Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/410

 370 Totemism in the Evolution of Religion.

as I still held to my views I was bound to make the best fight that I could for them.

But before beginning the present discussion, I should like to say that the differences between myself and M. Marillier as to the method in which the history of religion should be approached are important enough to deserve a paper to themselves, and that I must reserve them for separate treat- ment if, peradventure, the Society should be inclined to repeat its invitation.

Thus much premised, I proceed.

To M. Marillier,^ the attempt to reduce all forms of plant- and animal-worship to totemism seems narrow and inexact. As it is pleasant to begin by agreeing, if possible, with an opponent so courteous as M. Marillier, I am glad to say that to me also the attempt seems both inexact and narrow. But it is an attempt which I have not made. It is one thing to say, as I have said, that the first plants and animals to be wor- shipped were totems ; it is a different thing to say that all the plants and animals which came to be worshipped subse- quently in post-totem times were totems, and I have not said it. And so long as the Australian blackman, with his totem-clans, is regarded by anthropologists as occupying the lowest place in the evolution of society, so long will it be a plausible theory that his totem-plants and animals occupy the lowest place in the evolution of religion.

The same misunderstanding gives their point to sundry other criticisms. Now in all cases I should feel that for any misunderstanding of my words I was presumably myself to blame ; but when a critic so patient, so tolerant, and so fair- minded as M. Marillier misunderstands me, the presumption becomes a certainty. Nevertheless, the fact remains that I am not so totemist as M. Marillier paints me. He seems to imagine I hold, or am bound to hold, that every deity began by being a totem ; and he has no difficulty in pointing to many deities who probably, or certainly, never were

' IV., p. 396.