Tautology

“ We saw, when discussing Relative Terms, that the connotation of one term often implies that of another; sometimes reciprocally, like 'master' and 'slave'; or by inclusion, like species and genus; or by exclusion, like contraries and contradictories. When terms so related appear as subject and predicate of the same proposition, the result is often tautology—e.g., The master has authority over his slave; A horse is an animal; Red is not blue; British is not foreign. Whoever knows the meaning of 'master,' 'horse,' 'red,' 'British,' learns nothing from these propositions. ”

“ And now, through his tautology, he compels us also to be tautological, since we are careful to guard against being supposed to pass over any of the charges advanced by him; and therefore, in reference to the matter before us following the order of his treatise as we have it, he says: “Is it not the height of absurdity to maintain, that if, while he himself was alive, he won over not a single person to his views, after his death any who wish are able to gain over such a multitude of individuals?” ”

“ This stipulation, being independent of emperical facts, is a logical rule, and if it is followed, T becomes a tautology; the word 'can' in T (together with 'only') does not denote empirical impossibility, but logical impossibility. ”

“ The preposition “from” is included in these adverbs, therefore it becomes tautology in sense when prefixed to them.
462. “Equally as well,” is a very common expression, and a very incorrect one; the adverb of comparison, “as,” has no right in the sentence. “Equally well,” “Equally high,” “Equally dear,” should be the construction; and if a complement be necessary in the phrase, it should be preceded by the preposition “with,” as, “The wall was equally high with the former one,” “The goods at Smith’s are equally dear with those sold at the shop next door,” &c. “Equally the same” is tautology. ”

“ The truth-conditions determine the range, which is left to the facts by the proposition.
(The proposition, the picture, the model, are in a negative sense like a solid body, which restricts the free movement of another: in a positive sense, like the space limited by solid substance, in which a body may be placed.)
Tautology leaves to reality the whole infinite logical space; contradiction fills the whole logical space and leaves no point to reality. Neither of them, therefore, can in any way determine reality. ”

“ This restriction I make, not for the purpose of simplifying the problem of totemism by disregarding 'the individual totem,' 'the sex totem,' and so on, but because I understand that savages everywhere use one word for their hereditary kin totem, and other words for the plant or animal protectors of individuals, of magical societies, and so forth. The true totem is a plant or animal or other thing, the hereditary friend and ally—of the kin—but all plant or animal allies of individuals or of magical societies are not totems. ”

“ A favorite device for perpetuating institutions among the primitive peoples of many districts on different continents is the taboo, or prohibition, which is commonly fiducial but is often of general application. This device finds its best development in the earlier stages in the development of belief, and is normally connected with totemism. Another device, which is remarkably widespread, as shown by Morgan, is kinship nomenclature. ”

“ I need not explain to the Society what totemism is—the belief that certain kindreds descend from animals, plants, and other natural objects and phenomena, the naming of the kindred after these objects, and a certain sacredness which, in each kin, is ascribed to the animal, plant, or what not. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not only the clans and the Indi- sexes that have totems ; individuals also have their own vidual special totems, i.e., classes of objects (generally species of animals) , which they regard as related to themselves by those ties of mutual respect and protection which are characteristic of totemism. This relationship, however, in the case of the individual totem, begins and ends with the individual man, and is not, like the clan totem, transmitted by inheritance. ”

“ In the totemic stage of society the totem-clan was the vital organism, and the individual scarcely realised his own separate existence, but regarded himself as a member of his totem-clan, being a piece or fraction of a common life which extended through all the members of the clan and all the totem animals of the species. They may have thought also that each species of animals and plants had a different kind of life, and consequently also each clan whose life was derived from, and linked to, that of its totem-species. ”

“ Plainly names of the totem sort are well suited to the convenience of savages, who converse much in gesture-language. Above all, the very nature of totemism shows that it took its present shape at a time when men, animals, and plants were conceived of as physically akin; when names were handed on through the female line; when exogamy was the rule of marriage, and when the family theoretically included all persons bearing the same family name, that is, all who claimed kindred with the same plant, animal, or object, whether the persons are really akin or not. ”

“ Totemism, in the specific form that has to do with kinship, means that a social group depends for its identity on a certain intimate and exclusive relation in which it stands towards an animal-kind, or a plant-kind, or, more rarely, a class of inanimate objects, or, very rarely, something that is individual and not a kind or class at all. Such a totem, in the first place, normally provides the social group with its name. ”

“ All are derived by the American theory [2] from the manitu, or guardian, of some individual to whom the animal or other object has been revealed in an inspired dream or otherwise. The object became hereditary in the family of that man, descended to his offspring, or, in early societies with reckoning in the female line, to the offspring of his sisters (this is Mr. Hill-Tout's theory) , and so became the hereditary totem of a kin, while men of various totem kins unite in religious societies with society "totems" suggested by dreams. ”

“ I have already remarked that this is true; we find human associations, which are not kins or clans, bearing animal and other totemic names, while these associations are not exogamous (the Arunta nation) ; and we find exogamous sets, kins, or associations which do not bear animal names. ”

“ Even more curious are the vestiges of Totemism, or primitive animal worship, common to all branches of the Aryan race, as well as to the North American Indians, the Australian black fellows, and many other savages. Totemism consists in the belief that each family is literally descended from a particular plant or animal, whose name it bears; and members of the family generally refuse to pluck the plant or kill the animal after which they are named. Of these beliefs we find apparently several traces in Anglo-Saxon life. ”

“ Suppose such a society to reach the dimensions of a tribe. The rules that applied to brothers and sisters, mothers and sons, would persist, and the original names for persons in such relationships in the family would be extended, in the tribe, to all persons of the same status: new terms being adopted, or old terms extended, to cover new social relationships created by social laws in a wider society.
Another Theory of the Origin of Totemism and Exogamy.—How this would happen may be seen in studying the other hypothesis of exogamy and totemism. ”

“ Totemic clanship, however, differed from ordinary human clanship in that the nonhuman clan-brother was regarded as a specially powerful being, endowed with the superhuman qualities with which all animals and plants and certain other objects were credited. Regard for the totem was, thus, part of the regard paid to nonhuman objects in general, only emotionalized and intensified by the belief that the nonhuman group was in a peculiar way allied to the human group. ”

“ But, on further reflection, I conceived that my first theory was superfluous. Given the existence of local groups, as such totemic, and of totem kins of descent within the original local totem groups, the actual results, I thought, arise automatically, as soon as two local totem groups agree to intermarry. Men and women must many out of their local totem group (now 'phratry') and must marry out of their totem of descent. Consequently, no one totem could possibly exist in both phratries. ”

“ To philologists, the manner in which such calls to animals become customary in particular districts illustrates the consensus by which the use of words is settled. Each case of the kind indicates that a word has prevailed by selection among a certain society of men, and the main reasons of words holding their ground within particular limits, though it is so difficult to assign them exactly in each case, are probably inherent fitness in the first place, and traditional inheritance in the second. ”

“ Sub-Totems.—This is the name of what are also styled “multiplex totems,” that is, numerous objects claimed for their own by totem kins in various Australian regions. The Emu totem kin, among the Euahlayi tribe, claims as its own twenty-three animals and the north-west wind. [80] The whole universe, including mankind, was apparently divided between the totem kins. Therefore the list of sub-totems might be extended indefinitely. [81] These “sub-totems” are a savage effort at universal classification. ”

“ The various classifications which have been attempted are so many proofs of unity of origin; and their confliction shows the fallacy of the theory of diversity. * * * * We cannot admit that mankind can have diversity of origin while so united by one great plan. If a species or variety of the genus homo sprang up in Europe and another in America by agency of conditions existing in those localities, it would be beyond probability that they should both be formed on the same plan.”—H. Tuttle’s Origin and Antiquity of Physical Man Scientifically Considered, pp. ”

“ It is waste of time to seek for the origin of totemism in anything—an animal name, a sacred animal, a paternal soul tenanting an animal—which is inherited from its first owner, he being an individual ancestor male. Such inheritance implies the existence of reckoning descent in the male line, and totemism conspicuously began in, and is least contaminated in, tribes who reckon descent in the female line. ”

“ It is, moreover, long lived, and has the quality not only of putting off its old age, and assuming a second youth, but of receiving at the same time an augmentation of its size and strength; and when it has filled the appointed measure of its existence, it consumes itself, as Taut has laid down in the Sacred Books, upon which account this animal is received into the sacred rites and mysteries. ”

“ The next generation has the other class name, and may not marry within that. Assuming that phratry names, totem names, and generation names are always names of animals (or of other objects in nature) , the laws would amount, we repeat, simply to this: No person may marry another person who, by phratry, or totem, or generation, owns the same hereditary animal name or other name as himself or herself. Moreover no one may marry a person (where matrimonial classes exist) who bears the same class or generation name as his mother or father. ”

“ But the chief evidence for the savage theory of man’s close kinship with the lower animals is found in the institution called totemism (q.v.) —the belief that certain stocks of men in the various tribes are descended by blood descent from, or are developed out of, or otherwise connected with, certain objects animate or inanimate, but especially with beasts. The strength of the opinion is proved by its connexion with very stringent marriage laws. ”

“ Inherited ideas are a curious thing, and interesting to observe and examine. I had mine, the king and his people had theirs. In both cases they flowed in ruts worn deep by time and habit, and the man who should have proposed to divert them by reason and argument would have had a long contract on his hands. For instance, those people had inherited the idea that all men without title and a long pedigree, whether they had great natural gifts and acquirements or hadn't, were creatures of no more consideration than so many animals, bugs, insects ”

“ It will be noted that when we hear the specialists in anatomy and biology, their expressions on the subject of man's ancestry are, as a rule, characterized by a strong dissent from the development theory, while the belief in a development of man from an ape-like ancestor, uttered with a note of cocksureness, is found mainly among amateurs in these sciences. ”

“ A man’s name is one of the main constituents of his person and perhaps a part of his psyche. The fact that they had the same names as animals must have led primitive men to assume a secret and important bond between their persons and the particular animal species. What other bond than consanguinity could it be? But if the similarity of names once led to this assumption it could also account directly for all the totemic prohibitions of the blood taboo, including exogamy. ”

“ Where usages like exogamy occur, or where there is reverence for an object, without belief in a definite, nontheistic relation between a human clan and a nonhuman object, we cannot recognize totemism proper; such usages must be treated as belonging to man's general attitude toward his nonhuman associates. ”