ABSTRACT
On the other hand, besides these influences of community of local life, there is another reason explaining the formation of territorial divisions within societies-namely, that such divisions correspond to a need to which the clan system also corresponds, but which survives the latter by producing its effects under a new form. This need is the division of the first societies into similar compartments-segments, to use Durkheim’s expression.1 As far and as fast as social organ ization replaces totemic organization, these segments them-
selves cease to be family aggregates to become territorial communes.1 The passage from one state to the other takes place only through a slow evolution. 66 When the memory of a common origin is extinct and the domestic relations, which derive from it but often survive it, have themselves also disappeared, the clan is no longer conscious of itself save as a group of individuals who occupy the same tract of land: they become the village proper. It is in this way that all peoples who have outgrown the clan phase have formed territorial districts, marches, communes. As the Roman gens came to be enlisted in the curia, so these were fitted into other districts of the same nature but wider, called sometimes the hundred, sometimes the parish or union, which in their turn are often incorporated in others yet more ex tensive (county, province, or department), the union of which forms the society.” 2
In Australian societies, besides totemic groupings and matrimonial classes, a third variety of groupings is distin guished. The latter are territorial and based upon com munity of territory, and vaguely subject to the vague authority of those embryo chiefs called alatunjas of whom we shall speak shortly. This duality of organization has been analysed in the case of Australia, especially by Howitt,3 and interpreted with penetrating insight by Durkheim.4 Now, what strikes us when we examine the territorial organization, which people are prone to picture as something clear and sharply defined, is its extreme indeterminateness. “ Under the influence of our modern ideas,” writes Durkheim,5 “ we should be inclined to picture it as constituted at base by a fundamental and well-defined geographical district which, joined to other districts of the same sort, would form a more extensive territorial division until we reached the political society as a whole. And that is exactly how the author does view it when he defines the tribe as an union of local groupsthat is, on his terminology-of clans or hordes. Unfor tunately it is very hard, if not impossible, to define the local group with any precision. Its dimensions and forms are kaleidoscopic. It is sometimes so extensive that it bears all the aspect of a tribe, and Mr. Howitt warns us in many cases
1 Cf. Durkheim, XII, pp. 157-167. 2 XII, p. 162. 3 XIX. 4 IV, IX, pp. 358-360. 5 Loc. cit.
