and every one had to marry out of his class, or set of classes. All
other known tribes introduced these restrictions after totems had been
made hereditary. On passing the restrictive marriage law, they merely
drafted people of one set of hereditary totems into one division, all
the other totem kins into the other division. But the Arunta had not
made totems hereditary, but accidental, so all the children of one
crowd of mothers were placed in division A, all other children in
division B. The mothers in each division would have children of all the
totems, and thus the same totems now appeared in both of the exogamous
divisions. If a man married into his lawful opposite class, the fact
that the woman was of the same totem made no difference.

I have offered quite an opposite explanation. Arunta totems were,
originally, hereditary among the Arunta, as everywhere else, and no
totem occurred in both exogamous divisions. The same totems, later, got
into both divisions as the result of the later and isolated belief in
reincarnation PLUS the sacred haunted stones. That superstition has
left the Kaitish PRACTICE of marriage still almost untouched. A Kaitish
MAY, like an Arunta, marry a woman of his own totem, but he scarcely
ever does so. The old prohibition, extinct in law, persists in custom;
unless we say that the Kaitish are now merely imitating the usual
practice of the rest of the totemic races of the world.

Moreover, even among the Arunta, certain totems greatly preponderate in
each of the two exogamous intermarrying divisions of the tribe. This
must be because the present practice has not yet quite upset the
ancient usage, by which no totem ever occurred in both divisions. There
is even an Arunta myth asserting that this was so, but it is, of
course, of no historical value as evidence. Here it is proper to give
Mr. Frazer's contrary theory in his own words:--