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Within the clan, indeed, the maxim of blood for blood does not hold; though there may be another kind of punitive law put into force by the totemites against an erring brother, as, for instance, if they slay one of their number for disregarding the exogamic rule and consorting with a woman who is all-one-flesh with him.
Such a totem, in the first place, normally provides the social group with its name. They are "all-one-flesh" with one another, as certain of the Australians phrase it, because they are "all-one-flesh" with the totem.
But, for the native mind, the difference evidently goes far deeper than that. In some parts of Australia there are actually sex-totems, signifying that each sex is all-one-flesh, a mystic corporation.
You figure to yourself two small food-groups, whose respective beats are, let us say, on each side of a river. For some unknown reason they are totemic, one group calling itself Cockatoo, the other calling itself Crow, whilst each feels in consequence that its members are "all-one-flesh" in some mysterious and moving sense.
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