Totem and Taboo Part 14

[118] We merely wish to indicate here that the original narcism of the child is decisive for the interpretation of its character development and that it precludes the a.s.sumption of a primitive feeling of inferiority for the child.

[119] S. Reinach, _L'Art et la Magie_, in the collection _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, Vol. I, pp. 125-136. Reinach thinks that the primitive artists who have left us the scratched or painted animal pictures in the caves of France did not want to 'arouse' pleasure, but to 'conjure things'. He explains this by showing that these drawings are in the darkest and most inaccessible part of the caves and that representations of feared beasts of prey are absent. "Les modernes parlent souvent, par hyperbole, de la magie du pinceau ou du ciseau d'un grand artiste et, en general, de la magie de l'art. Entendu en sense propre, qui est celui d'une constrainte mystique exercee par la volonte de l'homme sur d'autres volontes ou sur les choses, cette expression n'est plus admissible; mais nous avons vu qu'elle etait autrefois rigoures.e.m.e.nt, vraie, du moins dans l'opinion des artistes" (p. 136).

[120] Recognized through so-called endopsychic perceptions.

[121] R. R. Marett, _Pre-animistic Religion, Folklore_, Vol. XI, No. 2, 1900.--Comp. Wundt, _Myth and Religion_, Vol. II, p. 171.

[122] We a.s.sume that in this early narcistic stage feelings from libidinous and other sources of excitement are perhaps still indistinguishably combined with each other.

[123] Schreber, _Denkwurdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken_, 1903.--Freud, Psychoa.n.a.lytic Observations concerning an autobiographically described case of Paranoia, _Jahrbuch fur Psychoa.n.a.lyt. Forsch._ Vol. III, 1911.

[124] Compare the latest communication about the Schreber case, p. 59.

[125] _Principles of Sociology_, Vol. I.

[126] _l.c._, p. 179.

[127] Compare my short paper: _A Note on the Unconscious in Psychoa.n.a.lysis_, in the _Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research_, Part LXVI, Vol. XXVI, 1912.

[128] p. 26.

[129] Frazer, _Taboo and the Perils of the Soul_, p. 158

[130] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 200.

[131] Frazer, _l.c._, p. 237.

[132] Freud, _Psychopathology of Everyday Life_, p. 215, trans. by A. A.

Brill.

[133] p. 139.

[134] _Revue Scientifique_, October, 1900, reprinted in the four volume work of the author, _Cultes, Mythes et Religions_, 1908, Tome I, p. 17.

[135] 1910.

[136] But it may be well to show the reader beforehand how difficult it is to establish the facts in this field.

In the first place those who collect the observations are not identical with those who digest and discuss them; the first are travellers and missionaries, while the others are scientific men who perhaps have never seen the objects of their research.--It is not easy to establish an understanding with savages. Not all the observers were familiar with the languages but had to use the a.s.sistance of interpreters or else had to communicate with the people they questioned in the auxiliary language of pidgin-English. Savages are not communicative about the most intimate affairs of their culture and unburden themselves only to those foreigners who have pa.s.sed many years in their midst. From various motives they often give wrong or misleading information, (Compare Frazer, _The Beginnings of Religion and Totemism Among the Australian Aborigines_; _Fortnightly Review_, 1905; _Totemism and Exogamy_, Vol. I, p. 150).--It must not be forgotten that primitive races are not young races but really are as old as the most civilized, and that we have no right to expect that they have preserved their original ideas and inst.i.tutions for our information without any evolution or distortion. It is certain, on the contrary, that far-reaching changes in all directions have taken place among primitive races, so that we can never unhesitatingly decide which of their present conditions and opinions have preserved the original past, having remained petrified, as it were, and which represent a distortion and change of the original. It is due to this that one meets the many disputes among authors as to what proportion of the peculiarities of a primitive culture is to be taken as a primary, and what as a later and secondary manifestation. To establish the original conditions, therefore, always remains a matter of construction. Finally, it is not easy to adapt oneself to the ways of thinking of primitive races. For like children, we easily misunderstand them, and are always inclined to interpret their acts and feelings according to our own psychic constellations.

[137] _Totemism_ (Edinburgh, 1887), reprinted in the first volume of his great study, _Totemism and Exogamy_.

[138] Compare the chapter on Taboo.

[139] Just as to-day we still have the wolves in a cage at the steps of the Capitol in Rome and the bears in the pit at Berne.

[140] Like the legend of the white woman in many n.o.ble families.

[141] _l.c._, p. 35.--See the discussion of sacrifice further on.

[142] See Chapter I.

[143] p. 116.

[144] The conclusion which Frazer draws about totemism in his second work on the subject (_The Origin of Totemism; Fortnightly Review_, 1899) agrees with this text: "Thus, totemism has commonly been treated as a primitive system both of religion and of society. As a system of religion it embraces the mystic union of the savage with his totem; as a system of society it comprises the relations in which men and women of the same totem stand to each other and to the members of other totemic groups. And corresponding to these two sides of the system are two rough-and-ready tests or canons of totemism: first, the rule that a man may not kill or eat his totem animal or plant, and second, the rule that he may not marry or cohabit with a woman of the same totem" (p. 101).

Frazer then adds something which takes us into the midst of the discussion about totemism: "Whether the two sides--the religious and the social--have always coexisted or are essentially independent, is a question which has been variously answered."

[145] In connexion with such a change of opinion Frazer made this excellent statement: "That my conclusions on these difficult questions are final, I am not so foolish as to pretend. I have changed my views repeatedly, and I am resolved to change them again with every change of the evidence, for like a chameleon the inquirer should shift his colours with the shifting colours of the ground he treads." Preface to Vol. I, _Totemism and Exogamy_, 1910.

[146] "By the nature of the case, as the origin of totemism lies far beyond our powers of historical examination or of experiment, we must have recourse as regards this matter, to conjecture," Andrew Lang, _Secret of the Totem_, p. 27.--"Nowhere do we see absolutely primitive man, and a totemic system in the making," p. 29.

[147] At first probably only animals.

[148] _The Worship of Animals and Plants_ (_Fortnightly Review_, 1869-1870). _Primitive Marriage_, 1865; both works reprinted in _Studies in Ancient History_, 1876; second edition, 1886.

[149] _The Secret of the Totem_, 1905, p. 34.

[150] _Ibid._

[151] _Ibid._

[152] According to Andrew Lang.

[153] Pikler and Somlo, _The Origin of Totemism_, 1901. The authors rightly call their attempt at explanation a "Contribution to the materialistic theory of History."

[154] _The Origin of Animal Worship_ (_Fortnightly Review_, 1870).

_Principles of Psychology_, Vol. I, ---- 169 to 176.

[155] _Kamilaroi and Kurmai_, p. 165, 1880 (Lang, _Secret of the Totem_, etc.).

[156] See the chapter on Taboo, p. 96.

[157] _l.c._, Vol. I, p. 41.

[158] _Address to the Anthropological Section, British a.s.sociation_, Belfast, 1902. According to Frazer, _l.c._, Vol. IV, p. 50.

[159] _The Native Tribes of Central Australia_, by Baldwin Spencer and H. J. Gillen, London, 1891.

[160] There is nothing vague or mystical about it, nothing of that metaphysical haze which some writers love to conjure up over the humblest beginnings of human speculation but which is utterly foreign to the simple, sensuous, and concrete modes of the savage. (_Totemism and Exogamy_, I., p. 117.)

[161] _l.c._, p. 120.

[162] _L'annee Sociologique_, Vol. I, V, VIII, and elsewhere. See especially the chapter, _Sur le Totemisme_, Vol. V, 1901.

[163] _Social Origins and the Secret of the Totem._

[164] _The Golden Bough_, II, p. 332.