Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/352

 ;^^o The Sociological Significance of Myth.

structure, and the failure of the familiar to arouse the mythic fancy.

There may be some who will accept this complexity and yet hold that it may have arisen through conditions present within Australia itself. It is possible that widely different forms of social organisation may have evolved in different parts of Australia, and that, when one of these was carried from one part of the continent to another by a movement of people, it seemed sufficiently strange to strike the imagination and become the subject of myth. It would be beyond the scope of this paper to consider this possibility, nor can I now attempt to develop the lessons to be learnt from the Australian narratives if their sociological signifi- cance be accepted. The object of this paper has been to formulate a principle to guide us in the study of social myth in general, and I have only chosen the Australians as my example because social myth seemed to be so well developed among them. I must leave for another occasion the inquiry into the exact nature of the social complexity which is indi- cated by the Australian narratives.

I cannot refrain, however, from concluding my paper with a suggestion that the main conclusion I have reached may furnish the solution of a problem which I used to intro- duce my subject. One of the grounds on which Mr. Lang rejects the historicity of Arunta myth-^ is that, as soon as the Inapertiva, or "undifferentiated animated bulks," became fully formed human beings with totems, they found them- selves in possession of the distinction between elder and younger brother. The story runs that a number of newly made men and women were killed and eaten by certain evil beings called Ornnclia, One man who had escaped the slaughter proceeded to search for his okilia or elder brother, and, when he had found his head, was able to bring him back to life. " How can we take as historical evidence," says Mr. Lang, " fables which transplant, into the first dawn -^ Loc. cit., p. 119.