198 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



eternal ; for so soon as the elder god vanished he 

 would be succeeded by a divine personality precisely 

 similar. In this sense also the god was self-begotten, 

 being father to the son who was as himself; and he 

 was ' the husband of his mother,' in that after the 

 death of his father he had entered upon all rights as 

 regards the goddess of the triad, and was in his turn 

 by her the father of the new divine son who should 

 one day replace him." 1 An illustration of this belief 

 is found in the Book of the Dead, where allusion is 

 made to a period "when Horus came to light in his 

 own children/' 2 In south-eastern Australia, among 

 the Kulin tribe the line of descent runs through males. 

 So far have the natives got on the road from mother- 

 right (in which descent is traced exclusively through 

 females) that they regard the woman as little more 

 than the nurse of the child. Mr. Howitt even records 

 the exclamation of an old man to his son, with whom 

 he was vexed : " Listen to me ! I am here, and there 

 you stand with my body." 3 It would hardly be fair 



1 Wiedemann, 103. 



2 Book of the Dead, c. 112, translated by Le Page Renouf, in 

 Proc. Soc. BibL Arch, xvii. 8. 



3 Howitt, 255; J. A. L xiv. 145. Among the Dieri a man 

 speaking calls his son or his brother's son Athamurani, a word 

 interpreted by Mr. Howitt as meaning a revival of myself (Ato, I, 

 mura, new). Here it is to be observed that the Dieri still trace 

 descent through the mother only, and the interpretation is merely a 

 philological conjecture which wants confirmation (Curr, i. 124 note). 

 Coming nearer home it would seem that the ancient Scandinavians 

 held the opinion that the son was in some sense a reincarnation of 

 the soul of the father. They appear to have thought that a man 

 possessed more than one soul. A family soul (cettarfylgjd) is 

 spoken of in opposition to the individual soul (manusfylgjd). It is 

 the cettarfylgja which passes from a man to be reincarnated in his 

 son. Strictly speaking, we are told, it is not an undivided collective 



