Part 8 (1/2)
([Greek: a a]) _The Nominalistic Theories_
The information about these theories will justify their summation under the headings I have used.
Garcilaso de La Vega, a descendant of the Peruvian Inkas, who wrote the history of his race in the seventeenth century, is already said to have traced back what was known to him about totemic phenomena to the need of the tribes to differentiate themselves from each other by means of names[150]. The same idea appears centuries later in the _Ethnology_ of A. K. Keane where totems are said to be derived from heraldic badges through which individuals, families and tribes wanted to differentiate themselves[151].
Max Muller expresses the same opinion about the meaning of the totem in his _Contributions to the Science of Mythology_[152]. A totem is said to be, 1. a mark of the clan, 2. a clan name, 3. the name of the ancestor of the clan, 4. the name of the object which the clan reveres. J. Pikler wrote later, in 1899, that men needed a permanent name for communities and individuals that could be preserved in writing.... Thus totemism arises, not from a religious, but from a prosaic everyday need of mankind. The giving of names, which is the essence of totemism, is a result of the technique of primitive writing. The totem is of the nature of an easily represented writing symbol. But if savages first bore the name of an animal they deduced the idea of relations.h.i.+p from this animal[153].
Herbert Spencer[154], also, thought that the origin of totemism was to be found in the giving of names. The attributes of certain individuals, he showed, had brought about their being named after animals so that they had come to have names of honour or nicknames which continued in their descendants. As a result of the indefiniteness and incomprehensibility of primitive languages, these names are said to have been taken by later generations as proof of their descent from the animals themselves. Totemism would thus be the result of a mistaken reverence for ancestors.
Lord Avebury (better known under his former name, Sir John Lubbock) has expressed himself quite similarly about the origin of totemism, though without emphasizing the misunderstanding. If we want to explain the veneration of animals we must not forget how often human names are borrowed from animals. The children and followers of a man who was called bear or lion naturally made this their ancestral name. In this way it came about that the animal itself came to be respected and finally venerated.
Fison has advanced what seems an irrefutable objection to such a derivation of the totem name from the names of individuals[155]. He shows from conditions in Australia that the totem is always the mark of a group of people and never of an individual. But if it were otherwise, if the totem was originally the name of a single individual, it could never, with the system of maternal inheritance, descend to his children.
The theories thus far stated are evidently inadequate. They may explain how animal names came to be applied to primitive tribes but they can never explain the importance attached to the giving of names which const.i.tutes the totemic system. The most noteworthy theory of this group has been developed by Andrew Lang in his books, _Social Origins_, 1903, and _The Secret of the Totem_, 1905. This theory still makes naming the centre of the problem, but it uses two interesting psychological factors and thus may claim to have contributed to the final solution of the riddle of totemism.
Andrew Lang holds that it does not make any difference how clans acquired their animal names. It might be a.s.sumed that one day they awoke to the consciousness that they had them without being able to account from where they came. _The origin of these names had been forgotten._ In that case they would seek to acquire more information by pondering over their names, and with their conviction of the importance of names they necessarily came to all the ideas that are contained in the totemic system. For primitive men, as for savages of to-day and even for our children[156], a name is not indifferent and conventional as it seems to us, but is something important and essential. A man's name is one of the main const.i.tuents 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 a.s.sume 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 a.s.sumption it could also account directly for all the totemic prohibitions of the blood taboo, including exogamy.
”No more than these three things--a group animal name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connexion between all bearers, human and b.e.s.t.i.a.l, of the same name; and belief in the blood superst.i.tions--were needed to give rise to all the totemic creeds and practices, including exogamy” (_Secret of the Totem_, p. 126).
Lang's explanation extends over two periods. It derives the totemic system of psychological necessity from the totem names, on the a.s.sumption that the origin of the naming has been forgotten. The other part of the theory now seeks to clear up the origin of these names. We shall see that it bears an entirely different stamp.
This other part of the Lang theory is not markedly different from those which I have called 'nominalistic'. The practical need of differentiation compelled the individual tribes to a.s.sume names and therefore they tolerated the names which every tribe ascribed to the other. This 'naming from without' is the peculiarity of Lang's construction. The fact that the names which thus originated were borrowed from animals is not further remarkable and need not have been felt by primitive men as abuse or derision. Besides, Lang has cited numerous cases from later epochs of history in which names given from without that were first meant to be derisive were accepted by those nicknamed and voluntarily borne (The Guises, Whigs and Tories). The a.s.sumption that the origin of these names was forgotten in the course of time connects this second part of the Lang theory with the first one just mentioned.
([Greek: b]) _The Sociological Theories_
S. Reinach, who successfully traced the relics of the totemic system in the cult and customs of later periods, though attaching from the very beginning only slight value to the factor of descent from the totem animal, once made the casual remark that totemism seemed to him to be nothing but ”_une hypertrophie de l'instinct social_.”[157]
The same interpretation seems to permeate the new work of E. Durkheim, _Les Formes elementaires de la Vie Religieuse; Le Systeme Totemique en Australie_, 1912. The totem is the visible representative of the social religion of these races. It embodies the community, which is the real object of veneration.
Other authors have sought a more intimate reason for the share which social impulses have played in the formation of totemic inst.i.tutions.
Thus A. C. Haddon has a.s.sumed that every primitive tribe originally lived on a particular plant or animal species and perhaps also traded with this food and exchanged it with other tribes. It then was inevitable that a tribe should become known to other tribes by the name of the animal which played such weighty role with it. At the same time this tribe would develop a special familiarity with this animal, and a kind of interest for it which, however, was based upon the psychic motive of man's most elementary and pressing need, namely, hunger[158].
The objections against this most rational of all the totem theories are that such a state of the food supply is never found among primitive men and probably never existed. Savages are the more omnivorous the lower they stand in the social scale. Besides, it is incomprehensible how such an exclusive diet could have developed an almost religious relation to the totem, culminating in an absolute abstention from the referred food.
The first of the three theories about the origin of totemism which Frazer stated was a psychological one. We shall report it elsewhere.
Frazer's second theory, which we will discuss here, originated under the influence of an important publication by two investigators of the inhabitants of Central Australia[159].
Spencer and Gillen describe a series of peculiar inst.i.tutions, customs, and opinions of a group of tribes, the so-called Arunta nation, and Frazer subscribes to their opinion that these peculiarities are to be looked upon as characteristics of a primary state and that they can explain the first and real meaning of totemism.
In the Arunta tribe itself (a part of the Arunta nation) these peculiarities are as follows:
1. They have the division into totem clans but the totem is not hereditary but is individually determined (as will be shown later).
2. The totem clans are not exogamous, and the marriage restrictions are brought about by a highly developed division into marriage cla.s.ses which have nothing to do with the totems.
3. The function of the totem clan consists of carrying out a ceremony which in a subtle magic manner brings about an increase of the edible totem. (This ceremony is called _Intichiuma_.)
4. The Aruntas have a peculiar theory about conception and re-birth.
They a.s.sume that the spirits of the dead who belonged to their totem wait for their re-birth in definite localities and penetrate into the bodies of the women who pa.s.s such a spot. When a child is born the mother states at which spirit abode she thinks she conceived her child.