Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/379

 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs. 359

worshipped as an ancestor, wider his animal name. A confusion arises, people come to think that the animal which they revere is not the dead man, but the creature whose name he bore.

As totem, names usually, and at first, probably always, come through the maternal side, and as ancestors in low savagery are easily forgotten (their very names being tabued), and as personal names derived from animals continue to be every- day affairs, this derivation of the totem is highly improbable. No confusion was likely to arise. Again, this derivation is impossible, where the totemists, as in Australia, are not ancestor-worshippers at all, as certainly the Australians are not. Mr. Spencer's theory does not quite explain how in really primitive society with descent in the female line, the name of a male ancestor became hereditary..

Mr. Frazer's Theories.

The hypotheses of Mr. J. G. Frazer are purely provisional. He starts from the idea so common in Miirchen, of the person whose " soul," " life," or " strength," is secretly hidden in an animal, plant, or other object. The owner of the soul wraps the " soul-box " up in a mystery, it is the central secret of his existence, for he may be slain by any one who can discover and destroy his " soul-box." Next, Mr. Frazer offers many cases of this actual belief and prac- tice among savage and barbarous peoples ; and as a freak or survival, the idea is found even among the civilised. We meet the superstition in the Melanesian group of islands (where totemism is all but extinct), and perhaps among the Zulus, with their serpent Idhtozi, whose life is associated with their own. Mr. Atkinson's New Caledonians, however, did not think that death inflicted on their animal " fathers " involved danger to themselves, though it distressed them as an outrage to sentiment. Then we have the " bush- souls," (one soul out of four in the possession of each individual), among the natives of Calabar. These souls.