H.—ANTHROPOLOGY. 153 
way the functions of a number of different varieties of totemism in 
Australia, and then draw certain general conclusions as to the function of 
totemism in the general integrative system of Australian tribes. We 
should not thereby be entitled without examination to draw conclusions 
as to the functions of totemism in America, or India, or Melanesia, or Africa. 
Just as the question of the nature of totemism is part of a very much 
wider sociological problem, so the study of the functions of totemism is 
part of the general sociological problem of the function of religion. 
The foregoing brief and inadequate statement of how I conceive that 
comparative sociology will take up the problems of totemism will, I hope, 
have served the purpose for which it was introduced, namely, to illustrate 
the difference of method that distinguishes the newer social anthropology 
from the old. I have chosen the subject of totemism because some of 
the most important steps of the passage from the old to the new methods 
are to be seen in Durkheim’s treatment of this subject in his ‘ Elementary 
Forms of the Religious Life.’ Unfortunately, Durkheim retained some of 
the ideas and some of the terminology of the older social anthropology. 
He speaks of his study as aiming to determine the ‘ origin’ of totemism, 
and although he seeks to give a new meaning to the word ‘ origin,’ yet his 
use of it misleads most of his readers, and I think it really misled Durkheim 
himself and caused him to cast what is really a theory of the nature and 
function of totemism into a form which renders it open to criticism, and 
which has caused it to be misunderstood by many of his readers. 
I think we should use the term origin, in speaking of any institution, 
as meaning the historical process by which it came into existence. Thus 
we can speak of and actually study the origin of parliamentary govern- 
ment in England. In comparative sociology, if we are to make it the 
science it should be, we must reject absolutely all attempts to conjecture 
the origin of any institution or element of culture. Wherever we have 
good and sufficient documentary evidence as to the origin of anything this 
can of course be utilised by sociology, but that is an entirely different 
matter. 
I have pointed out that the theories of the older social anthropology 
often took a psychological form. The procedure was one of conjecturing 
processes of thought in the minds of individuals which would lead them 
to adopt a certain belief or custom. I have not time in this address to 
discuss the subject of the relation of sociology to psychology. There is 
_ still a great deal of confusion as to that relation. The position maintained 
by the sociologist is (1) that in social institutions and in the phenomena 
of culture generally the sociologist has a field of study which is entirely 
_ distinct from that of the psychologist, and that generalisations made in 
this field must be sociological and not psychological generalisations ; 
(2) that therefore any explanation of a particular sociological phenomenon 
in terms of psychology, 7.e. of processes of individual mental activity, is 
invalid ; (3) that ultimately the nature of human social life is determined 
by the nature of the psycho-physical organism of man, and that therefore 
when we have discovered universal sociological laws it will be the duty of 
the psycho-physiologist to discover their basis in psycho-physical pre- 
_ cesses; (4) that, on the other hand, the behaviour or the psychology of 
