Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of MankindWundt, Wilhelm Max
Science
Elements of Folk Psychology: Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Wundt, Wilhelm Max
Ethnopsychology
But even after the development had reached its final form and limited
totemic exogamy was completely established, further changes ensued.
For the basis of such exogamy, we may conjecture, is the fact that
certain totem groups of associated clans enjoy particularly close
relations with one another. Even on these primitive levels, however,
the friendships of such groups are not absolutely permanent any more
than are the political friendships of modern civilized states, though
their degree of permanence is probably greater than that of the
latter. Migrations, changes in hunting-grounds, and other conditions,
were doubtless operative also in totemic culture, loosening the bonds
between friendly totems and cementing others in their stead. This led
to changes in the exogamous relations of totem groups. Instead of
groups _n_ and _r_ of clans A and B, _n_ and _q_ might then come to have
exogamous connections (see diagram III on p. 148). But the severance
of the old connection did not immediately obliterate the tradition of
the former relationship. The influence of the latter would naturally
continue to be felt, not in connection with acts of a transitory
nature, such as wooing and marriage, but in matters _permanent_ in
character and thus affecting the traditional organization of the
tribe. Such a permanent relation, however, is _totem affiliation_.
This explains how it happens that, even after the old totem connection
gave way to the new, it nevertheless continued to exercise a claim
on the totem membership of the children born under the new marriage
conditions; hence also the recognition of the claim on the part of
custom. In _one_ respect, indeed, such recognition was impossible.
More firmly established than any form of exogamy was the law that
children belonged to the mother, or, in the case of paternal descent,
to the father. This law could not be violated. Hence _exogamous_ and
_parental_ tribal membership became differentiated. The latter ordained
that children in every case belong to the totem of the parent who
determines descent; the tradition of the former decreed that children
belong, not to the parental totem, but to some other totem of the same
clan. Such a condition of dual totem membership might, of course,
arise from a great variety of conditions, just as may the similarly
overlapping social relations within our own modern culture--such, for
example, as the military and the so-called civil station of a man.
The customary designation of the first two forms of limited exogamy
as exogamy with direct maternal descent, and of the third as exogamy
with indirect maternal descent, is plainly inappropriate and may easily
give rise to misunderstandings. For it may suggest that the maternal
totem disposes of its rights in respect to marriage arrangements to
another totem group, and that eventually this even occurs in accordance
with a definite agreement. But this is certainly not the case. For
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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