this as the meaning of Mr. Howitt. I therefore, in Folk-Lore and elsewhere, as in The Secret of the Totem (pp. 197-200), said that Mr. Howitt's statement that there was no All Father belief among tribes with female descent (so I understood it), "seems in collision with his own evidence as to the facts."
To cut a long story short, I now gather from Mr. Howitt's recent paper that he did not mean what he seemed to mean. He now says: "The All Father belief is not found in such primitive tribes as the Dieri, but in other tribes which have' advanced to individual marriage, while yet retaining traces of primitive structure, such as the two-class organisation" (Folk-Lore, p. 186). To this relic of "primitive structure" we must add female descent and absence of local organisation.
Mr. Howitt asks me "what I desire to prove?" I desire to prove that; namely, that tribes so far backward as to lack "sub-classes," and to reckon descent in the female line, have the All Father belief. My misfortune was to suppose that Mr. Howitt implied denial of this fact in his book, p. 500. I explain the source of my error, which, here and elsewhere, I withdraw.
In the preface to The Secret of the Totem (p. ix.) I wrote, "Since critics of my Social Origins often missed my meaning, I am forced to suppose that I may in like manner have misconstrued some of the opinions of others. . . . I have done my best to understand, and shall deeply regret any failure of interpretation on my part." I apologized in advance for any such errors as I fell into about the meaning of Mr. Howitt in his page 500.
The whole importance of the matter is this: I supposed Mr. Howitt, on p. 500, to mean that the All Father belief is a concomitant of advance from "group marriage" to individual marriage, and from female descent to local organisation. Perhaps I again misinterpreted him? I do not know. I therefore, understanding him as I did, said
