Perhaps Mr Lang's theory hardly accounts for the fact that eaglehawk and crow figure not only as phratry names but also in the myths and rites. It is not apparent why eaglehawk and crow groups should take the lead and give their names to the phratries unless it was as contrasted colours; on the other hand, if they were selected as the names from among a number of others this difficulty vanishes, but then we do not see why these names are not more widely found, unless indeed the untranslated names mean eaglehawk and crow; but possibly all express a contrast of some sort.
On the whole, however, it may be said that Mr Lang's theory holds the field. Not only is it internally consistent, which cannot be affirmed of the reformation theory, but it colligates the facts far better. This may be illustrated by a single point.
On the reformation theory, unaccompanied, as it is, by any hypothesis of borrowing of phratry names, we should primâ facie find the latter, where they are translateable, to be those of the animals which are most frequently found as totems. Now in the area covered by Dr Howitt's recent work, omitting those tribes for which our lists of totems are admittedly not complete, we find that emu, kangaroo, snake, eaglehawk, and iguana are found as totems in about two-thirds of the cases; then, after a long interval, come wallaby and crow, less than half as often, with opossum rather more frequently, in half the total number. But it is clearly outside the bounds of probability that four of the commonest totems should not give their names, so far as is known, to phratries, while eaglehawk recurs five, crow six, and cockatoo three times, the two latter in one case in a remote area. Not only so, but the opposition between the phratry names—black and white or the like—is unintelligible, if, as on Dr Durkheim's theory, the phratries are simply the elementary totem groups which intermarried and threw off secondary totem kins. But criticism of other theories opens a wide field, into which it is best not to diverge.
On the development theory the phratries came into existence perhaps as the result of the persistence of an old custom of exogamy, non-moral in its inception, or, it may be, as a result of the rise of totemic tabus. The reformation theory, on the other hand, makes the conscious attainment of a better state of society the object of the institution of a dichotomous organisation. It will therefore be well to see what results in practice from the phratriac organisation.
In the two-phratry area (other rules, which usually exist, apart) it is impossible for children of the same mother or father, or of sisters or of brothers, to marry, nor can one of the parents, either mother or father, according to the rule of descent, take her or his own child in marriage. Now if the object of the reformation was to prevent parents from marrying children, it was clearly not attained. If, on the other hand, it was intended to prevent children of the same mother or father from intermarrying, the result could have been attained far more simply, either by direct prohibition, such as is found in other cases, or by the institution of totemic exogamy, which, in the view of some authorities, already existed, and consequently made the phratry superfluous.
According to Dr Frazer's 1905 theory, phratries were introduced to prevent brother and sister marriage and exogamous bars began in the female line[110]. Against this hypothesis may be urged not only the objections first stated but also the fact that for Dr Frazer the Arunta are primitive and yet reckon descent (of the class) in the male line. If, as he conceives, conceptional totemism was transformed in the central tribes into patrilineal totemism, I fail to see why the phratries or classes should descend in the female line.
If in the third place, it was proposed to prevent children of sisters or of brothers from intermarrying, it is completely mysterious why children of brothers and sisters should not only not have been prevented in the same way, but absolutely be regarded as the proper mates for each other. Even if a single community reformed itself on these lines, it is hardly conceivable that many should have done so, even if we suppose that the advantages of prohibition were preached from tribe to tribe by missionaries of the new order of things. Ex hypothesi, cousin marriage was not regarded as harmful; and it is highly improbable that any people in the lower stages of culture should have discovered that in-and-in breeding is harmful, for the results, especially in a people which contained no degenerates, would not appear at once, even if they appeared at all.
On this point therefore the probabilities are wholly on the side of development as against reformation.
An additional reason against the reformation theory is found in the fact that phratries, on this theory, would never exceed two in number, but in practice there are, as shown in Chapter II, wide variations.
[107] Secret of the Totem, pp. 31, 91 sq.