Totem and Taboo Part 15

[165] "It is unlikely that a community of savages should deliberately parcel out the realm of nature into provinces, a.s.sign each province to a particular band of magicians, and bid all the bands to work their magic and weave their spells for the common good." _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. IV, p. 57.

[166] _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. II, p. 89, and IV, p. 59.

[167] _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. IV, p. 63.

[168] "That belief is a philosophy far from primitive", Andrew Lang, _Secret of the Totem_, p. 192.

[169] Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. IV, p. 45.

[170] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 48.

[171] Wundt, _Elemente der Volker-Psychologie_, p. 190.

[172] _L'annee Sociologique_, 1898-1904.

[173] See Frazer's _Criticism of Durkheim, Totemism and Exogamy_, p.

101.

[174] _Secret_, etc., p. 125.

[175] See Frazer, _l.c._, Vol. IV, p. 75: "The totemic clan is a totally different social organism from the exogamous cla.s.s, and we have good grounds for thinking that it is far older."

[176] _Primitive Marriage_, 1865.

[177] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 73 to 92.

[178] Compare Chapter I.

[179] Morgan, _Ancient Society_, 1877.--Frazer, _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. IV, p. 105.

[180] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 106.

[181] _Origin and Development of Moral Conceptions_, Vol. II: Marriage (1909). See also there the author's defence against familiar objections.

[182] _l.c._, p. 97.

[183] Compare Durkheim, _La Prohibition de l'Inceste_ (_L'annee Sociologique_, I, 1896-7).

[184] Charles Darwin says about savages: "They are not likely to reflect on distant evils to their progeny."

[185] See Chapter I.

[186] "Thus the ultimate origin of exogamy and with it the law of incest--since exogamy was devised to prevent incest--remains a problem nearly as dark as ever."--_Totemism and Exogamy_, I, p. 165.

[187] _The Origin of Man_, Vol. II, Chap. 20, pp. 603-4.

[188] _Primal Law_, London, 1903 (with Andrew Lang, _Social Origins_).

[189] _Secret of the Totem_, pp. 114, 143.

[190] "If it be granted that exogamy existed in practice, on the lines of Mr. Darwin's theory, before the totem beliefs lent to the practice a _sacred_ sanction, our task is relatively easy. The first practical rule would be that of the jealous sire: 'No males to touch the females in my camp,' with expulsion of adolescent sons. _In efflux of time that rule, becoming habitual_, would be, 'No marriages within the local group.'

Next let the local groups receive names such as Emus, Crows, Opossums, Snipes, and the rule becomes, 'No marriage within the local group of animal name; no Snipe to marry a Snipe.' But, if the primal groups were not exogamous they would become so as soon as totemic myths and taboos were developed out of the animal, vegetable, and other names of small local groups."--'_Secret of the Totem_', p. 143. (The italics above are mine).--In his last expression on the subject (_Folklore_, December, 1911), Andrew Lang states, however, that he has given up the derivation of exogamy out of the "general totemic" taboo.

[A] M. Wulff, _Contributions to Infantile s.e.xuality_, _Zentralbl. f.

Psychoa.n.a.lyze_, 1912, II, No. I, p. 15.

[191] _Little Hans_, trans. by A. A. Brill (Moffat, Yard & Co., N.Y.).

[192] _l.c._, p. 41.

[193] 'The Phantasy of the Giraffe,' _l.c._, p. 30.

[194] S. Ferenczi, _Contributions to Psychoa.n.a.lysis_, p. 204, translated by Ernest Jones (Badger, Boston, 1916).

[195] Compare the communications of Reitler, Ferenczi, Rank, and Eder about the subst.i.tution of blindness in the Oedipus myth for castration.

_Intern. Zeitschrift f. artzl. Psychoa.n.a.lyze_, 1913, I, No. 2.

[196] Ferenczi, _l.c._, p. 209.

[197] Ferenczi, _l.c._, p. 212.

[198] Frazer finds that the essence of totemism is in this identification: "Totemism is an identification of a man with his totem."

_Totemism and Exogamy_, IV, p. 5.

[199] I am indebted to Otto Rank for the report of a case of dog phobia in an intelligent young man whose explanation of how he acquired his ailment sounds remarkably like the totem theory of the Aruntas mentioned above. He had heard from his father that his mother at one time during her pregnancy had been frightened by a dog.

[200] _The Religion of the Semites_, Second Edition, London, 1907.

[201] _The Religion of the Semites_, Second Edition, London, 1907.

[202] "The inference is that the domestication to which totemism leads (when there are any animals capable of domestication) is fatal to totemism." Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, 1911, fifth edition, p. 120.

[203] _l.c._, p. 313.

[204] _The Golden Bough_, Part V; _Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild_, 1912, in the chapters: "Eating the G.o.d and Killing the Divine Animal."

[205] Frazer, _Totem and Exogamy_, Vol. II, p. 590.

[206] I am not ignorant of the objections to this theory of sacrifice as expressed by Marillier, Hubert, Mauss and others, but they have not essentially impaired the theories of Robertson Smith.

[207] _Religion of the Semites_, 2nd Edition, 1907, p. 412.

[208] For a recent contribution compare _The Whole House of the Chilkat_, by G. T. Emmons (_American Museum Journal_, Vol. XVI, No. 7.) [Translator].

[209] The reader will avoid the erroneous impression which this exposition may call forth by taking into consideration the concluding sentence of the subsequent chapter.

[210] The seemingly monstrous a.s.sumption that the tyrannical father was overcome and slain by a combination of the expelled sons has also been accepted by Atkinson as a direct result of the conditions of the Darwinian primal horde. "A youthful band of brothers living together in forced celibacy, or at most in polyandrous relation with some single female captive. A horde as yet weak in their imp.u.b.escence they are, but they would, when strength was gained with time, inevitably wrench by combined attacks, renewed again and again, both wife and life from the paternal tyrant" (_Primal Law_, pp. 220-1). Atkinson, who spent his life in New Caledonia and had unusual opportunities to study the natives, also refers to the fact that the conditions of the primal horde which Darwin a.s.sumes can easily be observed among herds of wild cattle and horses and regularly lead to the killing of the father animal. He then a.s.sumes further that a disintegration of the horde took place after the removal of the father through embittered fighting among the victorious sons, which thus precluded the origin of a new organization of society; "An ever recurring violent succession to the solitary paternal tyrant by sons, whose parricidal hands were so soon again clenched in fratricidal strife" (p. 228). Atkinson, who did not have the suggestions of psychoa.n.a.lysis at his command and did not know the studies of Robertson Smith, finds a less violent transition from the primal horde to the next social stage in which many men live together in peaceful accord. He attributes it to maternal love that at first only the youngest sons and later others too remain in the horde, who in return for this toleration acknowledge the s.e.xual prerogative of the father by the restraint which they practise towards the mother and towards their sisters.

So much for the very remarkable theory of Atkinson, its essential correspondence with the theory here expounded, and its point of departure which makes it necessary to relinquish so much else.