98 PAGAN TRIBES OF BORNEO chap. 



A second factor that would have tended to bring 

 about this change is the prevalence of a belief in a 

 god or beneficent spirit more powerful than all 

 others, and more directly concerned with the welfare 

 / of his worshippers, however this belief may have 

 come into being. And a third factor that may have 

 tended in the same direction is the custom of head- 

 hunting, and the important part played by the 

 heads in the religious life of the people. For there 

 is some reason to think that head-hunting is a com- 

 paratively young institution among the tribes of 

 Sarawak. 



But in spite of all this, and although we do not 

 think it is possible completely to disprove the truth 

 of the hypothesis that some or all of these animal 

 cults are vestiges of a once fully developed totemic 

 system, we are inclined to reject it. We are led to 

 do so by four considerations. In the first place, if 

 by totemism we mean a social organisation con- 

 sisting in the division of a people into groups or 

 clans, each of which worships or holds in super- 

 stitious regard one or more kinds of animal or plant, 

 or other natural objects to which the members of 

 the group claim to be related by blood or by descent, 

 then it seems to us sufficiently wonderful that this 

 system should have existed among peoples so 

 remote from one another in all things, save certain 

 of the external conditions of life, as the Indians 

 of North America and the natives of Australia. 

 And it seems to us that to invoke the aid of the 

 hypothesis of totemism in the past to explain the 

 existence of a set of animal or plant superstitions 

 in any particular case is but to increase the mystery 

 that shrouds their origin ; for unless it can be shown 

 that the adoption or development of totemism by 

 any people brings with it immense advantages for 

 them in the struggle for existence, every fresh case 

 in which the evidence compels us to admit its 



