410 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION F. 



attribute pregnancy to the entering in to the woman of a totemic 

 spirit. The explanation given for this astounding ignorance of 

 natural causation among some of those Central Australian tribes 

 is that " the interval which elapses between the act of impreg- 

 nation and the first symptoms of pregnancy is sufficient to prevent 

 savage man from perceiving the connection between the two " : 

 that because some sexual unions are barren " he is driven to; 

 account for pregnancy and childbirth in some other way " ; and 

 that some of these peoples are so ignorant that they do not even 

 Icnow that a seed sowed in the earth will spring up and bear fruit, 

 and therefore could not be expected " to perceive that the child 

 which comes forth from the womb is the fruit of the seed which 

 was sowed there nine long months before." These arguments may 

 have some weight and importance so far as they apply to nomad 

 races like the Central Australian tribes, but even in the case of 

 those peoples they do not, in my judgment, account for the origin 

 of the totemic idea, nor do they show how hereditary totemism 

 originated from those conceptional fallacies. The explanation 

 given is still more unsatisfactory when applied to the case of other 

 totemic peoples living in widely different conditions to those in 

 which the central Australian tribes live. If the conceptional 

 theory really explains the origin of totemism, then all totemic 

 peoples, at one time, must have been in the same state of ignorance 

 of the cause and the duration of pregnancy as the Arunta tribes 

 now are. This, however, to say the least, seems to be highly 

 improbable in the case of the natives of India, Africa, North 

 America, and other countries who are well accustomed to the long 

 periods of gestation of the higher mammals, and whose totems 

 include the cow, elephant, buffalo and horse. We can scarcely 

 imagine those close observers of Nature being ignorant of the 

 part played by the male when they continually saw the female 

 refusing the attentions of the male when she was conscious that 

 the desired result was accomplished, any more than we can 

 imagine them as attributing the fact of their mares being in foal 

 to the entering into them of a totemic spirit. Then the fact that 

 sexual unions were often sterile would not surprise a native or 

 set him searching for supernatural reasons to account for the fact 

 any more than the fact that his fish-trap was often empty when 

 he expected to find it well filled, or that he himself was not always 

 successful in war or in the chase would necessitate the same course 

 of action. Then, because the Arunta tribes living in a nomad 

 condition in a comparatively barren country are said not to know 

 the simple truth that a seed sowed in the earth will spring up and 

 bear fruit, can we assert that the same ignorance also prevailed 

 among people living in a very different environment ? I cannot 

 myself imagine any natives in tropical or sub-tropical countries, 

 people who know the difference between the male and female 

 fruit-bearing trees, who constantly see the palm-seeds or nuts fall 

 to the ground and then sprout and grow, ever having been in 

 such a state of ignorance. 



