The Secret of the Totem

by Andrew Lang

With these and other merits the system of Dr. Durkheim, as unfolded at intervals in his periodical (L'Année Sociologique, 1898-1904), has, I shall try to show, certain drawbacks, at least as we possess it at present, for it has not yet appeared in the form of a book. As to the point which in this discussion we have taken first, throughout, it is not easy to be certain about the Professor's exact opinion. What was the condition of human society before totemic exogamy was evolved? Dr. Durkheim writes, "Many facts tend to prove that, at the beginning of societies of men, incest was not forbidden. Nothing authorises us to suppose that incest was prohibited before each horde (peuplade) divided itself into two primitive 'clans,' at least" (namely, what we now call "phratries"), "for the first form of the prohibition known to us, exogamy, everywhere appears as correlative to this organisation, and certainly this is not primitive. Society must have formed a compact and undivided mass before bisecting itself into two distinct groups, and some of Morgan's tables of nomenclature" (of relationships) "confirm this hypothesis."[3]

So far this is the ordinary theory. An undivided promiscuous horde, for reasons of moral reformation, or any other reason, splits itself into two exogamous "clans," or germs of the phratries. These, when they cease to be hostile (as they were on Dr. Durkheim's but not on Mr. Howitt's theory), peacefully intermarry, and become the phratries in a local tribe.

Why did the supposed compact horde thus divide itself into two distinct hostile "clans," each, on Dr. Durkheim's theory, claiming descent from a different animal, the totem of each "clan"? Why were two bodies in the same horde claiming two different animal ancestors? Why were the two divisions in a common horde mutually hostile? That they were originally hostile appears when our author says that, at a given stage of advance, "the different totemic groups were no longer strangers or enemies, one of the other."[4] Marriages, at this early period, must necessarily have been made by warlike capture, for the two groups were hostile, were exogamous, and, being hostile, would not barter brides peacefully. Women, therefore, we take it, could only be obtained for each group by acts of war. "Ages passed before the exchange of women became peaceful and regular. What vendettas, what bloodshed, what laborious negotiations were for long the result of this régime!"[5]

But why were they exogamous, these two primary groups formed by the bisection of a previously undivided incestuous horde? Why could not each of the two groups marry its own women? There must have been a time when they were not exogamous, and could marry their own women, for they were only exogamous, in Dr. Durkheim's theory, because they were totemic, and they did not begin by being totemic. The totem, says Dr. Durkheim, in explanation of exogamy, is a "god" who is in each member of his group while they are in him. He is blood of their blood and soul of their soul.[6] This being so—as it is wrong to shed the blood of our kindred—a man of totem Emu, say, may not marry a maid of, say, totem Emu; he must seek a bride from the only other group apparently at this stage accessible, that is a maid of, say, totem Kangaroo. Presently all Kangaroos of a generation must have been Emus by female descent; all Emus, Kangaroos; for the names were inherited through women. The clans were thus inextricably blended, and neither had a separate territory, a point to be remembered.

Manifestly the strange superstitious metaphysics of totemism must have occupied a long time in evolution. The sacredness of the totem is the result of a primitive "religiosity," Dr. Durkheim says, which existed before gods or other mythological personages had been developed. There is supposed by early man (according to our author) to be a kind of universal element of power, dreadful and divine, which attaches to some things more than to others, to some men more than to others, and to all women in their relations with men.[7] This mystic something (rather like the Mana of the Maories, and the Wakan of many North American tribes) is believed by each group (if I correctly understand Dr. Durkheim) to concentrate itself in their name-giving animal, their totem.[8] All tabu, all blood tabu, has in the totem animal its centre and shrine, in the opinion of each group. Human kinship, of Emu man to Emu woman, is, if I understand rightly, a corollary from their common kinship with the Emu bird; or rather the sacredness of their kinship, not to be violated by marriage, is thus derived; an opinion which I share.

How all this came to be so; why each of two "clans" in one horde chose, or acquired, a given animal as the centre of the mysterious sacred atmosphere, Dr. Durkheim has not, so far, told us. Yet surely there must have been a reason for selecting two special animals, one for each of the two "clans," as the tabu, the totem, the god. Moreover, as such a strange belief cannot be an innate idea of the human mind, and as this belief, with its corollaries, is, in Dr. Durkheim's theory, the sole origin of exogamy, there must have been a time when men, not having the belief, were not exogamous, and when their sexual relations were wholly unregulated. They only came under regulation after two "clans" of people, in a horde, took to revering two different sacred animals, according to Dr. Durkheim.

The totem, he says, is not only the god, but the ancestor of the "clan," and this ancestor, says Dr. Durkheim, is not a species—animal or vegetable—but is such or such an individual Emu or Kangaroo. This individual Emu or Kangaroo, however, is not alive, he is a creature of fancy; he is a "mythical being, whence came forth at once all the human members of the 'clan,' and the plants or animals of the totem species. Within him exist, potentially, the animal species and the human 'clan' of the same name."[9]

"Thus," Dr. Durkheim goes on, "the totemic being is immanent in the clan, he is incarnate in each individual member of the clan, and dwells in their blood. He is himself that blood. But, while he is an ancestor, he is also a god, he is the object of a veritable cult; he is the centre of the clan's religion.... Therefore there is a god in each individual member of the clan (for the entire god is in each), and, as he lives in the blood, the blood is divine. When the blood flows, the god is shed" (le dieu se répand).

All this, of course, was the belief (if ever it was the belief) when totemism was in its early bloom and vigour, for to-day a black will shoot his totem, but not sitting; and will eat it if he can get nothing else, and Mr. Howitt mentions cases in which he will eat his totem if another man bags it.[10] The Euahlayi, with female kin, eat their totems, after a ceremony in which the tabu is removed.[11] Totemism is thus decadent to-day. But "a totem is not a thing which men think they can dispose of at their will, at least so long as totemic beliefs are still in vigour.... A totem, in short, is not a mere name, but before all and above all, he is a religious principle, which is one and consubstantial with the person in whom it has its dwelling-place; it makes part of his personality. One can no more change one's totem than one can change one's soul...."[12] He is speaking of Arunta society on the eve of a change from female to male reckoning of descent.

So far, the theory of Dr. Durkheim is that in a compact communal horde, where incest was not prohibited, one "clan" or division took to adoring, say, the Eagle Hawk, another set the Crow; to claiming descent each from their bird; to regarding his blood as tabu; to seizing wives only from the other "clan"; and, finally, to making peaceful intermarriages, each, exclusively, only from the other set, Eagle Hawk from Crow, Crow from Eagle Hawk. We do not learn why half the horde adored one, and the other half another animal. If the disruption of the horde produced two such "clans," "at least," there may have been other "clans," sets equally primal, as Lizard, Ant, Wallaby, Grub. About these we hear nothing more in the theory; the two "primary clans" alone are here spoken of as original, and are obviously the result of a mere conjecture, to explain the two phratries of animal name, familiar in our experience.