He who knew a group's name might make a magical use of his knowledge to injure the group. But the group or kin-names being already known to all concerned (having probably been given from without), when the full totemic belief arose it was far too late for groups to conceal the totem names, as an individual can and does keep his own private essential name secret. The totem animal of every group was known to all groups within a given radius. "It is a serious offence," writes Mr. Howitt, "for a man to kill the totem of another person,"[19] that is, with injurious intentions towards the person.
Mr. Frazer at one time thought that the totem was perhaps originally the soul-box, or life-receptacle, of the totemist, and said: "How close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he hides the inner keep and citadel of his being." I could but reply, as Mr. Hill-Tout also replies, that every savage knew the secret, knew what beast was a man's totem. I added that I knew no cases of a custom of injuring a man by killing his totem, "to his intention," but that I was "haunted by the impression that I had met examples."[20] Mr. Howitt, we see, mentions this kind of misdeed as punishable by native law. But it was too late, we repeat, to hide the totem names. Men now can only punish offenders who make a cruel magical use of their knowledge of an enemy's totem.
An individual, however, we must repeat, can and does keep his intimate essential personal name as dark as the secret name of the city of Rome was kept. "An individual," says Mr. Howitt, "has of course his own proper individual name, which, however, is often in abeyance, because of the disinclination to use it, or even to make it generally known, lest it might come into the knowledge and possession of some enemy, who thus having it might thereby 'sing' its owner—in other words, use it as an incantation."[21]
Thus, in Australia, the belief that names imply a mystic rapport between themselves and the persons who bear them is proved to be familiar, and it is acted upon by each individual who conceals his secret name.
This being so, when the members of human groups found themselves, as groups, all in possession of animal group-names, and had forgotten how they got the names (all known groups having long been named), it was quite inevitable that men, always speculative, should ask themselves, "What is the nature of this connection between us and the animals whose names we bear? It must be a connection of the closest and most important kind." This conclusion, I repeat, was inevitable, given the savage way of thinking about names. Will any anthropologist deny this assertion?
Probably the mere idea of a mystic connection between themselves and their name-giving animals set the groups upon certain superstitious acts in regard to these animals. But being men, and as such speculative, and expressing the results of their speculations in myths, they would not rest till they had evolved a myth as to the precise nature of the connection between themselves and their name-giving animals, the connection indicated by the name.
Now, men who had arrived at this point could not be so inconceivably unobservant as not to be aware of the blood connection between mother and children, indicated in the obvious facts of birth. A group may not have understood the facts of reproduction and procreation (as the Arunta are said not to understand them),[22] but the facts of blood connection, and of the relation of the blood to the life, could escape no human beings.[23] As savages undeniably do not draw the line between beasts and other things on one side, and men on the other, as we do, it was natural for them to suppose that the animal bearing the group name, and therefore solidaire with the group, was united with it, as the members of the group themselves were visibly united, namely, by the blood bond. The animal in myth is thus men's ancestor, or brother, or primal ancestral form. This belief would promote kindness to and regard for the animal.
Next, as soon as the animal-named groups evolved the universally diffused beliefs about the wakan or mana, or mystically sacred quality of the blood as the life, they would also develop the various totem tabus, such as not to kill the totem animal, not to shed its blood, and the idea that, by virtue of this tabu, a man must not marry a maid who was of one blood with him in the totem. Even without any blood tabu, the tabu on women of the same totem might arise. "An Oraon clan, whose totem is the Kujzar-tree, will not sit in its shade." So strong is the intertotemic avoidance.[24] The belief grew to the pitch that a man must not "use" anything of his totem (χρῆσθαι γυναίκι), and thus totemic exogamy, with the sanction of the sacred totem, was established.[25]
Unessential to my system is the question, how the groups got animal names, as long as they got them and did not remember how they got them, and as long as the names, according to their way of thinking, indicated an essential and mystic rapport between each group and its name-giving animal. No more than these three things—a group animal-name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connection between all bearers, human and bestial, of the same name; and belief in the blood superstitions—was needed to give rise to all the totemic creeds and practices, including exogamy.
Now, we can prove that the origin of the totem names of savage groups is unknown to the savages, because they have invented many various myths to account for the origin of the names. If they knew, they would not have invented such myths. That, by their way of thinking, the name denotes a transcendental connection, which must be exploited, between themselves and their name-giving animals we have proved.