It were superfluous to dwell on this theory. Totem names are group names; and, as they occur where group names are derived from the mother, they cannot have originated in the animal nicknames of individual dead grandfathers. The names of the dead are usually tabued and forgotten; but that is of no great moment. The point is that such group names are derived through mothers, in the first instance, not through male founders of families.[23]
No theory which starts from an individual male ancestor, and his name bequeathed to his descendants, can be correct. That Mr. Spencer's does start in this way may be inferred from the following text: 'commonly the names of the clans which are forbidden to intermarry, such as Wolf, Bear, Eagle, Whale, &c., are names given to men, implying, as I have before contended (170-173), descent from distinguished male ancestors bearing those names—descent which, notwithstanding the system of female kinship, was remembered when there was pride in the connection.'
A brief-lived joy in the name of which the male ancestor's descendants were proud, left them, in the second generation, under exogamy and female kin. Thus my father was nicknamed 'Tiger.' Proud of the title, I call myself Tiger. But I must marry a woman who is Not-Tiger, and my offspring are Not-Tigers. My honour hath departed!
MR. FRAZER'S THEORIES
The hypotheses of Mr. J. G. Frazer are purely provisional. He starts from the idea, so common in Märchen, of the person whose 'soul,' 'life,' or 'strength' is secretly hidden in an animal, plant, or other object. The owner of the soul wraps the 'soul-box' up in a mystery, it is the central secret of his existence, for he may be slain by any one who can discover and destroy his 'soul-box.' Next Mr. Frazer offers many cases of this actual belief and practice among savage and barbarous peoples; and, as a freak or survival, the idea is found even among the civilised. We meet the superstition in the Melanesian group of islands (where Totemism is all but extinct), and perhaps among the Zulus, with their serpent Idhlozi, whose life is associated with their own. Mr. Atkinson's New-Caledonians, however, did not think that death inflicted on their animal 'fathers' involved danger to themselves, though it distressed them, as an outrage to sentiment. Then we have the 'bush-souls' (one soul out of four in the possession of each individual), among the natives of Calabar. These souls, Miss Kingsley wrote, are never in plants, but always in wild beasts, and are recognisable only by second-sighted men. The 'bush-soul' of a man is often that of his sons: the daughters often inherit the mother's 'bush-soul:' or children of both sexes may take the bush-soul of either father or mother. The natives will not injure their bush-soul beasts. Nothing is known as to prohibition of marriage between persons of the same bush-soul. Here we have really something akin to the totem, the bush-souls being hereditary, at least for one generation. But this is among a house-dwelling, agricultural people, far above the state of real savagery: not among a 'primitive' people.
The Zapotecs of Central America, again, choose, by a method of divination, 'a tona or second self,' an animal, for each child, at its birth. It is, by the nature of the case, not hereditable. The nagual, usually a beast, of each Indian of Guatemala is well known; and is discovered, on the monition of a dream, by each individual. Therefore it cannot be hereditable. The sexes, in Australia, have each a friendly and protecting species of animal; say a Bat for all men, a Nightjar for all women: indeed, in Australia, all the elements of nature have their place in the cosmic tribe. To injure the animal of either sex, is to injure one of the sex. There is no secret about the matter.
Mr. Frazer then argues, 'the explanation which holds good of the one' (say 'the sex totem,' or 'personal totem'), 'ought equally to hold good of the other' (the group totem). 'Therefore, the reason why a tribe' (I venture to prefer 'group,' or 'kin,' as there are many totems in each 'tribe') 'revere a particular species of animals or plants ... and call themselves after it, would seem to be a belief that the life of each individual of the tribe is bound up with some one plant or animal of the species, and that his or her death would be the consequence of killing that particular animal or destroying that particular plant.' Mr. Frazer thinks that 'this explanation squares well' with Sir George Grey's description of a Kobong or totem in Western Australia. There, a native gives his totem 'a fair show' before killing it, always affording it a chance of escape, and never killing it in its sleep. He only does not shoot his kindred animal sitting, and his plant he only spares 'in certain circumstances, and at a particular period of the year.' Mr. Frazer writes that as the man does not know which individual of the species of plant or animal 'is specially dear to him, he is obliged to spare them all, for fear of injuring the dear one.' But the man, it seems from Grey's account, does not 'spare' any of them; he kills or plucks them, 'reluctantly,' and in a sportsmanlike manner, 'never without affording them a chance of escape.' In a case of Sir George Grey's, the killing of a crow hastened the death of a man of the Crow totem, who had been ailing for some days. But the Australians do not think that to kill a man's totem is to kill the man. Somebody's totem is killed whenever any animal is slain. Mr. Frazer now finds that the Battas, for example, 'do not in set terms affirm their external soul to be in their totems,' and I am not aware that any totemists do make this assertion. They freely offer all other sorts of mythical explanations as to what their totems originally were, as to the origin of their connection with their totems, but never say that their totems are their 'soul-boxes.'
Mr. Frazer has an answer to this objection. 'How close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he' (the savage) 'hides the inner keep and citadel of his being.' The Giant, in the Märchen, tries to keep the secret of his 'soul-box,' much more then does 'the timid and furtive savage.' 'No inducement that can be offered is likely to tempt him to imperil his soul by revealing its hiding-place to a stranger. It is, therefore, no matter for surprise that the central mystery of the savaged life should so long have remained a secret, and that we should be left to piece it together from scattered hints and fragments, and from the recollections of it which linger in fairy tales.'
On reflection, we cannot but see the flaw in this reasoning. No savage has revealed to European inquirers that his totem is his 'soul-box.' But every other savage knows his fatal secret. Every savage, well aware that his own totem is the hiding-place of his soul, knows that the totems of his enemies are the hiding-places of their souls. He wants to kill his enemies, and he has an easy mode of doing so, to shoot down every specimen of their totems. His enemies will then die, when he is lucky enough to destroy their 'soul-boxes.' Now I am not aware, in the destructive magic of savages, of a single case in which a totem is slain, or tortured for the purpose of slaying or torturing a man of that totem. All other sorts of sympathetic magic are practised, but where is the evidence for that sort, which ought to be of considerable diffusion?[24] The supposed 'secret' of savage life is no secret to other savages. Each tells any inquirer what his 'clay' or totem is. He blazons his totem proudly. The nearest approach to invidious action, against a totem, with which I am acquainted, is the killing by the Kurnai women, of the men's 'sex totem,' when the young men are backward wooers. The purpose is to produce a fight between lads and lasses, a rude form of flirtation, after which engagements, or elopements, are apt to follow.[25]
Mr. Frazer tentatively suggests another, a rival or a subsidiary solution of the problem, to which reference has already been made. Among the Arunta and other tribes, 'the totemic system has a much wider scope, its aim being to provide the community with a supply of food and all other necessaries by means of certain magical ceremonies, the performance of which is distributed among the various totem groups.' That is to say, these totemic magical ceremonies now exist for the purpose of propagating, as part of the food supply, animals or vegetables, which, by the former theory, were the secret receptacles of the lives of the tribesmen. To kill and eat these sacred receptacles would endanger the lives of the tribesmen, but to risk that is quite in accordance with the practical turn of the Arunta mind. Mr. Frazer has, however, suggested a possible method of reconciling his earlier hypothesis—that a totem was a soul-box—with his later theory, that the primal object of totem groups was to breed their totems for food.[26]