It is true that reformatory movements in marriage law are actually being purposefully introduced, among tribes which, possessing already such laws, of unknown origin, to reform, have deduced from these laws themselves that there is a right and wrong in matters of sex. Certainly, too, much of savage marriage law is of ancient and purposeful institution. But the question is, not how moral laws, once developed, might be improved; but how a tabu law against sexual relations between near kin could even be so much as dreamed of by members of a communal horde, who bad do idea of kin, and could not possibly tell who was akin to whom. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte! We must account for le premier pas.
Again, the Intichiuma, or co-operative totemic magic, of the Arunta, regarded by our authors as "primary," is nowhere reported of the tribes of the south and east. Mr. Howitt asserts its absence. The lack of record, say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, "is no proof that these ceremonies did not exist" If they did, bow could they escape the knowledge of Mr. Howitt, an initiated man?[33] As a fact, when you leave the centre, and reach the north sea-coast, totemic magic dwindles, and nearly disappears. Among the coast tribes of the north, the Intichiuma magic is "very slightly developed." Its faint existence is "doubtless to be associated with the fact that they inhabit country where the food supply and general conditions of life are more favourable than in the central area of the continent which is the home of these ceremonies." But surely the regions of the south and east, where there is no Intichiuma, are also better in supply and general conditions than the centre. Why then should the apparent absence of Intichiuma in the south and east be due to want of observation and record, while the "very slight development" of Intichiuma on the north coast is otherwise explained, namely, by conditions—which also exist in the south!
Moreover, co-operative and totemic magic is most elaborately organised among the Sioux, Dakotah, Omaha, and other American tribes, where supplies are infinitely better than in any part of Australia,[34] and agriculture has there, as in Europe, a copious magic. Magic, as a well-known fact, is most and best organised in the most advanced non-scientific societies. In Australia it is most organised in the centre, and dwindles as you move either north, south, or east. This implies that, socially, the centre is in this respect most advanced and least primitive; while magic, partly totemic, is highly organised in the much more prosperous islands of the Torres Straits, and in America.
It is true that Collins (1798), a very early observer, saw east-coast natives performing ceremonies connected with Kangaroos, in one of which a Kangaroo hunt was imitated. Collins believed that this was imitative magic of a familiar kind, done to secure success in the chase. In Magic and Religion, p. 100, I express the same opinion. But Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, as to the magic observed by Collins, "There can be little doubt but that these ceremonies, so closely similar in their nature to those now performed by the central natives, were totemic in their origin"—they may be regarded as "clear evidence of the existence of these totemic ceremonies ... in a tribe living right on the eastern coast."[35]
Really the evidence of Collins, on analysis, is found to describe (i.) a Dog dance; (ii.) a native carrying a Kangaroo effigy made of grass; (iii.) a Kangaroo hunt. Nothing proves the working of totemic ceremonies: the point is not established. Collins saw a hunt dance, not a ceremony whose "sole object was the purpose of increasing the number of the animal or plant after which the totem is called," and to do that is the aim of the Intichiuma.[36] The hunt dances seen by Collins were just those seen by Mr. Howitt at an initiation ceremony.[37] In the Emu Intichiuma of the Arunta the Emus are represented by men, but no Emu hunt is exhibited, and women are allowed to see the imitators of the fowls.[38] The ceremonies reported by Collins were done at an initiation of boys, which "the women of course were not allowed to see."[39]
Apparently we have not "clear evidence" that Collins saw Intichiuma, or totemic co-operative magic, in the south, and Mr. Howitt asserts and tries to explain its absence there.
It is, of course, perfectly natural that men, when once they come to believe in a mystic connection between certain human groups and certain animals, should do magic for these animals. But, in point of fact, we do not find the practice in the more primitively organised tribes outside the Arunta sphere of influence, and we do find the practice most, and most highly organised, in tribes of advanced type, in America and the Torres Isles, quite irrespective of the natural abundance of supplies, which is supposed to account for the very slight development of Intichiuma on the north coast of Australia.
I cannot agree with Mr. Hartland in supposing that the barren nature of the Arunta country forced the Arunta to do magic for their totems. The country is not so bare as to prevent large assemblies, busy with many ceremonials, from holding together during four consecutive months, while Mr. Howitt's south-eastern tribes, during a ceremonial meeting which lasted only for a week, needed the white man's tea, mutton, and bread. If fertile land makes agricultural magic superfluous, why does Europe abound in agricultural magic? Among the Arunta, the totem names, deserting kinships, clung to local groups, and with the names went the belief that the inhabitants of the locality or the bearers of the names had a special rapport with the name-giving animals or plants. This rapport was utilised in magic for the behoof of these objects, and for the good of the tribe, which is singularly solidaire.
We trust we have shown that the primal origin of totemic institutions cannot be found in the very peculiar and strangely modified totemism of the Arunta, and of their congeners. Their marriage law, to repeat our case briefly, now reposes solely on the familiar and confessedly late system of exogamous alternating classes, as among other northern tribes. The only difference is that the totems are now (and nowhere else is this the case), in both of the exogamous moieties, denoted by the classes, and they are in both moieties because, owing to the isolated belief in reincarnation of local ghosts, attached to stone amulets, they are acquired by accident, not, as elsewhere, by inheritance. A man who does not inherit his father's totem because of the accident of his conception in a local centre of another totem, does, none the less, inherit his totemic ceremonies and rites. Totemism is thus en pleine décadence among the Arunta, from whom, consequently, nothing can be learned as to the origin of totemism.