TOTEMISM

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TOTEMISM

Totemism

To the strange and widely diffused institution of 'Totemism' our author often returns. I shall deal here with his collected remarks on the theme, the more gladly as the treatment shows how very far Mr. Max Muller is from acting with a shadow of unfairness when he does not refer to special passages in his opponent's books. He treats himself and his own earlier works in the same fashion, thereby, perhaps, weakening his argument, but also demonstrating his candour, were any such demonstration required.

On totems he opens (i. 7)--

'When we come to special cases we must not imagine that much can be gained by using such general terms as Animism, Totemism, Fetishism, &c., as solvents of mythological problems. To my mind, all such general terms, not excluding even Darwinism or Puseyism, seem most objectionable, because they encourage vague thought, vague praise, or vague blame.

'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. I am not aware, however, that any Egyptologists have adopted such a view to account for the animal forms of the Egyptian gods. Sanskrit scholars would certainly hesitate before seeing in Indra a totem because he is called vrishabha, or bull, or before attempting to explain on this ground the abstaining from beef on the part of orthodox Hindus [i. 7].'

 

Totemism Defined

I think I have defined totemism, {71} and the reader may consult Mr. Frazer's work on the subject, or Mr. MacLennan's essays, or 'Totemism' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However, I shall define totemism once more. It is a state of society and cult, found most fully developed in Australia and North America, in which sets of persons, believing themselves to be akin by blood, call each such set by the name of some plant, beast, or other class of objects in nature. One kin may be wolves, another bears, another cranes, and so on. Each kin derives its kin-name from its beast, plant, or what not; pays to it more or less respect, usually abstains from killing, eating, or using it (except in occasional sacrifices); is apt to claim descent from or relationship with it, and sometimes uses its effigy on memorial pillars, carved pillars outside huts, tattooed on the skin, and perhaps in other ways not known to me. In Australia and North America, where rules are strict, a man may not marry a woman of his own totem; and kinship is counted through mothers in many, but not in all, cases. Where all these notes are combined we have totemism. It is plain that two or three notes of it may survive where the others have perished; may survive in ritual and sacrifice, {72a} and in bestial or semi-bestial gods of certain nomes, or districts, in ancient Egypt; {72b} in Pictish names; {72c} in claims of descent from beasts, or gods in the shape of beasts; in the animals sacred to gods, as Apollo or Artemis, and so on. Such survivals are possible enough in evolution, but the evidence needs careful examination. Animal attributes and symbols and names in religion are not necessarily totemistic. Mr. Max Muller asks if 'any Egyptologists have adopted' the totem theory. He is apparently oblivious of Professor Sayce's reference to a prehistoric age, 'when the religious creed of Egypt was still totemism.'

Dr. Codrington is next cited for the apparent absence of totemism in the Solomon Islands and Polynesia, and Professor Oldenberg as denying that 'animal names of persons and clans [necessarily?] imply totemism.' Who says that they do? 'Clan Chattan,' with its cat crest, may be based, not on a totem, but on a popular etymology. Animal names of individuals have nothing to do with totems. A man has no business to write on totemism if he does not know these facts.

 

What a Totem is

Though our adversary now abandons totems, he returns to them elsewhere (i. 198-202). 'Totem is the corruption of a term used by North American Indians in the sense of clan-mark or sign-board ("ododam").' The totem was originally a rude emblem of an animal or other object 'placed by North American Indians in front of their settlements.'

 

The Evidence for Sign-boards

Our author's evidence for sign-boards is from an Ottawa Indian, and is published from his MS. by Mr. Hoskyns Abrahall. {73} The testimony is of the greatest merit, for it appears to have first seen the light in a Canadian paper of 1858. Now in 1858 totems were only spoken of in Lafitau, Long, and such old writers, and in Cooper's novels. They had not become subjects of scientific dispute, so the evidence is uncontaminated by theory. The Indians were, we learn, divided into [local?] tribes, and these 'into sections or families according to their ododams'--devices, signs, in modern usage 'coats of arms.' [Perhaps 'crests' would be a better word.] All people of one ododam (apparently under male kinship) lived together in a special section of each village. At the entrance to the enclosure was the figure of an animal, or some other sign, set up on the top of one of the posts. Thus everybody knew what family dwelt in what section of the village. Some of the families were called after their ododam. But the family with the bear ododam were called Big Feet, not Bears. Sometimes parts of different animals were 'quartered' [my suggestion], and one ododam was a small hawk and the fins of a sturgeon.

We cannot tell, of course, on the evidence here, whether 'Big Feet' suggested 'Bear,' or vice versa, or neither. But Mr. Frazer has remarked that periphrases for sacred beasts, like 'Big Feet' for Bear, are not uncommon. Nor can we tell 'what couple of ancestors' a small hawk and a sturgeon's fins represent, unless, perhaps, a hawk and a sturgeon. {74a}

For all this, Mr. Max Muller suggests the explanation that people who marked their abode with crow or wolf might come to be called Wolves or Crows. {74b} Again, people might borrow beast names from the prevalent beast of their district, as Arkades, [Greek], Bears, and so evolve the myth of descent from Callisto as a she-bear. 'All this, however, is only guesswork.' The Snake Indians worship no snake. [The Snake Indians are not a totem group, but a local tribe named from the Snake River, as we say, 'An Ettrick man.'] Once more, the name-giving beast, say, 'Great Hare,' is explained by Dr. Brinton as 'the inevitable Dawn.' {74c} 'Hasty writers,' remarks Dr. Brinton, 'say that the Indians claim descent from different wild beasts.' For evidence I refer to that hasty writer, Mr. Frazer, and his book, Totemism. For a newly sprung up modern totem our author alludes to a boat, among the Mandans, 'their totem, or tutelary object of worship.' An object of worship, of course, is not necessarily a totem! Nor is a totem by the definition (as a rule one of a class of objects) anything but a natural object. Mr. Max Muller wishes that 'those who write about totems and totemism would tell us exactly what they mean by these words.' I have told him, and indicated better sources. I apply the word totemism to the widely diffused savage institution which I have defined.__

 

More about Totems

The origin of totemism is unknown to me, as to Mr. McLennan and Dr. Robertson Smith, but Mr. Max Muller knows this origin. 'A totem is a clan-mark, then a clan-name, then the name of the ancestor of a clan, and lastly the name of something worshipped by a clan' (i. 201). 'All this applies in the first instance to Red Indians only.' Yes, and 'clan' applies in the first instance to the Scottish clans only! When Mr. Max Muller speaks of 'clans' among the Red Indians, he uses a word whose connotation differs from anything known to exist in America. But the analogy between a Scottish clan and an American totem-kin is close enough to justify Mr. Max Muller in speaking of Red Indian 'clans.' By parity of reasoning, the analogy between the Australian Kobong and the American totem is so complete that we may speak of 'Totemism' in Australia. It would be childish to talk of 'Totemism' in North America, 'Kobongism' in Australia, 'Pacarissaism' in the realm of the Incas: totems, kobongs, and pacarissas all amounting to the same thing, except in one point. I am not aware that Australian blacks erect, or that the subjects of the Incas, or that African and Indian and Asiatic totemists, erected 'sign- boards' anywhere, as the Ottawa writer assures us that the Ottawas do, or used to do. And, if they don't, how do we know that kobongs and pacarissas were developed out of sign-boards?

 

Heraldry and Totems

The Ottawas are armigeri, are heraldic; so are the natives of Vancouver's Island, who have wooden pillars with elaborate quarterings. Examples are in South Kensington Museum. But this savage heraldry is not nearly so common as the institution of totemism. Thus it is difficult to prove that the heraldry is the origin of totemism, which is just as likely, or more likely, to have been the origin of savage heraldic crests and quarterings. Mr. Max Muller allows that there may be other origins.

 

Gods and Totems

Our author refers to unnamed writers who call Indra or Ammon a totem (i. 200).

This is a foolish liberty with language. 'Why should not all the gods of Egypt with their heads of bulls and apes and cats be survivals of totemisms?' Why not, indeed? Professor Sayce remarks, 'They were the sacred animals of the clans,' survivals from an age 'when the religion of Egypt was totemism.' 'In Egypt the gods themselves are totem-deities, i.e. personifications or individual representations of the sacred character and attributes which in the purely totem stage of religion were ascribed without distinction to all animals of the holy kind.' So says Dr. Robertson Smith. He and Mr. Sayce are 'scholars,' not mere unscholarly anthropologists. {76}

 

An Objection

Lastly (ii. 403), when totems infected 'even those who ought to have been proof against this infantile complaint' (which is not even a 'disease of language' of a respectable type), then 'the objection that a totem meant originally a clan-mark was treated as scholastic pedantry.' Alas, I fear with justice! For if I call Mr. Arthur Balfour a Tory will Mr. Max Muller refute my opinion by urging that 'a Tory meant originally an Irish rapparee,' or whatever the word did originally mean?

Mr. Max Muller decides that 'we never find a religion consisting exclusively of a belief in fetishes, or totems, or ancestral spirits.' Here, at last, we are in absolute agreement. So much for totems and sign- boards. Only a weak fanatic will find a totem in every animal connected with gods, sacred names, and religious symbols. But totemism is a fact, whether 'totem' originally meant a clan-mark or sign-board in America or not. And, like Mr. Sayce, Mr. Frazer, Mr. Rhys, Dr. Robertson Smith, I believe that totemism has left marks in civilised myth, ritual, and religion, and that these survivals, not a 'disease of language,' explain certain odd elements in the old civilisations.

 

A Weak Brother

Our author's habit of omitting references to his opponents has here caused me infinite inconvenience. He speaks of some eccentric person who has averred that a 'fetish' is a 'totem,' inhabited by 'an ancestral spirit.' To myself it seems that you might as well say 'Abracadabra is gas and gaiters.' As no reference was offered, I invented 'a wild surmise' that Mr. Max Muller had conceivably misapprehended Mr. Frazer's theory of the origin of totems. Had our author only treated himself fairly, he would have referred to his own Anthropological Religion (pp. 126 and 407), where the name of the eccentric definer is given as that of Herr Lippert. {78} Then came into my mind the words of Professor Tiele, 'Beware of weak brethren'--such as Herr Lippert seems, as far as this definition is concerned, to be.

Nobody knows the origin of totemism. We find no race on its way to becoming totemistic, though we find several in the way of ceasing to be so. They are abandoning female kinship for paternity; their rules of marriage and taboo are breaking down; perhaps various totem kindreds of different crests and names are blending into one local tribe, under the name, perhaps, of the most prosperous totem-kin. But we see no race on its way to becoming totemistic, so we have no historical evidence as to the origin of the institution. Mr. McLennan offered no conjecture, Professor Robertson Smith offered none, nor have I displayed the spirit of scientific exactitude by a guess in the dark. To gratify Mr. Max Muller by defining totemism as Mr. McLennan first used the term is all that I dare do. Here one may remark that if Mr. Max Muller really wants 'an accurate definition' of totemism, the works of McLennan, Frazer, Robertson Smith, and myself are accessible, and contain our definitions. He does not produce these definitions, and criticise them; he produces Dr. Lippert's and criticises that. An argument should be met in its strongest and most authoritative form. 'Define what you mean by a totem,' says Professor Max Muller in his Gifford Lectures of 1891 (p. 123). He had to look no further for a definition, an authoritative definition, than to 'totem' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or to McLennan. Yet his large and intelligent Glasgow audience, and his readers, may very well be under the impression that a definition of 'totem' is 'still to seek,' like Prince Charlie's religion. Controversy simply cannot be profitably conducted on these terms.

'The best representatives of anthropology are now engaged not so much in comparing as in discriminating.' {79} Why not refer, then, to the results of their discriminating efforts? 'To treat all animal worship as due to totemism is a mistake.' Do we make it?

 

Mr. Frazer and Myself

There is, or was, a difference of opinion between Mr. Frazer and myself as to the causes of the appearance of certain sacred animals in Greek religion. My notions were published in Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887), Mr. Frazer's in The Golden Bough (1890). Necessarily I was unaware in 1887 of Mr. Frazer's still unpublished theory. Now that I have read it, he seems to me to have the better logic on his side; and if I do not as yet wholly agree with him, it is because I am not yet certain that both of our theories may not have their proper place in Greek mythology.

 

Greek Totemism

In C. and M. (p. 106) I describe the social aspects of totemism. I ask if there are traces of it in Greece. Suppose, for argument's sake, that in prehistoric Greece the mouse had been a totem, as it is among the Oraons of Bengal. {80} In that case (1) places might be named from a mouse tribe; (2) mice might be held sacred per se; (3) the mouse name might be given locally to a god who superseded the mouse in pride of place; (4) images of the mouse might be associated with that of the god, (5) and used as a local badge or mark; (6) myths might be invented to explain the forgotten cause of this prominence of the mouse. If all these notes occur, they would raise a presumption in favour of totemism in the past of Greece. I then give evidence in detail, proving that all these six facts do occur among Greeks of the Troads and sporadically elsewhere. I add that, granting for the sake of argument that these traces may point to totemism in the remote past, the mouse, though originally a totem, 'need not have been an Aryan totem' (p. 116).

I offer a list of other animals closely connected with Apollo, giving him a beast's name (wolf, ram, dolphin), and associated with him in myth and art. In M. R. R. I apply similar arguments in the case of Artemis and the Bear, of Dionysus and the Bull, Demeter and the Pig, and so forth. Moreover, I account for the myths of descent of Greek human families from gods disguised as dogs, ants, serpents, bulls, and swans, on the hypothesis that kindreds who originally, in totemistic fashion, traced to beasts sans phrase, later explained their own myth to themselves by saying that the paternal beast was only a god in disguise and en bonne fortune.

This hypothesis at least 'colligates the facts,' and brings them into intelligible relationship with widely-diffused savage institutions and myths.

 

The Greek Mouse-totem?

My theory connecting Apollo Smintheus and the place-names derived from mice with a possible prehistoric mouse-totem gave me, I confess, considerable satisfaction. But in Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough (ii. 129- 132) is published a group of cases in which mice and other vermin are worshipped for prudential reasons--to get them to go away. In the Classical Review (vol. vi. 1892) Mr. Ward Fowler quotes Aristotle and AElian on plagues of mice, like the recent invasion of voles on the Border sheep-farms. He adopts the theory that the sacred mice were adored by way of propitiating them. Thus Apollo may be connected with mice, not as a god who superseded a mouse-totem, but as an expeller of mice, like the worm-killing Heracles, and the Locust-Heracles, and the Locust-Apollo. {81a} The locust is still painted red, salaamed to, and set free in India, by way of propitiating his companions. {81b} Thus the Mouse-Apollo (Smintheus) would be merely a god noted for his usefulness in getting rid of mice, and any worship given to mice (feeding them, placing their images on altars, their stamp on coins, naming places after them, and so on) would be mere acts of propitiation.__

There would be no mouse-totem in the background. I do not feel quite convinced--the mouse being a totem, and a sacred or tabooed animal, in India and Egypt. {82a} But I am content to remain in a balance of opinion. That the Mouse is the Night (Gubernatis), or the Lightning (Grohmann), I am disinclined to believe. Philologists are very apt to jump at contending meteorological explanations of mice and such small deer without real necessity, and an anthropologist is very apt to jump at an equally unnecessary and perhaps equally undemonstrated totem.

 

Philological Theory

Philological mythologists prefer to believe that the forgotten meaning of words produced the results; that the wolf-born Apollo ([Greek]) originally meant 'Light-born Apollo,' {82b} and that the wolf came in from a confusion between [Greek], 'Light,' and [Greek], a wolf. I make no doubt that philologists can explain Sminthian Apollo, the Dog-Apollo, and all the rest in the same way, and account for all the other peculiarities of place-names, myths, works of art, local badges, and so forth. We must then, I suppose, infer that these six traits of the mouse, already enumerated, tally with the traces which actual totemism would or might leave surviving behind it, or which propitiation of mice might leave behind it, by a chance coincidence, determined by forgotten meanings of words. The Greek analogy to totemistic facts would be explained, (1) either by asking for a definition of totemism, and not listening when it is given; or (2) by maintaining that savage totemism is also a result of a world-wide malady of language, which, in a hundred tongues, produced the same confusions of thought, and consequently the same practices and institutions. Nor do I for one moment doubt that the ingenuity of philologists could prove the name of every beast and plant, in every language under heaven, to be a name for the 'inevitable dawn' (Max Muller), or for the inevitable thunder, or storm, or lightning (Kuhn- Schwartz). But as names appear to yield storm, lightning, night, or dawn with equal ease and certainty, according as the scholar prefers dawn or storm, I confess that this demonstration would leave me sceptical. It lacks scientific exactitude.

 

Mr. Frazer on Animals in Greek Religion

In The Golden Bough (ii. 37) Mr. Frazer, whose superior knowledge and acuteness I am pleased to confess, has a theory different from that which I (following McLennan) propounded before The Golden Bough appeared. Greece had a bull-shaped Dionysus. {83a} 'There is left no room to doubt that in rending and devouring a live bull at his festival, his worshippers believed that they were killing the god, eating his flesh, and drinking his blood.' {83b} Mr. Frazer concludes that there are two possible explanations of Dionysus in his bull aspect. (1) This was an expression of his character as a deity of vegetation, 'especially as the bull is a common embodiment of the corn-spirit in Northern Europe.' {84a} (2) The other possible explanation 'appears to be the view taken by Mr. Lang, who suggests that the bull-formed Dionysus "had either been developed out of, or had succeeded to, the worship of a bull-totem."' {84b}

Now, anthropologists are generally agreed, I think, that occasional sacrifices of and communion in the flesh of the totem or other sacred animals do occur among totemists. {84c} But Mr. Frazer and I both admit, and indeed are eager to state publicly, that the evidence for sacrifice of the totem, and communion in eating him, is very scanty. The fact is rather inferred from rites among peoples just emerging from totemism (see the case of the Californian buzzard, in Bancroft) than derived from actual observation. On this head too much has been taken for granted by anthropologists. But I learn that direct evidence has been obtained, and is on the point of publication. The facts I may not anticipate here, but the evidence will be properly sifted, and bias of theory discounted.

To return to my theory of the development of Dionysus into a totem, or of his inheritance of the rites of a totem, Mr. Frazer says, 'Of course this is possible, but it is not yet certain that Aryans ever had totemism.' {84d} Now, in writing of the mouse, I had taken care to observe that, in origin, the mouse as a totem need not have been Aryan, but adopted. People who think that the Aryans did not pass through a stage of totemism, female kin, and so forth, can always fall back (to account for apparent survivals of such things among Aryans) on 'Pre-Aryan conquered peoples,' such as the Picts. Aryans may be enticed by these bad races and become Pictis ipsis Pictiores.

 

Aryan Totems (?)

Generally speaking (and how delightfully characteristic of us all is this!), I see totems in Greek sacred beasts, where Mr. Frazer sees the corn-spirit embodied in a beast, and where Mr. Max Muller sees (in the case of Indra, called the bull) 'words meaning simply male, manly, strong,' an 'animal simile.' {85a} Here, of course, Mr. Max Muller is wholly in the right, when a Vedic poet calls Indra 'strong bull,' or the like. Such poetic epithets do not afford the shadow of a presumption for Vedic totemism, even as a survival. Mr. Frazer agrees with me and Mr. Max Muller in this certainty. I myself say, 'If in the shape of Indra there be traces of fur and feather, they are not very numerous nor very distinct, but we give them for what they may be worth.' I then give them. {85b} To prove that I do not force the evidence, I take the Vedic text. {85c} 'His mother, a cow, bore Indra, an unlicked calf.' I then give Sayana's explanation. Indra entered into the body of Dakshina, and was reborn of her. She also bore a cow. But this legend, I say, 'has rather the air of being an invention, apres coup, to account for the Vedic text of calf Indra, born from a cow, than of being a genuine ancient myth.' The Vedic myth of Indra's amours in shape of a ram, I say 'will doubtless be explained away as metaphorical.' Nay, I will go further. It is perfectly conceivable to me that in certain cases a poetic epithet applied by a poet to a god (say bull, ram, or snake) might be misconceived, and might give rise to the worship of a god as a bull, or snake, or ram. Further, if civilised ideas perished, and if a race retained a bull-god, born of their degradation and confusion of mind, they might eat him in a ritual sacrifice. But that all totemistic races are totemistic, because they all first metaphorically applied animal names to gods, and then forgot what they had meant, and worshipped these animals, sans phrase, appears to me to be, if not incredible, still greatly in want of evidence.

 

Mr. Frazer and I

It is plain that where a people claim no connection by descent and blood from a sacred animal, are neither of his name nor kin, the essential feature of totemism is absent. I do not see that eaters of the bull Dionysus or cultivators of the pig Demeter {86} made any claim to kindred with either god. Their towns were not allied in name with pig or bull. If traces of such a belief existed, they have been sloughed off. Thus Mr. Frazer's explanation of Greek pigs and bulls and all their odd rites, as connected with the beast in which the corn-spirit is incarnate, holds its ground better than my totemistic suggestion. But I am not sure that the corn-spirit accounts for the Sminthian mouse in all his aspects, nor for the Arcadian and Attic bear-rites and myths of Artemis. Mouse and bear do appear in Mr. Frazer's catalogue of forms of the corn-spirits, taken from Mannhardt. {87} But the Arcadians, as we shall see, claimed descent from a bear, and the mouse place-names and badges of the Troad yield a hint of the same idea. The many Greek family claims to descent from gods as dogs, bulls, ants, serpents, and so on, may spring from gratitude to the corn-spirit. Does Mr. Frazer think so? Nobody knows so well as he that similar claims of descent from dogs and snakes are made by many savage kindreds who have no agriculture, no corn, and, of course, no corn-spirits. These remarks, I trust, are not undiscriminating, and naturally I yield the bull Dionysus and the pig Demeter to the corn-spirit, vice totem, superseded. 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. Frazer give the Arcadian bear 'the benefit of the doubt'?

I am not at all bigoted in the opinion that the Greeks may have once been totemists. The strongest presumption in favour of the hypothesis is the many claims of descent from a god disguised as a beast. But the institution, if ever it did exist among the ancestors of the Greeks, had died out very long before Homer. We cannot expect to find traces of the prohibition to marry a woman of the same totem. In Rome we do find traces of exogamy, as among totemists. 'Formerly they did not marry women connected with them by blood.' {88a} But we do not find, and would not expect to find, that the 'blood' was indicated by the common totem.

 

Mr. Frazer on Origin of Totemism

Mr. Frazer has introduced the term 'sex-totems,' in application to Australia. This is connected with his theory of the Origin of Totemism. I cannot quite approve of the term sex-totems.

If in Australia each sex has a protecting animal--the men a bat, the women an owl--if the slaying of a bat by a woman menaces the death of a man, if the slaying of an owl by a woman may cause the decease of a man, all that is very unlike totemism in other countries. Therefore, I ask Mr. Frazer whether, in the interests of definite terminology, he had not better give some other name than 'totem' to his Australian sex protecting animals? He might take for a local fact, a local name, and say 'Sex- kobong.'

Once more, for even we anthropologists have our bickerings, I would 'hesitate dislike' of this passage in Mr. Frazer's work: {88b}

'When a savage names himself after an animal, calls it his brother, and refuses to kill it, the animal is said to be his totem.' Distinguo! A savage does not name himself after his totem, any more than Mr. Frazer named himself by his clan-name, originally Norman. It was not as when Miss Betty Amory named herself 'Blanche,' by her own will and fantasy. A savage inherits his totem name, usually through the mother's side. The special animal which protects an individual savage (Zapotec, tona; Guatemalan, nagual; North America, Manitou, 'medicine') is not that savage's totem. {89a} The nagual, tona, or manitou is selected for each particular savage, at birth or puberty, in various ways: in America, North and Central, by a dream in a fast, or after a dream. ('Post-hypnotic suggestion.') But a savage is born to his kin-totem. A man is born a wolf of the Delawares, his totem is the wolf, he cannot help himself. But after, or in, his medicine fast and sleep, he may choose a dormouse or a squirrel for his manitou (tona, nagual) or private protecting animal. These are quite separate from totems, as Mr. Max Muller also points out.

Of totems, I, for one, must always write in the sense of Mr. McLennan, who introduced totemism to science. Thus, to speak of 'sex-totems,' or to call the protecting animal of each individual a 'totem,' is, I fear, to bring in confusion, and to justify Mr. Max Muller's hard opinion that 'totemism' is ill-defined. For myself, I use the term in the strict sense which I have given, and in no other.

Mr. McLennan did not profess, as we saw, to know the origin of totems. He once made a guess in conversation with me, but he abandoned it. Professor Robertson Smith did not know the origin of totems. 'The origin of totems is as much a problem as the origin of local gods.' {89b} Mr. Max Muller knows the origin: sign-boards are the origin, or one origin. But what was the origin of sign-boards? 'We carry the pictures of saints on our banners because we worship them; we don't worship them because we carry them as banners,' says De Brosses, an acute man. Did the Indians worship totems because they carved them on sign-boards (if they all did so), or did they carve them on sign-boards because they worshipped them?

 

Mr. Frazer's Theory

The Australian respects his 'sex-totem' because the life of his sex is bound up in its life. He speaks of it as his brother, and calls himself (as distinguished by his sex) by its name. As a man he is a bat, as a woman his wife is an owl. As a member of a given human kin he may be a kangaroo, perhaps his wife may be an emu. But Mr. Frazer derives totemism, all the world over, from the same origin as he assigns to 'sex- totems.' In these the life of each sex is bound up, therefore they are by each sex revered. Therefore totemism must have the same origin, substituting 'kin' or 'tribe' for sex. He gives examples from Australia, in which killing a man's totem killed the man. {90}

I would respectfully demur or suggest delay. Can we explain an American institution, a fairly world-wide institution, totemism, by the local peculiarities of belief in isolated Australia? If, in America, to kill a wolf was to kill Uncas or Chingachgook, I would incline to agree with Mr. Frazer. But no such evidence is adduced. Nor does it help Mr. Frazer to plead that the killing of an American's nagual or of a Zulu's Ihlozi kills that Zulu or American. For a nagual, as I have shown, is one thing and a totem is another; nor am I aware that Zulus are totemists. The argument of Mr. Frazer is based on analogy and on a special instance. That instance of the Australians is so archaic that it may show totemism in an early form. Mr. Frazer's may be a correct hypothesis, but it needs corroboration. However, Mr. Frazer concludes: 'The totem, if I am right, is simply the receptacle in which a man keeps his life.' Yet he never shows that a Choctaw does keep his life in his totem. Perhaps the Choctaw is afraid to let out so vital a secret. The less reticent Australian blurts it forth. Suppose the hypothesis correct. Men and women keep their lives in their naguals, private sacred beasts. But why, on this score, should a man be afraid to make love to a woman of the same nagual? Have Red Indian women any naguals? I never heard of them.

Since writing this I have read Miss Kingsley's Travels in West Africa. There the 'bush-souls' which she mentions (p. 459) bear analogies to totems, being inherited sacred animals, connected with the life of members of families. The evidence, though vaguely stated, favours Mr. Frazer's hypothesis, to which Miss Kingsley makes no allusion. _

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