any other
property that is handed on from one generation to another; and, last
but not least, taking part in the totemic mysteries that disclose to
the elect the inner meaning of being a Cockatoo or a Crow, as the case
may be.

Now such a picture of the original clan and of the original inter-clan
organization is very pretty and easy to keep in one's head. And when
one is simply guessing about the first beginnings of things, there
is something to be said for starting from some highly abstract and
simple concept, which is afterwards elaborated by additions and
qualifications until the developed notion comes near to matching the
complexity of the real facts. Such speculations, then, are quite
permissible and even necessary in their place. To do justice, however,
to the facts about totemic society, as known to us by actual observation,
it remains to note that the clan is by no means the only form of social
organization that it displays.

The clan, it is true, whether matrilineal or patrilineal, tends at
the totemic level of society to eclipse the family. The natural family,
of course--that is to say, the more or less permanent association of
father, mother and children, is always there in some shape and to some
extent. But, so long as the one-sided method of counting descent
prevails, and is reinforced by totemism, the family cannot attain to
the dignity of a formally recognized institution. On the other hand,
the totemic clan, of all the formally recognized groupings of society
to which an individual belongs in virtue of his birth and kinship,
is, so to speak, the most specific. As the Australian puts it, it makes
him what he "is." His social essence is to be a Cockatoo or a Crow.
Consequently his first duty is towards his clan and its members, human
and not-human. Wherever there are clans, and so long as there is any
totemism worthy of the name, this would seem to be the general law.

Besides the specific unity, however, provided by the clan, there are
wider, and, as it were, more generic unities into which a man is born,
in totemic society of the complex type that is found in the actual
world of to-day.

First, he belongs to a phratry. In Australia the tribe--a term to be
defined presently--is nearly always split up into two exogamous
divisions, which it is usual to call phratries.[5] Then, in some of
the Australian tribes, the phratry is subdivided into two, and, in
others, into four portions, between which exogam