Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/386

 366 The Origin of Totem Names and Beliefs.

of his totem. Is his manitu or " individual totem " meant? Then the process might be successful, but has no concern with the origin of hereditary kin-totemism. Indeed Mr. Thomas " leaves the applicability of the theory to group- totemism for subsequent consideration." We shall show — indeed, in Mr. Herbert Spencer's case we have shown — the difficulty of deriving kin-totemism from the manitii, or " obsessing spirit " if Mr. Thomas pleases, of the individual. This point, as is said, Mr. Thomas reserves for later con- sideration.

Dr. Wilken's Theory.

We now come to a theory which exists in many shapes, but in all is vitiated, I think, by the same error of reasoning. Mr. Tylor, however, has lent at least a modified approval to the hypothesis as mooted by the late Dutch anthropologist. Dr. Wilken, of Leyden. Mr. Tylor writes, " If it does not completely solve the totem-problem, at any rate it seems to mark out its main lines." Unluckily the hypothesis of Dr. Wilken is perhaps the least probable of all. The materials are found, not in a race so comparatively early as the Australians or Adamanese, but among the settled peoples of Malay, Sumatra, and Melanesia. By them, in their tables of precedence, " the crocodile is regarded as equal in rank to the Dutch resident." Crocodiles are looked on as near kinsmen of men who, when they die, expect to become crocodiles. To kill crocodiles is murder. " So it is with tigers, whom the Sumatrans worship and call ancestors."

Mr. Tylor observes, " Wilken sees in this transmigration of souls the link which connects totemism with ancestor worship," and thinks that Dr. Codrington's remarks on Melanesian ways add weight to this opinion. In Melanesia, as Dr. Codrington reports, an influential man, before his death, will lay a ban, or tabu, on something, say a banana, or a pig. He says that he " will be in " a shark, a banana, a bird, a buLterfly, or what not. Dr. Codrington's informant,