Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/348

 326 The Sociological Significmice of Myth.

ance due to the exceptional development of the magico- religious aspect of toteinism in Australia.

Even, however, if it be conceded that the prominence of social forms in Australia is a secondary result of the close connection of these social forms with magico-religious func- tions, we are still left with the fact that Australian myth does not deal solely with the magico-religious aspect of totemism, but that its purely social aspect occurs explicitly as the direct subject of myth. We cannot get over the fact that, even though the social side of totemism may be sub- sidiary, it yet has a social side which is the subject of myth. Further, we have the fact that Australian myth has not altogether passed over the dual organisation and matri- monial classes which have, so far as we know, a more purely social function. Though I have lightened my task by bringing in the magico-religious importance of totemism as the main motive for its prominence in myth, I have not disposed of the whole problem, but am still left with the necessity of explaining how the social aspect of totemism and the purely social dual system have come to be subjects of myth.

I have now to point out a condition which would make social forms such an object of attention, and even of mystery and wonder, that we may readily understand their becoming a fit subject for the mythic fancy. The statement on which I have hitherto relied, that social structure is too familiar to become the subject of myth, is only true so long as a people remains homogeneous and undisturbed by outside influence. If the social system of the Australians has been the result of a process of development working itself out within a homogeneous people, I cannot believe that there would ever have arisen myths so intimately associated with social institutions as those of the Arunta and other Central Australian tribes. If, on the other hand, the Australians are not a homogeneous people, but if their social institu- tions have arisen through a blend of widely different forms