Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 17, 1906.djvu/27

 Presidential Address. 17

savage trouble his head about kinship at all ? Only- suckling babes would be interested, and their connection with their mother would cease long before they were in a position to think of kinship in the abstract. Exogamy is a mark of the relatively primitive ; but it is mere assumption to suppose that no form of marriage precedes that. So with group marriage, if that be assumed. The regulation of marriage by totem is often alluded to as primitive, and as compared with matrimonial classes of a more artificial type it may be ; but that it is really primitive is another assumption. When we examine the marks usually assumed as primitive, we are forced to the conclusion that very often a general consensus of opinion is accepted in place of proof. It may be that female kinship preceded male kinship ; there are very- good reasons for thinking that it usually did. But a safer criterion, if the word safe may be used of such slippery hypotheses, is to be found in the range of knowledge or of ignorance in matters which can easily be tested.

Now, the Arunta tribe is a veritable puzzle. Like the human soul, it is a strange mixture of discordant elements. Hence it is that we find one set of doctors describing them as primitive, and another set denying it with equal distinctness. The fact is, the Arunta tribe is both. The system of matrimonial classes which it contains is admitted to be of a late type. We need not contest this point ; both parties, I believe, grant it. But their view of totems is their own. Spencer and Gillen, and Howitt, and I believe all those who really know the Australian tribes at first hand, believe this to be the most primitive form of totemism hitherto found. Mr. Frazer follows them ; Mr. Lang denies it, regarding this view as a " sport " or " freak " rather than a primitive thing. I may remark, before passing on, that his argu- ment on this point is not admissible ; it is only reason-

B