Social Origins and Primal Law

by Andrew Lang; J. J. Atkinson

RECAPITULATION

Does my guess at the origin of totems seem out of harmony with human nature? You, belonging to a local group, must call other groups by one name or another. Plant and animal names come very handy. The names fluctuate at first, but are at last accepted by the groups to which they are applied. The origin of the names being forgotten, an explanation of them is needed, and, as in every case where it is needed, it is provided in myths. The myths, once believed in, are acted upon; they become the parents of tabus, magic, rites of various kinds. Social rules must be developed, some already exist; and each group called by an animal, plant, or other such name, becomes, under that name, a social unit, and accepts, as such, the customary legislation, just as a parish does. You must not marry within the totem name: either because of the totem tabu in general, or because the totem comes to be conceived of as denoting kinship, and (for one reason or another) you had already a tendency not to marry within the limit of the group. The usual totem rules may be thwarted by other rules derived from a peculiar system of animism, very philosophically elaborated, as among the Arunta of Central Australia. The institution, in short, may develop or may dwindle, may persist in practice, or fade into faint survival, or blend with analogous superstitions, or wholly vanish, in varying conditions. Totemism affects art; to some extent it may have affected religious evolution. It is certainly a source of innumerable myths.

But, if my guess holds water, Totemism arose out of names given from without, these names being of a serviceable sort, as they could be, and are, not only readily expressed in words, but readily conveyed in gesture language from a considerable distance. The names could be 'signalled.'[21] 'There is an Emu man: look out!' This could easily and silently be expressed in gesture language. Place-names, and many nicknames, could not so be signalled.

This theory, of course, is not in accordance with any savage explanations of the origin of their totem. It could not be! Their explanations are such fables as only men in their intellectual condition could invent: they are myths, they involve impossibilities. My hypothesis (or myth) does not, I think, involve anything impossible or far-fetched, or incapable of proof in a general way. It is human, it is inevitable, that plant and animal names should be given, especially among groups more or less hostile. We call the French 'frogs.' It is also a fact that names given from without come to be accepted. It is a fact that names, once accepted, are explained by myths; it is a fact that myths come to be believed, and that belief influences behaviour.

AN OBJECTION ANSWERED

Here I foresee an objection; it will be said that, on the other hand, behaviour produces myths. Men find themselves performing some apparently idiotic rite: they ask themselves, 'Why do we do this thing?' and they invent a myth as an answer. Certainly they do, but you believe in a God, or in Saints, and act (or you ought to act) in a manner pleasing to these guardians of conduct. You don't believe in a God, because you behave well, and it is not because you behave well to a totem that you believe in a totem. You treat him as game, not as vermin, because you believe in him, and your belief is based on the myth which your ancestors invented to account for their having a totem.

My guess has the advantage of going behind the age of settled dwellings, agriculture, kinship through males, and the causal action of individuals. It reverts to the group stage of human life. Groups give and accept the names; invent the myths, act on their belief in the myths, and so introduce the sanction of what had perhaps been a mere tendency towards exogamy. On the other hand, my guess has the disadvantage of dealing with a hypothetical stage of society, behind experience. But this cannot be avoided, for if we base our hypotheses of the origin of Totemism on our experience of the ways of societies which have passed, or are passing, out of Totemism, our theories must necessarily be invalidated. It may be replied that I have myself given illustrations of my theory from the folk-lore of civilised society. But the only begetters of these illustrative cases are boys—and boys are in the savage stage, 'at least as far as they are able.'

In a tone more serious, it may be reiterated that no theory of the origin of Totemism is likely to be correct which derives the totem, in the first instance, in any way, from the individual, the private man. Long ago, Mr. Fison wrote, 'Sir John Lubbock considers that the "worship of plants and animals is susceptible of a very simple explanation, and has really originated from the practice of naming, first individuals, and then their families, after particular animals."'[22] Mr. Fison replied, 'This is surely a reversal of the true order. The Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, the badge of a group, not of an individual. The individual takes it, in common with his fellows, only because he is a member of the group. And, even if it were first given to an individual, his family, i.e. his children, could not inherit it from him,' when descent is reckoned on the female side.[23]

It is a commonplace, perhaps an overworked commonplace, that the group, not the individual, is the earlier social unit. Yet the hypotheses of Lord Avebury, Mr. Herbert Spencer, Dr. Wilken, Mr. Boas, Miss Alice Fletcher, and Messrs. Hose and McDougall, all derive from individuals, in one way or other, the most archaic names of human groups. The hypothesis of Mr. Max Müller leaves the origin of the group name unexplained. The later hypothesis (especially provisional), of Mr. Frazer, does start from the group name, but I am not certain whether we are to understand that each group name is derived from the plant Or animal or selected by the group as the object of its magical rites, or whether, for some unknown reason, each group already bore the name of the animal, or plant, or element, before entering on the great co-operative industrial system. Now it seems to me certain that the names, in each case, were originally not names of individuals, or in any way derived from individuals, but were names of groups. As to how pristine groups might obtain such names I have offered what, in the nature of the case, has to be only a conjecture. But named, as soon as men had intelligence and speech, the groups, as groups, had to be, and the actual names are such as, whether in savagery or in full civilisation, are given to individuals, and are also, in civilised rural society, given to local groups, to members of parishes and villages. So far, the cause which I suggest is a vera causa of collective group names.