Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/87

Rh case of conjugal relations within the group continues to be prominent in the legends, the answer must be that it is not a veritable memory of what actually took place, but a reflection of the condition of things to which there is a general tendency in the present day, namely, the tendency for the totem-group to coincide with the local group. In the legends this tendency would be emphasised. Where it exists, that is, where the local group consists largely or chiefly of the members of one totem-group, and there is no prohibition against conjugal relations within the totem-group, there conjugal relations within the totem-group will become frequent in proportion to the comparative local strength of the totem-group, unless they be checked by any other restriction. They are now held in check to some extent by the class-regulations. But in the times of which the legends speak there were no class-regulations, for the institution of of these regulations is among the subjects to be explained by the legends themselves.

I am afraid I have committed the unpardonable sin of dulness. It is an easily-besetting sin to one who pries into savage thought. Yet savage thought is the seed-plot of civilised literature and of much of civilised philosophy and civilised religion. To the ordinary man or woman of our time and country, its details are often strange and repulsive; more usually they are, from their remoteness, utterly devoid of interest. Such a person feels like one I knew who was taken to hear a lecture on spiders. "What are spiders to me?" he asked; "I am willing to let them alone, if they will only let me alone." Totemism has not been allowed to let us alone. Until lately it has occupied a large place in the speculations of anthropologists. Now, at a time when it has been a little discredited, I have thought it might be useful to pause and ask whether all the recent discoveries have left it in evil case, whether some of the interpretations placed on facts are quite justified, whether, in fine, the fabric is really as