§ 6 The Clansman and His Totem
The relationship of Clansman to Totem may be conceived of as one of friendliness, protection, consanguinity, or even identity; and this last I take to be the case in the age when Totemism is most alive and powerful. But in what sense can a man be the same as an emu? He may be of the same name; but by itself that would be nothing. It is not the name, but the identity which the name has come to signify that must be considered. Some light may be shed upon the problem by the saying of a native to Spencer and Gillen, pointing to a photograph of himself: “That one is just the same as me; so is a kangaroo.” The photograph might be “the same” as himself in the sense of resemblance; but in that sense the kangaroo is not the same. Some, indeed, who have speculated on the savage mind suppose that it is not only incapable of reasoning, but even of perceiving the facts before it, when under the influence of some strong belief; and I admit that this is sometimes true. But all a savage’s actions in relation to his Totem show that he is aware of the difference: not least his efforts on certain occasions to help his imagination to establish identity by disguising himself and by imitating the actions of this strange other self, and by eating a little of it to insure physical identity at least to that extent. He also seeks to multiply it that others may eat their ration, and for any theory of his identity with the Totem, this must be a puzzle.
But a photograph may be the same as oneself in another sense than mere superficial resemblance: it may, like a shadow or reflection, be (or contain) a man’s soul, or part of it. And similarly a kangaroo or other Totem may be conceived to be the same as a man, that is, as having the same soul. Perhaps this is as near as we can get to the Australian’s meaning in the above-quoted confession of faith. It is reconcilable with the ceremonial eating of some part of the Totem; for that will convey spiritual as well as physical properties: and to reconcile it with the multiplication of the Totem that others may eat, I point to the biological necessity that each clan’s Totem should be food for the other tribesmen. Where all edible animals and plants are Totems, how else can they subsist? But we have several times seen that biological necessity will place limits to a belief, and that excuses can be found for necessary actions which are in conflict with a belief. That the clansmen give their own Totem to the tribe (since they cannot defend it) is an ingenious compromise.
It is reported that amongst the Euahlayi tribe occur personal Totems (or guardians, rare in Australia) called Yunbeai, possessed chiefly by wizards. A man may eat his hereditary Totem, but not his Yunbeai; which in this privilege seems to have supplanted the Totem. His spirit is in the Yunbeai, and its spirit is in him.532 They have, then, the same soul; and, although this belief is not strictly Totemism, it is probably derived from it. A clansman of the Yuin tribe (West Australia) had as his Totem the Black Duck, which warned him against enemies; and he related that once, whilst he slept, a Lace-Lizard man sent his Totem, which went down his throat and almost ate his Black Duck residing in his breast; so that he nearly died.533 Were not his Black Duck and his soul the same?
This hypothesis agrees very well with a belief that one’s body and soul descend from the same ancestor as the Totem’s; and that at death one goes to, or becomes, the Totem; and excuses the fiction that the quickening of a pregnant woman may be caused by the entry into her of the spirit of some totem-plant or animal.
On the Gold Coast and elsewhere in West Africa, a man has more than one soul, it may be as many as four; and one of them dwells with some animal in the bush: thence called his “bush-soul.” Sir James Frazer’s first hypothesis concerning Totemism was that it may have been derived from the notion of an external soul which may be deposited in anything (as thus in an animal in the bush) for safety. He now thinks the connexion of the “bush-soul” with Totemism uncertain.534 If there has been any connexion, may it not be that the “bush-soul” is derived from Totemism, and that every Totem is a sort of “bush-soul”—that is, it has a soul which is the same (at least, of the same kind) as the clansman’s?