d on one tiger are apparently held
to extend to all tigers and also to all members of the tiger clan.

65. The common life of the clan.

The totem-clan held itself to partake of the life of its totem, and
on the above hypothesis one common life would flow through all the
animals and plants of the totem and all the members of the clan. An
Australian calls his totem his Wingong (friend) or Tumang (flesh),
and nowadays expresses his sorrow when he has to eat it. [148] If a
man wishes to injure any man of a certain totem, he kills any animal
of that man's totem. [149] This clearly shows that one common life is
held to bind together all the animals of the totem-species and all the
members of the totem-clan, and the belief seems to be inexplicable on
any other hypothesis. The same is the case with the sex-totems of the
Kurnai tribe. In addition to the clan-totems all the boys have the
Superb Warbler bird as a sex-totem, and call it their elder brother;
and all the girls the Emu-wren, and call it their elder sister. If
the boys wish to annoy the girls, or vice versa, each kills or injures
the other's totem-bird, and such an act is always followed by a free
fight between the boys and girls. [150] Sex-totems are a peculiar
development which need not be discussed here, but again it would appear
that a common life runs through the birds of the totem and the members
of the sex. Professor Robertson Smith describes the clan or kin as
follows: "A kin was a group of persons whose lives were so bound up
together, in what must be called a physical unity, that they could
be treated as parts of one common life. The members of one kindred
looked on themselves as one living whole, one single animated mass of
blood, flesh and bones, of which no member could be touched without
all the members suffering. This point of view is expressed in the
Semitic tongue in many familiar forms of speech. In case of homicide
Arabian tribesmen do not say, 'The blood of M. or N. has been spilt'
(naming the man): they say, 'Our blood has been spilt.' In Hebrew
the phrase by which one claims kinship is, 'I am your bone and your
flesh.' Both in Hebrew and in Arabic flesh is synonymous with 'clan'
or kindred group." [151] The custom of the blood-feud appears to have
arisen from the belief in a common life of the clan. "The blood-feud
is an institution not peculiar to tribes reckoning descent through
females; and it is still in force. By virtue of its require