140 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



to be an early form of relationship recognized in human society before the 

 recognition of kinship by blood; and the exogamous rule has been deduced 

 from this primiti^'e conception of relationship. That is to say, no matter 

 where exogamous social units have been found, the tendency has been to 

 assign a uniform cause for their existence. 01)\'iously this would not be 

 justifiable if we were to discover cases in which blood relationship was 

 recognized and where the feeling against marrying within one's own social 

 group was simply a special application of the principle that one must not 

 marry persons related by blood. This is precisely what Wissler has found 

 among the Blackfoot. There is no doubt about the fact that the bands or 

 gentes of this tribe are exogamous. The question is, " are they exogamous 

 because the Blackfoot regard the band as the unit of relationship, or because 

 all the members of a band happen to be real blood-relatives?" Wissler's 

 data indicate that the latter alternative represents the facts. Here then 

 we have an illustration of convergent evolution. The feeling of clan or 

 gens affiliation in other tribes and the feeling of l)lood-relationship among 

 the Blackfoot have produced a similar result, the rule of exogamy for definite 

 social groups. As a matter of fact, the analogy is due to our classifying 

 together the similar behavior of the Blackfoot band members and the 

 clansmen of other tribes. As soon as we consider the subjective attitude 

 involved in the two cases, the resemblance proves to be merely external. 



The subject of totemism furnishes another example. Totemism is 

 usually defined as an association between certain social groups and certain 

 species of animals (the totems), and most theories of totemism, however 

 different in other respects, derive the institution from some single psycho- 

 logical point of origin. But quite recently Goldenweiser has shown that 

 this procedure is indefensible. Totemism in Australia has no more to do 

 with totemism in America than the whale with fishes or the bat with 

 birds. What has taken place is the independent development of certain 

 superficial resemblances that are currently summarized by a common label. 



As indicated by these examples, there are logically two forms of the 

 process of convergence that may be distinguished. Either we may have 

 the independent development of identical customs or other cultural fea- 

 tures; or there may be merely a tendency toward superficial resemblances, 

 which however are at first nn'staken for geiuiine homologies. In the latter 

 ca.se, our prol)lem reduces itself to that of revising the classification of 

 ethnological phenomena. Up to the present time there has been very 

 little eviden(;e of genuine convergence in the sense of independent develop- 

 ment of identical forms from distinct points of departure; but the apparent 

 convergence due to erroneous modes of classification may l)e exemplified in 

 many branches of ethnology and j)roves to be one of the most stinuilating 

 subjects for discussion at the present day. 



