Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/524

 488 Correspondence.

Further, why does Mr. Hartland use the terms "relaxation or annihilation " of the bond of blood ? Surely there is no evidence of this in all we know of the Arunta people. If there is, it ought to be formulated categorically, so that it may be judged. I, at all events, have not been able to find any such evidence.

Of course these criticisms are only designed to help the cause of enquiry, and are not against Mr. Hartland's views specially. But I want to say this, — that we are all apt to use terms of science in connection with anthropological investigation which are not in accord with the facts we are investigating, and the influence of advanced terminology is fatal to correct investigation.

Laurence Gomme.

May I be permitted to discuss at no great length Mr. Hart- land's paper on "Totemism and Exogamy," with which I have several points of agreement and of disagreement ?

With Mr. Hartland (p. 363) I have always believed that Arunta totemism " is manifestly in decay," (or at least in a late, peculiar form) ; and I hold that every step in the process of decay, or of alteration from the normal type, can be easily and satisfactorily explained. If I am right, the whole edifice of the " conceptional " theory as the original form of totemism falls to the ground; its corner- stone is removed. The conceptional belief among the Arunta does not produce "a kindred group," which is part of Dr. Frazer's latest minimum definition of totemism ; and the ideas of some of Dr. Rivers's Melanesian women are said by him to have no reference to the cause of conception (which is well understood), and produce no "group" at all, whether of kin or, as among the Arunta, of workers of the same rites.

I also agree with Mr. Hartland (p. 366) that "the noisome list" of peoples practising adelphic incest is hostile (I think fatal) to Dr. Westermarck's theory of sexual aversion among young camp-mates, whether brothers and sisters or not. I do not go into cases among Europeans, where white families live very remote from each other, because my evidence is matter of hear- say, and, I hope, mythical. In Australia, "local exogamy" has superseded the old rules through the localising influence of