But the whole traditions, full of stark mythical inventions (including a myth like that of Isis and the mutilation of Osiris), amount merely to this. Society was totemic, but the totems were not exogamous; rather endogamous of the two. Society among the Arunta is still totemic, but not, as far as totems go, exogamous. In this it differs from the usual rule, and the myth explains why,--‘it was always so.’ But Arunta society is exogamous as regards the ‘phratries’ and classes, and _that_ has to be explained by the myth. The myth therefore explains by saying that Emu men introduced a deficient, and northern men an adequate, system of exogamy--that which now prevails. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen, however, appear to deny that the ‘traditions’ ‘simply explain the origin of the present system, out of, as it were, no system. It is true that the traditions do give stages in the arrangement of the present system; but they also do ‘explain the origin of the present system.’ And Messrs. Spencer and Gillen not only admit this, but, as we saw, even think the explanation ‘quite possible.’ The explanation, I repeat, is that the system ‘is due to the deliberate action of certain ancestors,’ Emu men and wiser Northern men. Of course, as we tried to show, that explanation of primeval exogamy is improbable, but it is the explanation given by the Arunta legend. With a grain of fact, as to innovations from the North, the legend is a myth, an ætiological myth, a myth explanatory of the origin of the present organisation. History it is not. The Arunta ‘traditions’ are not historical evidence in favour of the new hypothesis that the Arunta are ‘primitive,’ are in ‘the chrysalis stage’ of humanity; (this they deny): that Totemism, in origin, was a magical co-operative and industrial association; that the original totems were not exogamous; and that exogamy was superimposed by legislation, or grew out of an organisation so imposed on a society of non-exogamous totem groups. Whatever the value of that hypothesis, it has no historical support from the Arunta traditions. History is a very different thing.