Folklore as an Historical ScienceGomme, George Laurence
History
Folklore as an Historical Science
Gomme, George Laurence
Folklore
This is an important aspect of the case, and it is one which, I think,
cannot be ignored. We have found that rudimentary totemism was the
basis of a social system founded on artificial associations with
animal or plant, was therefore kinless in character; and we have found
that when totemism has been carried on into a society developed upon
the recognition of blood kinship, blood kinship became antagonistic to
totemism, and ultimately displaced it. These two facts point to the
rudimentary kinless system as the true origin of totemism.
III
Now we may test these conclusions by applying the theory they contain
to an actual case of totemic society. It would be well to choose for
this purpose a people who had specialised their totemic organisation,
and there are only two supreme instances of this among the races of
the world--the North American Indians and the Australians. Everywhere
else, where totemism exists, it is not the dominant feature of the
social organisation. In Asia and in Africa totemism is subordinate to,
or at all events in close or equal association with, other elements,
and we cannot be quite sure that we have in these cases pure totemism.
North American totemism is in the most advanced stage. Australian
totemism is to a very considerable degree less advanced, and it is
therefore to Australian totemism I shall turn for evidence.
But even here it is necessary to bear in mind that primitive as the
Australians are, they are not so primitive as to be in the primary
stages of totemic society. They have developed, and developed strongly
along totemic lines, and we know that such development once started
has the capacity to proceed far. What we have to do, therefore, is to
attempt to penetrate beneath the range of development, to search for
the social group at the farthest from the centre point from which
migration started, to discover, if we can, relics of group hostility,
hostile capture of women and of kinless society, all of which belong
to the primary stage from which totemic development has taken place.
If we can do this, we may hope to arrive at the origin of totemism,
and we are more likely to accomplish it in the case of the Australians
than with any other people. If we cannot, as Mr. Lang alleges,
anywhere see "absolutely primitive man and a totemic system in the
making,"[366] we may go back along the lines from which totemism has
developed in Australian society and see somewhat of the process of the
making.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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