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Updated: May 31, 2025
The real origin of reflection is not to be found in what may be called the mythical creation of nature, which is the necessary result of the spontaneity of the intelligence, both in man and animals; it is developed after long duration of barbarism and ignorance. M'Lennan and others have shown how the era of reflection and hypothesis begins in the evolution of human intelligence.
As to the first question, we must remember that the origin and determining causes of totemism are still unknown. Mr. M'Lennan's theory of the origin of totemism has never been published. It may be said without indiscretion that Mr. M'Lennan thought totemism arose at a period when ideas of kinship scarcely existed at all.
M'Lennan rather than of Sir Henry Maine. The point to which all the testimony adduced converges, the explanation which most readily solves all the difficulties, is the explanation of Mr. M'Lennan. The Aryan races have very generally passed through the stage of scarcity of women, polyandry, absence of recognised male kinship, and recognition of kinship through women.
This fact, indicated by M'Lennan and by all who have devoted themselves to anthropological researches with respect to the origin of religions, and of myth in general, is now recognized as certain; but it seems to me that the interpretation and explanation of it are altogether implete.
Were the gentes really of different stocks, as their names would imply and as the people believed? If so, how came clans of different stocks to be united in the same tribe? . . . How came a variety of such groups, of different stocks, to coalesce in a local tribe? These questions, Mr. M'Lennan thought, could not be answered on the patriarchal hypothesis.
Here the anthropologist and physiologist come in with their methods, and even those, we think, can throw but an uncertain light on the very 'origin' of institutions, and on strictly primitive man. For the purposes of this discussion, we shall here re-state the chief points at issue between the adherents of Sir Henry Maine and of Mr. M'Lennan, between historical and anthropological inquirers.
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