the killing of it results in a holiday and that the animal is killed and yet mourned. The ambivalent emotional attitude which to-day still marks the father complex in our children and so often continues into adult life also extended to the father substitute of the totem animal.
But if we associate the translation of the totem as given by psychoanalysis, with the totem feast and the Darwinian hypothesis about the primal state of human society, a deeper understanding becomes possible and a hypothesis is offered which may seem phantastic but which has the advantage of establishing an unexpected unity among a series of hitherto separated phenomena.
The Darwinian conception of the primal horde does not, of course, allow for the beginnings of totemism. There is only a violent, jealous father who keeps all the females for himself and drives away the growing sons. This primal state of society has nowhere been observed. The most primitive organization we know, which today is still in force with certain tribes, is associations of men consisting of members with equal rights, subject to the restrictions of the totemic system, and founded on matriarchy, or descent through the mother.[1] Can the one have re-
- ↑ For a recent contribution compare, “The Whole House of The Chilkat,” by G. T. Emmons, American Museum Journal, Vol. XVI, No. 7. (Translator.)
