410 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



PRIMITIVE MAN. 



r I^WO articles contributed to the 

 April and May numbers of the 

 Fortnightly Eeview by Mr. J. G. 

 Frazer, the learned author of The 

 Golden Bough, and more recently of 

 a monumental edition of Pausanias, 

 are worthy of the close attention of 

 all who are interested in the early 

 history of mankind. The articles are 

 entitled The Origin of Totemism, 

 and the object of the writer is to show 

 that on this obscure subject a flood 

 of light has been shed by the lately 

 published researches of Messrs. Spen- 

 cer and Gillen into the beliefs and 

 practices of the native tribes of cen- 

 tral Australia, those tribes being 

 perhaps the best representatives 

 now anywhere surviving of the most 

 primitive condition of the human 

 race. Mr. Baldwin Spencer, formerly 

 a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, 

 is at present Professor of Biology in 

 the University of Melbourne, while 

 Mr. Gillen is a special magistrate in 

 South Australia, charged with the 

 protection of the aborigines. In their 

 work, Mr. Frazer observes, " We pos- 

 sess for the first time a full and au- 

 thentic account of thoroughly primi- 

 tive savages living in the totem stage 

 and practically unaffected by Euro- 

 pean influence. Its importance," he 

 adds, " as a document of human his- 

 tory can, therefore, hardly be over- 

 estimated." 



Evolution, it has often been re- 

 marked, and is again remarked by the 

 writer of these articles, is an outcome 

 of the struggle for life, and is rapid 

 and vigorous or slow and feeble, ac- 

 cording to the intensity of the strug- 

 gle and the number and variety of 

 the competing elements. Among the 

 great land masses of our planet Aus- 

 tralia is the smallest; and, owing to 

 this circumstance, and also to its 



physical conformation, which ren- 

 ders large areas unfit for the main- 

 tenance of life, population has been 

 much restricted and competition has 

 been at a minimum. Hence the ex- 

 tremely backward and undeveloped 

 condition of its native tribes, a con- 

 dition which enables us, as Mr. Fra- 

 zer observes 1 , to detect humanity in 

 the chrysalis stage, and mark the first 

 blind gropings of our race after lib- 

 erty and light. 



The account given of these tribes 

 contains indeed some very remark- 

 able details. For example, " though 

 they suffer much from cold at night 

 under the frosty stars of the clear 

 Australian heaven, the idea of using 

 as garments the warm furs of the 

 wild animals they kill and eat has 

 never entered into their minds." 

 They attribute the propagation of 

 the human race wholly to the action 

 of spirits, to whom they attribute a 

 fecundating power, treating as whol- 

 ly irrelevant to the matter any con- 

 tact of the sexes. The idea of natu- 

 ral causation seems to be one which 

 they have no power to grasp. They 

 believe that various results are de- 

 pendent on special antecedent con- 

 ditions, but it is a pure matter of 

 accident what they shall conceive 

 the conditions in any case to be. 

 Here we come to the origin of to- 

 temism. Heretofore totemism has 

 been considered, broadly speaking, 

 as the identification of themselves 

 by some group of savages with a 

 particular plant or animal or other 

 manifestation of the powers of Na- 

 ture, accompanied by a complete or 

 partial taboo, so far as the group in 

 question is concerned, of the ani- 

 mal or other object adopted as to- 

 tem, and also by a rule prohibiting 

 marriage within the group. What 

 Messrs. Spencer and Gillen have sue- 



