Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/370

 350 T^^^ Ovifrivi of Totem Names and Beliefs.

with more zvakan, or niana, or cosmic rapport : each man^ therefore, and each organised magical society, looks out for, and, for some reason of dream or divination, adopts a special animal friend. But it is hard to believe that the members of a primeval human group of unknown antiquity consciously and deliberately made a compact to adopt, and for ever be faithful to, this or that plant, animal, element, or the like : to be inherited in the female line.

We cannot prove that it was not so, that a primitive group of rudimentary human beings did not make a cove- nant with bear or wolf, as Israel did with Jehovah, and as an individual savage does with his nyarong, or nagual, or ■manitu. This covenant, if made and kept by each group, would be the origin of totemism. But I am not certain that this theory, involving joint and deliberate selection and retention of a totem by a primeval human group, has ever been maintained, unless it be by Mr. Jevons. " The primary object of a totem alliance between a human kin and an animal kind is to obtain a supernatural ally against supernatural foes."^ The term " supernatural " seems here out of place, both the animal kind and the human kin being natural ; and one has a difficulty in conceiving that very early groups of kin would make, and would adhere to such alliances. Indeed, how could they adhere to their totems, when these descended through women of alien totem groups ? But there seems to be nothing otherwise impos- sible or self-contradictory in this theory, nor can it be dis- proved, for lack of evidence. Only such theories as are self-contradictory, or inconsistent with the known and admitted facts of the case, are capable of absolute disproof.

It may, of course, be objected here that though totems, in actual savage society, descend sometimes in the female line, still, descent in the male line may be the original rule ; and that thus a group, like an individual, could seek, make

' Introduction to the History of Reh\^on, p. 214. Major Powell has said something to the same effect, hut that was in a journal of " popular science."