This hypothesis escapes the difficulty as to how an incestuous horde, guided by an inspired medicine man, could ever come to see that there was such a thing as incest, and that such a thing ought not to be tolerated. We also escape Dr. Durkheim's difficulty—How did two hostile sects of animal worshippers arise in the "compact mass" of the horde; and how could they, though of one blood, claim separate origins? We also see how totem kins could occur within the phratries, without needing to urge alternately that such kins both do and do not possess a territorial basis. Again, we have not to decide, what we can never know, whether man was originally gregarious and promiscuous or not. We see that circumstances forced him to live in groups so small that the jealous will of the Sire or Sires could enforce exogamy on the young members of the camp, a prohibition which the natural conservatism of the savage might later extend to the members of the animal-named local group, even when heterogeneous. However heterogeneous by descent, all members of the local group were, by habitat, of one animal name, and when tabus arose in deference to the sacred animal, these tabus forbade marriage whether in the animal-named local group, or in the animal name of descent.
So far, the theory "marches," and meets all facts known to us, in pristine tribes with female descent, phratries, and totem kins, but without "matrimonial classes," four or eight. The theory also meets facts which have not, till now, been recognised in Australia, and which we proceed to state.
[1] Rep. Reg. Smithsonian Institute, p. 801, 1883.
[2] Evolution in Art, pp. 252-257.
[3] "This question, Minna Murdu?" ("What totem?") "can be put by gesture language, to which, in the same way, a suitable reply can be made." (Mr. Howitt, on the Dieri. Rep. Reg. Smith. Institute, p. 804, Note I, 1883.)
[4] Folk Lore, December 1903.
[5] Social Origins, p. 56, Note 1.
[6] L'Année Sociologique, v. p. 106, Note I.
[7] The Kamilaroi are said to offer exceptions to this rule.
[8] Totemism, pp. 60-62. We must remember that American writers use the word "phratry" in several quite different senses; we cannot always tell what they mean when they use it.