Peoples who are still in the totemistic stage, as we have seen, know nothing about the beginnings of the institution. All that they tell the civilised inquirers is no more than the myth handed down by their own tradition. Thus the Dieri or Dieyrie, in Australia, say that the totems were appointed by the ancestors, for the purpose of regulating marriages, after consultation with Mura Mura, or with 'the' Muramura. The Woeworung, according to Mr. Howitt, have a similar legend.[14] It is not necessary here to ask whether Mura Mura is 'the Supreme Being' (Gason, Howitt), or 'ancestral spirits' (Fison).[15] The most common savage myth is of the Darwinian variety, each totem kin is descended from, or evolved out of, the plant or animal type which supplies its totem. Again, as in fairy tales, a woman gave birth to animals, whence the totem kins derive their descent. In North-West America, totems are often accounted for by myths of ancestral heroes. 'The Tlingit' (Thlinket) 'hold that souls of ancestors are reborn in children, that a man will be reborn as a man, a wolf as a wolf, a raven as a raven.' Nevertheless, the totems are regarded as 'relatives and protectors,' and it is explained that, in the past, a human ancestor had an adventure with this or that animal, whence he assumed his totem armorial bearings.[16] In precisely the same way a myth, a very late myth, was invented, about the adventure of a Stewart with a lion, to account for the Lyon of the Stewarts.[17] The Haidas and Thlinkets, believing as they do that human souls are reborn human, cannot hold that a bestial soul animates a man, say, of the Raven totem.
The Arunta, on the other hand, suppose that the souls of animals which evolved into human beings, are reincarnated in each child born to the tribe. 'Two clans of Western Australia, who are named after a small opossum and a little fish, think that they are so called because they used to live chiefly on these creatures.'[18] This myth has some support in modern opinion: the kins, it is argued, received their totem names from the animals and plants which mainly formed their food supply; though now their totems are seldom eaten by them. These legends, and others, are clearly ætiological myths, like the Samoan hypothesis that gods are incarnate in the totems. The myths merely try to explain the original connection between men and totems, and are constructed on the lines of savage ideas about the relations of all things in the universe, all alike being personal, and rational, and capable of interbreeding, and of shape-shifting. Certain Kalamantans of Sarawak will not eat a species of deer, because 'an ancestor became a deer of this kind.'[19] All such fables, of course, are valueless as history; and, in the savage state of the intellect, such myths were inevitable.
MODERN THEORIES
Mr. McLennan himself at first had a theory, which, as far as I heard him speak of it, was more or less akin to my own. But he abandoned it, says his brother, Mr. Daniel McLennan, for reasons that to him appeared conclusive. I ought to mention that Mr. A. H. Keane informed me, several years ago, that he had independently evolved a theory akin to mine, of which, as it then stood, I had published some hint. (For a statement of Mr. Keane's theory see our Preface.) In 1884[20] I wrote, 'People united by contiguity, and by the blind sentiment of kinship not yet brought into explicit consciousness, might mark themselves by a badge, and might thence derive a name, and, later, might invent a myth of their descent from the object which the badge represented.' But why should such people mark themselves by a badge, and why, if they did, should the mark be, not a decorative or symbolic pattern, but the representation of a plant or animal? These questions I cannot answer, and my present guess is not identical with that of 1884.
Meanwhile let us keep one point steadily before our minds. Totemism, at a first glance, seems a perfectly crazy and irrational set of beliefs, and we might think, with Dr. Johnson, that there is no use in looking for reason among the freaks of irrational people. But man is never irrational. His reason for doing this, or believing that, may seem a bad reason to us, but a reason he always had for his creeds and conduct, and he had a reason for his totem belief, a reason in congruity with his limited knowledge of facts, and with his theory of the universe. For all things he wanted an explanation. Now what he wanted a reason for, in Totemism, was the nature and origin of the connection between his own and the neighbouring groups, and the plant or animal names which they bore. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, 'what gave rise, in the first instance, to the association of particular men with particular animals and plants, it is impossible to say.' But it is not impossible to guess, with more or less of probability. The connection once established, savages guessed at its origin: their guesses, as always, were myths, and were of every conceivable kind. The myth of descent from or kinship with the animal or plant, the Darwinian myth, does not stand alone. Every sort of myth was fashioned, was believed, and influenced conduct. Our business is to form our own guess as to the original connection between men and their totems: a guess which shall be consistent with human nature.
MR. MAX MÜLLER'S THEORY
Many such guesses by civilised philosophers exist. We need not dwell long on that of Mr. Max Müller, akin, as it is, to my own early conjecture, 'a totem is a clan mark, then a clan name, then the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly the name of something worshipped by the clan.'[21] We need not dwell on this, because the kind of 'clan mark' on a pillar outside of the quarters of the clan, in a village, is peculiar to North America, and to people dwelling in fixed settlements. Among the nomadic Australians, we have totemism without the settlements, without the totem pillar, without the 'clan mark,' on the pillar, which, thus, cannot be the first step in Totemism. Again, the 'clan name,' or group name, must be earlier than the 'clan mark,' which merely expresses it, just as my name is prior to my visiting card, or as the name of an inn, 'The Red Lion,' is prior to the sign representing that animal. Obviously we have to ask first, whence comes the clan name, or group name?
THE THEORY OF MR. HERBERT SPENCER
In a passage on animal-worship, Mr. Herbert Spencer (unless I misconceive him) advances a theory of the origin of Totemism. True, he does not here speak of totems, but he suggests an hypothesis to explain why certain stocks claim descent from animals, and why these animals are treated by them with more or less of religious regard. Actual men, in savagery, are often called by 'animal nicknames,' and we cannot be surprised if the savage ... gets the idea that an ancestor named 'the tiger' was an actual tiger ... Inevitably, then, he grows up believing that his father descended from a tiger—thinking of himself as one of the tiger stock.[22]