Again (p. 351), 'Totemism' (as opposed to fetichism), 'is a deification of classes.' But the term 'deification' implies the possession, by the deifiers, of the conception of Deity; of gods, or of a god. The Australians have totems, but, according to Lord Avebury, have no notion of a god or gods. They 'possess merely certain vague ideas as to the existence of evil spirits, and a general dread of witchcraft' (p. 338). It is not clear, then, how they can 'deify' classes of things, if they have no notion of deity. 'They do not believe in the existence of a true Deity' (with a capital D), says Lord Avebury, without defining what 'a true Deity' is: and, contrary to the evidence of Mr. Howitt and many others, he denies that 'morality is in any way connected with their religion, if such it can be called' (p. 338).

The authority cited is of 1859,[1] and is contradicted, for example, by Mr. Howitt (1880-1890), who is not here quoted. It is clear that Australian totems cannot result from the 'deification of classes,' if the Australians have no conception of Deity, whether 'true' or not so true.

Lord Avebury remarks, 'True, myths do not occur among the lowest races' (p. 355), whereas, with many others, myths of the origin of Totemism do notably occur, as we have shown, among perhaps all totemistic races. Perhaps we should read, deleting the comma, 'true myths do not occur among the lowest races,' when the question as to what a 'true myth' is again arises, as in the case of 'a true Deity.' Perhaps we must suppose that by 'a true myth,' or a 'true Deity,' Lord Avebury implies a Deity or a myth in accordance with his own conception of either.

LORD AVEBURY ON THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

'The worship of animals,' says our author (p. 275), 'is susceptible of a very simple explanation, and perhaps, as I have ventured to suggest,[2] may have originated from the practice of naming, first individuals, and then their families, after particular animals. A family, for instance, which was called after the bear, would come to look on that animal first with interest, then with respect, and at length with a sort of awe.' If by 'individuals,' male individuals are intended, this theory is open to the objection that Lord Avebury regards descent in the female as earlier than descent in the male line (p. 164), while 'families' with enduring relations to their founders, can hardly yet have been consciously envisaged, by his theory, at so very rudimentary a stage. Moreover, we try to show that totem names were, originally, group names, and were not derived from the personal names of individuals, an opinion in which Mr. Haddon concurs. Lord Avebury's theory is, apparently, that of Mr. Herbert Spencer, minus the supposed worship of the ghost of the male ancestor and founder of the family.

COMMUNAL MARRIAGE

Lord Avebury assumes, as a working hypothesis, that 'the communal marriage system ... represents the primitive and earliest social condition of man....' (p. 102). The objections to this hypothesis we have stated, though, of course, historic certainty cannot be attained.

Lord Avebury, assuming 'communal marriage' as the Primitive stage, holds that it 'was gradually superseded by individual marriage founded on capture, and that this led firstly to exogamy, and then to female infanticide; thus reversing Mr. McLennan's order of sequence' (p. 108). 'Originally no man could appropriate a woman of his own tribe exclusively to himself ... without infringing tribal rights, but, on the other hand, if a man captured a woman belonging to another tribe, he thereby acquired an individual and peculiar right to her, and she became his exclusively, no one else having any claim or property in her' (p. 110). (I here italicise 'tribe' and 'tribal.' Lord Avebury intends, I think, a woman of the same 'fire-circle' (p. 188), not a woman of the tribe understood as a large and inevitably not primitive local aggregate of friendly groups of different totems, such as the Arunta, Narrinyeri, Pawnees, and so forth.)

In brief, men would desire to appropriate to themselves some woman, at first from beyond their own 'tribe.' This they could only do by capture. Their individual right in her would be modified by the disgusting license of the bridal night, which Lord Avebury regards as 'compensation' to the other males of the 'tribe' (pp. 138, 557-560). That license I would rather explain as Mr. Crawley does: the topic does not need to be insisted on at length in this place. Lord Avebury, at all events, supposes that a form of capture finally came to be applied, with results in individual marriage, to women of the same 'tribe' (p. 111). But if we have 'complete and conclusive evidence that in large portions of Australia every man had the privilege of a husband over every woman not belonging to his own gens; sharing, of course, these privileges with every other man belonging to the same class or gens as himself' (p. 112), I fail to see that a man gained anything by enduring the trouble and risk of capturing a bride all to himself. Before the capture she had been, it seems, the common spoil of the males of her 'tribe;' when captured she was the common spoil of her captor's 'class or gens'—though a 'class' and a gens are not, I think, identical, but much the reverse.

The rather promiscuous use of terms for different kinds of human communities affected all the pioneer works on primitive society, and, indeed, still perplexes our speculations. Thus Lord Avebury suggests (p. 119) the case of four exogamous neighbouring 'tribes,' with kinship traced through women. 'After a certain time the result would be that each tribe would consist of four septs or 'clans' (totem kins?), 'representing the four original tribes, and hence we should find communities in which each tribe is divided into clans, and a man must always marry a woman of a different clan.'