Modern Mythology Part 9

Philological Theory

Philological mythologists prefer to believe that the forgotten meaning of words produced the results; that the wolf-born Apollo ([Greek]) originally meant 'Light-born Apollo,' {82b} and that the wolf came in from a confusion between [Greek], 'Light,' and [Greek], a wolf. I make no doubt that philologists can explain Sminthian Apollo, the Dog-Apollo, and all the rest in the same way, and account for all the other peculiarities of place-names, myths, works of art, local badges, and so forth. We must then, I suppose, infer that these six traits of the mouse, already enumerated, tally with the traces which actual totemism would or might leave surviving behind it, or which propitiation of mice might leave behind it, by a chance coincidence, determined by forgotten meanings of words. The Greek a.n.a.logy to totemistic facts would be explained, (1) either by asking for a definition of totemism, and not listening when it is given; or (2) by maintaining that savage totemism is also a result of a world-wide malady of language, which, in a hundred tongues, produced the same confusions of thought, and consequently the same practices and inst.i.tutions. Nor do I for one moment doubt that the ingenuity of philologists could prove the name of every beast and plant, in every language under heaven, to be a name for the 'inevitable dawn'

(Max Muller), or for the inevitable thunder, or storm, or lightning (Kuhn- Schwartz). But as names appear to yield storm, lightning, night, or dawn with equal ease and certainty, according as the scholar prefers dawn or storm, I confess that this demonstration would leave me sceptical. It lacks scientific exact.i.tude.

Mr. Frazer on Animals in Greek Religion

In The Golden Bough (ii. 37) Mr. Frazer, whose superior knowledge and acuteness I am pleased to confess, has a theory different from that which I (following McLennan) propounded before The Golden Bough appeared.

Greece had a bull-shaped Dionysus. {83a} 'There is left no room to doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival, his wors.h.i.+ppers believed that they were killing the G.o.d, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.' {83b} Mr. Frazer concludes that there are two possible explanations of Dionysus in his bull aspect. (1) This was an expression of his character as a deity of vegetation, 'especially as the bull is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit in Northern Europe.' {84a} (2) The other possible explanation 'appears to be the view taken by Mr.

Lang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dionysus "had either been developed out of, or had succeeded to, the wors.h.i.+p of a bull-totem."'

{84b}

Now, anthropologists are generally agreed, I think, that occasional sacrifices of and communion in the flesh of the totem or other sacred animals do occur among totemists. {84c} But Mr. Frazer and I both admit, and indeed are eager to state publicly, that the evidence for sacrifice of the totem, and communion in eating him, is very scanty. The fact is rather inferred from rites among peoples just emerging from totemism (see the case of the Californian buzzard, in Bancroft) than derived from actual observation. On this head too much has been taken for granted by anthropologists. But I learn that direct evidence has been obtained, and is on the point of publication. The facts I may not antic.i.p.ate here, but the evidence will be properly sifted, and bias of theory discounted.

To return to my theory of the development of Dionysus into a totem, or of his inheritance of the rites of a totem, Mr. Frazer says, 'Of course this is possible, but it is not yet certain that Aryans ever had totemism.'

{84d} Now, in writing of the mouse, I had taken care to observe that, in origin, the mouse as a totem need not have been Aryan, but adopted.

People who think that the Aryans did not pa.s.s through a stage of totemism, female kin, and so forth, can always fall back (to account for apparent survivals of such things among Aryans) on 'Pre-Aryan conquered peoples,' such as the Picts. Aryans may be enticed by these bad races and become Pictis ipsis Pictiores.

Aryan Totems (?)

Generally speaking (and how delightfully characteristic of us all is this!), I see totems in Greek sacred beasts, where Mr. Frazer sees the corn-spirit embodied in a beast, and where Mr. Max Muller sees (in the case of Indra, called the bull) 'words meaning simply male, manly, strong,' an 'animal simile.' {85a} Here, of course, Mr. Max Muller is wholly in the right, when a Vedic poet calls Indra 'strong bull,' or the like. Such poetic epithets do not afford the shadow of a presumption for Vedic totemism, even as a survival. Mr. Frazer agrees with me and Mr.

Max Muller in this certainty. I myself say, 'If in the shape of Indra there be traces of fur and feather, they are not very numerous nor very distinct, but we give them for what they may be worth.' I then give them. {85b} To prove that I do not force the evidence, I take the Vedic text. {85c} 'His mother, a cow, bore Indra, an unlicked calf.' I then give Sayana's explanation. Indra entered into the body of Daks.h.i.+na, and was reborn of her. She also bore a cow. But this legend, I say, 'has rather the air of being an invention, apres coup, to account for the Vedic text of calf Indra, born from a cow, than of being a genuine ancient myth.' The Vedic myth of Indra's amours in shape of a ram, I say 'will doubtless be explained away as metaphorical.' Nay, I will go further. It is perfectly conceivable to me that in certain cases a poetic epithet applied by a poet to a G.o.d (say bull, ram, or snake) _might_ be misconceived, and _might_ give rise to the wors.h.i.+p of a G.o.d as a bull, or snake, or ram. Further, if civilised ideas perished, and if a race retained a bull-G.o.d, born of their degradation and confusion of mind, they might eat him in a ritual sacrifice. But that _all_ totemistic races are totemistic, because they all first metaphorically applied animal names to G.o.ds, and then forgot what they had meant, and wors.h.i.+pped these animals, sans phrase, appears to me to be, if not incredible, still greatly in want of evidence.

Mr. Frazer and I

It is plain that where a people claim no connection by descent and blood from a sacred animal, are neither of his name nor kin, the essential feature of totemism is absent. I do not see that eaters of the bull Dionysus or cultivators of the pig Demeter {86} made any claim to kindred with either G.o.d. Their towns were not allied in name with pig or bull.

If traces of such a belief existed, they have been sloughed off. Thus Mr. Frazer's explanation of Greek pigs and bulls and all their odd rites, as connected with the beast in which the corn-spirit is incarnate, holds its ground better than my totemistic suggestion. But I am not sure that the corn-spirit accounts for the Sminthian mouse in all his aspects, nor for the Arcadian and Attic bear-rites and myths of Artemis. Mouse and bear do appear in Mr. Frazer's catalogue of forms of the corn-spirits, taken from Mannhardt. {87} But the Arcadians, as we shall see, _claimed descent_ from a bear, and the mouse place-names and badges of the Troad yield a hint of the same idea. The many Greek family claims to descent from G.o.ds as dogs, bulls, ants, serpents, and so on, _may_ spring from grat.i.tude to the corn-spirit. Does Mr. Frazer think so? n.o.body knows so well as he that similar claims of descent from dogs and snakes are made by many savage kindreds who have no agriculture, no corn, and, of course, no corn-spirits. These remarks, I trust, are not undiscriminating, and naturally I yield the bull Dionysus and the pig Demeter to the corn-spirit, vice totem, superseded. But I do hanker after the Arcadian bear as, at least, a possible survival of totemism. The Scottish school inspector removed a picture of Behemoth, as a fabulous animal, from the wall of a school room. But, not being sure of the natural history of the unicorn, 'he just let him bide, and gave the puir beast the benefit o'

the doubt.'

Will Mr. Frazer give the Arcadian bear 'the benefit of the doubt'?

I am not at all bigoted in the opinion that the Greeks may have once been totemists. The strongest presumption in favour of the hypothesis is the many claims of descent from a G.o.d disguised as a beast. But the inst.i.tution, if ever it did exist among the ancestors of the Greeks, had died out very long before Homer. We cannot expect to find traces of the prohibition to marry a woman of the same totem. In Rome we do find traces of exogamy, as among totemists. 'Formerly they did not marry women connected with them by blood.' {88a} But we do not find, and would not expect to find, that the 'blood' was indicated by the common totem.

Mr. Frazer on Origin of Totemism

Mr. Frazer has introduced the term 's.e.x-totems,' in application to Australia. This is connected with his theory of the Origin of Totemism.

I cannot quite approve of the term s.e.x-totems.

If in Australia each s.e.x has a protecting animal--the men a bat, the women an owl--if the slaying of a bat by a woman menaces the death of a man, if the slaying of an owl by a woman may cause the decease of a man, all that is very unlike totemism in other countries. Therefore, I ask Mr. Frazer whether, in the interests of definite terminology, he had not better give some other name than 'totem' to his Australian s.e.x protecting animals? He might take for a _local_ fact, a _local_ name, and say 's.e.x- kobong.'

Once more, for even we anthropologists have our bickerings, I would 'hesitate dislike' of this pa.s.sage in Mr. Frazer's work: {88b}

'When a savage _names himself_ after an animal, calls it his brother, and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem.' Distinguo! A savage does not name _himself_ after his totem, any more than Mr. Frazer named himself by his clan-name, originally Norman. It was not as when Miss Betty Amory named herself 'Blanche,' by her own will and fantasy. A savage _inherits_ his totem name, usually through the mother's side. The special animal which protects an individual savage (Zapotec, tona; Guatemalan, nagual; North America, Manitou, 'medicine') is _not_ that savage's totem. {89a} The nagual, tona, or manitou is selected for each particular savage, at birth or p.u.b.erty, in various ways: in America, North and Central, by a dream in a fast, or after a dream.

('Post-hypnotic suggestion.') But a savage is born to his kin-totem. A man is born a wolf of the Delawares, his totem is the wolf, he cannot help himself. But after, or in, his medicine fast and sleep, he may choose a dormouse or a squirrel for his manitou (tona, nagual) or _private_ protecting animal. These are quite separate from totems, as Mr. Max Muller also points out.

Of totems, I, for one, must always write in the sense of Mr. McLennan, who introduced totemism to science. Thus, to speak of 's.e.x-totems,' or to call the protecting animal of each individual a 'totem,' is, I fear, to bring in confusion, and to justify Mr. Max Muller's hard opinion that 'totemism' is ill-defined. For myself, I use the term in the strict sense which I have given, and in no other.

Mr. McLennan did not profess, as we saw, to know the origin of totems. He once made a guess in conversation with me, but he abandoned it. Professor Robertson Smith did not know the origin of totems. 'The origin of totems is as much a problem as the origin of local G.o.ds.' {89b} Mr. Max Muller knows the origin: sign-boards are the origin, or one origin. But what was the origin of sign-boards? 'We carry the pictures of saints on our banners because we wors.h.i.+p them; we don't wors.h.i.+p them because we carry them as banners,' says De Brosses, an acute man. Did the Indians wors.h.i.+p totems because they carved them on sign-boards (if they all did so), or did they carve them on sign-boards because they wors.h.i.+pped them?

Mr. Frazer's Theory

The Australian respects his 's.e.x-totem' because the life of his s.e.x is bound up in its life. He speaks of it as his brother, and calls himself (as distinguished by his s.e.x) by its name. As a man he is a bat, as a woman his wife is an owl. As a member of a given human kin he may be a kangaroo, perhaps his wife may be an emu. But Mr. Frazer derives totemism, all the world over, from the same origin as he a.s.signs to 's.e.x- totems.' In these the life of each s.e.x is bound up, therefore they are by each s.e.x revered. Therefore totemism must have the same origin, subst.i.tuting 'kin' or 'tribe' for s.e.x. He gives examples from Australia, in which killing a man's totem killed the man. {90}

I would respectfully demur or suggest delay. Can we explain an American inst.i.tution, a fairly world-wide inst.i.tution, totemism, by the local peculiarities of belief in isolated Australia? If, in America, to kill a wolf was to kill Uncas or Chingachgook, I would incline to agree with Mr.

Frazer. But no such evidence is adduced. Nor does it help Mr. Frazer to plead that the killing of an American's nagual or of a Zulu's Ihlozi kills that Zulu or American. For a nagual, as I have shown, is one thing and a totem is another; nor am I aware that Zulus are totemists. The argument of Mr. Frazer is based on a.n.a.logy and on a special instance.

That instance of the Australians is so archaic that it _may_ show totemism in an early form. Mr. Frazer's may be a correct hypothesis, but it needs corroboration. However, Mr. Frazer concludes: 'The totem, if I am right, is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his life.' Yet he never shows that a Choctaw _does_ keep his life in his totem. Perhaps the Choctaw is afraid to let out so vital a secret. The less reticent Australian blurts it forth. Suppose the hypothesis correct. Men and women keep their lives in their naguals, private sacred beasts. But why, on this score, should a man be afraid to make love to a woman of the same nagual? Have Red Indian _women_ any naguals? I never heard of them.

Since writing this I have read Miss Kingsley's Travels in West Africa.

There the 'bush-souls' which she mentions (p. 459) bear a.n.a.logies to totems, being inherited sacred animals, connected with the life of members of families. The evidence, though vaguely stated, favours Mr.

Frazer's hypothesis, to which Miss Kingsley makes no allusion.

THE VALIDITY OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Anthropological Evidence

In all that we say of totemism, as, later, of fetis.h.i.+sm, we rely on an enormous ma.s.s of evidence from geographers, historians, travellers, settlers, missionaries, explorers, traders, Civil Servants, and European officers of native police in Australia and Burmah. Our witnesses are of all ages, from Herodotus to our day, of many nations, of many creeds, of different theoretical opinions. This evidence, so world-wide, so diversified in source, so old, and so new, Mr. Max Muller impugns. But, before meeting his case, let us clear up a personal question.

'Positions one never held'

'It is not pleasant [writes our author] to have to defend positions which one never held, nor wishes to hold, and I am therefore all the more grateful to those who have pointed out the audacious misrepresentations of my real opinion in comparative mythology, and have rebuked the flippant tone of some of my eager critics' [i. 26, 27].

I must here confess to the belief that no gentleman or honest man ever _consciously_ misrepresents the ideas of an opponent. If it is not too flippant an ill.u.s.tration, I would say that no bowler ever throws consciously and wilfully; his action, however, may unconsciously develop into a throw. There would be no pleasure in argument, cricket, or any other sport if we knowingly cheated. Thus it is always _unconsciously_ that adversaries pervert, garble, and misrepresent each other's opinions; unconsciously, not 'audaciously.' If people would start from the major premise that misrepresentations, if such exist, are unconscious errors, much trouble would be spared.

Positions which I never held