OTHER OBJECTIONS ANSWERED
A well-known Folk-lorist to whom I submitted my theory, rather 'in the rough,' replied to me thus: 'I have thought of Totemism as meaning a social system, that is, as including belief, worship, kinship, society. And therefore, the animal or plant names are an essential part of the system. You, as I understand it, come along and say the name is the result of one of the trifles of the human mind, therefore did not enter into the totem system very deeply, and certainly did not belong to the beliefs and the worship, except as the result of a later myth-making age. Of course your book may explain all, and I shall look forward to studying it, as I have always enjoyed your studies.
'But I confess I don't much believe in these accidents causing or rather entering into so widely spread a system as Totemism. Cut away the name and nothing is left to Totemism except myth, survivals, and a social grouping without any apparent cement. Blood kinship as a basis of society surely arose much later, unless Dr. Reevers's remarkable evidence from the Haddon expedition to New Guinea helps the matter. He found, you remember, blood kinship traceable by definite genealogies beneath, so to speak, a system of Totemism, and but for the most minute examination blood kinship would have escaped observation once more and Totemism only would have been reported. Is this blood kinship the true social basis and Totemism only a veneer?
'I have goodly notes on Totemism and non-Totemism, and I confess it difficult to eliminate the name as an important part of the system. It covers every part—is the shell into which all the rest fits. Now I have too much respect for our savage friends to think they used myth any further than we do. We go every Sunday saying "I believe," but we don't build up much upon this. Our social fabric, nay our religion, is not of this. And so of the savage. If I grant you the myth of descent from an animal to have arisen out of a pre-existing name system, I am no nearer the understanding of totem-kinship as the basis of a social group.'
These are natural objections, on a first view of my suggestions. Totemism is a social system, but there was an age before totemism, an age of undeveloped totemism; into these we try to peer. But the method of name-giving which I postulate is hardly 'a trifle of the human mind.' It is, as I have proved, a widely diffused, probably an universal tendency of the human mind. Not less universal, in the savage intellectual condition, is the belief in the personality and human characteristics of all things whatsoever; man is only one tribe in the cosmic kinship, and is capable of specially close kinship with animals. Nobody denies this, and the resulting myths to explain the connection of the groups and their totems are not only natural, but inevitable—the real origin of the connection, 'in the dark backward and abysm of time,' being forgotten. We may go to church, and say 'I believe,' and we may not act up to our creeds. 'And so of the savage.' But it is not 'so of the savage.' His belief in a myth of kinship with an Emu is carried into practice, and regulates his conduct, magical and social. This is not contestable. In the same way a Christian who believes in the efficacy of masses for the welfare of his dead friends, pays for masses. At the lowest, he 'thinks the experiment well worth trying.' To other myths, say as to the origin of the spots on a beast, a savage may 'give but a doubtsome credit.' They are not of a nature to affect his conduct in any way. But the totem myths do affect his conduct, quite undeniably, and, even if there are sceptics, public opinion and customary law compel them to regulate their behaviour on the lines of the general belief. We are not to be told that nobody believes in anything! The 'social grouping' consequent on the beliefs is not 'without any apparent cement.' The cement is the belief in the actual kinship of all persons having the same totem name, and sacred totem blood, even if they belong to remote and hostile tribes. All wolves are brethren in the wolf; all bears are brethren in the bear; and so men-bears are sisters to women-bears, and brothers may not marry sisters. Here is 'apparent cement' of the very best quality, and in abundance, given the acknowledged condition of the savage intellect.
Manifestly these ideas belong, as a whole, to 'a later myth-making age '—that is to an age later than the dateless period of the hypothetical anonymous groups. But, between that hypothetical period and the evolution of the idea of group kinship with animals and plants, and with all men of the same animal and plant stock names, there is time enough and to spare for the full evolution of Totemism.
Again, to a Darwinian, the enormous influence of 'accidents' in evolution ought not to be a matter hard of belief; without 'accidents' (in the Darwinian sense of the word), there would be no differentiation at all, and no evolution. The Darwinian 'accident' seems to mean a variation of unknown cause. But the giving of plant and animal group names is hardly an 'accident' of this kind. 'What else are you to call it?' the player asked, when questioned as to the origin of the words 'a yorker.' And by what names so handy and serviceable as plant and animal names were pristine men to call the neighbouring groups?
I have shown why place names were less handy, and how, in nomadic life, they were scarcely possible. Local names come in as Totemism goes out. Long nicknames, 'Boil-food-with-the-paunch-skin,' 'Take down their leggings,' 'Travel-with-very-light-baggage,' 'Shot-at-some-white-object' (Siouan nicknames of gentes), are much less handy, much less easy to be signalled by gesture language, and are certainly much later than 'Emu,' 'Wolf,' 'Kangaroo,' 'Eagle,' 'Skunk,' and other totem names. If such totem names were, originally, the favourite form of nomenclature for hostile groups (like our 'Sick Vulture' for a famous scholar, or 'Talking Potato,' for Mr. J. W. Croker), I see not much of an 'accident' in the circumstance.
The totem names, then, came in upon a very early society: and myth, belief, custom, and rite, crystallised round them, and round the idea of blood kindred, which must be very early indeed.
My critic asks, 'Is blood kinship the true social basis, and Totemism only a veneer?' That question I have already answered. In my opinion mankind, in evolving prohibitions of marriage, first had their eyes on contiguity, that of 'hearth-mates.' Groups of hearth-mates were next distinguished by totem names. But these names could give no superstitious sanction to customary laws, till the idea of 'blood kinship' with, or descent from, or evolution out of, or other form of kinship with the totem was developed. At this period, the totem name roughly indicated ties of blood kinship. But the Australians, as we saw, have now reached a clearer idea of what blood kinship is, and, by a bye-law, prohibit marriages of 'too near flesh,' in cases where, though the persons are akin by blood, totem law does not interfere. Totem law has had an educating influence in developing the objection to marriages between people contiguous as hearth-mates, into the objection to marriages between persons too near in blood kinship. Thus Totemism is not 'only a veneer.'