[3] L'Année Sociologique, i. 6, 7.
[4] L'Ann. Soc. v. 104-107; Spencer and Gillen, pp. 68-69.
[5] Spencer and Gillen, pp. 125, 126. The reader is recommended to study Dr. Durkheim's passage cited in the last note, the topic being difficult.
[CHAPTER V]
OTHER BARS TO MARRIAGES
The prohibitions on marriage, with which we have hitherto been concerned, are based on what savages regard—while we do not—as relations of kindred. Men and women of the same 'phratry' or 'primary division' may not intermarry (where such divisions exist), nor may men and women of the same totem name. Civilised society, at least in Europe, now recognises no such things as the 'phratry' or the totem kin. When Mr. George Osborne, in Vanity Fair, was asked whether he was akin to the ducal House of Leeds, he replied that he bore the same arms—these having been conferred on his father by a coach-builder. In savage society, Captain Osborne's answer would have been satisfactory. He would really have reckoned as a kinsman of all other Emus, if his totem and badge (coat of arms) was an Emu. In Scotland the Campbell name used to be regarded as implying at least a chance that the bearer was of the blood of the Black Knight of Loch Awe, and had a right to the Campbell tartan, and badge, the gale, or bog-myrtle. But, of course, as a rule, in modern society, a common surname is no proof of kinship, and coats of arms are usually home by the middle classes, and peers of recent creation, without much inquiry.
So far, then, the totemic rules which prohibit certain marriages, have no resemblance to our own definite 'forbidden degrees,' based on nearness of blood. The savage rules, as they stand, include our notions of kindred, but these notions, as far as they are recognised, are not conterminous with ours. But the 'phratry' prohibitions, and the totem prohibitions, are not the only bars to marriage among such peoples as the Australians.