Meanwhile the question as between two entirely different solutions of the old mystery remains open.

Since critics of my Social Origins often missed my meaning, I am forced to suppose that I may in like manner have misconstrued some of the opinions of others, which, as I understand them, I am obliged to contest. I have done my best to understand, and shall deeply regret any failures of interpretation on my own part.

Necessarily I was unaware that in Mr. Frazer's opinion, as set forth in his essay of September 1905, "the common assumption that inheritance of the totem through the mother always preceded inheritance of it through the father need not hold good." I have throughout argued on that assumption, which I understood to be held by Mr. Frazer, as well as by Mr. Taylor, Mr. Howitt, and most authorities. If it be correct, as I still think it is, it cannot but be fatal to the Arunta claim to primitiveness. But Arunta society is, in many points, so obviously highly organised, and so confessedly advanced, that I am quite unable to accept this tribe as an example of the most archaic state of affairs extant. If I am wrong, much of my argument is shaken, and of this it is necessary to warn the reader. But a tribe really must be highly advanced in organisation, if it can afford to meet and devote four months to ceremonials, as it did, in a region said to be relatively deficient in natural supplies.

In this book I have been able to use the copious materials of Mr. Howitt and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen in their two recent works. It seems arrogant to differ from some of the speculative opinions of these distinguished observers, but "we must go where the logos leads us."

I end by thanking Mr. H. J. Ford for his design of Eagle Hawk and Crow, heading the totems in their phratries, and betrothing two interesting young human members of these divisions.

THE SECRET OF THE TOTEM

CHAPTER I

ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM

The making of the local tribe of savagery—Earliest known stage of society—Result of complex processes—Elaborate tribal rules—Laws altered deliberately: sometimes borrowed—Existing 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 beliefs—Some beliefs tend to polytheism: others towards monotheism—Some tribes of pristine organisation have totemic magic and pirrauru: others have not—The more northern tribes of pristine organisation 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 (b) has female descent plus "matrimonial classes"—Account of these—Eight-class system—The Arunta nation—Their peculiar form of belief in reincarnation—Churinga 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.

Men live in united local communities, relatively large, and carefully regimented, before they have learned to domesticate animals, or to obey chiefs, or to practise the rudest form of agriculture, or to fashion clay into pottery, or to build permanent hovels. Customary law is older than any of these things, and the most ancient law which we can observe unites a tribe by that system of marriages which expresses itself in totemism.

It is plain that the processes of evolution which have resulted in the most backward societies known to us, must have been very complex. If we reflect that the society of the Australian aborigines presents the institution of local tribes, each living peacefully, except for occasional internal squabbles, in a large definite tract of country; cultivating, on the whole, friendly relations with similar and similarly organised tribes; while obeying a most elaborate system of rules, it is obvious that these social conditions must be very remote from the absolutely primitive.[1] The rules of these tribes regulate every detail of private life with a minuteness and a rigour that remind us of what the Scottish Cavalier (1652) protested against as "the bloody and barbarous inconveniences of Presbyterial Government." Yet the tribes have neither presbyters, nor priests, nor kings. Their body of customary law, so copious and complex that, to the European, it seems as puzzling as algebra is to the savage, has been evolved, after a certain early point, by the slow secular action of "collective wisdom." We shall find that on this point, early deliberate modification of law, there can be no doubt.

The recent personal researches of Mr. Howitt and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen make it certain that tribal affairs, now, among many tribes at least, are discussed with the utmost deliberation, and that modifications of institutions may be canvassed, adopted, or rejected, on the initiative of seniors, local "Headmen," and medicine men.[2] It is also certain that tribe borrows from tribe, in the matter of songs, dances, and institutions, while members of one tribe are permitted to be present at the sacred ceremonials of others, especially when these tribes are on intermarrying terms.[3] In such cases, the ceremonials of one tribe may affect those of another, the Arunta may influence the Urabunna, who borrow their sacred objects or churinga for use in their own rites. We even hear of cases in which native religious ideas have been propagated by missionaries sent from tribe to tribe.[4]

Thus, conservative as is the savage by nature, he is distinctly capable of deliberate modification of his rites, ceremonies, and customary laws, and of interchanging ideas on these subjects with neighbouring tribes.

All this is true, to-day, and doubtless has long been true.

But at this point we must guard against what we consider a prevalent fallacy. The legislative action of the natives, the initiative of local Headmen, and Heads of Totems and of "Classes" (social divisions), and of medicine men inspired by "some supernatural being, such as Kutchi of the Dieri, Bunjil of the Wurunjerri, or Daramulun of the Coast Murring,"[5] is only rendered possible by the existence, to-day, of social conditions which cannot be primitive. To-day the Tribe, with its innumerable rules, and its common faith in Kutchi or Daramulun,