So far we have seen no luminous and consistent account of how mankind became exogamous, if they began by being promiscuous. The theories rest on the idea that man, dwelling in an “undivided horde” (except so far as it was divided into co-operative magical societies), bisected it Durkheim. into two exogamous intermarrying moieties. Durkheim has put forward a theory which is not at all points easily understood. He supposes that, “at the beginning of societies of men, incest was not prohibited . . . before each horde (peuplade) divided itself into two primitive ‘clans’ at least” (L’Année sociologique, i. pp. 62, 63). Each of the two “clans” claimed descent from a different animal, which was its totem, and its “god.” The two clans were exogamous,—out of respect to the blood of their totem (with which every member of the clan is mystically one), and, being hostile, the two clans raided each other for women. Each clan threw off colonies, which took new totems, new “gods,” though still owning some regard to their original clan, from which they had seceded, while abandoning its “god.” When the two “primary clans” made alliance and connubium, they became the phratries in the local tribe, and their colonies became the totem kins within the phratries.
We are not told why the original horde was disrupted into two hostile and intermarrying “clans”: we especially wonder why the horde, if it wanted an animal god, did not choose one animal for the whole community; and we may suspect that a difference of taste in animal “gods” caused the hostility of the two clans. Nor do we see why, if things occurred thus, the totem kins should not represent twenty or thirty differences of religious taste, in the original horde, as to the choice of animal gods. If the horde was going to vary in opinion, it is unlikely that only two factions put forward animal candidates for divinity. Again, a “clan” (a totem kin, with exogamy and descent derived through mothers) cannot overflow its territorial area and be therefore obliged to send out colonies, for such a clan (as Durkheim himself remarks) has no territorial area to overflow. It is not a local institution at all.
While these objections cannot but occur, Durkheim does provide a valid reason for the existence of exogamy. When once the groups (however they got them) had totems, with the usual taboos on any sort of use of the totem by his human kinsfolk, the women of the kin would be tabooed to the men of the same kin. In marrying a maiden of his own totem, a man inevitably violates the sanctity of the blood of the totem (L’Année sociologique, i. pp. 47-57. Cf. Reinach, Cultes, mythes et religions, vol. i. pp. 162-166).
Here at last we have a theory which accounts for the “religious horror” that attaches to the violation of the rule of totemic exogamy: a mysterious entity, the totem, is hereby offended. But how did totems, animals, plants and so on, come to be mystically solidaires with their human namesakes and kinsmen? We do not observe that Dr Durkheim ever explains why two divisions of one horde chose each a different animal god, or why the supposed colonies thrown off by these primary clans deserted their animal gods for others, or why, and on what principle, they all chose new “gods,”—fresh animals, plants and other objects. His hereditary totem is, in practice, the last thing that a savage changes. The only case of change on record is a recent attempt to increase the range of legal marriages in a waning Australian tribe, on whose lands certain species of animals are perishing.
Theories based on a supposed primal state of promiscuity certainly encounter, when explaining the social organization of Australian savages, difficulties which they do not surmount. But Howitt has provided (apparently without fully realizing the merit of his own suggestions) Howitt’s solution. a way out of the perplexities caused by the conception of early mankind dwelling promiscuously in “undivided communes.” The way out is practically to say that, in everyday life, they lived in nothing of the sort. Howitt writes (Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 173): “A study of the evidence . . . has led me to the conclusion that the state of society among the early Australians was that of an ‘Undivided Commune.’. . . It is, however, well to guard this expression. I do not desire to imply necessarily the existence of complete and continuous communism between the sexes. The character of the country, the necessity of moving from one point to another in search of game and vegetable food, would cause any Undivided Commune, when it assumed dimensions greater than the immediate locality could provide with food, to break up into two or more Communes of the same character. In addition to this it is clear . . . that in the past as now, individual likes and dislikes must have existed, so that, admitting the existence of common rights between the members of the Commune, these rights would remain in abeyance, so far as the separated parts of the Commune were concerned. But at certain gatherings . . . or on great ceremonial occasions, all the segments of the original Commune would reunite,” and would behave in the fashion now common in great licentious festive meetings.
In the early ages contemplated, how can we postulate “great ceremonial occasions” or even peaceful assemblies at fruit-bearing spots? How can we postulate a surviving sense of solidarity among the scattered segments of the Commune, obviously very small, owing to lack of Primitive promiscuity improbable. supplies, and perpetually disintegrated? But, taking the original groups as very small, and as ruled by likes and dislikes, by affection and jealousy, we are no longer concerned with a promiscuous horde, but with a little knot of human beings, in whom love, parental affection and the jealousy of sires, would promptly make discriminations between this person and that person, as regards sexual privileges. Thus we have edged away from the hypothesis of the promiscuous indiscriminating horde to the opinion of Darwin. “We may conclude,” he says, “from what we know of the jealousy of all male quadrupeds, armed as many of them are with special weapons for battling with their rivals, that promiscuous intercourse in a state of Nature is extremely improbable. . . . The most probable view is that Man originally lived in small communities, each (man) with a single wife, or, if powerful, with several, whom he jealously guarded against all other men.” But, in a community of this early type, to guard women jealously would mean constant battle, at least when Man became an animal who makes love all the year round. So Darwin adds: “Or man may not have been a social animal, and yet have lived with several wives, like the Gorilla,—for all the natives agree that but one adult male is seen in a band; when the young male grows up a contest takes place for the mastery, and the strongest, by killing or driving out the others, establishes himself as head of the Community. Younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close interbreeding within the limits of the same family” (Descent of Man, ii. pp. 361, 363 (1871)).
Here, then, we have practical Exogamy, as regards unions of brothers and sisters, among man still brutish, while the Sire is husband of the whole harem of females, probably unchecked as regards his daughters.
On this Darwinian text J. J. Atkinson builds his theory of the evolution of exogamy and of savage society in his Primal Law (Social Origins and Primal Law, by Lang and Atkinson, 1903). Paternal jealousy “gave birth to Primal Law, prohibitory of marriage between certain members of a Atkinson’s theory. family or local group, and thus, in natural sequence, led to forced connubial selection beyond its circle, that is, led to Exogamy . . . as a habit, not as an expressed law. . . .” The “expressed law” was necessarily a later development; conditioned by the circumstances which produced totemism, and sanctioned, as on Durkheim’s scheme, by the totemic taboo. Atkinson worked out his theory by a minute study of customs of avoidance between near kin by blood or affinity; by observations on the customs of animals, and by hypotheses as to the very gradual evolution of human restrictions through many modifications. He also gave a theory of the “classificatory” system of names for relationships opposed to that of Morgan. The names are based merely “on reference to relativity of age of a class in relation to the group.” The exogamous moieties of a tribe (phratries) are not
