Note 8 — Chapter II · EARLY GROUP LIFE

The fact that primitive man is at once an individual and a member of a group—that he has as it were two personalities or selves, an individual self and a clan-self, or "tribal-self," as Clifford called it,—is not merely a psychologist's way of stating things. The Kafir people, according to their most recent student, Mr. Dudley Kidd, have two distinct words to express these two selves. They call one the idhlozi and other the itongo. "The idhlozi is the individual and personal spirit born with each child—something fresh and unique which is never shared with any one else—while the itongo is the ancestral and corporate spirit which is not personal but tribal, or a thing of the clan, the possession of which is obtained not by birth but by certain initiatory rites. The idhlozi is personal and inalienable, for it is wrapped up with the man's personality, and at death it lives near the grave, or goes into the snake or totem of the clan; but the itongo is of the clan, and haunts the living-hut; at death it returns to the tribal amatongo (ancestral spirits). A man's share in this clan-spirit (itongo) is lost when he becomes a Christian, or when he is in any way unfaithful to the interests of the clan, but a man never loses his idhlozi any more than he ever loses his individuality."—Savage Childhood, pp. 14 f.