ABSTRACT
It is still a much disputed question what was the original form of human marriage, but in any case the family seems to be a later institution than the clan or community, what ever its structure, and family gods consequently are later than the gods of the community. If promiscuity, or if polyandry and the matriarchate, were the original state of things, then the family was admittedly a later develop ment. And so also it was, if the patriarchate with monogamy or polygamy prevailed from the beginning. In the latter case, the gods of the patriarch were necessarily also the gods of his married children and his grandchildren ; as long as the patriarch and his children and children’s children dwelt together and formed the community, the married children and their respective families could have no separate gods of their own. When, however, circumstances made it possible for the families which formed such a patriarchal community to exist apart from one another, and this was only possible in relatively late times, then it became also possible for them to have gods of their own in addition to those that they worshipped along with their kinsmen. In Western Africa, as appears from the account cited at the beginning of last chapter from Colonel Ellis, families obtain their cults from the sanctuaries of the established gods, by the mediation of the priests. It is from the gods of the community also that individuals in some cases obtain their guardian spirits. Thus in Samoa, “ at child-birth the help of several ‘ gods’ was invoked in succession, and the one who happened to be addressed at the moment of the birth was the infant’s
totem ” 1 (this individual totem is quite distinct in Samoa from the clan totem, and is the child’s guardian spirit).
