Nothing can be more easy. Supposing the Arunta to have begun, as in my
theory, with hereditary totemism, the rise of their isolated belief in
spirit-haunted sacred stones, encroached on and destroyed the
hereditary character of their totemism. The belief in CHURINGA NANJA is
an isolated freak, but it has done its work, while leaving traces of an
earlier state of things, as we have shown, both among the Kaitish and
Arunta.

If I am right in differing from such a master of many legions as the
learned author of THE GOLDEN BOUGH, the irreligion of the Arunta and
northern tribes (if these be really without religion) is the result of
their form of speculation, wholly occupied by the idea of
reincarnation, while the Arunta form of totemism is the consequence of
an isolated fantasy about their peculiar sacred stones. Meanwhile the
Euahlayi, as Mrs. Parker proves, entertain, in a limited way, not
elsewhere recorded in Australia, the belief in the reincarnation of the
souls of uninitiated young people. They also, like the Arunta,
recognise haunted trees and rocks, but the haunting spirits do not
desire reincarnation, and are not ancestral. Spirits of the dead go to
one or other abode of souls, to Baiame, or far from his presence to a
place of pain. So limited is human fancy, that here, as in Beckford's
picture of hell in VATHEK, each spirit eternally presses his hand
against his side. Were this a Christian doctrine, the Euahlayi would be
said to have borrowed it, but few will accuse them of plagiarising from
Beckford. These myths, like all myths, are not consistent. Baiame may
change a soul into a bird.

We may ask whether, with their limited belief in reincarnation, and
with their haunted Minggah trees and rocks, the Euahlayi have set up a
creed which might possibly develop into the northern faith, or whether