Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/477

Rh elements of which it consists. Until this has been done we must be careful how we generalise from the data so lucidly expounded here—a caution which is indeed implied in the authors' introductory paragraphs.

One other remark must be added. If an investigation of the classificatory systems of a large number of peoples result in finding the notion of totem, as among the Australians, as the very foundation of their earliest attempts at a philosophy of the universe, as inextricably involved in the earliest exercise of their classificatory faculties, we shall be led to the conclusion that it must have arisen at an immensely distant period of human history. That period will be thrown further and further back, the more widespread we find the notion to be. But totemism could not have originated, and certainly could not have formed the basis of any classificatory system, unless the society in which it arose was recognised as to some extent heterogeneous. If it could be shown that totemism is the basis of every savage classification of which we have any knowledge, we should have a fair ground for presuming that at the dawn of humanity every society was already heterogeneous, and that totem-clans and phratries were not formed by the coalescence of previously separate and homogeneous human societies. These researches, therefore, may have an indirect but important bearing on recent theories of social origins.

With regard to the rest of the contents of the volume I can only repeat what I have said of previous volumes. They are, in one word, excellent.

origin and significance of primitive barter are well worthy of study, and finding they had not been made the subject of adequate treatment, Mr. P. J. Hamilton Grierson, after much