[557]. It is obviously true that human groups have names derived from objects with which they are somehow specially connected; in the lists of clan-names in Oceania, Africa, India, America, animal names predominate, but many are taken from plants, and some from inanimate objects;[913] when groups become settled they are sometimes called after their places of abode. The other supposition in these "name theories"—that the names are given from without—is less certain. There are examples of such naming by outsiders—nicknames, sometimes respectful, sometimes derisive.[914] But the known cases are not numerous enough to establish a general rule—the origin of names of clans and tribes is largely involved in obscurity.[915] There is no improbability in either theory of the method of naming, native or foreign—both modes may have existed, one in one region, one in another, and one group may at different times have been called by different names.
[558]. "Coöperative" theories suppose that a number of groups united for economic purposes, to each being assigned the duty of increasing by magical means the supply of a particular sort of food or other necessity, and procuring a portion for the general store.[916] Such coöperation, however, assumes too great a capacity of organization to be primitive. It is hardly found outside of Central Australia, in which region there are indications of a long period of social development.[917]
[559]. The theory that the totem is a god, immanent in the clan, incarnate in every member of the clan, a divine ancestor, the center of the clan's religion,[918] is contradicted by the actual relation between a clan and its totem: the latter is cherished as a kinsman and friend, but not worshiped as a god.[919]
[560]. Summing-up on the origin of totemism. This brief survey of proposed theories of the origin of totemism is sufficient to show the complexity of the problem. Not one of the hypotheses just mentioned is universally accepted, and no one of them appears to account satisfactorily for all the known facts. Some of them are based obviously on data derived from limited areas. Australian usage suggested the coöperative theory, and Australia and Melanesia the conceptional theory. The identification of totemism with ancestor-worship comes from South Africa; its connection with the belief in transmigration is due to Indonesia; its derivation from the individual guardian is based on a North American institution; and North America probably suggested the badge theory also. It may be frankly confessed that in the present state of knowledge all theories are guesses.
[561]. As there are communities in which it is probable or possible that totemism has never existed, so it is conceivable that it has been developed in different ways in different places. Considering the variety of circumstances in primitive life, it would not be strange if human groups found themselves impelled to take various paths in their attempts at effective organization. The starting-point being reverence for animals and other objects of nature, and belief in their kinship with men, one human group may have been led by some accidental experience to regard some nonhuman group or object as its ally. In another case a name, adopted by a group of its own accord or given it from without, may have induced such an alliance. Individuals may have imposed their guardian animals or plants on communities. A badge, chosen for convenience, may have been the beginning of a totemic organization. In these and other ways a group of men may have come to form intimate relations with a nonhuman group or other object.
[562]. This fundamental relation having been established (with aversion to eating or injuring the sacred object), various usages would attach themselves to it in accordance with general laws of social development. In many cases a rule of exogamy, for the better regulation of marriage, would be adopted. When tribes, consisting each of several clans, came into existence, a coöperative economic system would sometimes arise: magical methods of producing results, common in early stages of life, would be so organized that to every clan would be assigned the duty of producing a supply of some sort of food. Following the general tendency to genealogical construction, the belief in kinship with the sacred object would lead a clan to imagine an ancestor of the same kind, animal or animal-human or plant or rock, and myths explaining the origin would be devised. Various other usages and ideas would coalesce with those belonging to totemism proper: belief in the superhuman power of nonhuman things, including the conception of mana; the belief that every newborn child is the reincarnation of an ancestor; recognition of omens from the movements of such things; belief in the magical power of names; reverence for ancestors—a natural feeling, in itself independent of the totemic conception; totems regarded as creators; the employment of totemic animals as emissaries to the supernatural Powers. Thus the resultant social system would be a congeries of beliefs and usages, and in such a system, when it appears, the totemic element must be distinguished from its attachments, which must be referred each to its appropriate source.
[563]. Function of totemism in the development of society. The service of totemism to society lies in the aid it has given to the friendly association of men in groups. Common social feeling, the perception of the advantage to be gained by combination in the quest for food and for defense against human enemies, originated the formation of groups. Totemism strengthened union by increasing the sense of brotherhood in the clan and facilitating the cöoperation that is a condition of social progress. This sort of service was rendered in early times by all systems in which social relations were connected with relations to animals and other natural objects; but totemism made a special appeal to the emotions and gave all the members of a human group one and the same object of devotion about which sentiments of loyalty and brotherhood could crystallize. It is a crude, initial political form that has given way to more definite forms.
[564]. It cannot be said that totemism has contributed to economic progress except in so far as every stable organization may be favorable to general progress. It has been claimed that it effected the domestication of animals and plants.[920] In support of this claim it is urged that, apart from reverence for these objects, there is nothing in savage ideas and customs that could lead to domestication. Early man, seeking food, would try all accessible animals and plants—but why, it is asked, should he desire to keep them as attachments to his home and cultivate them for his own use? Would his purpose be amusement? But, though savages sometimes have animals as pets, the custom is not general, and such pets are freely killed. Could the motive be utility? The answer is that savages have neither the ability to perceive the advantage, for food and labor, that would accrue from domestication, nor knowledge of the fact that seeds must be kept, in order to secure a crop, from one year to another, nor the self-restraint to practice present abstinence for the sake of future good.
[565]. On the other hand, it is said, semireligious reverence for animals preserves them from injury, they lose their fear of man, and those that are domesticable become tame and are appropriated and used by men; and sacred plants are retained from one year to another for ritual purposes, and their seeds produce a succession of crops. Totem animals are not eaten—a pastoral people does not eat its cattle, it keeps them for their milk. In a word, animals, it is held, are not tamed by man of set purpose, but grow tame when not molested, and those that are edible or capable of rendering service are gradually domesticated; and similarly, through religious use of plants, the possibility of cultivating certain plants becomes known.
[566]. This argument rests on the assumption of the universal mental incapacity of early men—a subject admittedly obscure. Certainly they appear to be quite lacking in knowledge and reflection in some regards; yet they sometimes show remarkable skill in hunting (so, for example, the African Pygmies), and they have created remarkable languages. But, if we leave the question of intellectual capacity aside, there are facts that seem to throw doubt on the totemic origin of domestication. In the first place, the conditions under which reverence for a totemic animal may make it tame do not appear to have existed in totemic society. For such taming it is necessary that the animal be perfectly safe within a considerable area. But this is not possible where a group of men is composed of various clans, a given animal being spared by one clan but freely hunted and killed by all the other clans[921]—a state of things that was presumably universal.