‘Fire Totems’
Mr. Max Müller, after a treatise on Agni and other fire-gods, consecrates two pages to ‘Fire Totems.’ ‘If we are assured that there are some dark points left, and that these might be illustrated and rendered more intelligible by what are called fire totems among the Red Indians of North America, let us have as much light as we can get’ (ii. 804). Alas! I never heard of fire totems before. Probably some one has been writing about them, somewhere, unless we owe them to Mr. Max Müller’s own researches. Of course, he cites no authority for his fire totems. ‘The fire totem, we are told, would thus naturally have become the god of the Indians.’ ‘We are told’—where, and by whom? Not a hint is given on the subject, so we must leave the doctrine of fire totems to its mysterious discoverer. ‘If others prefer to call Prometheus a fire totem, no one would object, if only it would help us to a better understanding of Prometheus’ (ii. 810). Who are the ‘others’ who speak of a Greek ‘culture-hero’ by the impossibly fantastic name of ‘a fire totem’?