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Updated: May 27, 2025
And it seems to us that to invoke the aid of the hypothesis of totemism in the past to explain the existence of a set of animal or plant superstitions in any particular case is but to increase the mystery that shrouds their origin; for unless it can be shown that the adoption or development of totemism by any people brings with it immense advantages for them in the struggle for existence, every fresh case in which the evidence compels us to admit its occurrence, whether in the past or as a still flourishing institution, can but increase the wonder with which we have to regard its wide distribution.
Having separately examined the three principles of exogamy, lineage and totemism, we must now try to see how they work together. Generalization in regard to these matters is extremely risky, not to say rash; nevertheless, the following broad statements may serve the reader as working hypotheses, that he can go on to test for himself by looking into the facts.
'It is, for instance, quite possible to place all worship of animal gods, all avoidance of certain kinds of animal food, all adoption of animal names as the names of men and families, under the wide and capacious cover of totemism. All theriolatry would thus be traced back to totemism.
The rules governing marriage are less elaborate than in Australia, the method of initiation is simpler, and the political organization is more definite. In regard to other usages commonly associated with totemism the reported details are not numerous.
It is not easy to explain the beginnings of totemism in Gaul or elsewhere, but it should always be borne in mind that early man could not regard it as an axiomatic truth that he was the superior of every other animal.
Animal clan-names and tribe-names, belief in kinship with animals and plants and in descent from them, exogamy, transformations, refusal to eat certain animals except ceremonially, apologies for killing them, omens derived from them, worship of animal-gods, incarnations of gods in animals, animals sacred to gods, tribal marks derived from animals all these are found in such diverse social combinations that it is impossible to infer merely from the occurrence of this or that custom the existence of the peculiar form of social organization to which the name 'totemism' proper is given above.
The same remarks apply to the statement of Finnish mythology here given, and familiar in the Kalewala. Departmental divine beings of natural phenomena we find everywhere, or nearly everywhere, in company, of course, with other elements of belief totemism, worship of spirits, perhaps with monotheism in the background. That is as much our opinion as Mr. Max Muller's.
But I do hanker after the Arcadian bear as, at least, a possible survival of totemism. The Scottish school inspector removed a picture of Behemoth, as a fabulous animal, from the wall of a school room. But, not being sure of the natural history of the unicorn, 'he just let him bide, and gave the puir beast the benefit o' the doubt. Will Mr.
As the beginnings of totemism are obscure it is not possible to say exactly what a man's attitude toward his totem was in the earliest period.
Totemism occupied us next, and the views of Mr. Max Muller and Mr. J. G. Frazer were criticised. Then I defended anthropological and criticised philological evidence. Our method of universal comparison was next justified in the matter of Fetishism. The Riddle Theory of Mr. Max Muller was presently discussed.
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