Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/86

 76 regarding the Arunta as a people wholly "primitive." The rule remains true that where totemism is in full force, "persons of the same totem may not marry or have sexual intercourse with one another." The disregard of the rule would be an inevitable stage in the decline of the institution.

It may, however, be objected that there is no trace of totemic exogamy among the Arunta; whatever traces there may be of any totemic regulation of marriage point in an opposite direction. These traces consist of little more than frequent references in the legends to men and women of the same totem living in local groups together, whence it is inferred to have been quite normal for a man to have a wife of the same totem as himself. I am not sure that a complete and satisfactory answer can be given to the objection. But the character of the legends must be taken into consideration. I have already referred to them, not as narratives of actual events, but as possible witnesses to the bare fact of progress. They seem in almost all cases expressly framed to account for the present condition of something which to the native mind requires explanation. In other words, they are mainly ætiological. Now, a restriction or taboo of any kind is always a subject requiring explanation. Consequently, the present marriage-restrictions would be felt to require a legend to account for them, and they are accounted for by a legend. The absence of restrictions, on the other hand, requires no explanation. Restrictions, again, which have been abolished or have passed silently away no longer need to be accounted for. Accordingly they are forgotten, and any explanation of them once extant is forgotten also. Hence we are not likely to find references to prohibitions of marriage within the totem-group, or to practices indicating the existence of such prohibitions. If, then, we are asked why the converse