Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 22, 1911.djvu/117

 Correspondence. 9 1

Exogamy has strengthened my belief in my own theory ; and, considering on the one hand the nature of his objections to it and on the other hand our agreement in many essential points, I can- not help cherishing the hope, — although I apologise for expressing it, — that the last differences of opinion will disappear some day when Dr. Frazer is reconsidering the whole question with that fair impartiality which is one of the finest qualities of his genius.

Edward Westermarck.

It is not necessary for me to write at much length on the points raised by Mr. Thomas's review of Dr. Frazer's great work on Totemism, for several reasons. One is that I " say ditto to " Mr. Thomas where he differs from Dr. Frazer's hypotheses and con- clusions. Another is that I have already often expressed my dissent, and stated my reasons for dissenting, in my book The Secret of the Totem, and in papers contributed to Man and other serials, such as the Revue des Idees Ethncgraphiques. A third reason is that, since the appearance of Dr. Frazer's great book, I have written a little work on the topic of the origins of Totemism and Exogamy,, and have laid it aside that I may revise it with fresh eyes so to speak.

My objections to Dr. Frazer's theories, as far as they have been already pubHshed, have either not come to Dr. Frazer's notice or have produced no effect on his mind. For example, he attributes to an American student a theory of my own on the question how did phratries come so often to bear the names of animals? {Secret of the Totem, pp. 142-53.) I wrote on Aus- tralian phratry names mainly, but was quite unaware that I had been anticipated, in the case of North America, by the author whom Dr. Frazer cites, I think with approval. Dr. Frazer was probably unaware that I had come to the same conclusion as his American writer, of whom I had never heard.

To take Mr. Thomas's points in order : —

I (p. 390). I entirely agree with him that as, among the Arunta, "the majority" ("the great majority," says Mr. Spencer), "of any one" (totem) "kin do actually belong to a single moiety," — or set of exogamous subclasses, — this fact needs explaining, and Dr. Frazer, I think, makes no attempt to explain it. My