The Secret of the Totem

ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

The making of the local tribe of savagery—Earliest known stage of locietj—Result of complex processes—Elaborate tribal mles—Laws altered deliberately: sometimes borrowed — Kxisting legislative methods of savages not primitive — ^The tribe a gradual conquest of culture—The tribe a combination of small pre-tribal kinships — History of progress towards the tribe traceable in surviving institutions — ^From passion to Law — Rudeness of native culture in Australia — Varieties of social organisation there — i. Tribes with two phratries, totems, female descent—Tribes of this organisation differ as to ceremonies and belief*— ^me beliefe tend to polytheism: others towards monotheism—Some tribes of pristine organisation have totemic magic and ptrruuru: others have not—The more northern tribes of pristine orgvusation share the ceremonies and beliefs of central tribes: not so the south-eastern tribes — Second form {a) of social organisation has male descent — Second form (d) has female descent /Atf “matrimonial classes “—Account of these — Eight* dass system — The Arunta nation — ^Their peculiar form of belief in reincamation — Ckimnga nanja — Recapitulation — The Euahlayi tribe. The question of the origin of totemism has more than the merely curious or antiquarian interest of an historic or prehistoric mystery. In the course of the inquiry we may be able to discern and discriminate the relative contributions of unreflecting passion, on one hand, and of deliberate reason, on the other, to the structure of the earliest extant form of human society. That form is the savage local tribe, as known to us in America and in Australia.