Note 98.1 — RITUAL AND BELIEF

It may be well to illustrate the foregoing speculation from the customs and superstitions of the Arunta of Central Australia. The Arunta have been represented to be the lowest and least evolved of known humanity in their beliefs and institutions: they are, it is said, still in the stage of primitive absence of religion; magic alone is the object of their belief; magic alone they practise. Now none of the Australian tribes are, strictly speaking, in a primitive condition. The civilization of all of them has evolved to some extent. It has evolved, speaking in general terms, along similar lines; and these lines have been conditioned by the environment. It is admittedly significant that, in a land where so many archaic types of the lower animals have survived, we should find archaic types of human culture. Yet the most archaic types of Australian culture are far from being primitive. So far are they that the social organization is of the most complex character, the product of a succession of stages of development. The least archaic types exhibit the old social organization breaking down and new structures in course of formation. With the evolution of society an evolution of belief has also been going on. It has not been exactly concurrent. Culture rarely or never evolves equally in all directions. It is a mental process, partly conscious, partly unconscious. The collective mind of a given society, like the individual minds of which it is composed, is not exercised equally on all subjects at the same time. Hence while, for example, we find among the Euahlayi tribe, in the north of New South Wales, an advanced theology and a more developed worship than have been recorded elsewhere in Australia, the social organization is still on the basis of female descent; and though the clansmen eat without scruple their hereditary totems, in other respects the totemic system seems to be in full force. In the same way the Arunta and their neighbours certainly preserve relics of a very archaic condition of thought and social organization. Though for certain purposes a son inherits from his mother’s husband, it is doubtful whether descent is counted through the father for social purposes; the physical relation between father and child, indeed, is but imperfectly recognized. On the other hand, they have developed a very elaborate theory of reincarnation, and their totemic system seems to be in course of transformation into a number of societies bearing in some respects remarkable resemblance to those of the tribes of British Columbia.98.1 Magical practices (chiefly in connection with these societies or totemic groups) are more prominent than religious.