CHAPTEE XIV. 



GILD REGULATION. 



787. ERRONEOUS interpretations of social phenomena 

 are often caused by carrying back modern ideas into ancient 

 times, and supposing that motives which might then have 

 prompted us to do certain things were the motives which 

 prompted uncivilized or semi-civilized men to do them. 

 One example occurs in the usual belief that the symbols 

 which everywhere meet us in the accounts of men s usages, 

 were consciously chosen that symbols originated as sym 

 bols. But in all cases they were the rudiments of things that 

 were once in actual use. It is assumed, for instance, that a 

 totem, the distinguishing mark of a tribe or individual, was 

 at the outset deliberately selected; whereas, as we have 

 seen ( 144, 176), the primitive totem was something ren 

 dered sacred by a supposed personal relation to it, usually as 

 ancestor; and when, at a later stage among some tribes, it 

 became a custom for the young savage to choose a totem for 

 himself, the act bore the same relation to the original gene 

 sis of totems, as the act of choosing a coat of arms bears to the 

 original genesis of coats of arms. In either case symbolizo- 

 tion is secondary not primary. 



The undeveloped man is uninventive. As tools and 

 weapons were derived from the original simple stick or 

 club by incidental deviations, so throughout : it was not by 

 intention that the processes and usages of early social life 

 were reached, but through modifications made unawares. 



448 



