Page:Totem and Taboo (1919).djvu/207

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INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM
195

mother might easily be identified by her with the child in her womb. Such maternal fancies, so natural and seemingly so universal, appear to be the root of totemism.[1]

The main objection to this third theory of Frazer’s is the same which has already been advanced against his second, sociological theory. The Aruntas seem to be far removed from the beginnings of totemism: Their denial of fatherhood does not apparently rest upon primitive ignorance; in many cases they even have paternal inheritance. They seem to have sacrificed fatherhood to a kind of a speculation which strives to honor the ancestral spirits.[2] Though they raise the myth of immaculate conception through a spirit to a general theory of conception, we cannot for that reason credit them with ignorance as to the conditions of procreation any more than we could the old races who lived during the rise of the Christian myths.

Another psychological theory of the origin of totemism has been formulated by the Dutch writer, G. A. Wilcken. It establishes a connection between totemism and the migration of souls. “The animal into which, according to general belief, the souls of the dead passed, be-

  1. “Totemism and Exogamy,” IV, p. 63.
  2. “That belief is a philosophy far from primitive,” Andrew Lang, “Secret of the Totem,” p. 192.