Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 15, 1904.djvu/119

 Correspondence. loi

4. I did not, therefore, accept that theory, and when I came to Dr. Durkheim's hypothesis as to the origin of the non-totemic " Matrimonial Classes," I found that it asserted the existence of these classes before, on his theory of totem kins, these kins deserted their totem and arbitrarily took new totems.^ As I had rejected that opinion, I did not discuss a theory which in- volved its acceptance (namely Dr. Durkheim's hypothesis as to the matrimonial classes), but {Social Origins^ p. 119) I referred the reader to pp. 81-83, where I gave reasons for not accepting Dr. Durkheim's hypothesis. I did not add that Dr. Durkheim had inadvertently declared his own hypothesis as to the origin of the totem kins to be, as it is, impossible.

5. Any student who wishes to see Dr. Durkheim refute his own theory of the origin of the totem kins within the phratries, may read him in L^Annee Sociologique, volume i., p. 6, p. 52, and in the same periodical, volume v., pp. no, iii. In the latter passages (i. 52, V. no, in) Dr. Durkheim demonstrates that his own theory (as given in volume i., p. 6) is impossible, and even un- thinkable. His theory of the origin of the totem kins, in volume i., p. 6, is, that they were swarms or colonies thrown off from " a primary totem clan " (compare, for a fuller statement, volume v., pp. 91, 92), ivhich changed their totems. In volume i., pp. 52, 53, and in volume v., pp. no, in, he asserts, and demonstrates, that this change was impossible. " One can no more change one's totem, than one can change one's souV (volume v., p. in). Yet his totem kins (volume i., p. 6) began their career, he says, by changing their totems, and taking new totems. How utterly impossible this per- formance was. Dr. Durkheim had demonstrated in volume i., p. 52. " The totem is incarnate in every individual member of the clan : he dwells in their blood ; he is their blood .... he is a god pre- sent in each individual organism, for all of him is in each of them, and it is in their blood that this deity dwells."

6. But, in volume i., p. 6, we are told that the members of the original " totem clans " who swarmed off from these communities, deserted their totems. Yet these men were in these totems, which they deserted, and these totems were in them ; were their "gods," their " blood," their " souls," according to Dr. Durkheim (vol. i., p. 52). None the less (vol. i., p. 6) the seceders from the original

' VA^tn^e Sociologique, vol. i., p. 16.