The relations of the totem groups to the ‘primary divisions,’ or ‘phratries,’ among the Arunta and cognate tribes, are, as we have already stated, entirely peculiar. We have seen that, in North America, and in Australia generally, no phratry ever contains the same totems as its linked phratry, and we have seen that Mr. Frazer calls this the natural arrangement.[35] If so, the present Arunta arrangement is not natural; it is a divergence from the natural type. Among the Arunta, ‘no totem is confined to either moiety’ (‘phratry’) ‘of the tribe.’ There is only ‘in each local centre a great predominance of one moiety.’[36] Dr. Durkheim regards the present state of Arunta affairs (the totems not being peculiar to either phratry) as _une dérogation_. Originally, he thinks, as among the Urabunna, each phratry contained only totems which were _not_ in the other phratry; and he detects survivals, among the Arunta, of the earlier usage. At present the Arunta totems show ‘a slight tendency to skip’ (_chevaucher_) ‘from one into the other phratry, doubtless because the Arunta totem system is no longer complete’--and no wonder, as Arunta totems are now not hereditary, but derived from the totem souls haunting each locality. Again, in Arunta legend, the ancestors ‘were divided into companies, the members of which bore the same totem name, and belonged as a rule to the same moiety’ (‘phratry’) ‘of the tribe,’ as now among the Urabunna, ‘who are in a less developed state than the Arunta.’ So say Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, and thus Arunta legend points to a past in which Arunta usage was, in this matter, as a rule the same as that of the less developed Urabunna: which I believe it really was. But we can hardly accept the legends when they fit, and reject them when they do not fit, our theory! I lay no stress on the legends. If, however, the Arunta ‘phratries’ originally, as Dr. Durkheim and I believe, never contained the same totems, then each Arunta totem group was, at that time, necessarily exogamous. No man or woman could then marry within the totem, as, at present, the Arunta can and do. They were barred by the phratry limit: persons of their totem were never in the phratry into which alone they could marry. So no one then could marry a member of his or her own totem kin. ‘It is, therefore, untrue that marriage has always been permitted between members of a totem,’ says Dr. Durkheim, though Arunta legend declares for the opposite view. ARUNTA MYTHS Here I am apt to agree with Dr. Durkheim. The evidence of the Arunta legends as to the customs of the _Alcheringa_, or ‘dreamtime,’ is ‘such stuff as dreams are made of.’ The legends are ‘statements, invented mainly by popular fancy,’ says Dr. Durkheim, ‘to explain existing institutions, by attaching them to some mythical beings in the past. They are myths, in the proper sense of the word.’ They are not marked by authenticity.