658 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
cer and Gillin ! ; and all other students of native Australian society have either been overwhelmed by an apparently irresolvable nebula of overlapping classes and sub-classes and super-classes, or have been led to a related conclusion — indeed the gordian knot of entangled relationships constituting Australian society is easily cut by the student who places himself in the position of an indi- vidual Blackfellow, and projects from Self dichotomous class-lines occasionally uniting and bifurcating in other individuals, after the manner of the dichotomous lines of Aristotelian classification and the Tree of Porphyry. The social classes, and the conduct in- volved in their maintenance, are fixed by a bifurcate series of ordinances, ostensibly descended from the mystical olden time, and put in the form of tabus and equally mystical mandates by the shamans. In like manner the obscure pantheon of the Aus- tralians seems to be arranged in nearly symmetric pairs ; and even the individual shade (or mystical double of the person) is con- ceived as bipartite — e. g., among the Arunta, who designate the ghostly attendants Iruntarinia and Arumbaringa, respectively."
Although typically developed among the Australian aborigi- nes, the binary philosophy is by no means confined to the Austral continent and primeval culture ; it existed among the Tasmanians, reappears in Africa, persists in China and Mongolia, and may clearly be traced in America, e. g., in the " Sides " forming the primary basis of society in the Seneka and other Amerind tribes ; while no fiducial system is wholly free from the persistent dualism springing from binary interpretations of nature. Yet the mystical Two is no more complete in itself than the mystical Four and Six of higher culture ; the primary classes or sides are perfected in the tribe both in Australia and in America, the Iruntarinia and Arumbaringa are conjoined in and non-existent apart from the personality they are held to shadow, and the mandates and prohi- bitions of Australian (and indeed of most other) laws are perfected
1 The Native Tribes of Central Australia , by Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillin, 1899, p. 55. * Op. cit., p. 513.
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