Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/377

 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs. 357

own. But he abandoned it, says his brother, Mr. Daniel Mc Lennan, for reasons that to him appeared conclusive. I ought to mention that Mr. A. H. Keane informed me^ several years ago, that he had independently evolved a theory akin to mine, of which, as it then stood, I had published some hint. Mr. Keane's printed statement of his theory I have not read. In 1884^ I wrote, " People united by contiguity, and by the blind sentiment of kinship not yet brought into explicit consciousness, might mark themselves by a badge, and might thence derive a name, and, later, might invent a myth of their descent from the object which the badge represented." But why should such people mark themselves by a badge, and why, if they did, should the mark be, not a decorative or symbolic pattern, but the representation of a plant or animal ? These ques- tions I cannot answer, and my present guess is not identical with that of 1884.

Meanwhile let us keep one point steadily before our minds. Totemism, at a first glance, seems a perfectly crazy and irrational set of beliefs, and we might think, with Dr. Johnson, that there is no use in looking for reason among the freaks of irrational people. But man is never irrational. His reason for doing this, or believing that, may seem a bad reason to us, but a reason he always had for his creeds and conduct, and he had a reason for his totem belief, a reason in congruity with his limited knowledge of facts and with his theory of the universe. For all things he wanted an explana- tion. Now what he wanted a reason for, in totemism, was the nature and origin of the connection between his own and the neighbouring groups and the plant or animal names which they bore. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write " what gave rise, in the first instance, to the association of particular men with particular animals and plants, it is impossible to say." But it is not impossible to guess, with more or less of probability. The connection once established, savages

' Cusloin and Mytli^ y. 262.