Frazer accepted the tradition of the Aruntas that each totem clan had
originally lived on its totem without any restriction. It then became
difficult to understand the evolution that followed through which
savages were satisfied to ensure the totem for others while they
themselves abstained from eating it. He then assumed that this
restriction was by no means the result of a kind of religious respect,
but came about through the observation that no animal devoured its own
kind, so that this break in the identification with the totem was
injurious to the power which savages sought to acquire over the totem.
Or else it resulted from the endeavour to make the being favourably
disposed by sparing it. Frazer did not conceal the difficulties of this
explanation from himself[161], nor did he dare to indicate in what way
the habit of marrying within the totem, which the myths of the Aruntas
proclaimed, was converted into exogamy.
Frazer’s theory based on the _Intichiuma_, stands or falls with the
recognition of the primitive nature of the Arunta institutions. But it
seems impossible to hold to this in the fact of the objections advanced
by Durkheim[162] and Lang[163]. The Aruntas seem on the contrary to be
the most developed of the Australian tribes and to represent rather a
dissolution stage of totemism than its beginning. The myths that made
such an impression on Frazer because they emphasize, in contrast to
prevailing institutions of to-day, that the Aruntas are free to eat the
totem and to marry within it, easily explain themselves to us as wish
phantasies, which are projected into the past, like the myths of the
Golden Age.
([Greek: γ g]) _The Psychological Theories_
Frazer’s first psychological theories, formed before his acquaintance
with the observations of Spencer and Gillen, were based upon the belief
in an ‘outward soul’[164]. The totem was meant to represent a safe place
of refuge where the soul is deposited in order to avoid the dangers
which threaten it. After primitive man had housed his soul in his totem
he himself became invulnerable and he naturally took care himself not to
harm the bearer of his soul. But as he did not know which individual of
the species in question was the bearer of his soul he was concerned in
sparing the whole species. Frazer himself later gave up this derivation
of totemism from the belief in souls.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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