[593] On this point, the testimony of Strehlow (II, p. 52) confirms that of Spencer and Gillen. For a contrary opinion, see A. Lang, The Secret of the Totem, p. 190.
[594] A very similar idea had already been expressed by Haddon in his Address to the Anthropological Section (B.A.A.S., 1902, pp. 8 ff.). He supposes that at first, each local group had some food which was especially its own. The plant or animal thus serving as the principal item of food became the totem of the group.
All these explanations naturally imply that the prohibitions against eating the totemic animal were not primitive, but were even preceded by a contrary prescription.
[595] Fortnightly Review, Sept., 1905, p. 458.
[596] Fortn. Rev., May, 1899, p. 835, and July, 1905, pp. 162 ff.
[597] Though considering totemism only a system of magic, Frazer recognizes that the first germs of a real religion are sometimes found in it (Fortn. Rev., July, 1905, p. 163). On the way in which he thinks religion developed out of magic, see The Golden Bough,2 I, pp. 75-78.
[598] Sur le totemisme, in Année Soc., V, pp. 82-121. Cf., on this same question, Hartland, Presidential Address, in Folk-Lore, XI, p. 75; A. Lang, A Theory of Arunta Totemism, in Man, 1904, No. 44; Conceptional Totemism and Exogamy, ibid., 1907, No. 55; The Secret of the Totem, ch. iv; N. W. Thomas, Arunta Totemism, in Man, 1904, No. 68; P. W. Schmidt, Die Stellung der Aranda unter der Australischen Stämmen, in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1908, pp. 866 ff.
[599] Die Aranda, II, pp. 57-58.
[600] Schulze, loc cit., pp. 238-239.
[601] In the conclusion of Totemism and Exogamy (IV, pp. 58-59), Frazer says, it must be admitted, that there is a totemism still more ancient than that of the Arunta: it is the one observed by Rivers in the Banks Islands (Totemism in Polynesia and Melanesia, in J.A.I., XXXIX, p. 172). Among the Arunta it is the spirit of an ancestor who is believed to impregnate the mother; in the Banks Islands, it is the spirit of an animal or vegetable, as the theory supposes. But as the ancestral spirits of the Arunta have an animal or vegetable form, the difference is slight. Therefore we have not mentioned it in our exposition.