differentiated from each other, and from the group in which they lived. Mr. McLennan, in 1865, did not ask how these women ever came to be distinctly differentiated, each from each, and from the group which held them, though that differentiation was a necessary prelude to the recognition of kindred through these women. But presently, in his Studies of Totemism (1869), he found, whether he observed the fact or not, the means of differentiation. Differentiation became possible after, and not before, each primitive group received a totem name, retained by its captive women within each group to which they were carried, a name to be inherited by their children in each case.

He says, 'heterogeneity as a statical force can only have come into play when a system of kinship led the hordes to look on the children of their foreign women as belonging to the stocks of their mothers.' That was impossible, before the totem or some equivalent system of naming foreign groups arose, a circumstance not easily observed till Mr. McLennan himself opened the way to the study of Totemism.1

It thus appears that Mr. Crawley's theory of exogamy and mine are practically identical in essence (if I rightly interpret him). The original objection was to the intermarriage of the young of the group of contiguity, the hearthmates. If there was but one male of the elder generation in the group of contiguity, these young people would be brothers and sisters. If there were two or more males of the elder generation, brothers, the group would include cousins, who (even before the totem name was accepted by the group) would also be forbidden to intermarry. When the totem name was accepted, cousins, children of brother and sister, and even brothers and sisters, children of one father, by wives of different totems, would be, technically, intermarriageable: though their marriages may, in practice, have been forbidden because they were still of the group of contiguity, and as such bore its local totem name, say, Emu, while, by the mother's 1 See Studies in Ancient History, pp. 183-186.

totem name, they may have been Bats, or Cats, or anything. Where I must differ from Mr. Crawley is in doubting whether at this hypothetical early stage, the superstitions which produce sexual tabu' had arisen. We cannot tell; but certainly, as soon as the totem name had given rise to the myth that the totem, in human beings as in animals and plants, was inviolable—the beast or plant of the totem blood not to be killed or eaten,' the woman of the totem name not to be touched-so soon would endogamy, marriage within the totem, be a sin, incest. This it would be; the totem tabu once established, whether sexual tabu, or sexual jealousy, or both, caused the first prohibition, not to marry group mates. Here we may briefly advert to Dr. Westermarck's theory of exogamy, though it interrupts the harmonious issue of our speculations.

DR. WESTERMARCK'S THEORY

As to exogamy, Dr. Westermarck explains it by 'an instinct' against marriage of near kin. Our ancestors who married near kin would die out, he thinks, and they who avoided such unions would survive, and thus an instinct would be developed,'' by 'Natural Selection.' But why did any of our ancestors avoid such marriages at all? From an aversion to those with whom they lived.' And why had they this aversion? Because they had an instinct against such unions. Then why had they an instinct? We are engaged in a vicious circle. Lastly it is not scientific to use the term instinct of this kind of thing.' 3

3

MR. MORGAN'S THEORY

As to Mr. Morgan's theory, in his Ancient Society (1877), of a movement of sanitary and moral reform, which led to prohibition of 'consanguine marriages' I shall return to it

This is the view of Dr. Durkheim, who explains the blood superstition. Cf. Reinach, L'Anthropologie, x. 65.

2 History of Human Marriage, p. 352.

* Compare Mr. Crawley, Mystic Rose, pp. 444-446.

D

in a later part of this essay (Other Bars to Marriage'). Here it will be found that Mr. Morgan is the source of certain other theories which we are to discuss, a fact involving a certain amount of repetition of arguments already advanced.

RETURN TO THE AUTHOR'S THEORY

We conclude, provisionally, that exogamy, for various reasons of sexual jealousy, and perhaps of sexual superstition, and of sexual indifference to persons familiar from infancy, may, at least, have tended to arise while each little human group was anonymous; before the acceptance of totem names by local groups. But this exogamous tendency, if it existed, must have been immensely reinforced and sweepingly defined when the hitherto anonymous groups, coming to be known by totem names, evolved the totem superstitions and tabus. Under these, I suggest, exogamy became fully developed. Marriage was forbidden, amours were forbidden (there are exceptional cases), within the totem name. This law barred, of course, marital relations between son and mother, between brother and sister, but, just as it stood, permitted incest between father and daughter, so long as the totem name was inherited from the mother. But that form of incest, in turn, came to be barred by another set of savage rules, which, whatever their origin, prohibit marriage within the generation. That set of rules, noted specially in Australia and North America, is part of what is usually styled 'The Class System.'

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CHAPTER II

THE CLASS SYSTEM

UNDER this name appear to be blended, (1) the prohibition to marry within a division, which, in its simplest form, is said to cut the tribe into two 'classes' or 'phratries,' or 'groups ;' 1 (2) the prohibition to marry within the totem name; (3) the prohibition to marry within the generation, and within certain recognised degrees ('classes,' 'sections') of real or inferred kinship-too near flesh,' too close consanguinity, which, in their present condition, many Australian tribes undoubtedly regard as a bar to matrimony. But it does not follow that they originally held this opinion.

We shall first examine what authorities who differ from me, call the great bisection' of the tribe, into, say, Matthurie and Kirarawa, members of which must intermarry, the totem prohibition also remaining in force. It will here be suggested, in accordance with what has already been said, but contrary to general opinion, that the totemic prohibition is earlier than the prohibition of marriage between persons of the same segment of the 'bisection.' The opinions of most students appear, at present, to be divided thus. We hear that:

1. The exogamous division into two moieties, or 'phratries,' is earlier than the division of each into numerous totem kins. The totem kins are regarded as later 'subdivisions' of, or additions to, the two 'original' moieties.

2. Totem groups are earlier than the 'bisection' (though

1 Apparently, among the Kamilaroi, members of the same phratry may intermarry, avoiding unions in their own totems. Mathews (Proc. Roy. Soc. N.S.W. xxxi. 161, 162). Mr. Mathews calls a ‘phratry' a 'group.'

somehow, according to the same authors, the two moieties of the bisection bore totem names), but, before the bisection,' these totem groups were not exogamous. They only became exogamous when six of them, say, were arranged in one of the two moieties (phratries), now forbidden to marry, and another six in the other.

I venture to prefer, as already indicated, the system (3) that totem groups not only existed, but were already exogamous, before the great bisection' producing the 'phratries' came into existence, though I argue that bisection' is a misleading term, and that the apparent division was really the result of an amalgamation of two separate and independent local totem groups.

This theory (presently to be more fully set forth) is original on my part, at least as far as my supraliminal consciousness is concerned. I mean that I conceived myself to have hit on the idea in July 1902. But something very like my notion (I later discovered) had been printed by Dr. Durkheim, and something not unlike it was propounded by Herr Cunow (1894). Mr. Daniel McLennan had also suggested it and I find that the Rev. John Mathew had stated a form of it in his Eagle-Hawk and Crow (1899), (pp. 19– 22, 93-112). Mr. Mathew's hypothesis, however, involves a theory of contending and alien races in Australia. This theory does not seem well based, but, however that may be, I recognise that Mr. Mathew's hypothesis of the origin of exogamy (p. 98), and of the origin of the phratries' or 'primary classes,' in many respects anticipates my own. He opposes Mr. Howitt's conclusions, and I may be allowed to say that I would prefer Mr. Howitt, owing to his unrivalled knowledge, as an ally. On the other hand, the undesigned coincidence of Dr. Durkheim's, Mr. Daniel McLennan's, Mr. Mathew's, and Herr Cunow's ideas with my own, raises a presumption that mine may not be untenable.

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