at the Moon and the Crow 'make' the new
children.

It would thus appear that the central and northern belief in perpetual
reincarnation of primal spirits is not primitive, yet the Arunta method
of acquiring totems does not exist save by grace of this belief, PLUS
the isolated belief in primal sacred stones.

I am obliged to differ from Mr. Frazer when he says that 'it is easy to
see how hereditary totemism, either in the paternal or in the maternal
line, would be derived from' the Arunta belief and practice, whereas
'it is hardly possible that this peculiar form of local totemism
[Arunta], with its implied ignorance of such a thing as paternity at
all, could be derived from hereditary totemism.'

I do not know whether the other northern tribes share the Arunta
nescience of procreation, or not. Whether they do or do not, it was as
easy for them to e plain all difficulties by a reconciling myth--a
spirit of the husband's totem follows his wife--as for a white savant to
frame an hypothesis. The Urabunna, with female descent of the totem,
have quite another myth--to reconcile everything.

Nothing can be more easy. Supposing the Arunta to have begun, as in my
theory, with hereditary totemism, the rise of their isolated belief in
spirit-haunted sacred stones, encroached on and destroyed the
hereditary character of their totemism. The belief in CHURINGA NANJA is
an isolated freak, but it has done its work, while leaving traces of an
earlier state of things, as we have shown, both among the Kaitish and
Arunta.

If I am right in differing from such a master of many legions as the
learned author of THE GOLDEN BOUGH, the irreligion of the Arunta and
northern tribes (if these be really without religion) is the result of
their form of speculation, wholly occupied by the idea of
reincarnation, while the Arunta form of totemism is the consequence of
an isolated fantasy about their peculiar sacred stones. Meanwhile the
Euahlayi, as Mrs. Parker proves, entertain, in a limited way, not
elsewhere recorded in Australia, the belief in the reincarnation of the
souls of uninitiated young people. They also, like the Arunta,
recognise haunted trees and rocks, but the haunting spirits do not
desire reincarnation, and are not ancestral. Spirits of the dead go to
one or other abode of souls, to Baiame, or far from his presence to a
place of pain. So limited is human fancy, that here, as in Beckford's
picture of hell in VATHEK, each spirit et