TOTEMISM HOPKINS. 579 



ness and is merely an instance of what imagination can suggest 

 under the guise of science. 1 



The name theory of totemism is an old error. Herbert Spencer 

 derived totemism from names; Jevons derives names from totemism. 

 Andrew Lang attempted to explain the totem as a name and part of 

 a system of naming. 2 Something similar has also been tried by 

 Pikler and Somlo, who hold that the totem is a kind of writing — 

 that is, -that the totem animal, painted, served originally as a mark 

 to distinguish one clan from another. 3 



Other theories refer totemism to a belief in metempsychosis or 

 to a belief in a personal guardian spirit. The first was favored by 

 E. B. Tylor; but as metempsychosis is held by non-totemic people 

 and totemists do not all believe in metempsychosis, this theory does 

 not suffice, though it applies to certain selected examples^ like the 

 Bantus. The guardian-spirit theory has been dubbed the American 

 theory, because it was invented here i and is illustrated by American 

 tribes. Yet the fact that this type of totemism is lacking in many 

 places ; for example, among the wild tribes of India, where totemism 

 is common, does not make for its acceptance as a general explanation 

 of the phenomena. The phase is, in fact, not tribal but individual, 

 and against the theory stands the circumstance that it excludes 

 women, who have no personal totem. The guardian spirit (which 

 may or may not be an animal-spirit) is in truth not a totem but 

 rather resembles the bush soul. In higher form it becomes the genius 

 and guardian angel. 



;Sir J. G. Frazer has advanced several theories in regard to the 

 origin of totemism. He used to hold that the totem was the soul- 

 keeper ; but he then abandoned this view in favor of the theory that 

 totemism was a system of magic intended to provide a supply of 

 food for somebody else. This altruistic theory he explained as 

 follows : In a group of clans every clan killed its own totem for some 

 other clan and subsisted itself on the kill of a third clan. Clan A 



1 In his Mythus mid Religion, 2, 298, Wundt thus explains by inherited " Gefiihlston " 

 man's otherwise inexplicable aversion to a diet of worms, mice, snakes, etc. What is true 

 is that there is a common superstition to the effect that vermin represent the souls of 

 demons or of evil persons (in India due to Karma ; hence holy water keeps off noxious 

 insects). Wundt of course derives all nature gods from animal gods. He ignores com- 

 pletely the cogent evidence to the contrary. In Churchill's Weatherwords of Polynesia 

 (1907), men are derived direct from divine weather aspects, rain, clouds, etc., which, as 

 gods, generate all the races of earth. The savages who thus invent gods of phenomena 

 as ancestors can not be ignored ; they represent a religious phase as primitive as totemism. 



2 The Secret of the Totem (1905). 



3 " Der Ursprung des Totemismus," in the Jahrbuch fur Vergleichende Rechtswissen- 

 schaft, 1902. On the deficiencies as well as advantage of the name theories, Wundt has 

 some sound remarks, op. cit. 2, 265. 



4 Miss Fletcher, The Import of the Totem (1895) ; Boas, in U. S. National Museum 

 (1897). The personal guardian (seen in a dream) taken from the animal world is 

 found also among the Iban of Borneo (originally from Sumatra). See The Pagan Tribes 

 of Borneo, by Charles Hose and William McDougall (1912). 



