Is there any human institution which can be safely called "Totemism"?Is there any possibility of defining, or even describing Totemism? Isit legitimate—is it even possible, with due regard for "methodology"and logic—to seek for the "normal" form of Totemism, and to trace itthrough many Protean changes, produced by various causes, social andspeculative? I think it possible to discern the main type of Totemism,and to account for divergences.
Quite the opposite opinion appears to be held by Mr. H. H. Goldenweizerin his "Totemism, an Analytic Study."[1] This treatise is acutelycritical and very welcome, as it enables British inquirers abouttotemism to see themselves as they appear "in larger other eyes thanours." Our common error, we learn, is this: "A feature salient in thetotemic life of some community is seized upon only to be projected intothe life of the remote past, and to be made the starting-point of thetotemic process. The intermediary stages and secondary features aresupplied from local evidence, by analogy with other communities, or 'inaccordance with recognised principles of evolution' [what are they?]and of logic. The origin and development, thus arrived at, are thenused as principles of interpretation of the present conditions. Notone step in the above method of attacking the problem of totemism islogically justifiable."[2]
As I am the unjustifiable sinner quoted in this extract,[3] I mayobserve that my words are cited from a harmless statement to theeffect that a self-consistent "hypothesis," or "set of guesses,"which colligates all the known facts in a problem, is better than aself-contradictory hypothesis which does not colligate the facts.
Now the "feature salient in the totemic life of some communities,"which I "project into the life of the remote past," and "make thestarting-point of the totemic process" is the totemic name, animal,vegetable, or what not, of the totem-kin.
In an attempt to construct a theory of the origin of totemism,the choice of the totemic name as a starting-point is logicallyjustifiable, because the possession of a totemic name is,universally, the mark of a totem-kin; or, as most writers prefer tosay, "clan." How can you know that a clan is totemic, if it is notcalled by a totemic name? The second salient feature in the totemiclife of some communities which I select as even prior to the totemicname, is the exogamy of the "clans" now bearing totemic names.
To these remarks Mr. Goldenweizer would reply (I put his ideas briefly)there are (1) exogamous clans without totemic names; and there are (2)clans with totemic names, but without exogamy.
To this I answer (1) that if his exogamous clan has not a totemicname, I do not quite see why it should be discussed in connection withtotemism; but that many exogamous sets, bearing not totemic names,but local names or nicknames, can be proved to have at one time bornetotemic names. Such exogamous sets, therefore, no longer bearingtotemic names, are often demonstrably variations from the totemic type;and are not proofs that there is no such thing as a totemic type.
Secondly, I answer, in the almost unique case of "clans" bearingtotemic names without being exogamous, that these "clans" havepreviously been exogamous, and have, under ascertained conditions,shuffled off exogamy. They are deviatio