Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/340

 322 Reviews.

the face of the change of filiation, is certainly very remarkable. It affords one more proof that during a long period of human history, legal descent and relationship have little to do with physical fact. But since it has persisted, it is not difficult to see that it may have aided the break-up of the totem-clan and its transformation into a totem-group of a different character. The change of filiation did not in the first instance affect the totem-clan : it only affected the exogamous classes. As before, the totem continued to be derived through the mother. But the totem-clan was no longer an exo- gamous body, since one portion of it remained in each of the intermarrying phratries. The effect was to weaken more and more the consciousness of kin within the totem-clan. Autonomy was lost, and, with autonomy, community of interest was in danger of perishing. If the true physical relation between father and child had been apprehended, the totem-clan would simply have passed over to male descent. This is what has happened elsewhere. But the physical relation not being appre- hended, the totem-clan could not pass over to male descent. Some other provision was, therefore, required for its continuance. That provision was supplied by a development of the theory of reincarnation. Reincarnation is not an uncommon theory among savages, or for matter of that among civilised peoples, and no doubt it existed among the Arunta prior to the change of filiation. But where the totem-clan is a living institution the deceased member must be born again in his own clan (if at all), and it is because a child is born in a certain clan that he is conjectured to be a returned ancestor. The developed Arunta theory is very nearly the converse of this. A child born of a woman of any totem is conjectured from extrinsic circumstances to be such and such an ancestor returned, and his totem will depend upon that of the ancestor whom he is supposed to be. The result of the developments was that the totem-clan was gradually transformed into a fortuitous group which continued to exist simply for the purpose of performing the religious rites. The blood- bond was finally dissolved ; the autonomy was gone. Nothing remained of the community of interest, but such as resulted from the posses- sion of religious, or quasi-religious rites, which the totem-group alone had the power to perform, but which were now performed for the benefit, not of themselves exclusively, but of the entire tribe. I jjut this forward as no more than an hypothesis illustrating