Mr. Frazer’s Theory

The Australian respects his ‘sex-totem’ because the life of his sex is bound up in its life.  He speaks of it as his brother, and calls himself (as distinguished by his sex) by its name.  As a man he is a bat, as a woman his wife is an owl.  As a member of a given human kin he may be a kangaroo, perhaps his wife may be an emu.  But Mr. Frazer derives totemism, all the world over, from the same origin as he assigns to ’sex-totems.’  In these the life of each sex is bound up, therefore they are by each sex revered.  Therefore totemism must have the same origin, substituting ‘kin’ or ‘tribe’ for sex.  He gives examples from Australia, in which killing a man’s totem killed the man. {90}

I would respectfully demur or suggest delay.  Can we explain an American institution, a fairly world-wide institution, totemism, by the local peculiarities of belief in isolated Australia?  If, in America, to kill a wolf was to kill Uncas or Chingachgook, I would incline to agree with Mr. Frazer.  But no such evidence is adduced.  Nor does it help Mr. Frazer to plead that the killing of an American’s nagual or of a Zulu’s Ihlozi kills that Zulu or American.  For a nagual, as I have shown, is one thing and a totem is another; nor am I aware that Zulus are totemists.  The argument of Mr. Frazer is based on analogy and on a special instance.  That instance of the Australians is so archaic that it may show totemism in an early form.  Mr. Frazer’s may be a correct hypothesis, but it needs corroboration.  However, Mr. Frazer concludes:  ’The totem, if I am right, is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his life.’  Yet he never shows that a Choctaw does keep his life in his totem.  Perhaps the Choctaw is afraid to let out so vital a secret.  The less reticent Australian blurts it forth.  Suppose the hypothesis correct.  Men and women keep their lives in their naguals, private sacred beasts.  But why, on this score, should a man be afraid to make love to a woman of the same nagual?  Have Red Indian women any naguals?  I never heard of them.

Since writing this I have read Miss Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa.  There the ‘bush-souls’ which she mentions (p. 459) bear analogies to totems, being inherited sacred animals, connected with the life of members of families.  The evidence, though vaguely stated, favours Mr. Frazer’s hypothesis, to which Miss Kingsley makes no allusion.

THE VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Anthropological Evidence

In all that we say of totemism, as, later, of fetishism, we rely on an enormous mass of evidence from geographers, historians, travellers, settlers, missionaries, explorers, traders, Civil Servants, and European officers of native police in Australia and Burmah.  Our witnesses are of all ages, from Herodotus to our day, of many nations, of many creeds, of different theoretical opinions.  This evidence, so world-wide, so diversified in source, so old, and so new, Mr. Max Muller impugns.  But, before meeting his case, let us clear up a personal question.