Folklore as an Historical ScienceGomme, George Laurence
History
Folklore as an Historical Science
Gomme, George Laurence
Folklore
Mr. Lang rejects Mr. Frazer's theory _in toto_, and propounds his own
as due to the naming of savage societies, and to a sort of natural
exogamy produced by practically the same set of conditions as I have
already described. Mr. Lang's totemism began in the primary groups,
and began with exogamy as a necessary part of it. "Unessential to my
system," says Mr. Lang, "is the question how the groups got animal
names, as long as they got them, and did not remember how they got
them, and as long as the names according to their way of thinking
indicated an essential and mystic rapport between each group and its
name-giving animal. No more than these three things--a group animal
name of unknown origin; belief in a transcendental connection between
all bearers human and bestial of the same name; and belief in the
blood superstitions (the mystically sacred quality of the blood as
life)--was needed to give rise to all the totemic creeds and practices
including exogamy," and further, "we guess that for the sake of
distinction, groups gave each other animal and plant names. These
became stereotyped we conjecture, and their origin was forgotten. The
belief that there must necessarily be some connection between animals
and men of the same names led to speculation about the nature of the
connection. The usual reply to the question was that the men and
animals of the same name were akin by blood. The kinship _with
animals_ being particularly mysterious was peculiarly sacred. From
these ideas arose tabus, and among others that of totemic
exogamy."[357]
Mr. Baldwin Spencer, and with him Dr. Haddon, consider totemism to
have arisen from economic conditions. Primitive human groups, says Dr.
Haddon, "could never have been large, and the individuals comprising
each group must have been closely related. In favourable areas each
group would have a tendency to occupy a restricted range, owing to the
disagreeable results which arose from encroaching on the territory
over which another group wandered. Thus, it would inevitably come
about that a certain animal or plant, or group of animals or plants,
would be more abundant in the territory of one group than in that of
another."[358]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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