ss) of four
classes may marry another person of any one of these four, but must
marry a person of a given class among the four in B division
(nameless). The succession to the class is hereditary in the mate line.
But any person among the Arunta, contrary to universal custom
elsewhere, may marry another person of his or her own totem, if that
person be in the right class of the opposite division. Nowhere else can
a person of division A and totem Grub find a Grub to marry in the
opposite division B. But this is possible among the Arunta and Kaitish,
because their totems are acquired by pure accident, are not hereditary,
and all totems exist, or may exist, in division A and also in division B.

Mr. Frazer argues that the Arunta is the earlier state of affairs. He
supposes that men acquired their totems, at first, by local accident,
before they had laid any restrictions on marriage. Later, they divided
their tribe, first into two, then into four, then into eight classes;
and every one had to marry out of his class, or set of classes. All
other known tribes introduced these restrictions after totems had been
made hereditary. On passing the restrictive marriage law, they merely
drafted people of one set of hereditary totems into one division, all
the other totem kins into the other division. But the Arunta had not
made totems hereditary, but accidental, so all the children of one
crowd of mothers were placed in division A, all other children in
division B. The mothers in each division would have children of all the
totems, and thus the same totems now appeared in both of the exogamous
divisions. If a man married into his lawful opposite class, the fact
that the woman was of the same totem made no difference.

I have offered quite an opposite explanation. Arunta totems were,
originally, hereditary among the Arunta, as everywhere else, and no
totem occurred in both exogamous divisions. The same totems, later, got
into both divisions as the result of the later and isolated belief in
reincarnation PLUS the sacred haunted stones. That superstition has
left the Kaitish PRACTICE of marriage still almost untouched. A Kaitish
MAY, like an Arunta, marry a woman of his own totem, but he scarcely
ever does so. The old prohibition, extinct in law, persists in custom;
unless we say that the Kaitish are now merely imitating the usual
practice of the rest of the totemic races of the world.

Moreover, even among the Arunta, certain totems g