Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/88

 78 much battered as we have been led to fear. If to some of you much of what I have said be trite as well as dull, I would plead that it is labour not always lost to restate the obvious; for the obvious is in danger of being overlooked, because it is obvious. The points I have chosen to touch were not chosen because they were the easiest to deal with, but because they were vital to the definition of the totem as we have understood it. I have not tried to discuss the question whether totemism is as large a factor in social and religious evolution as many have been inclined to think. All I have tried to show is that we need not at present revise our conception of it in the two material points of exogamy and the relation of the totem to the clan, in consequence of anything lately published concerning the tribes of which I have been speaking. But of course we must never forget that no theory of totemism is other than provisional. Totemism itself is but a name for a working hypothesis which may at any time have to be revised or abandoned.

When I began I pointed out that in the natural growth of science it was inevitable that we should shift our base of operations from European tradition to savage tradition. Let me urge further that among savage peoples the Australian aborigines and the Indian tribes of the North-West Coast of America are entitled on national grounds to more than superficial attention. They dwell, the latter chiefly, the former wholly, within the limits of .aur own Empire. They are our own fellow subjects. We are deeply interested in their moral and material condition; we are largely responsible for their welfare. To understand their arts and institutions, their traditions and ideas, is the first requisite for their proper government. Over