All these things, given the savage stage of thought, would inevitably follow from the recognised but mysterious connection between men and the plants and animals from which they were named. All such connections, to the savage, are blood-relationships, and such relationship involves the duties which are recognised and performed. But how did the early groups come to be named after the plants and animals; the name suggesting the idea of connection, and the idea of connection involving the duties of the totemist to his totem, and of the totem to the totemist?
NO 'DISEASE OF LANGUAGE'
The names, I repeat, requiring and receiving mythical explanations, and the explanations necessarily suggesting conduct to match, are the causes of Totemism. This theory is not a form of the philological doctrine, nomina numina. This is no case of disease of language, in Mr. Max Müller's sense of the words. A man is called a Cat, all of his kin are Cats. The language is not diseased, but the man has to invent some reason for the name common to his kin. It is not even a case of Folk Etymology, as when a myth is invented to explain the meaning of the name of a place, or person, or thing. Thus the Loch of Duddingston, near Edinburgh, is explained by the myth that Queen Mary, as a child, used to play at 'dudding' (or skipping) stones across the water: 'making ducks and drakes.' Or again, marmalade is derived from Marie malade. Queen Mary, as a child, was seasick in crossing to France, and asked for confiture of oranges; hence Marie malade—'marmalade.' In both cases, the name to be explained is perverted. There is no real 'stone' in Duddingston—'Duddings' town,' the ton or tun of the Duddings; while 'marmalade' is a late form of 'marmalet,' a word older than Queen Mary's day.
An example of a folk etymology bordering on Totemism is the supposed descent of Clan Chattan, and of the House of Sutherland, from the Wild Cat of their heraldic crests. Now Clan Chattan is named, not from the cat, but from Gilla Catain, 'the servant of Saint Catan,' a common sort of Celtic personal name, as in Gilchrist.[39] The Sutherland cat-crest is, apparently, derived from Catness, or Caithness. That name, again, is mythically derived from Cat, one of the Seven Sons of Cruithne who gave their names to the seven Pictish provinces, as Fib to Fife, and so on. These Seven Sons of Cruithne, like Ion and Dorus in Greece (Ionians, Dorians), are mere mythical 'eponymoi' or name-giving-heroes, invented to explain the names of certain districts. In Totemism this is not so. Not fancied names, like Duddingstone, or Marmalade, are, in Totemism, explained by popular etymologies. Emu, Kangaroo, Wolf, Bear, Raven, are real, not perverted names, the question is, why are these names borne by groups of human beings? Answers are: given in all the numerous savage myths, whether of a divine ordinance (Dieri, Woeworung) or of descent and kinship, of intermarriage with beasts, or of adventures with beasts, or of a woman giving birth to beasts, or of evolution out of bestial types, and all these myths suggest mutual duties between men and their totems, as between men and their human kinsfolk. It will be seen that here no disease of language is involved, not even a volks-etymologie (a vera causa of myth).
If it could be shown by philologists that many totem names originally meant something other than they now do, and that they were misunderstood, and supposed to be names of plants and animals, then 'disease of language' would be present. Thus λύκος and ἅρκτος have really been regarded, as meaning, each of them 'the bright one,' and the Wolf Hero of Athens, and the Bear of the Arcadians, have been explained away, as results of 'disease of language.' But nobody will apply that obsolete theory to the vast menagerie of savage totem names.
HYPOTHETICAL EARLY GROUPS BEFORE TOTEMISM
But, discarding this old philological hypothesis, how did the pristine groups get their totem names? We ought first to return to our conjecture as to what these pristine groups were like. They must have varied in various environments. Where the sea, or a large lake, yields an abundant food-supply, men are likely to have assembled in considerable numbers, as 'kitchen middens' show, at favourable stations. In great woods and jungles the conditions of food-supply are not the same as in wide steppes and prairies, especially in the uniform and arid plateaus of Central Australia. Rivers, like seas and lakes, are favourable to settlement; steppes make nomadism inevitable, before the rise of agriculture. But, if the earliest groups were mutually hostile, strongly resenting any encroachment on their region of food-supply, the groups would necessarily be small, as in Mr. Darwin's theory of small pristine groups, the male, with his females, daughters, and male sons not adult.[40] A bay, or inlet, or a good set of pools and streams, would be appropriated and watchfully guarded by a group, just as every area of Central Australia has its recognised native owners, who wander about it, feeding on grubs, lizards, snakes, rats, frogs, grass-seeds, roots, emus, kangaroos, and opossums.
The pristine groups, we may be allowed to conjecture, were small. If they were not, the hypotheses which I venture to present are of no value, while that of Mr. Atkinson shares their doom. Mr. McLennan, as far as one can conjecture from the fragments of his speculations, regarded the earliest groups as at least so large, and so bereft of women, that polyandry was the general rule. Mr. Darwin, on the other hand, began with Polygyny and Monogamy, 'jealousy determining the first stage.'[41] This meant that there was a jealous old sire, who kept the women to himself, as in Mr. Atkinson's theory. As we can scarcely expect to reach certainty on this essential point, anthropology becomes (like history in the opinion of a character in Silas Marner) 'a process of ingenious guessing.' But, embarking on conjecture, I venture to suggest that the problem of the commissariat must have kept the pristine groups very small.[42]
They 'lived on the country,' and the country was untilled. They subsisted on the natural supplies, and the more backward their material culture, the sooner would they eat the country bare, as far as its resources were within their means of attainment. One can hardly conceive that such human beings herded in large hordes, rather they would wander in small 'family' groups. These would be mutually hostile, or at least jealous: they could scarcely yet have established a modus vivendi, and coalesced into the friendly aggregate of a local tribe, such as Arunta, Dieri, Urabunna, and so on. Such tribes have now their common councils and mysteries lasting for months among the Arunta. We cannot predicate such friendly union of groups in a tribe, for the small and jealous knots of really early men; watchfully resenting intrusion on their favourite bays, pools, and hunting of browsing grounds. As to marriage relations, it is not improbable that 'sexual solidarity' (as Mr. Crawley calls it), the separation of the sexes—the little boys accompanying the men, the little girls accompanying the women—and perhaps that 'sexual tabu,' coupled with the jealousy of male heads of groups, may already have led to prohibition of marriage within the group, and to raids for women upon hostile groups. The smaller the group, the more easily would sexual jealousy prohibit the lads from dealings with the lasses of their own group. There might thus, in different degrees, arise a tendency towards exogamy, and specially against son and mother, or father's mates, and brother and sister marriage. The thing would not yet be a sin, forbidden by a superstition, but still, the tendency might (as we have already said) run strong against marriage within each little group.