has been called in Africa, may originally have been copied from a natural cave built in the sand. The two forms, moreover, are not always mutually exclusive. In winter, for example, the Esquimo of Behring Strait lives in a round hut made of snow; in summer, he pitches a tent. In Melanesia, Polynesia, and other regions, the erection of dwelling-places on the seashore or on the shores of large rivers led to the pole-hut, a modification which came to resemble the houses of later times. This hut, which is generally occupied jointly by several families, is erected on poles that are firmly driven into the ground and reach far up into the air. Such a pole-hut, even at this early age, develops the typical form of a commodious dwelling. One of the factors here operative is the institution of men's clubs, which is prevalent in these regions: the necessity that many individuals live together leads to the erection of buildings of considerable size. In this connection, we note a characteristic difference between the beginnings of architectonic art and that of the other arts. The latter, whether in the case of tattooing, ceramics, or the fetishistic precursors of sculpture, always originate in mythological and, primarily, in magical motives; the sole impetus to architecture is furnished by the immediate needs of practical life. Thus, then, it is not to religious impulses but to the social conditions which require that many individuals shall live together, that we must trace a more perfected technique of building than that of primitive times.
Much more nearly parallel to the development of the other forms of art is that of the musical arts, meaning by this all those arts which consist in the direct activity of man himself. The musical arts include the dance, poetry, and music, as well as the various combinations into which these enter with one another. Since it is the third of these arts, music, that manifests a particular tendency to combine with and to supplement the other two, all three may be comprehended under its name. This will also serve to suggest the fact that, just as the formative arts are closely related in that they give objective embodiment to the creations of the imagination, so also are the musical arts allied by virtue of their reliance on subjective expression. Of all these various arts, the dance preserves the closest connection with the more primitive age. In the cult dance of the totemic period, however, the dance receives an extraordinarily rich development, reaching a stage of perfection comparable to that to which formative art attains in the external adornment of the body—that is, in tattooing. The dance and tattooing, indeed, are closely related, since nowhere else is the personal body so directly the object and the means of artistic activity. To the dances of the primitive period, however, the totemic dance adds one external feature—the mask—whose origin is directly due to totem belief. Even the Australians, of course, are not familiar with the mask-dance. They sometimes paint the face or mark it with single lines, and this may be regarded as the precursor of the mask; the mask itself however appears only in the later development of totemism, and continues far into the succeeding age. Moreover, as regards its distribution, there are considerable differences. It plays its most important rôle in American and Polynesian regions, a less prominent one in Africa. In America, the mask-dance and the elevation of masks into cult objects, to which the mask-dance occasionally gives rise, extend from the Esquimos of the north far down to the south. Koch-Grünberg has given a clear picture of the mask-dances and the mask-cult of the natives of the Brazilian forests. Here the masks are not a secondary means of magic, as it were—much less an occasional object of adornment. Every mask is a sort of sacred object. When the youth attains to manhood, he receives a mask, which is sacred to him throughout his entire life. After the great cult festivals, which are celebrated with mask-dances, the masks are carefully preserved. In the mask there is supposed to reside the demon who is represented by it, and the fear of the demon is transferred to the mask. The dancing of this period consists primarily of the animal dance, which is a rhythmic imitation, often wonderfully skilful, of the movements of an animal. The mask also, therefore, always represents, in a more or less altered or grotesquely exaggerated form, an animal's head, or a being intermediate between animal and man, thus vividly calling to mind certain totemic legends whose heroes are sometimes animals and sometimes human beings. On the more advanced stages of totemic culture, there are also masks representing objects of external nature. Mention has already been made of the cloud masks used in the vegetation festivals of the Hopi and Zuni. The rain-priests of these tribes, with these masks on their heads and with pictures of zigzag lightning on their garments, are the living representatives of storm demons. Thus, the mask imparts to its wearer the character of the demon represented by it. The characteristics of face-masks, such as enormous beards and teeth, huge eyes, noses, etc., cause them, particularly, to be the living embodiments of the fear of demons, and thus to be themselves regarded as demoniacal beings. Whatever may be their more specific nature, whether, for example, they represent demons of sickness or of fertility, they always present the same fear-inspiring features. A certain diversity of expression is much more likely to come as a result of the external character of the dance in which the masks are used. This may give rise to expressions portraying surprise and astonishment, or the more lively emotions of fear, terror, or exalted joy. In the latter case, we must bear in mind that representations of grinning laughter differ in but a few characteristic marks from those of violent weeping.
Corresponding to these differences in the character of the masks that are worn, are two main forms of the dance, particularly of the cult dance. The first of these is the ceremonial dance, which moves in slow and solemn rhythm. This is the dance that generally inaugurates the great cult festivals of the semi-cultural peoples of totemism or that accompanies certain of the chief features of the festival—such, for example, as the entrance and procession of the cloud-masked ancestral spirits in the vegetation festivals of New Mexico. Contrasting with the ceremonial dance are the ecstatic dances, which for the most part form the climax of the festival. Only the men are allowed to take part in the ceremonial dances, and the same is generally true also of the ecstatic dances. The women, if not altogether excluded from the ceremonies, are either silent witnesses or accompany the dance with songs or screams. It is only in the more extreme form of the ecstatic-orgiastic dance that both sexes participate. The mixed dances probably arose in connection with the vegetation festivals, as a result of the relation which was thought to exist between the sexual emotions and the creative forces of nature. It was doubtless because of this late origin that the Greeks long continued to regard the dances of the Dionysian festivals, which were borrowed from Oriental cults and executed by women alone or by women and men together, as in part a degeneration of good custom. In the drama, whose origin was the mimetic dance, the rôle of women was taken by men.
Closely connected with the dance is music, the preparatory stage of which is constituted by the participation of the voice in the rhythm of the external movements of the body. These articulatory movements, which form a part of the mimicking activity of the face, supplement the dynamic rhythm of the dance with the melodic rise and fall of tones. The emotion which finds its outlet in the dance itself, then seeks a further enhancement through objective means. These means also involve the activity of the bodily organs; noises are produced by clapping the hands, by stamping on the ground, or by the rhythmic clash of sticks. In the latter case, the transition from instruments of noise to those of tone is easily made. The earliest forms of tone instruments are of two sorts, according as they copy the production of sound by external means, on the one hand, or by the vocal organs, in the accompanying tones, on the other. Thus, the two original forms of musical instruments are instruments of concussion and wind instruments. In origin, these are directly connected with the dance. They are natural means of intensification created directly by the emotion, though later modified by systematic invention. The later development of musical art continues to remain in close relation to the two main forms of the dance, the solemn ceremonial and the ecstatic dance, between which there come to be numerous transitions. From the most primitive to the highest stages of music, we continually find two sorts of musical expression, the sustained and the animated. These correspond to the contrasting feelings of rest and excitement, which are experienced even by animals, and which man therefore doubtless carried with him from his natural state into his cultural life. With the progress of culture, these feelings constantly become more richly differentiated.
The totemic age may be said to include only the first few advances beyond the simple emotions already expressed in the dance. Nevertheless, there are ethnological differences that register in a very characteristic way those specific musical talents of the various races which are obscured on higher levels of culture because of the increasing complexity of international relations. Thus, Africa is apparently the chief centre, if not the original home, of instruments of concussion and of the great variety of stringed instruments that develop from them. America, on the other hand, is the region in which wind instruments, in particular their original form, the flute, have attained their chief development. The flute of the American Indians is not, of course, like our own; it is blown, not with the lips, but with the mouth. It therefore resembles a shawm or a clarinet. As regards production of tone, however, it is a flute, for the tone is produced by the extension of one lip over the other in a manner similar to that of the flute-pipes of our organs. That which distinguishes the sound of the flute and of its shorter form, the fife, from that of stringed instruments is primarily the greater intensity and the longer duration of the tone. Corresponding to the difference in musical instruments is that of the noise instruments which characterize the two regions. Africa possesses the drum. This it employs not only for purposes of accompaniment in cult ceremonies, but also as a means of signalling, since it renders distant communication possible by use of the so-called drum-language. In America, we find the rattle. Though this, of course, is not entirely lacking in Africa, it nevertheless occurs primarily within the cultural realm of the North American Indians. Here it is employed as an instrument of noise and magic, similarly to the bull-roarer of the Australians. As between the rattle and the drum, the difference is again one of the longer duration of sound in the case of the American instrument.
The tones produced by these early musical instruments, however, even those of the stringed instruments and their vocal accompaniment, by no means, of course, form harmonic music. On the contrary, harmony is an achievement of the succeeding age; it is here foreshadowed in only imperfect beginnings. Such beginnings, however, may everywhere be discerned in the records that we have of the melodies of the Soudan negroes and the American races. Nevertheless, most of the records that are as yet available are still of doubtful value. The auditor is too prone to find in them his own musical experiences. For reliable data we must wait until, following the beginnings that have already been made, a greater number of such natural songs will have been objectively recorded by the aid of the phonograph. As yet we can only say that, if we may judge from their musical instruments, the Africans surpass all other natural peoples in musical talent. Their melodies ordinarily move within the range of about an octave, whereas those of the North American Indians seldom pass beyond a sixth. The fact of this small tonal compass will itself indicate that the melody of all natural peoples tends to very constant rhythms and intervals. The latter, moreover, show some similarity to those with which we are familiar. The chief characteristic of these songs, however, is their tendency toward repetition. One and the same motive frequently recurs with tiresome monotony. The melodies thus reflect certain universal characteristics of primitive poetry as they appear in the songs of the Veddahs and of other pretotemic tribes.
Nevertheless, the forms of poetry exhibit an important advance over those of the more primitive peoples just mentioned. Particularly in the case of the song, we find that the simple expression of the moods directly aroused by nature is supplemented by a further important feature. This feature is closely bound up with that more lively bodily and mental activity of totemic culture which is reflected likewise in its use of implements and weapons. Karl Bücher was the first to point out that common labour gives rise to common songs, whose rhythm and melody are determined by the labour. The increasing diversity of the work results in a wider range of content and also in a richer differentiation of forms. Such work-songs are to be found throughout the entire totemic era, whereas, of course, they are lacking in the preceding age, in which common labour scarcely exists. Contemporaneously with the work-song, the cult-song makes its appearance. The latter is essentially conditioned by the development of totemic ceremonies. As these become more numerous, the cult-song likewise gradually grows richer and more manifold, in close reciprocal relations with the dance and music. In the case of the cult-song, as well as of the work-song, the above-mentioned repetition of motives comes to exercise an important influence on the accompanying activity. Though different causes are operative in the two cases, these causes nevertheless ultimately spring from a single source—namely, the heightening of emotions. In the cult-song, man aims to bring his petitions and, as we may say for the earlier age, the magic which his words exercise, as forcibly as possible to the notice of the demons or, at a later period, of the gods whom he addresses. For this reason the same wish is repeated again and again. The most primitive form of cult-song generally consists of but a single wish repeated in rhythmic form. In the work-song, on the other hand, it is the constantly recurring rhythm of the work that leads directly to the repetition of the accompanying rhythmic and melodic motives. When one and the same external task becomes associated time and again with these accompanying songs, the two mutually reinforce each other. The song is a stimulus to the work, and the work heightens the emotion expressed in the song. Both results vary with the degree in which the song is adapted to the work and thus itself becomes a poetic representation of it. Here again neither plan nor purpose originally played the least part; the development was determined by the rhythmic and melodic motives immanent in the work.
Several brief illustrations may serve to give us a clear picture of what has been said. The first is a cult-song of American origin. Again we turn to the cult usages of one of the tribes of New Mexico, the Sia. The motif of the song, which is rain-magic, furnishes the material for very many of the ceremonies of these regions. The song of the rain-priests is as follows:—
All ye fluttering clouds,
All ye clouds, cherish the fields,
All ye lightnings and thunders, rainbows and
cloud-peoples,
Come and labour for us.
This song is repeated again and again without change of motif—it is a conjuration in the form of a song.
The snake society of the Hopi, to which we have already referred, has a similar song, which it sings with musical accompaniment. It runs as follows:—
Oh, snake society of the North, come and labour for us,
Snake society of the South, of the West, snake society of the
Zenith and of the Nadir,
Come hither and labour for us.
The fact that the snake societies of the Zenith and Nadir are invoked makes it clear that this song is not, as it were, an appeal addressed to other societies of human beings. There are, of course, none such at the Zenith or the Nadir. The song is obviously directed to a demon society conceived as similar to human cult associations. It petitions for assistance in the preparation of the field and for a successful harvest.
The repetitions in such cases as these are always due to the fact that the songs are conjurations. Not so with the work-song. This is generally the expression of a greater diversity of motives, as is shown by the following lines taken from a song of the Maoris of New Zealand. The song is one which they sing while transporting trunks of trees to the coast:—
Give more room,
Joyous folk, give room for the totara,
Joyous folk,
Give me the maro.
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Slide on, slide on!
Slip along, slip along!
Joyous folk! etc.
'Totara' and 'maro' are the names of trees that they have felled. In its rhythm and its repetitions, the song gives us a direct portrayal of the work itself.
These song-forms are still entirely the product of external motives and never arise under the independent and immediate influence of subjective moods. Far superior to them is another field of literary composition, the narrative. The totemic age, particularly, has produced a great variety of forms of narrative. Predominant among these is the märchen-myth, a narrative which resembles the fairy-tale and which, as a rule, continues during this period to be of the nature of a credited myth. It is a prose narrative circulated by word of mouth, in which manner it sometimes traverses wide regions. With occasional changes or in connection with different mythical ideas it may survive many generations. So far as these general characteristics are concerned, the märchen, indeed, is the most permanent of all forms of literary composition. It extends from the most primitive levels of culture down to the present. In the form of the märchen-myth, however, it is especially characteristic of the totemic age. We now possess numerous collections of such tales from the most diverse regions of totemic as well as of later civilizations. An Englishwoman, Mrs. Parker, has brought together a number of Australian tales, and these have been augmented in more recent times, particularly through the labours of the German missionary Strehlow. Strehlow has a great advantage over most of the other Australian investigators in being familiar with the languages of the tribes among whom he lives. Valuable material regarding America and Africa has been gathered particularly by American and English travellers; data, furthermore, are not lacking concerning the natural and cultural peoples of other parts of the earth. Moreover, comparative research has for some time past studied the märchen with the primary purpose of determining to what localities the materials of the märchen and the fable have spread, and thus, in turn, of learning the early cultural relations of peoples. This investigation of the märchen, however, has, for the most part, suffered from a false preconception. The criterion by which we judge present-day tales of this sort was applied to märchen-fiction in general. The märchen-myths of primitive peoples, therefore, were regarded either as creations of individuals and as never having been credited, or, at best, as retrogressive forms of higher types of myth—particularly of nature myths—adapted to the needs of childlike comprehension. A closer investigation of the märchen-myths of relatively primitive peoples has rendered this theory absolutely untenable. True, retrogressive forms occasionally occur in this as well as in most other sorts of myth and of literary composition. Nevertheless, there is no longer any room for doubt that, on the one hand, the earliest products of narrative composition were all of the nature of the märchen, and that, on the other hand, most primitive märchen-fictions were credited myths. An attempt to arrive at the sources of the most common motifs of the märchen of different peoples and ages will reveal the fact that the majority of them must undoubtedly be traced to the totemic age. Such was the environment, certainly, in which the earliest narrative had its setting, particularly in so far as it was believed to report truths of history.
The early myth narrative was of the general character of the märchen primarily in that it was not, as a rule, restricted to a specific time or place. This also differentiates the folk märchen of to-day from the saga. An occasional exception is offered by the anthropogenic legends of peoples of nature, although these also are in other respects of the nature of the märchen. A second essential characteristic of the märchen is the fact that magical agencies play a rôle in the determination of events. This is true even of present-day folk märchen, and is due to the circumstance that the primitive märchen arose in an age which was still entirely under the dominance of magical beliefs. These beliefs, which influenced all phases of the activity of primitive man, also caused the magical märchen to be credited either in their entirety or at least in great part. All the narratives of this age, however, bear the characteristics of the märchen, as these have just been indicated, or, at any rate, it is at most only occasionally, in the primitive legend, that they approximate to the saga. It follows, therefore, that the development of the myth in general begins with the märchen-myth. Here also the development proceeds from below upwards, and not the reverse.
But even though the beginnings of the märchen-myth doubtless date back to primitive man, the flower of the development is undeniably to be found in the totemic age. For it is to this age that all those characteristics point that are still to be found, as survivals of the totemic period, in present-day märchen and children's fairy-tales. Of such characteristics, we might mention primarily the magical causality which the action involves—a point to which we have already referred—and also the rôle assigned to the animal, which is portrayed either as the helper and benefactor of man or, at the least, as like him in nature. The latter resemblance appears particularly in the fact that marriages are frequently represented as taking place between man and animals; furthermore, transformations of men into animals are said to occur, and retransformations of the latter into men. In these totemic märchen we very seldom find man to the exclusion of animals; just as little, moreover, do animals appear alone. Both the animal fable and the märchen which deals exclusively with human beings, are products of a later development and belong to a period in which the märchen is no longer credited. Even more truly, however, do these primitive märchen lack the moral lessons which are taught by the stories of later times, particularly by the fable. Nevertheless, those fable märchen which are generally called 'explicative' because they explain the traits of certain animals, still generally bear the marks of the totemic age, even though they apparently belong to one of its somewhat later periods. An example of this is the tale of the American Indians of the North-west, according to which the crow became black through being burned by the sun while stealing celestial fire; or the tale of the Bantus, which explains that the rabbit acquired the cleft in his lip as the result of a blow once dealt him by the man in the moon.
The most primitive märchen lacks all such intellectualistic motives. It recounts an event without any discernible purpose or without bringing the action to any natural conclusion. The following Australian märchen may serve as an illustration: 'Several women go out into the field with their children to gather grass seed. There they meet a magpie. It offers to watch the children while the women are gathering the seeds. They leave the children with the magpie. When they return, however, the children have disappeared. The magpie has hidden them in a hollow tree. The women hear the children crying, but do not know where they are, and return home without them. The magpie has disappeared.' Such a narrative is strikingly similar, in its lack of aim, to the songs of primitive peoples. Markedly superior is the märchen-fiction found among other natural peoples of totemic culture. These tales gradually develop a closer connection between the events. It is now that the märchen hero makes his appearance, and it is with him, particularly, that the events are associated. This hero is not of course, similar to the one of the later hero saga, who gains distinction by his strength, cleverness, and other qualities. He is a magic-hero, in control of magical forces. The latter are frequently represented as communicated to him by an animal which he meets, or by an old woman; more rarely, he is said to receive them from a male magician. A further characteristic of the childhood period of the märchen-fiction is the fact that the hero himself is almost always a child. A youth sets forth on adventure, meets with magical experiences, returns home, and generally benefits his tribe through certain possessions that he has acquired on his journey. Here, again, animals play a supporting rôle. Rich collections of such märchen have been gathered, particularly in America. One of the tales of the Pawnee tribe of prairie Indians runs as follows: 'A young man did not join his companions in their sports, but went alone into the forest. One day he returned with a buffalo cow which had become his wife and had borne him a buffalo calf. But the very moment that the wife and calf entered the hut of the man they were transformed into human beings. Nevertheless, a cloud of magic hung over the man. If the child were to fall to the floor, it would be changed back into a buffalo calf. Now, this misfortune actually came to pass, and the mother was also again changed into a buffalo cow. Sadly the young man then went with them into the forest, where he himself became a buffalo and for a time lived quietly with the buffalo herd. Suddenly he again returned home, transformed into a man. But he had learned from the buffaloes how one must set about to lure them forth in order to hunt them. This secret he imparted to his fellow-tribesmen, and since that time the tribe has enjoyed plenty of buffalo meat.' This is a buffalo legend which tells of a sort of compact between the tribe and the buffaloes. That the legend, moreover, is not a mere märchen in our sense of the term, has been strikingly shown by Dorsey, to whom we owe the collection of Pawnee tales from which this story is taken. The tale is still recounted by the Pawnees when they wish the buffalo to appear for the hunt. Thus, it is a magical märchen, not only in that it deals with magical events but also in that its narration is supposed to exercise magical powers. This naturally presupposes that it is credited.
To trace the further development of the totemic märchen-myth is to find the gradual emergence of characteristic changes. The relation between man and the animal is slowly altered. This is most clearly apparent in connection with the transformation of human beings into animals. This change is no longer held to be one in which man, because of the magical powers which he acquires, is the gainer, and not the loser. The transformation now more and more comes to be regarded as a degradation. The man who has changed into an animal is portrayed by the märchen as denounced and persecuted by his fellow-tribesmen. He is compelled to withdraw into solitude or to live exclusively with the animal herd, because he is no longer regarded by his fellows as an equal. Later, near the end of the totemic period, the change is conceived, not as degradation but as the result of an evil magic from which an innocent person suffers, and, eventually, as a punishment which overtakes a person because of some misdeed or other. Of these notions, that of malevolent magic again apparently antedates that of punishment. When the latter appears, the relation which was characteristic of totemism at its height becomes practically reversed. Quite naturally, therefore, the idea that transformation into an animal is a punishment arises long after the close of the totemic age. Indeed, it is to be found far into the period of ideas of requital, which are a relatively late product of deity cult, and whose development is largely influenced by philosophical reflection. Thus considered, the doctrine of metempsychosis developed by the Brahmans of India and by the Pythagorean sect of the Occident is the last metamorphosis of a very ancient totemic animal tale. These changes, however, have had practically no influence on the development of the märchen itself. This is shown by the fact that the folk märchen of to-day have universally retained the idea that the transformation of men into animals is the result of malevolent magic. The latter, indeed, is the form in which these survivals of a distant totemic past are even to-day most easily comprehensible to the child mind.
Thus, the animal märchen is an important product of totemic culture, directly embodying the views that dominate the life of this age. In addition to such tales, however, and, in part, in combination with them, there are several other forms of the märchen-myth, consisting chiefly of ideas concerning nature and, to some extent, of magical ideas sustained by the human emotions of fear and of hope. Two sorts of märchen, especially, should here be mentioned, celestial tales and tales of fortune, both of which owe their development to totemic culture. The celestial märchen, however, disappears comparatively early, mainly, no doubt, because it is displaced or assimilated by the celestial mythology of the post-totemic age. The märchen of fortune, on the other hand, remains as a permanent form of märchen-fiction, and all later narrative composition has been influenced by it.
The celestial märchen affords a direct record of the impression made by celestial phenomena on the consciousness of an age whose ideas were as yet circumscribed by the environment. By the environment, however, must as yet be understood the entire visible world—sun, moon, and stars, as well as hills and valleys, animals and men. The distant, moreover, was always likened to that which was near at hand and immediately accessible. Animals and men were supposed to inhabit the clouds and the heavenly bodies, precisely as they do the earth, and the relations which they were there held to sustain to one another are identical with those described in the animal tale. When the new moon appears, a wolf is devouring the moon; in an eclipse of the sun, the sun is swallowed up by a black monster; and when, in the evening, the sun disappears behind a dark cloud, it likewise is overpowered by a monster, and the red glow of the sunset is the blood which it sheds. Three themes in particular are dominant in the most primitive celestial tales: the ascension of man into the heavens, his descent from heaven, and the devourment of the great heavenly bodies, in particular of the sun, at sunset. One of the earliest of these conceptions is the journey to heaven. This is indicated by the very fact that the means for this journey are always derived directly from nature, or consist of the weapons and implements of primitive culture. There is a conception current in Australia and Oceania that beings have climbed to heaven by means of high trees, or have allowed themselves to be raised up by the branch of a tree that had been bent down to the earth. Where the bow and arrow exist, as in Melanesia and America, the arrow-ladder is frequently employed for the celestial journey. A hunter shoots an arrow into the heavens, where it remains fixed; he then sends a second arrow which catches into the notch of the first, then a third, a fourth, etc., until the ladder reaches to the earth. The downward journey is not so difficult. This is generally accomplished by means of a basket or a rope sustained by cords; it is thus that the celestial inhabitant is enabled to descend to the earth. Many märchen relate that the sun and the moon were originally human beings who journeyed to the heavens. Here they are thought to remain, or occasionally, perhaps, to return to the earth while other human beings take their place.
Besides the märchen telling of the interrelations of human and celestial beings, there are also a number of other sorts. Of them we may here single out, as a particularly characteristic type, those which deal with devourment. Obviously, as has already been noticed, it is the setting of the sun that very frequently constitutes the central theme of these tales. These märchen of devourment, however, differ from those that deal with celestial journeys in that they clearly exemplify narratives in which only one of the elements consists of a celestial phenomenon; in addition to it, there are regularly also other elements borrowed from the terrestrial environment. Indeed, the latter may of itself originate märchen, independently of the influence of celestial phenomena. We must distinguish at the outset, therefore, between those märchen of devourment that contain celestial elements and others in which these elements are apparently lacking. A familiar example of märchen of devourment is the Biblical legend of Jonah. In its traditional rendering, this is clearly of a relatively late origin, though it is probably based on much older tales. Many of the tales of devourment, which are common to all parts of the earth, centre about a hero, who is generally a courageous youth seeking adventure. The hero is devoured by a monster; he kindles a fire in the belly of the monster, and, by burning up its entrails, rescues himself. The fact that fire figures so prominently in these tales makes it highly probable that they took shape under the influence of observations of the setting sun. Other tales make no mention of fire, but relate that the belly of the monster is extremely hot, and that the heat singes the hair of the one who has been swallowed. In an old illustrated Bible which was recently discovered, Jonah is pictured as having a luxuriant growth of hair at the moment when he is being swallowed; in a second picture, when he comes forth from the belly of the whale, he is entirely bald. But even though this reference to fire and to heat indicates an influence on the part of the sunset, this type of celestial märchen is none the less entirely different from that which deals with journeys to heaven and the return to earth. In the latter, the heaven is itself the scene of action upon which men and animals play their rôles. In the märchen of devourment, the celestial phenomenon imparts certain characteristics to the terrestrial action that is being described, but the latter continues to preserve its terrestrial nature. The narrator of the märchen or legend, therefore, may be wholly unconscious of any reference to the heavens. The psychological process of assimilation causes elements of a celestial phenomenon to be fused into an action of the terrestrial environment and to communicate to the latter certain characteristics without, however, thereby changing the setting of the action. The shark and the alligator are animals capable of devouring men, though this occurs less frequently in reality than in story. Yet because thoughts of this sort arouse strong emotions, they may of themselves very well come to form themes of märchen of devourment. This has frequently been the case. It seems to have happened, for example, in the Jonah legend. The above-mentioned picture in which the prophet is represented as hairless after having been in the belly of the fish, may very well have its source in some other märchen of devourment. In thus combining numerous elements of different origins, the märchen is truly representative of myth development. It shows clearly that the main theme of the myth is usually taken from man's terrestrial environment. True, celestial elements may enter into its composition and may sometimes give to the mythological conception its characteristic features. Even in such cases, however, a consideration of the tale as a whole will show that the celestial elements are completely absorbed by the terrestrial theme; their very existence may be completely unknown to the narrators of the tale. In a similar manner, celestial elements have probably been involved in the formation of other widely current märchen. Thus, the märchen theme underlying the legends of the Babylonian Sargon, the Israelitic Moses, and the Egyptian Osiris, as well as other tales in which a child, secreted in a chest, is borne away by the waves and lands on a distant shore, is generally regarded as having been suggested by the temporary disappearance and reappearance of the sun in a cloudy sky. In this case, however, the supposition is doubtless much more uncertain than in the case of the märchen of devourment. The theme relating to fire in the belly of the monster may be regarded as fairly unambiguous evidence of the influence of celestial phenomena, precisely because it is related only externally and apparently accidentally to the action. It should further be said that the märchen of the floating chest, at least in its connection with the personalities of the saga and of history, does not appear until the post-totemic age. It is probably an old märchen-theme which was assimilated by these legends of origin because the origin of a hero or a god was unknown and demanded explanation. Once appropriated, it underwent a number of changes in form.
Thus, the celestial märchen transcends the ideas characteristic of the totemic age. No less do the tales of fortune or adventure generally mark the transition from the supremacy of the animal to the dominance of man. These tales, however, exhibit but a gradual and continuous development. In the earliest märchen-myths, of which several examples have already been mentioned, the narrative describes an event with entire objectivity, without any apparent colouring derived from the emotional attitude of the narrator. Later, however, even the totemic animal märchen more and more betrays a love of the adventurous and of shifting fortunes. This change varies with the degree in which man steps into the centre of action, and animals, though not entirely disappearing, receive a place, similarly to monsters and other fantastic beings, only in so far as they affect the destinies of the hero of the tale. The main theme of the narrative then consists of the adventures of the hero, who is represented as experiencing many changes of fortune, always, however, with a happy ending. But even at this stage of development the hero is a boy; at a somewhat later period, a young girl sometimes assumes the rôle, or a youth wins a maiden after numerous adventures. At this point, the tale of fortune ceases to be a true märchen-myth. Just as the dance changes from a cult ceremony into a direct expression of lively emotions of pleasure, themselves heightened by the joy in the rhythm of the bodily movements, so also does the märchen develop into a narrative that ministers to the mere delight in fluctuations of life-events and in their happy outcome.
Thus, the beginnings of the tale of fortune go back to early totemic culture, though its more perfect development is to be found only among the semi-cultural peoples of the totemic era. The hero of the märchen then gradually passes over into the hero of the saga and of the epic. Instead of the boy who sets forth upon magical adventures, we find the youth who has matured into manhood and whose mighty deeds fill the world with his fame. The preliminary steps to this transition are taken when the märchen hero, particularly in the tale of fortune, acquires a more and more personal character. Thus, even at a very early age, we find that two types of hero appear side by side—the strong and the clever. These types, portrayed by the märchen, survive also in the heroes of the epic. Moreover, in addition to the strong and the clever, the Achilles and the Ulysses, the märchen introduces also the malevolent, quarrelsome, and despicable hero, the Thersites.