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to societies as slightly evolved as possible, for it is evidently there that we have the greatest chance of finding it and studying it well. Now there are no societies which present this characteristic to a higher degree than the Australian ones. Not only is their civilization most rudimentary—the house and even the hut are still unknown—but also their organization is the most primitive and simple which is actually known ; it is that which we have elsewhere called organization on a basis of clans.1 In the next chapter, we shall have occasion to restate its essential traits.
However, though making Australia the principal field of our research, we think it best not to leave completely aside the societies where totemism was first discovered, that is to say, the Indian tribes of North America.
This extension of the field of comparison has nothing about it which is not legitimate. Undoubtedly these people are more advanced than those of Australia. Their civilization has become much more advanced : men there live in houses or under tents, and there are even fortified villages. The size of the society is much greater, and centralization, which is completely lacking in Australia, is beginning to appear there ; we find vast confederations, such as that of the Iroquois, under one central authority. Sometimes a complicated system of differentiated classes arranged in a hierarchy is found. However, the essential lines of the social structure remain the same as those in Australia ;it is always the organization on a basis of clans. Thus we are not in the presence of two different types, but of two varieties of a single type, which are still very close to each other. They represent two successive moments of a single evolution, so their homo-geneousness is still great enough to permit comparisons.
Also, these comparisons may have their utility. Just because their civilization is more advanced than that of the Australians, certain phases of the social organization which is common to both can be studied more easily among the first than among the second. As long as men are still making their first steps in the art of expressing their thought, it is not easy for the observer to perceive that which moves them ; for there is nothing to translate clearly that which passes in these obscure minds which have only a confused and ephemeral knowledge of themselves. For example, religious symbols then consist only in formless combinations of lines and colours, whose sense it is not easy to divine, as we shall see. There are many gestures and movements by which interior states express themselves ; but being
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essentially ephemeral, they readily elude observation. That is why totemism was discovered earlier in America than in Australia;it was much more visible there, though it held relatively less place in the totality of the religious life. Also, wherever beliefs and institutions do not take a somewhat definite material form, they are more liable to change under the influence of the slightest circumstances, or to become wholly effaced from the memory. Thus the Australian clans frequently have something floating and Protean about them, while the corresponding organization in America has a greater stability and more clearly defined contours. Thus, though American totemism is further removed from its origins than that of Australia, still there are important characteristics of which it has better kept the memory.
In the second place, in order to understand an institution, it is frequently well to follow it into the advanced stages of its evolution ;1 for sometimes it is only when it is fully developed that its real signification appears with the greatest clearness. In this way also, American totemism, since it has a long history behind it, could serve to clarify certain aspects of Australian totemism.2 At the same time, it will put us in a better condition to see how totemism is bound up with the forms which
1 Division du Travail social, 3rd ed., p. 150.
1It is to be understood that this is not always the case. It frequently happens, as we have already said, tnat the simpler forms aid to a better understanding of the more complex. On this point, there is no rule of method which is applicable to every possible case.
2Thus the individual totemism of America will aid us in understanding the function and importance of that in Australia. As the latter is very rudimentary, it would probably have passed unobserved.
follow, and to mark its place in the general historical development of religion.
So in the discussions which follow, we shall not forbid ourselves the use of certain facts borrowed from the Indian societies of North America. But we are not going to study American totemism here ;3 such a study must be made directly and by itself, and cannot be mixed with the one which we are undertaking ; it raises other problems and implies a wholly different set of special investigations. We shall have recourse to American facts merely in a supplementary way, and only when they seem to be able to make us understand Australian facts to advantage. It is these latter which constitute the real and immediate object of our researches.4
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BOOK II
THE ELEMENTARY BELIEFS
CHAPTER I
TOTEMIC BELIEFS
The. Totem as Name and as Emblem
Owing to its nature, our study will include two parts. Since every religion is made up of intellectual conceptions and ritual practices, we must deal successively with the beliefs and rites which compose the totemic religion. These two elements of the religious life are too closely connected with each other to allow of any radical separation. In principle, the cult is derived from the beliefs, yet it reacts upon them ; the myth is frequently modelled after the rite in order to account for it, especially when its sense is no longer apparent. On the other hand, there are beliefs which are clearly manifested only through the rites which express them. So these two parts of our analysis cannot fail to overlap. However, these two orders of facts are so different that it is
3 Besides, there is not one unique type of totemism in America, but several different species which must be distinguished.
4 We shall leave this field only very exceptionally, and when a particularly instructive comparison seems to us to impose itself.
indispensable to study them separately. And since it is impossible to understand anything about a religion while unacquainted with the ideas upon which it rests, we must seek to become acquainted with these latter first of all.
But it is not our intention to retrace all the speculations into which the religious thought, even of the Australians alone, has run. The things we wish to reach are the elementary notions at the basis of the religion, but there is no need of following them through all tlie development, sometimes very confused, which the mythological imagination of these peoples has given them. We shall make use of myths when they enable us to understand these fundamental ideas better, but we shall not make mythology itself the subject of our studies. In so far as this is a work of art, it does not fall within the jurisdiction of the simple science of religions. Also, the intellectual evolution from which it results is of too great a complexity to be studied indirectly and from a foreign point of view. It constitutes a very difficult problem which must be treated by itself, for itself and with a method peculiar to itself.
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Among the beliefs upon which totemism rests, the most important are naturally those concerning the totem ; it is with these that we must begin.
At the basis of nearly all the Australian tribes we find a group which holds a preponderating place in the collective life : this is the clan. Two essential traits characterize it.
In the first place, the individuals who compose it consider themselves united by a bond of kinship, but one which is of a very special nature. This relationship does not come from the fact that they have definite blood connections with one another; they are relatives from the mere fact that they have the same name. They are not fathers and mothers, sons or daughters, uncles or nephews of one another in the sense which we now give these words ; yet they think of themselves as forming a single family, which is large or small according to the dimensions of the clan, merely because they are collectively designated by the same word. When we say that they regard themselves as a single family, we do so because they recognize duties towards each other which are identical with those which have always been incumbent upon kindred : such duties as aid, vengeance, mourning, the obligation not to marry among themselves, etc.
By this first characteristic, the clan does not differ from the Roman gens or the Greek ywoy; for this relationship also came merely from the fact that all the members of the gens had the same name,1 the nomen yntilicium. And in one sense, the gens is a clan ; but it is a variety which should not be confounded with the Australian clan.2 This latter is distinguished by the fact that its name is also the name of a determined species of material things with which it believes that it has very particular relations, the nature of which we shall presently describe ; they are especially relations of kinship. The species of things which serves to designate the clan collectively is called its totem. The totem of the clan is also that of each of its members.
Each clan has its totem, which belongs to it alone ; two different clans of the same tribe cannot have the same. In fact, one is a member of a clan merely because he has a certain name. All who bear this name are members of it for that very reason ; in whatever manner they may be spread over the tribal territory,
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they all have the same relations of kinship with one another.1 Consequently, two groups having the
1This is the definition given by Cicero : Gentiles sunt qui inter se eodem nomine sunt (Top. 6). (Those are of the same gens who have the same name among themselves.)
2It may be said in a general way that the clan is a family group, where kinship results solely from a common name ; it is in this sense that the gens is a clan. But the totemic clan is a particular sort of the class thus constituted.
1In a certain sense, these bonds of solidarity extend even beyond the frontiers of the tribe. When individuals of
different tribes have the same totem, they have peculiar duties towards each other. This fact is expressly stated for certain tribes of North America (see Frazer. Totemism and Exogamy, HI, pp. 57, 8i, 299, 35&-357). The texts relative to Australia are less explicit. However, it is probable that the prohibition of marriage between members of a single totem is international.
same totem can only be two sections of the same clan. Undoubtedly, it frequently happens that all of a clan does not reside in the same locality, but has representatives in several different places. However, this lack of a geographical basis does not cause its unity to be the less keenly felt.
In regard to the word totem, we may say that it is the one employed by the Ojibway, an Algonquin tribe, to designate the sort of thing whose name the clan bears.2 Although this expression is not at all Australian,3 and is found only in one single society in America, ethnographers have definitely adopted it, and use it to denote, in a general way, the system which we are describing. Schoolcraft was the first to extend the meaning of the word thus and to speak of a " totemic system."4 This extension, of which there are examples enough in ethnography, is not without inconveniences. It is not normal for an institution of this importance to bear a chance name, taken from a strictly local dialect, and bringing to mind none of the distinctive characteristics of the thing it designates. But to-day this way of employing the word is so universally accepted that it would be an excess of purism to rise against this usage.5
In a very large proportion of the cases, the objects which serve as totems belong either to the animal or the vegetable kingdom, but especially to the former. Inanimate things are much more rarely employed. Out of more than 500 totemic names collected by Howitt among the tribes of south-eastern Australia, there are scarcely forty which are not the names of plants or animals ; these are the clouds, rain, hail, frost, the
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moon, the sun, the wind, the autumn, the summer, the winter, certain stars, thunder, fire, smoke, water or the sea. It is noticeable how small a place is given to celestial bodies and, more generally, to the great cosmic phenomena, which were destined to so great a fortune in later religious development. Among all the clans of which Howitt speaks, there were only two which had the moon as totem,1 two the sun,2 three a star,3 three the thunder,4 two the lightning.5 The rain is a single exception; it, on the contrary, is very frequent.6
These are the totems which can be spoken of as normal. But totemism has its abnormalities as well. It sometimes happens that the totem is not a whole object, but the part of an object. This fact appears rather rarely in Australia ;7 Howitt cites only one example.8 However, it may well be that this is found with a certain frequency in the tribes where the totemic groups are excessively subdivided ; it might be said that the totems had to break themselves up in order to be able to
2Morgan, Ancient Society, p. 165.
3In Australia the words employed differ with the tribes. In the regions observed by Grev, they said Kobong; the Dieri say Murdu (Howitt, Nat Tr.. V. 91) ; the Narrinyeri, Ngaitye (Talpin. in Curr, II. p. 244) ; the Warramunga. Mungdi or
Mungdii [Nor. Tr., p. 754), etc.
4Indian Tribes of the United States, IV, p. 86.
5This fortune of the word is the more regrettable since we do not even know exactly how it is written. Some write totam, others toodaim. or dodaim, or ododam (see Frazer, Totemism. p. i). Nor is the meaning of the word determined exactly. According to the report of the first observer of the Ojibway, J. Long. the word totam designated the protecting genius, the individual totem, of which we shall speak below (Bk. II, ch. iv) and not the totem of the clan. But the accounts of other explorers say exactly the contrary (on this point, see Frazer, Totemism and Exogamy, III, pp. 49-52).
1The Wotjobaluk (p. 121) and the Buandik (p. 123).
2The same. The W'algal (p. 102), the Wotjobaluk and the Buandik.
3The Muruburra (p. 117), the Wotjobaluk and the Buandik.
4The same. The Muruburra (p. 117), the Wotjobaluk and the Buandik.
5The Buandik and the Kaiabara (p. 116). It is to be remarked that all the examples come from only five tribes.
6Thus, out of 204 kinds of totems, collected by Spencer and Gillen out of a large number of tribes, 188 are animals or plants. The inanimate objects are the boomerang, cold weather, darkness, fire, lightning, the moon, red ochre, resin, salt water, the evening star, a stone, the sun, water, the whirlwind, the wind and hail-stones (Nor. Tr., p. 773. Cf. Frazer,
Totemism and Exogamy. I, pp. 253-254).
7Frazer (Totemism, pp. 10 and 13) cites a rather large number of cases and puts them in a special group which he calls split-totems, but these are taken from tribes where totemism is greatly altered, such as in Samoa or the tribes of Bengal.
8Howitt, Nat. Tr., p. 107.
furnish names to these numerous divisions. This is what seems to have taken place among the Arunta and the Loritja. Strehlow has collected 442 totems in these two societies, of which many are not an animal species, but some particular organ of the animal of the species, such as the tail or stomach of an opossum, the fat of the kangaroo, etc.9
We have seen that normally the totem is not an individual, but a species or a variety : it is not such and such a kangaroo or crow, but the kangaroo or crow in general. Sometimes, however, it is a particular object. First of all, this is necessarily the case when the thing serving as totem is unique in its class, as the sun, the moon, such or such a constellation, etc. It also happens that clans take their names from certain geographical irregularities or depressions of the land, from a certain ant-hill, etc. It is true
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that we liave only a small number of examples of this in Australia;
but Strehlow does mention some.1 But the very causes which have given rise to these abnormal totems show that they are of a relatively recent origin. In fact, what has made certain geographical features of the land become totems is that a mythical ancestor is supposed to have stopped there or to have performed some act of his legendary life there.2 But at the same time, these ancestors are represented in the myths as themselves belonging to clans which had perfectly regular totems, that is to say, ones taken from the animal or vegetable kingdoms. Therefore, the totemic names thus commemorating the acts and performances of these heroes cannot be primitive ; they belong to a form of totemism that is already derived and deviated. It is even permissible to ask if the meteorological totems have not a similar origin ; for the sun, the moon and the stars are frequently identified with the ancestors of the mythological epoch.3
Sometimes, but no less exceptionally, it is an ancestor or a group of ancestors which serves as totem directly. In this case, the clan takes its name, not from a thing or a species of real things, but from a purely mythical being. Spencer and Gillen had already mentioned two or three totems of this sort. Among the Warra-munga and among the Tjingilli there are clans which bear the name of an ancestor named Thaballa who seems to be gaiety incarnate.4 Another Warramunga clan bears the name of a huge fabulous serpent named Wollunqua, from which the clan considers itself descended.5 We owe other similar facts to Strehlow.6 In any case, it is easy enough to see what probably took place. Under the influence of diverse causes and by the very development of mythological thought, the collective and impersonal totem became effaced before certain mythical personages who advanced to the first rank and became totems themselves.
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Howsoever interesting these different irregularities may be, they contain nothing which forces us to modify our definition of a totem. They are not, as has sometimes been believed,1 different varieties of totems which are more or less irreducible into each other or into the normal totem, such as we have defined it. They are merely secondary and sometimes even aberrant forms
9 See the tables collected by Strehlow, op. cit.. II, pp. 61-72 (cf. Ill, pp. xiii-xvii). It is remarkable that these fragmentary totems are taken exclusively from animal totems.
1Strehlow, II, pp. 52 and 72.
2For example, one of these totems is a cave where an ancestor of the Wild Cat totem rested ; another is a subterranean gallery which an ancestor of the Mouse clan dug, etc. (ibid., p. 72).
3Nat. Tr.. pp. 561 ff. Strehlow, II, p. 71, note 2. Howitt, Nat. Tr.. pp. 426 fi.; On Australian Medicine Men, J.A.I.,
XVI, p. 53 ; Further Notes on the Australian Class Systems, J.A.I.. XVIII, pp. 63 ff.
4Thaballa means "laughing boy," according to the translation of Spencer and Gillen. The members of the clan which bear this name think they hear him laughing in the rocks which are his residence (Nor. Tr., pp. 207, 215, 226 note). According to a myth given on p. 422, there was an initial group of mythical Thaballa (cf. p. 208). The clan of the Kati, " full-grown men," as Spencer and Gillen say, seems to be of the same sort (Nor. Tr.. p. 207).
5Nor. Tr.. pp. 226 ff.
6Strehlow, II, pp. 71 f. He mentions a totem of the Loritja and Arunta which is very close to the serpent Wollunqua : it is the totem of a mythical water-snake.
1This is the case with Klaatsch, in the article already cited (see above, р.92,п.з).