580 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1918. 



killed for Clan B, Clan B for Clan C, etc. 1 It is difficult to believe 

 that savages, whose main business in life is to look out for number 

 one, ever arranged their hope of a dinner on the precarious promise 

 of some other clan to supply them with food ; and in fact Dr. Frazer 

 himself abandoned this sic vos non vobis theory in favor of still a 

 third explanation, which he now thinks will be his last theory. At 

 any rate, it is his latest, though we may venture to hope it will not 

 be his last. It is based on the fact that some savages believe that 

 their offspring comes not from intercourse between men and women, 

 but from the spirits of animals or quasi-animals seen by a woman, 

 or from the food she eats. They think that the spirits which thus 

 become their children are really the animals they have seen or whose 

 flesh they have eaten before conceiving. Hence Dr. Frazer calls this 

 the conceptional theory. 2 



Curiously enough, almost all these theories absolutely ignore 

 the usual foundation of totemism. The works of Spencer and 

 Gillen on the tribes of central Australia have shown that here totem- 

 ism generally reverts to the principle of food-utility. The so-called 

 Opossums in central Australia received their totemic name because 

 they " subsisted principally on this little animal." 3 Is not this the 

 most natural reason in the world ? They that eat 'possum are called 

 'possums. They that eat meat in India are called Meaters. Do not 

 we also have frog eaters, beef eaters, etc. ? It is much to be regretted 

 that Dr. Frazer in his latest theory has flung away completely 

 all connection between food and totem, or admits it only as an acci- 

 dental element in the conceptional theory. In fact, most totemism 

 rests on food supply. The ancients tell us that the totemic troglo- 

 dytes at the time of Agatharcides regarded their cattle as parents. 

 Why? Because (they said) their cattle supplied them with food. 4 

 In the Harivansha, which reflects Hindu belief of circa 400 A. D., 

 the cowboys say : 



The hills where we live and the cows whereby we live are our divinities ; 

 let the gods, if they will, make a feast to Indra ; as for us, we hold the hills 

 and cows to be the objects worthy of our worship and reverence. For in that 



1 The food theory of Dr. A. S. Iladdon is that each clan subsisted on one animal and 

 gave lo its neighbors its superfluous supply ; if crabs, then they would be called the Crab 

 Clan. 



2 Compare The Golden Bough (1900), 3, 417 f. ; Totemism and Exogamy, 4, 41 f. 

 Dr. Frazer's latest theory is based on the investigations of Dr. W. H. R. Rivers, Totemism 

 in Polynesia and Melanesia, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1909, p. 172 f., 

 in regard to the belief of the savages of Banks' Islands in the northern New Hebrides, 

 especially the natives of Mota and Motlav. The conceptional idea itself is found, too, not 

 only in Australia but in Germany, where also women were supposed to conceive on sight. 

 On P. W. Schmidt's "trade totemism," Z. f. E., 12 (1909), which follows the lines of 

 Eraser's theory of food exchange, see Goldenweiser, p. 277. 



3 Spencer and Gillen, The Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 209. 



4 Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, p. 296. 



