One result of the classificatory marriage system, however it grew up, is the extended use of names of kinship to denote all individuals of the same or corresponding generation—“father” for all men who might by custom have married your mother; “brother” and “sister” for all men and women descended from those whom your father or mother might have married; “husband” or “wife” for any man or woman whom, according to custom, you might have married. When further progress has been made in culture, distinctive names are used to express blood-relationship and class-relationship. It may be worth considering whether, in Australia, some of the customs which have been supposed to bear witness to an original state of promiscuity are not really results of the classificatory system of naming relationship: marital rights having been claimed on the ground of the names “husband” and “wife” as used in that system.
§ 6. The Clansman and his Totem
The relationship of Clansman to Totem may be conceived of as one of friendliness, protection, consanguinity, or even identity; and this last I take to be the case in the age when Totemism is most alive and powerful. But in what sense can a man be the same as an emu? He may be of the same name; but by itself that would be nothing. It is not the name, but the identity which the name has come to signify that must be considered. Some light may be shed upon the problem by the saying of a native to Spencer and Gillen, pointing to a photograph of himself: “That one is just the same as me; so is a kangaroo.” The photograph might be “the same” as himself in the sense of resemblance; but in that sense the kangaroo is not the same. Some, indeed, who have speculated on the savage mind suppose that it is not only incapable of reasoning, but even of perceiving the facts before it, when under the influence of some strong belief; and I admit that this is sometimes true. But all a savage’s actions in relation to his Totem show that he is aware of the difference: not least his efforts on certain occasions to help his imagination to establish identity by disguising himself and by imitating the actions of this strange other self, and by eating a little of it to insure physical identity at least to that extent. He also seeks to multiply it that others may eat their ration, and for any theory of his identity with the Totem, this must be a puzzle.
But a photograph may be the same as oneself in another sense than mere superficial resemblance: it may, like a shadow or reflection, be (or contain) a man’s soul, or part of it. And similarly a kangaroo or other Totem may be conceived to be the same as a man, that is, as having the same soul. Perhaps this is as near as we can get to the Australian’s meaning in the above-quoted confession of faith. It is reconcilable with the ceremonial eating of some part of the Totem; for that will convey spiritual as well as physical properties: and to reconcile it with the multiplication of the Totem that others may eat, I point to the biological necessity that each clan’s Totem should be food for the other tribesmen. Where all edible animals and plants are Totems, how else can they subsist? But we have several times seen that biological necessity will place limits to a belief, and that excuses can be found for necessary actions which are in conflict with a belief. That the clansmen give their own Totem to the tribe (since they cannot defend it) is an ingenious compromise.
It is reported that amongst the Euahlayi tribe occur personal Totems (or guardians, rare in Australia) called Yunbeai, possessed chiefly by wizards. A man may eat his hereditary Totem, but not his Yunbeai; which in this privilege seems to have supplanted the Totem. His spirit is in the Yunbeai, and its spirit is in him.[532] They have, then, the same soul; and, although this belief is not strictly Totemism, it is probably derived from it. A clansman of the Yuin tribe (West Australia) had as his Totem the Black Duck, which warned him against enemies; and he related that once, whilst he slept, a Lace-Lizard man sent his Totem, which went down his throat and almost ate his Black Duck residing in his breast; so that he nearly died.[533] Were not his Black Duck and his soul the same?
This hypothesis agrees very well with a belief that one’s body and soul descend from the same ancestor as the Totem’s; and that at death one goes to, or becomes, the Totem; and excuses the fiction that the quickening of a pregnant woman may be caused by the entry into her of the spirit of some totem-plant or animal.
On the Gold Coast and elsewhere in West Africa, a man has more than one soul, it may be as many as four; and one of them dwells with some animal in the bush: thence called his “bush-soul.” Sir James Frazer’s first hypothesis concerning Totemism was that it may have been derived from the notion of an external soul which may be deposited in anything (as thus in an animal in the bush) for safety. He now thinks the connexion of the “bush-soul” with Totemism uncertain.[534] If there has been any connexion, may it not be that the “bush-soul” is derived from Totemism, and that every Totem is a sort of “bush-soul”—that is, it has a soul which is the same (at least, of the same kind) as the clansman’s?
§ 7. Totemism and Magic
The identity of a man with his name, as usually assumed by savages, whether his personal or his totemic name, is not itself a magical belief, but an inevitable result of mental association at a low level of intelligence: perhaps earlier than any notions that can properly be called magical. The name of a man, always thought of along with his other properties, seems to be as much one of them as a scar on his neck or any peculiar trait of visage or length of limb. This must be as old as naming. But such a complication of the name with other marks having been formed, it becomes the ground of magic beliefs and practices. To mention the name of a man or spirit insures his presence and participation in any rite, either acting or suffering; or where writing is known, his name on a piece of paper is as good as his nail-parings. The use of the name is not a mere animistic summons (which might be disobeyed), but an immediate instatement of the given individual. Such magic may enter into totemic observances.
The descent of the clan from the Totem-animal, or of the animal from a forefather of the clan, or of both from a tertium quid, involves metamorphosis; and this, again, is not itself a magic idea; for real metamorphoses are common in the life of birds, amphibia, insects, and it would be unreasonable to expect savages to perceive clearly that these are not parallel cases. There is a difference, however, between transformations that may be observed, such as that of a chrysalis into a butterfly, and those that have never been observed, but are merely imagined and asserted. The latter are more mysterious, and mystery is one character of magic. For example, the Witchety-Grub clan among the Arunta have as their mate a bird, the chantunga, which they will not eat because, they say, of old some full-grown witchety-grubs were transformed into these birds.[535] This change has a magical character, though no magical agency is assigned. But if any attempt were made to explain how the great change took place, recourse might be had to powers of magic. Even when agency is assigned, it is not always magical. In the earliest Alcheringa the two Ungambikula (“out of nothing”) saw in groups by the shore of the salt water a number of inapertwa, rudimentary men, mere roundish masses, without organs or means of feeding, and these they cut out into men with stone knives, therefore not by magic.[536] But, again, a tribe on the Darling River (Wathi-wathi) have traditions concerning Bookoomuri who lived long ago, excelled in Magic, and transformed themselves into animals; and here the magical power is asserted, though the manner of its operation is indefinite. But the Bear clan of the Tshimshians (British Columbia) explain their position by the story that once upon a time an Indian, whilst hunting, met a bear, which took him to its home, where he stayed two years. On returning to his village he looked like a bear; but, having been rubbed with medical herbs, recovered human shape.[537] And here the magic is as explicit as in any recipe for a were-wolf, or that fallacious ointment with which Lucius achieved his memorable transformation.