CHAPTER VI
THE AUTHOR'S THEORY
Mr. Darwin's theory of man's early social condition – Either men lived in male communities, each with his own female mates, or man was solitary, living alone with his female mates and children – His adolescent sons he drove away – The latter view accepted – It involves practical exogamy – Misunderstood by M. Salomon Reinach – Same results would follow as soon as totems were evolved – Totemism begins in assumption, by groups of men, of the names of natural objects – Mr. Howitt states this opinion – Savage belief in magical rapport between men and things of the same name – Mr. Frazer and Professor Rhys died for this fact – Theory of Dr. Pikler – Totemism arises in the need of names to be represented in pictographs – But the pictograph is later than the name – Examples of magic of names – Men led to believe in a connection of blood kin between themselves and objects of the same names – These objects regarded with reverence – Hence totemic exogamy merely one aspect of the general totem name – Group names were sobriquets of local groups, given by members of other local groups – Proof that such names may be accepted and gloried in – Cases of tribal names given from without and accepted – Mr. Hill-Tout on influence of names – His objection to our theory answered – Mr. Howitt's objections answered – American and Celtic cases of derisive nicknames accepted – Two Australian totem names certainly sobriquets – Religious aspect of totemism – Results from a divine decree – Other myths – Recapitulation.
The problem has been to account for the world-wide development of kinships, usually named after animals, plants, and other objects, and for the rule that the members of these kins may never marry within the kinship as limited by the name, Crow, Wolf, or whatever it may be. Why, again, are these kinships regimented, in each tribe, into two "phratries," exogamous, which also frequently bear animal names? No system hitherto proposed seems satisfactory, for the reasons given in the preceding critical chapters.
In trying to construct a more satisfactory system than those which have been criticised, we must commence, like others, with an hypothesis as to what kind of social animal man was when he began his career. Now we really are not quite reduced to conjecture, for Mr. Howitt's knowledge of savage life, in such a country as Australia, proves that the economic conditions, the search for supplies, and the blunt inefficiency of the earliest weapons, instruments, and hunting methods must have forced men to live in small separate groups. The members, again, of each group, being animated by "individual likes and dislikes" (including love, hate, jealousy, maternal affection, and the associations of kindness between a male and those whom he provided for and protected), must soon have evolved some discrimination of persons, and certain practical restraints on amatory intercourse. In groups necessarily very small, these germinal elements of later morality could be evolved, as they could not be evolved in the gregarious communal horde of theory.
Even when man's ancestors were hardly men, Mr. Darwin thus states his opinion as to their social condition.
He says, "We may conclude, judging from what we know of the jealousy of all Male Quadrupeds… that promiscuous intercourse in a state of Nature is extremely improbable. Therefore, looking far back in the stream of Time, and judging from the social habits of man as he now exists, the most probable view is (a) that he aboriginally lived in small communities, each [man] with a single wife, or, if powerful, with several, whom he jealously guarded from all other men. Or (b) he may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several wives, like the Gorilla – for all the natives agree that bat one adult male is found in a band. When the young male grows up, a contest takes place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or driving out the others, establishes himself as head of the community.
"Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding within the limits of the same family."142
There is no communal horde in either of Mr. Darwin's conjectures, and the males of these "families" were all exogamous in practice, all compelled to mate out of the group of consanguinity, except in the case of the sire, or male head, who, of course, could mate with his own daughters.
Were I forced to conjecture, I should adopt Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis (b) because, given man so jealous, and in a brutal state so very low as that postulated, he could not hope "jealously to guard his women from all other men," if he lived in a community with other men.
There would be fights to the death (granting Mr. Darwin's hypothesis of male jealousy, man being an animal who makes love at all seasons),143 and the little community would break up. No respect would be paid to the Seventh Commandment, and Mr. Darwin's first conjectured community would end in his second – given the jealousy and brutality and animal passions of early man, as postulated by him.
On Mr. Darwin's second conjecture our system could be based. Small "family" groups, governed by the will of the sire or master, whose harem contains all the young females in the group, would be necessarily exogamous in practice – for the younger male members. The sire would drive out all his adult sons as they came to puberty, and such as survived and found mates would establish, when they could, similar communities.
With efflux of time and development of intellect the rule, now conscious, would become, "No marriage within this group of contiguity;" the group of the hearth-mates. Therefore, the various "family groups" would not be self-sufficing in the matter of wives, and the males would have to seize wives by force or stealth from other similar and hostile groups. Exogamy, in fact, so far as the rule was obeyed, would exist, with raiding for wives. (This is the view of Mr. Atkinson, in his Primal Law.)144
If, on the other hand, Mr. Darwin's second hypothesis as to the primal state of man's brutal ancestors be rejected, economic and emotional conditions, as stated by Mr. Howitt (ch. iv., supra), would still keep on constantly breaking up, in everyday life, each supposed communal horde of men into small individualistic groups, in which the jealousy of the sire or sires might establish practical exogamy, by preventing the young males from finding mates within the group. This would especially be the case if the savage superstitions about sexual separation and sexual taboo already existed, a point on which we can have no certainty.145 Young males would thus be obliged to win mates, probably by violence, from other hostile camps. But, whether this were so or not, things would inevitably come to this point later, as soon as the totem belief was established, with the totemic taboo of exogamy," No marriage within the totem name and blood."
The establishment of totemic belief and practice cannot have been sudden. Men cannot have, all in a moment, conceived that each group possessed a protective and sacred animal or other object of one blood with themselves. Not in a moment could they have drawn, on Dr. Durkheim's lines, the inference that none must marry within the sacred totem blood. Before any such faith and rule could be evolved, there must have been dim beginnings of the belief (so surprising to us) that each human group had some intimate connection with this, that, or the other natural species, plants, or animals. We must first seek for a cause of this belief in the connection of human groups with animals, the idea of which connection must necessarily be prior to the various customs and rules founded on the idea. Mr. Baldwin Spencer remarks, "What gave rise in the first instance to the association of particular men with particular plants and animals it does not seem possible to say." Mr. Howitt asks, "How was it that men assumed the names of objects which, in fact, must have been the commencement of totemism?"146 The answer may be very simple. It ought to be an answer which takes for granted no superstition as already active; magic, for instance, need not have yet been developed.
In criticising the theory of Mr. Baldwin Spencer, we have tried to show that human groups would not work magic each for a separate animal, unless they already believed in a connection of a mystic or peculiarly intimate kind between themselves and their animal. Whether late or early in evolution, the Arunta totem magic can only rest on the belief in a specially close and mystical rapport between the totem animal or plant, and the human beings of the same name. How could the belief in that rapport arise?
Manifestly, if each group woke to the consciousness that it bore the name of a plant or animal, and did not know how it came to bear that name, no more was needed to establish, in the savage mind, the belief in an essential and valuable connection between the human group Emu, and the Emu species of birds, and so on. As Mr. Howitt says, totemism begins in the bearing of the name of an object by a human group.
It is difficult to understand how a fact so obvious as this – that the community of name, if it existed, and if its origin were unknown, would come to be taken by the groups as implying a mystic connection between all who bore it, men or beasts – can have escaped the notice of any one who is acquainted with the nature of savage thinking, and with its survivals into civilised ritual and magic. Mr. Frazer has devoted forty-two pages of his Golden Bough147 to the record of examples of this belief about names, in various forms. He quotes Professor Rhys to the effect that probably "the whole Aryan family believed at one time, not only that the name was a part of the man, but that it was that part of him which is termed the soul, the breath of life, or whatever you may choose to define it as being." So says Mr. Rhys in an essay on Welsh Fairies.148 This opinion rests on philological analysis of the Aryan words for "name," and is certainly not understated.149 But, if the name is the soul of its bearer, and if the totem also is his soul, then the name and the soul and the totem of a man are all one! There we have the rapport between man and totemic animal for which we are seeking.
Whether "name" in any language indicates "soul" or not, the savage belief in the intimate and wonder-working connection of names and things is a well-ascertained fact. Now as things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, animals and sets of men having the same name are, in savage opinion, mystically connected with each other. That is now the universal savage belief, though it need not have existed when names were first applied to distinguish things, and men, and sets of men. Examples of the belief will presently be given.
This essential importance, as regards the totemic problem, of the names, has not escaped Professor Julius Pikler.150 Men, says Dr. Pikler, needed for each other, collectively, "ein bleibender schriftlich fixierbarer Name von Gemeinschaften und individuen." They wanted permanent names of human communities and of the members of these communities, names which could be expressed in pictographs, as in the pictures of the Red Indian totem, reversed on grave-posts; or erect, on pillars outside of the quarters of the totem kin in Red Indian villages; or in tattooing, and so forth.
This is practically the theory of Mr. Max Müller.151 Mr. Max Müller wrote, "A totem is (i.) a clan mark, then (ii.) a clan name, then (iii.) the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly (iv.) the name of something worshipped by the clan," This anticipated Dr. Pikler's theory.152
It is manifest, of course, that the name necessarily comes into use before, not as Mr. Max Müller thought, and as Dr. Pikler seems to think, after its pictorial representation, "the clan mark." A kin must have accepted the name of "the Cranes," before it used the Crane as its mark on a pillar in a village (villages being late institutions), or on grave-posts, or in tattoo marks. A man setting up an inn determines to call it "The Green Boar," "The White Hart," or "The Lochinvar Arms," before he has any of these animals, or the scutcheon of the Gordons of Lochinvar, painted on the signboard. He does not give his inn the name because it has the signboard; it has the signboard because it has the name. In the same way, a community must have had a name, say Eagle Hawk or Crow, before a savage could sketch, or express by gesture, a Crow or Eagle Hawk, and expect the public to understand that he meant to indicate, whether by pictograph or gesture language, a member of that Eagle Hawk or Crow named community. Totemism certainly is not, as Dr. Pikler argues, "die Folge der Schriftart, der Schrifttechnik jenes Menschen."153
The names came before the pictographs, not the pictographs before the names, necessarily; but the animal or vegetable names had this advantage, among others, that they could be expressed in terms of pictograph, or of gesture language. You cannot express in art, without writing, a tribal name, such at least as are the tribal names of the men who say Wonghi or Kamil when they mean "No," or of other tribes when they mean "What?"
Dr. Pikler says that "the germ of totemism is the naming," and here we agree with him, but we cannot follow him when he adds that "the naming is a consequence of the primitive schriftteknik," a result of the representation in the pictograph. A man knows himself and is known by others to be, by group name, a Crane, or a Rain-cloud, or a Bear, before he makes his mark with the pictograph of the bird's footprint, as 
, or of the Rain-cloud, as 
or of the Bear's-foot, as 
154.
So far we must differ, then, from Dr. Pikler; naming is indeed the original germ of totemism, but the names came before the pictographs which represent the animals denoted by the names: it could not possibly be otherwise. But when once the name of the community, Eagle Hawk, Crow, Bear, Crane, Rain-cloud, or what not, is recognised and accepted, then, as Dr. Pikler writes, "even the Greeks,155 in ages of philosophic thought relatively advanced, conceived that there was a material connection between things and their names," and, in the same way, savages, bearing an animal group-name, believed that there was an important connection, in fact, between the men and the name-giving animal, "and so conceived the idea of kinship with or descent from" the name-giving animal.156
Totemism, as Dr. Pikler says, "has its original germ, not in religion, but in the practical everyday needs of men," the necessity for discriminating, by names, between group and group. "Totems, probably, in origin, had nothing really religious about them," I had written.157
Thus, given a set of local groups158 known by the names of Eagle Hawk, Crow, Wolf, Raven, or what not, the idea that these groups were intimately connected with the name-giving animals in each case was, in the long run, sure to occur to the savage thinker. On that assumed mystical connection, implied in the name, and suggested by the name, is laid the foundation of all early totemic practice. For the magical properties of the connection between the name and its bearer the reader has only to refer to Mr. Frazer's assortment of examples, already cited. We here give all that are needed for our purpose.
In Australia, each individual Arunta has a secret name, Aritna Churinga, "never uttered except on the most solemn occasions," "never to be spoken in the hearing of women, or of men, or of another group." To speak the secret name in these circumstances would be as impious "as the most flagrant case of sacrilege amongst white men."159
These ideas about the mystic quality of names are so familiar to all students, that I did not deem it necessary to dwell on them in Social Origins. But we should never take knowledge for granted, or rather, for every student does know the facts, we should never take it for granted that the knowledge will be applied. The facts prove, I repeat that, to the early mind names, and the things known by names, are in a mystic and transcendental connection of rapport. Other Australian examples of the secrecy of a man's name, and of the power of magically injuring him by knowledge of his name, are given by Mr. Howitt, Brough Smyth, Lumholtz, Bulmer, Dawson, and others. It would appear that this superstition as to names is later than the first giving of animal names to totem groups, and that totem names were not given to groups by the groups themselves (at least, were not given after the superstition about names came in), for to blazon their own group names abroad would be to give any enemy the power of injuring the group by his knowledge of its name. Groups, had they possessed the name-belief, would have carefully concealed their group names, if they could. There are a few American cases in which kins talk of their totems by periphrases, but every one knows the real names.
He who knew a group's name might make a magical use of his knowledge to injure the group. But the group or kin-names being already known to all concerned (having probably been given from without), when the full totemic belief arose it was far too late for groups to conceal the totem names, as an individual can and does keep his own private essential name secret. The totem animal of every group was known to all groups within a given radius. "It is a serious offence," writes Mr. Howitt, "for a man to kill the totem of another person,"160 that is, with injurious intentions towards the person.
Mr. Frazer at one time thought that the totem was perhaps originally the soul-box, or life-receptacle, of the totemist, and said: "How close must be the concealment, how impenetrable the reserve in which he hides the inner keep and citadel of his being." I could but reply, as Mr. Hill-Tout also replies, that every savage knew the secret, knew what beast was a man's totem. I added that I knew no cases of a custom of injuring a man by killing his totem, "to his intention," but that I was "haunted by the impression that I had met examples."161 Mr. Howitt, we see, mentions this kind of misdeed as punishable by native law. But it was too late, we repeat, to hide the totem names. Men now can only punish offenders who make a cruel magical use of their knowledge of an enemy's totem.
An individual, however, we must repeat, can and does keep his intimate essential personal name as dark as the secret name of the city of Rome was kept. "An individual," says Mr. Howitt, "has of course his own proper individual name, which, however, is often in abeyance, because of the disinclination to use it, or even to make it generally known, lest it might come into the knowledge and possession of some enemy, who thus having it might thereby 'sing' its owner – in other words, use it as an incantation."162
Thus, in Australia, the belief that names imply a mystic rapport between themselves and the persons who bear them is proved to be familiar, and it is acted upon by each individual who conceals his secret name.
This being so, when the members of human groups found themselves, as groups, all in possession of animal group-names, and had forgotten how they got the names (all known groups having long been named), it was quite inevitable that men, always speculative, should ask themselves, "What is the nature of this connection between us and the animals whose names we bear? It must be a connection of the closest and most important kind." This conclusion, I repeat, was inevitable, given the savage way of thinking about names. Will any anthropologist deny this assertion?
Probably the mere idea of a mystic connection between themselves and their name-giving animals set the groups upon certain superstitious acts in regard to these animals. But being men, and as such speculative, and expressing the results of their speculations in myths, they would not rest till they had evolved a myth as to the precise nature of the connection between themselves and their name-giving animals, the connection indicated by the name.
Now, men who had arrived at this point could not be so inconceivably unobservant as not to be aware of the blood connection between mother and children, indicated in the obvious facts of birth. A group may not have understood the facts of reproduction and procreation (as the Arunta are said not to understand them),163 but the facts of blood connection, and of the relation of the blood to the life, could escape no human beings.164 As savages undeniably do not draw the line between beasts and other things on one side, and men on the other, as we do, it was natural for them to suppose that the animal bearing the group name, and therefore solidaire with the group, was united with it, as the members of the group themselves were visibly united, namely, by the blood bond. The animal in myth is thus men's ancestor, or brother, or primal ancestral form. This belief would promote kindness to and regard for the animal.
Next, as soon as the animal-named groups evolved the universally diffused beliefs about the wakan or mana, or mystically sacred quality of the blood as the life, they would also develop the various totem tabus, such as not to kill the totem animal, not to shed its blood, and the idea that, by virtue of this tabu, a man must not marry a maid who was of one blood with him in the totem. Even without any blood tabu, the tabu on women of the same totem might arise. "An Oraon clan, whose totem is the Kujzar-tree, will not sit in its shade." So strong is the intertotemic avoidance.165 The belief grew to the pitch that a man must not "use" anything of his totem (χρῆσθαι γυναίκι), and thus totemic exogamy, with the sanction of the sacred totem, was established.166
Unessential to my system is the question, how the groups got animal names, as long as they got them and did not remember how they got them, and as long as the names, according to their way of thinking, indicated an essential and mystic rapport between each group and its name-giving animal. No more than these three things – a group animal-name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connection between all bearers, human and bestial, of the same name; and belief in the blood superstitions – was needed to give rise to all the totemic creeds and practices, including exogamy.
Now, we can prove that the origin of the totem names of savage groups is unknown to the savages, because they have invented many various myths to account for the origin of the names. If they knew, they would not have invented such myths. That, by their way of thinking, the name denotes a transcendental connection, which must be exploited, between themselves and their name-giving animals we have proved.
In Social Origins I ventured a guess as to how the group names first arose, namely, in sobriquets given by group to group.167 I showed that in France, England, the Orkneys, and I may now add Guernsey, and I believe Crete, villagers are known by animal names or sobriquets, as in France – Cows, Lizards, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogs; in Orkney – Starlings, Oysters, Crabs, Seals, Auks, Cod, and so forth. I also gave the names of ancient Hebrew villages, recorded in the Book of Judges, such as Lions, Jackals, Hornets, Stags, Gazelles, Wild Asses, Foxes, Hyænas, Cows, Lizards, Scorpions, and so forth. I also proved that in rural England, and in the Sioux tribe of Red Indians, rapidly ceasing to be totemic, the group sobriquets were usually "Eaters of" this or that animal, or (where totemism survived among the Sioux) "not Eaters of" this or that.168 I thus established the prevalence in human nature, among peasants and barbarians, of giving animal group-sobriquets. "In Cornwall," writes an informant (Miss Alleyne), "it seems as if the inhabitants do not care to talk about these things for some reason or another," and "the names are believed to be very ancient." When once attention is drawn to this curious subject, probably more examples will be discovered.
I thus demonstrated (and I know no earlier statement of the fact) the existence in the European class least modified by education of the tendency to give such animal group-sobriquets. The same principle even now makes personal names derived from animals most common among individuals in savage countries, the animal name usually standing, not alone, but qualified, as Wolf the Unwashed, in the Saga; Sitting Bull, and so on. As we cannot find a race just becoming totemic, we cannot, of course, prove that their group animal-names were given thus from without, but the process is undeniably a vera causa, and does operate as we show.
As to this suggestion about the sources of the animal names borne by the groups, Dr. Durkheim remarks that it is "conjectural."169 Emphatically it is, like the Doctor's own theories, nor can any theory on this matter be other than guess-work. But we do not escape from the difficulty by merely saying that the groups "adopted" animal names for themselves; for that also is a mere conjecture. Perhaps they did, but why? Is it not clear that, given a number of adjacent groups, each one group has far more need of names for its neighbours than of a name for itself? "We" are "we"; all the rest of mankind are "wild blacks," "barbarians," "outsiders." But there are a score of sets of outsiders, and "we," "The Men," need names for each and every one of them. "We" are "The Men," but the nineteen other groups are also "The Men" – in their own opinion. To us they are something else ("they" are not "we"), and we are something else to them; we are not they; we all need differentiation, and we and they, by giving names to outsiders, differentiate each other. The names arose from a primitive necessity felt in everyday life.
That such sobriquets, given from without, may come to be accepted, and even gloried in, has been doubted, but we see the fact demonstrated in such modern cases as "the sect called Christians" (so called from without), and in Les Gueux, Huguenots, Whigs, Tories, Cavaliers, Cameronians ("that nickname," cries Patrick Walker (1720), "why do they not call them Cargillites, if they will give them a nickname?")170 I later prove that two ancient and famous Highland clans have, from time immemorial, borne clan names which are derisive nicknames. Several examples of party or local nicknames, given, accepted, and rejoiced in, have been sent to me from North Carolina.
Another example, much to the point, may be offered. The "nations," that is, aggregates of friendly tribes, in Australia, let us say the Kamilaroi, are usually known by names derived from their word for "No," such as Kamil (Kamilaroi), Wira (Wirajuri), Wonghi (Wonghi tribe), Kabi (Kabi tribe). Can any one suppose that these names were given from within? Clearly they were given from without and accepted from within. One of the Wonghi or of the Wiraidjuri or Kamilaroi tribe is "proud of the title." Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, "It is possible that the names of the tribes were originally applied to them by outsiders, and were subsequently adopted by the members of the tribes themselves, but the evidence is scanty and inconclusive."171 There can hardly be any evidence but what we know of human nature. Do the French call themselves Oui Oui? Not much I but the natives of New Caledonia call them Oui Oui.172
Moreover, to return to totem names, savage groups would have no reason for resenting, as derisive, animal names given from without. Considering the universal savage belief in the mystic wisdom and wakan, or power, of animals, there was no kind of objection among savages to being known by animal group-names. I repeat that the names were rather honour-giving than derisive. This has not been understood by my critics. They have said that among European villages, and among the Sioux of to-day, group nicknames are recognised, but not gloried in or even accepted meekly. My answer is obvious. Our people have not the savage ideas about animals.
Here it may be proper to reply to this objection as urged by Mr. Hill-Tout. That scholar might seem, in one passage of his essay on "Totemism: Its Origin and Import," to agree fully with these ideas of mine. He says, "To adopt or receive the name of an animal or plant, or other object, was, in the mind of the savage, to be endowed with the essence or spirit of that object, to be under its protection, to become one with it in a very special and mysterious sense." That is exactly my own opinion. The very early groups received animal names, I suggest, and when they had forgotten how they received them, believed themselves, as Mr. Hill-Tout says they naturally would do, to be "under the protection" of their name-giving animals, "and one with them in a very special and mysterious sense." Mr. Hill-Tout proceeds to give many examples of the process from America.173
It might appear, then, that Mr. Hill-Tout accepts my theory, namely, that group names, of forgotten origin, are the germs of totemism. But he rejects it, partly, no doubt, because he owns a different theory. His reasons for objecting, however, as offered, are that, while I prove that modern villages give each other collective animal names, I do not prove that the villagers – styled Grubs, Mice, Geese, Crows, and so on – accept and rejoice in these names, as totemists rejoice in being Grubs, Mice, Crows, and so forth. But I never said that the modern villagers delighted in being called Mice or Cuckoos! They very much resent such appellations. The group names of modern villagers were cited merely to prove that the habit of giving such collective names survives in Folk Lore, not to prove that modern villagers accept them gladly. The reason why they resent them is that our country folk are not savages, and have not the beliefs about the mystic force of names and the respect for animals which Mr. Hill-Tout justly ascribes to savages.