he following broad statements may serve the
reader as working hypotheses, that he can go on to test for himself
by looking into the facts. Firstly, exogamy and totemism, whether they
be in origin distinct or not, tend in practice to go pretty closely
together. Secondly, lineage, or the one-sided system of reckoning
descent, is more or less independent of the other two principles.[4]

[Footnote 4: That is to say, either mother-right or father-right in
any of their forms may exist in conjunction with exogamy and totemism.
It is certainly not the fact that, wherever totemism is in a state
of vigour, mother-right is regularly found. At most it may be urged
in favour of the priority of mother-right that, if there is change,
it is invariably from mother-right to father-right, and never the other
way about.]

If, instead of consulting the evidence that is to hand about the savage
world as it exists to-day, you read some book crammed full with theories
about social origins, you probably come away with the impression that
totemic society is entirely an affair of clans. Some such notion as
the following is precipitated in your mind. You figure to yourself
two small food-groups, whose respective beats are, let us say, on each
side of a river. For some unknown reason they are totemic, one group
calling itself Cockatoo, the other calling itself Crow, whilst each
feels in consequence that its members are "all-one-flesh" in some
mysterious and moving sense. Again, for some unknown reason each is
exogamous, so that matrimonial alliances are bound to take place across
the river. Lastly, each has mother-right of the full-blown kind. The
Cockatoo-girls and the Crow-girls abide each on their own side of the
river, where they are visited by partners from across the water; who,
whether they tend to stay and make themselves useful, or are merely
intermittent in their attentions, remain outsiders from the totemic
point of view and are treated as such. The children, meanwhile, grow
up in the Cockatoo and Crow quarters respectively as little Cockatoos
or Crows. If they need to be chastised, a Cockatoo hand, not necessarily
the mother's, but perhaps her brother's--never the father's,
however--administers the slap. When they grow up, they take their
chances for better and worse with the mother's people; fighting when
they fight, though it be against the father's people; sharing in the
toils and the spoils of the chase; inheriting the weapons and