Page:Totem and Taboo (1919).djvu/220

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
208
TOTEM AND TABOO

V, 1845-47). The younger males being thus driven out and wandering about would also, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close inbreeding within the limits of the same family.”[1]

Atkinson[2] seems to have been the first to recognize that these conditions of the Darwinian primal horde would in practice bring about the exogamy of the young men. Each one of those driven away could found a similar horde in which, thanks to jealousy of the chief, the same prohibition as to sexual intercourse obtained, and in the course of time these conditions would have brought about the rule which is now known as law: no sexual intercourse with the members of the horde. After the advent of totemism the rule would have changed into a different form: no sexual intercourse within the totem.

Andrew Lang[3] declared himself in agreement with this explanation of exogamy. But in the same book he advocates the other theory of Durkheim which explains exogamy as a consequence of the totem laws. It is not altogether easy to combine the two interpretations; in the first case exogamy would have existed before

  1. “The Origin of Man,” Vol. II, Chapter 20, pp. 603-604.
  2. “Primal Law,” London, 1903 (with Andrew Lang, “Social Origins”).
  3. “Secret of the Totem,” pp. 114, 143.