In another tribe of this area there is a similar belief concerning the choi (another "soul"). The aborigines of Pennefather River believe that babies are made out of swamp mud and then inserted into the wombs of women by a being called Anjea. Now it is particularly important for us to note that Anjea animates the baby with a piece of its father's spirit if it is a boy, and with a piece of its father's sister's spirit if it is a girl. For each new baby Anjea provides a new piece of spirit. But he does not take these pieces from the spirit of the living father or his sister. He has a special source from which to take it; he takes it from the father's or father's sister's afterbirth. When a child is born a portion of its spirit stays in its afterbirth. Hence the grandmother takes the afterbirth and buries it in the sand, and marks the place by thrusting sticks into the ground. So when Anjea comes along and sees it, he knows where to look for the father's (or father's sister's) spirit, which he wants in order to animate the new baby. And in this way all babies are animated by a spiritual part of their father or paternal aunts.[641]
Both these examples illustrate perfectly well the general definition of kinship ideas we have given above. Here the relation between father and child is established in the native ideas by a purely spiritual connection. But obviously this connection is a very important one. The deep tie between a man and his child is here explicitly indicated and not inferred by us, as in the foregoing cases, in which we could only state that the beliefs and facts point to such a tie. In the present case the father's spirit is the material from which the child's soul is to be built up. It is not his bodily germ that procreates the child, but his spiritual germ. What does it matter that the mother gives birth to the child? The latter is animated by the father's (or father's sister's) spirit, and this spiritual connection is of course as strong a bond of kinship as can possibly be imagined.
There is in the second of these examples a complication produced by the fact that a female child is not animated by her father's, but by her father's sister's, spirit. But this complication is more apparent than real. We must always remember that the aborigines do not think in clearly defined ideas, and that there is always a question rather of some broad emotional connection than of a tie logically apprehended. And here the connection between the female children and their father is broadly marked by the spiritual tie between his sister and the children. It may be said that "spiritual propagation" follows the male line exclusively, for all children are animated by a spirit taken from their father or his sister.
We have still a few examples to quote where there appears to be involved a tie between father and child established on other grounds than the sexual act. In some of the North Queensland tribes (Cairns district) "the acceptance of food from a man by a woman was not merely regarded as a marriage ceremony, but as the actual cause of conception."[642] A similar belief obtains among the Larrekiya and Wogait of Port Darwin. "The old men say that there is an evil spirit who takes babies from a big fire and places them in the wombs of women, who must then give birth to them. When in the ordinary course of events a man is out hunting and kills game or gathers vegetable food, he gives it to his wife, who must eat it, believing that the food will cause her to conceive and bring forth a child. When the child is born, it may on no account partake of the particular food which produced conception until it has got its first teeth."[643] In these cases we might look also for some material from which the ideas of individual paternity might have been evolved, but this is a supposition merely, which obviously is much less well founded than our inferences referring to the Central and North Central tribes.
Let us turn to another portion of the continent, to the South-Eastern tribes, where the natives have to a certain extent inverse ideas on procreation. They seem to know that conception is due to copulation. But they exaggerate the father's part. The children are begotten "by him exclusively; the mother receives only the germ and nurtures it; the aborigines ... never for a moment feel any doubt ... that the children originate solely from the male parent, and only owe their infantine nurture to their mother."[644] This theory is not a logical and consistent one, but none of the aboriginal views possess these qualities! But this theory of procreation is quite clear and categorical in acknowledging exclusively what seems to the native mind important for the formation of consanguineous ties in the act of procreation. Let us adduce the examples in detail, as they are very instructive. The Wirdajuri nation[645] believe that the child "emanates from the father solely, being only nurtured by its mother." There is a strong tie of kinship between the child and the father; the latter nevertheless has not the right to dispose of his daughter in marriage; that is done by the mother and the mother's brother. We see here that curiously enough strong paternal consanguinity coincides with weakening of the patria potestas (provided the information be accurate on both points). For disposal of the daughter is one of the chief features of a parent's authority over the child. Among the Wolgal the child belongs to the father, and he only "gives it to his wife to take care of for him."[646] This is probably an interpretation of the facts of procreation. In this tribe the father disposes of his daughter; in fact "he could do what he liked" with her on the ground of his exclusive right to the child. Here, apparently, the ideas on kinship enhance the paternal authority. A strong proof of this unilateral paternal consanguinity is given yet more in detail in the case of the Kulin tribes. There, according to a native expression, "the child comes from the man, the woman only takes care of it."[647] And when once an old man wished to emphasize his right and authority over his son he said: "Listen to me! I am here, and there you stand with my body."[648] This is clearly a claim to kinship on the basis of consanguinity. It is interesting to note that in the examples just quoted this consanguineous kinship seems to give some claims to authority. Analogously amongst the Yuin the child belonged to his father "because his wife merely takes care of his children for him."[649]
Withal this information leaves us in the dark about the detailed working of these ideas. Especially we are not quite clear whether the assertions of "being of the same body," of "belonging to him," etc., do actually refer to the act of procreation, whether they form an interpretation of this act, or whether they have quite a different basis; although it seems from the expressions quoted above that the first alternative is the right one. On the other hand, when we read that the mother only nurtures the child, that she merely takes care of it and so on, does it mean that the aboriginal mind decrees or interprets that during pregnancy the mother is a kind of nurse only, that she is the soil in which the father has deposited the seed? And as the relation between the plant and the seed is closer than that between the plant and the soil, so the relation between father and child is nearer than that between mother and child? All this is left to hypothesis, strongly supported by the statements, but unfortunately not affirmed by them in a clear and unambiguous way. We are not at all sure whether all these ideas, instead of being theories of the act of impregnation, have not some mystic, legendary basis like the beliefs of the Queenslander dealt with above.
A survey of different points of Australian folk-lore has been made in order to find some kinship ideas corresponding to the definition given on [page 183]. From all the results obtained, the most certain and best founded one is the negative fact that the majority of the Australian tribes are wholly ignorant of the physiological process of procreation. This result, although at first sight a negative one, leads, when viewed in the proper light, to sociological conclusions of some importance. In regard to the discussion on consanguinity (given [pp. 176] sqq.), it follows from this fact that we cannot speak of paternal consanguinity among these tribes in the social sense of this word,[650] and that the individual tie of kinship, which does nevertheless exist between father and child, must be conceived of by the natives in some different way. This conclusion is also very important, for it obviously tears asunder the intimate connection between the sexual side of marriage and kinship, a connection that has often been assumed hitherto. The lack of sexual exclusiveness found in Australia does not affect the structure of the individual family, of which kinship is the index. Waiving the question whether this holds good for primitive mankind in general, it may be assumed as quite a final result for the majority of Australian tribes.
The positive ideas of kinship enumerated in this survey fulfil the two conditions set up on [page 183]; they refer to the individual relation between father and child,[651] and they affirm a close tie between the two. But in order to prove that such ideas are sociologically relevant ideas of kinship, it must yet be shown that they possess some social functions; that is to say, that they play an essential part in the collective formulation of the various norms regulating individual parental kinship. Now it was not possible to find any data on this point, so this gap remains unfilled, and therefore the results arrived at here must be considered as incomplete. It was necessary to introduce the conjectural assumption that all the facts known which give sociological evidence of individual parental kinship stand in close connection with the beliefs in question. Nevertheless, this assumption is neither arbitrary nor scientifically barren, as far as I see. It may first be remarked that the complete absence in our ethnographic information of any attempt to connect the data of folk-lore and the facts of sociology is not astonishing at all, as it is the consequence of one of the shortcomings in social science at the present day. This lack is due to reasons connected with the ethnographer and not with the material. The intimate relation which must exist between social beliefs and social functions was quite a sufficient justification for the introduction of this assumption. Moreover, this assumption, although hypothetical, lies quite within the limits of verification. A conjectural assumption referring to facts which lie necessarily outside the reach of observation, incurs much more the risk of scientific barrenness. But this cannot be the case with new points of view, the enunciation of which imposes itself as an inevitable logical inference, and which, being capable of verification, may serve as a fertile working hypothesis.