Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/176

 i6o The Origin of Exogamy and Totemism.

with themselves in explanatory myths. There must have been dim beginnings of the behef (so surprising to us) that each human group had some intimate connection with this, that, or the other natural species, plants, or animals. We must first seek for a cause of this belief in the connection of human groups with animals, the idea of which connec- tion must necessarily be prior to the various customs and rules founded on the idea. Mr. Baldwin Spencer remarks, "What gave rise in the first instance to the association of particular men with particular animals and plants it does not seem possible to say." ^ Mr. Howitt asks, " How was it that men assumed tJie navies of objects, ivhich in fact must have been the comniencevient of toteniisvi ? " ^ The answer may be very simple. It ought to be an answer which takes for granted no superstition as already active ; magic, for instance, need not have yet been develoj^ed.

Manifestly, if each group woke to the consciousness that it bore the name of a plant or animal, and did not know how it came to bear that name, no more was needed to establish, in the savage mind, the belief in an essential and valuable connection between the human group Emu, and the Emu species of birds, and so on. As Mr. Howitt says, totemism begins in the bearing by human groups of the name of objects.

It is difficult to understand how a fact so obvious as this, — that the totemic name, if th? name existed, and if its origin were unknown^ would come to be taken by the groups as implying a mystic connection between all who bore it, men or beasts, — can have escaped the notice of any one who is acquainted with the nature of savage thinking, and with its survivals into civilised ritual and magic. Mr. Frazer has devoted forty-two pages of his Golden BongJi"^ to the record of examples of this belief

^^The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 127]. ^ The Native Tribes of South- East Australia, p. 153. 'Sec. ed. , vol. i., pp. 404-46.