e.

Among the Australian aborigines apparently the clans, or sections
of them, wander about in search of food and game, and meet each
other for more or less promiscuous intercourse. This may perhaps
be supposed to have been the general primitive condition of society
after the introduction of exogamy combined with female descent. And
its memory is possibly preserved in the tradition of the Golden Age,
golden only in the sense that man was not troubled either by memory
or anticipation, and lived only for the day. The entire insecurity
of life and its frequent end by starvation or a violent death did not
therefore trouble him any more than is the case with animals. He took
no thought for the morrow, nor did the ills of yesterday oppress
his mind. As when one of a herd of deer is shot by a hunter and
the others stand by it pityingly as it lies dying on the ground,
uncertain of its mishap, though they would help it if they could;
yet when they perceive the hunter they make quickly off and in a few
minutes are again grazing happily a mile or two away: little or no
more than this can primitive man be supposed to have been affected by
the deaths of his fellows. But possibly, since he was carnivorous,
the sick and old may have been killed for food, as is still the
practice among some tribes of savages. In the natural course,
however, more or less permanent unions, though perhaps not regular
marriages, must have developed in the female exogamous clan, which
would thus usually have men of other clans living with it. And since
identification of individuals would be extremely difficult before
the introduction of personal names, there would be danger that when
two clans met, men and women belonging to the same totem-clan would
have sexual intercourse. This offence, owing to the strength of the
feeling for exogamy, was frequently held to entail terrible evils
for the community, and was consequently sometimes punished with
death as treason. Moreover, if we suppose a number of small clans,
A, B, C, D and E, to meet each other again and again, and the men and
women to unite promiscuously, it is clear that the result would be a
mixture of relationships of a very incestuous character. The incest
of brothers and sisters by the same father would be possible and of
almost all other relations, though that of brothers and sisters by the
same mother would not be caused. This may have been the reason for
the introduction of the class system amon