J. J. Atkinson

“ Amidst the savage races, although rare, it is by no means unknown. It is not a crime by the laws of totem kinship with female descent, the daughter in such a case being always of the same totem as her mother, and thus theoretically eligible. The only bar is the classificatory system which, based on sequence in birth, forbids all connection between those of different generations. Thus this form of incest, when it does occur, in no way creates the utter horror which we find universal at any union between brother and sister. ”

“ Thus we have suggested that the original innovation consisted in the toleration of the presence of a single male offspring. But the way was evidently thus paved for the acceptance, at least in later generations, of others of the young males, although at first only of those who, not too much rivalling the fathers in power, would offer least grounds for jealousy. Now if we may accept it as an axiom in the matter of social progress in this race, that everything depended on aggregation of numbers in peaceful union, then such renewed inclusion presents itself in an important light. ”

“ Let us concentrate, now, our attention on the character of the genuine totem, the totem of the group or kin. It is not adopted by the savages on a dream-warning; each man or woman for himself or herself: nor is it chosen for each child at birth, nor by a diviner, like the nagual, bush-soul, nyarong of Sarawak, or the secret animal friend of each individual Australian. A savage inherits his group totem name. The name of any plant or animal which he may adopt for himself, or have assigned to him as a personal name, by his parents, or, so to speak, god-parents, is not his totem. ”

“ It is even certain that the full possible benefit of the innovation would not be able to make itself felt even in the group of its creators. It is easy to understand that, in spite of the shield-like love of the mother, there would be friction between father and son in such unfamiliar circumstances, not only novel to the individual, but unhabitual to the race. ”

“ There is no fact more striking than the subordination in which the younger bulls are kept; as long as they are at all tolerated in the herd by its patriarch, their intercourse with the females is most limited, and only takes place by stealth and at the risk of life and limb.
Nothing, as breeders are aware, is so fatal to the well-being of a herd, or leads so quickly to degeneration, as the perpetuation of the race by immature males. That procreation should be the act of the robust adult alone, is evidently an axiom with nature herself in successful production ”

“ The very significant counter-fact, however, remains, that none of the actual anthropoids, as far as regards the adult males, are in any way social or even gregarious; the conclusion thus seems evident that, like these his nearest compeers of to-day, man was on the contrary a non-social animal, and that, as with the gorilla, only one grown male would have been seen in a band. We must then imagine our more or less human ancestor, roaming the forest in search of daily food, as a solitary polygamous male, with wife or wives and female children; the unsocial head of a solitary isolated group. ”

“ But man is never irrational. His reason for doing this, or believing that, may seem a bad reason to us, but a reason he always had for his creeds and conduct, and he had a reason for his totem belief, a reason in congruity with his limited knowledge of facts, and with his theory of the universe. For all things he wanted an explanation. Now what he wanted a reason for, in Totemism, was the nature and origin of the connection between his own and the neighbouring groups, and the plant or animal names which they bore. ”

“ As if to accentuate the problems raised by the change of 'class' names in each generation, Mr. Matthews has discovered that when a man may marry a woman of his own 'phratry,' but out of a set of totems not his own, the totems of his children by her alter as the class names do. 'The children take the totem name,' not of their mother, but of their maternal grandmother. ”

“ Totemism as we know it, especially in some tribes of North America and in Australia, has certainly, as a necessary condition, that state of mind in which man regards all the things in the world as very much on a level in personality; the beasts being even more powerful than himself. Were it not so, the totem myths about human descent from beasts and plants: about friendly beasts, beasts who may marry men, and about metamorphoses, could not have been invented and believed, even to whatever extent myths are believed. ”

“ Lord Avebury, at all events, supposes that a form of capture finally came to be applied, with results in individual marriage, to women of the same 'tribe' (p. 111) . But if we have 'complete and conclusive evidence that in large portions of Australia every man had the privilege of a husband over every woman not belonging to his own gens; sharing, of course, these privileges with every other man belonging to the same class or gens as himself' (p. 112) , I fail to see that a man gained anything by enduring the trouble and risk of capturing a bride all to himself. ”

“ The horror aroused by certain relations, such as that of brother-and-sister marriage, is perhaps the oldest of moral sentiments, yet it has lost its hold of some barbaric races, and has been overcome by dynastic pride, as in the Royal House of the Incas of Peru, and in that of Egypt. While the Family, everywhere almost, has been secured by a religious and all but instinctive dread of certain aberrations, the laws or customs which may not be broken have varied in different lands, and in different stages of civilisation. What is incest in one age or country is innocent in another ”

“ If because the common name, say Emu, is taken to indicate some sort of blood-relationship, why may you not marry a blood relation, even if there be no traceable kinship between you and her? A Douglas may marry a Douglas, a Smith may marry a Smith; but an Emu is often capitally punished if he marries an Emu. Suppose you get your totem name from the beast for which you do magic. Why may you not marry a person who bears the name of the same beast, and whose male kindred do magic for it? ”

“ The myths, once believed in, are acted upon; they become the parents of tabus, magic, rites of various kinds. Social rules must be developed, some already exist; and each group called by an animal, plant, or other such name, becomes, under that name, a social unit, and accepts, as such, the customary legislation, just as a parish does. You must not marry within the totem name: either because of the totem tabu in general, or because the totem comes to be conceived of as denoting kinship, and (for one reason or another) you had already a tendency not to marry within the limit of the group. ”

“ What is the origin of the stringent laws that, among naked and far from dainty nomads, compel men and women to seek their mates outside of certain large groups of real or imagined kindred? The answers given to this question have varied with the facts of savage law which chanced to be at each moment accessible to inquirers, and all attempts to solve the problem must be provisional. New knowledge may upset even the most recent theory, and, indeed, new knowledge of the rules of certain Australian tribes has already produced fresh hypotheses, as regards certain aspects of the problem. ”

“ Now I have too much respect for our savage friends to think they used myth any further than we do. We go every Sunday saying "I believe," but we don't build up much upon this. Our social fabric, nay our religion, is not of this. ”

“ Before entering into the matter ourselves, we must keep in mind our affirmation as to the axiom which must, in my opinion, guide us in all research into the hidden causes of early social evolution. All innovations, as we have said, in the regulation of society, all novel legislative procedure so to speak, will be found to have relation to the sexual feelings in jealousy. This already is the genesis of the primal law, and, in each case of avoidance, we have found jealousy the leading factor. ”

“ We shall doubtless find that the door left ajar by the entrance of the outside suitor was not to yield further with ease to the pressure of new needs, half-hearted as men would be, from the conservative force of old ideas, of incest and entire masculine dominance.
There is, for instance, one curious trait in actual savage custom which evidently dates from a very early stage of this epoch. It is that of the strange forms of 'stealthy' intercourse, being the indispensable preliminary symbols of the legality of an after marriage between the resident female of a group and an outside male. ”

“ With equal strength and probably already greater cunning than any actual animal of to-day, he had perhaps acquired dominance over most of the other beasts of the field. The patriarch had only one enemy whom he should dread, an enemy with each coming year more and more to be feared—deadly rivals of his very own flesh and blood, and the fruit of his loins—namely, that neighbouring group of young males exiled by sexual jealousy from his own and similar family groups—a youthful band of brothers living together in forced celibacy, or at most in polyandrous relation with some single female captive. ”

“ Place-names, and many nicknames, could not so be signalled.
This theory, of course, is not in accordance with any savage explanations of the origin of their totem. It could not be! Their explanations are such fables as only men in their intellectual condition could invent: they are myths, they involve impossibilities. My hypothesis (or myth) does not, I think, involve anything impossible or far-fetched, or incapable of proof in a general way. It is human, it is inevitable, that plant and animal names should be given, especially among groups more or less hostile. ”

“ To hold that man, whilst in the animal stage, should form an exception to the general rule seems unreasonable. If, as we are inclined to believe, he was originally a quite non-social animal, the fact becomes more possible still that, as with modern types of anthropoid apes, each adult as head of a group was at feud with every other. As regards the social evolution, it would indeed seem most natural that, as Mr. Darwin conceived, the first step in progress should have been taken by animals already united gregariously, and thus already imbued with some social feelings. ”

“ The complication we have mentioned would arise when, after successful captures of females by the young males, captures which it is hardly necessary to state would have been 'hostile,' the introduction of their captives within the parental group took place. The presence of females not to be his own within a circle where all that was feminine had ever been his in undisputed right, would certainly stir to its depths the soul of the Cyclopean type of parent. Such a situation must in its inception have caused a friction full of menace to the new order of things. ”

“ For myself, I still incline to the opinion [36] that the reckoning of descent through the woman is the more archaic method, and the method that, certainly, tends to dwindle and disappear, as at last it did among the Picts. This applies to human society, not to that of Mr. Atkinson's hypothesis, in which the question is not of kin, but of property. 'Every female in my crowd is my sole property,' says—or feels—Mr. Atkinson's patriarchal anthropoid, and the patriarch gives expression to his sentiment with teeth and claws, if he has not yet learned to double up his fist, with a stone in it. ”

“ The son, in addressing or speaking of his mother, overlooks the 'one love which needs no winning,' and his term has reference only to the present marriage law of his tribe. That law 'codifies' the terms, they result from that law, and that law, again, is based, if I am right, on totem prohibitions, on the desire to keep marriage between people of the same generation, and on the rights and duties of the generations. These prohibitions, of phratry, 'class,' totem, and age, leave only a certain set of women marriageable to a certain set of men. ”

“ Each group will need a special name for each of its unfriendly neighbours.
These names, as likely as not, or more likely than not, will be animal or plant names, given for various reasons, perhaps, among others from fancied resemblances. It may be objected that an individual may bear a resemblance to this or that animal, but that a group cannot. But it is a peculiarity of human nature, to think that strangers (of another school eleven, say) are all very like each other, and if one of them reminds us of an Emu or a Kangaroo, all of them will. ”

“ An alien could belong to a local deme, but not to a Φρατρία. His children, if by marriage with a free woman, were reckoned in her father's Φρατρία male descent prevailing, of course, in Attica. In Australia the tribes-woman's children by an alien would usually go to her totem and 'primary exogamous division.' The child of an alien woman, in Attica, even if the father was high born, could not be admitted to a Φρατρία: which certainly looks like a survival of the archaic reckoning by female descent. To try to insert an alien child in a deme was a civil, in a Φρατρία was a religious offence. ”