igion and Totemism among the
Australian Aborigines,' FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW, September 1905, p. 452,
Note 1.] but I am unable to see how the religious aspect of Atnatu,
non-moral as it is, can be overlooked. He is the father of part of the
tribe, and all are bound to, observe his ceremonial rules. He accounts for
the beginning of the beginning; he is the cause of the Alcheringa; men owe
duties to him. We do not know whether he was once as potent in their
hearts, and as moral as Byamee, but has DOGRINGOLO under Arunta
philosophic influences; or whether Byamee is a more highly evolved form of
Atnatu. But it is quite certain that the Kaitish, in a region as far
almost from the north sea as that of the Arunta, and further from southern
coastal influences than the Arunta, have a modified belief in the All
Father. How are we to account for this on the philosophic hypothesis of
Oceanus as the father of all the gods; of coastal influences producing a
richer life, and causing both social and religious progress?

Another difficulty is that while the Arunta, with no religion, and the
Kaitish, with the Atnatu belief, are socially advanced in organisation
(whether we reckon male descent of the totem 'a great step in
progress,' or an accident), they are yet supposed by Mr. Frazer to be,
in one respect, the least advanced, the most primitive, of known human
beings. The reason is this: the Arunta do not recognise the processes
of sexual union as the cause of the production of children. Sexual
acts, they say, merely prepare women for the reception of original
ancestral spirits, which enter into them, and are reincarnated and
brought to the birth.

If the women cannot accept the spirits without being 'prepared' by
sexual union, then sexual union plays a physical part in the generation
of a spirit incarnated, a fact which all believers in the human soul
are as ready as the Arunta to admit. If the Arunta recognise the
prior necessity of 'preparation,' then they are not so ignorant as
they are thought to be; and their view is produced, not so much by
stark ignorance, as by their philosophy of the eternal reincarnation of
primal human spirits. The Arunta philosophers, in fact, seem to
concentrate their speculation on a point which puzzled Mr. Shandy. How
does the animating principle, or soul, regarded as immaterial, clothe
itself in flesh? Material acts cannot effect the incarnation of a
spirit. Therefore, the spirit enters women from without,