Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/118

 CORRESPONDENCE.

Dr. Durkheim on "Social Origins." (Vol. xiv., p. 421.)

1. A FULL reply to Dr. Durkheim's review of Social Origins would occupy many pages of Folk-Lore. It must suffice to say that all Dr. Durkheim's objections to my system are rebutted by antici- pation, and all the questions which he asks are answered by anticipation, in Social Origins itself. Any one may convince himself of this by reading (as a specimen), in company with the review, Social Origins^ p. 56, Note i.

2. Dr. Durkheim remarks {Folk-Lore, December, 1903, p. 423), that I object to the theory he has proposed {L^A/itiee Sociologi(/ue, vol. i., p. 6), namely, to see in the phratries the result of the sub- division of a primary horde, whereas, according to him, they were, as he has just remarked, two groups at first autonomous and distinct. He adds that my method " is indeed exposed to criticism when it consists in rejecting an explanation because it is irreconcilable with a preliminary postulate of one's own. A theory must be discussed on its merits."

3. In this passage Dr. Durkheim appears to confuse his own theory of the origin of " phratries in the coalescence of two primary exogamous totem clans " (a theory which is much akin to my own), with his theory of the origin of the totem "clans" in the phratries. The latter theory I rejected, after criticism, in Social Origins (pp. 83, 84). I did not reject it because it clashed with a postulate of my own, and, as I shall show (par. 5, below). Dr. Durkheim has himself proved that his theory of the origin of totem "clans" is inconceivable and impossible, — according to his own system.