406 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



or injuring their totems ; why some people on the other hand 

 occasionally eat a portion of their totem ; why people are often 

 supposed to partake of the qualities and character of their totems ; 

 why men often claim to exercise a magical power over their totems ; 

 why people believe themselves to be descended from their totemic 

 animals or plants ; and, why totemic peoples aften confuse their 

 ancestors with their totems. 



In contra-distinction to this theory Dr. Frazer strongly affirms 

 that the conceptional theory not only explains the origin of 

 totemism, but is also a sufficient explanation of all the facts and 

 fancies connected with it. This theory is practically based on the 

 assumption that a savage does not connect pregnancy with a 

 sexual act ; that a woman is not aware that she is pregnant until 

 she feels the child stirring in her womb ; that she then imagines 

 that something has entered into her ; and that she fixes upon 

 something near her at that critical moment and imagines that the 

 spirit of a kangaroo, emu, or other animal has entered into her, 

 or that the spirit of a gum tree, or even of the yam which she was 

 eating, " had, so to say, struck root and grown up in her." 



The evidence for this is principally derived from Spencer and 

 Gillen's works on the natives of Central Australia, and especially on 

 the beliefs of the Arunta and adjoining tribes. These people are 

 in a very primitive condition, and are described as being in a state 

 of " savage ignorance of the physical process by which men and 

 animals reproduce their kinds," and in particular of " the part 

 played by the male in the generation of offspring." From this it 

 is assumed that this " ignorance of the true source of childbirth 

 was common among all races of men, and that it is indeed but 

 one remove from absolutely primitive totemism," which " ought 

 to consist in nothing more or less than in a belief that women are 

 impregnated without the help of men by something which enters 

 their womb at the moment when they first feel it quickened," and 

 therefore, " in the identification of a man with a thing, whether an 

 animal, a plant, or what not," and in the " identification of groups 

 of peoples to groups of things." 



I think, however, as already stated, that we shall have to look 

 further back to the origin of the custom. The conceptional theory 

 may, and probably does, apply to a stage in the development of 

 totemism in certain areas, such as those in which the investigations 

 of Messrs. Spencer and Gillen were conducted, but even in those 

 areas it does not appear to be " the ultimate source of totemism." 

 Assuming, for the present, that it were clearly proved that the 

 natives are indeed " ignorant of the true causes of child-birth " ; 

 that a woman only knows that she is pregnant when she feels the 

 child stirring in her womb ; and that she fully believes that if she 

 feels this when " near a tree haunted by spirits of kangaroo people, 

 then her child will be of the kangaroo totem." This does not, I 

 submit, amount to an explanation of the origin of totemism, for 

 we have still to account for the antecedent belief in totem spirits ; 



