Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 3, 1892.djvu/27

Rh island of Aurora, in the New Hebrides, women, before the birth of a child, believe that it will be the echo (nunu) of some particular object, such as a cocoanut, breadfruit, etc., and they believe, therefore, that it would be injurious to the child if it ate that food. Now, here we have totem beliefs, but not totemism. And if, from such evidence, we are justified, as it seems probable, in thinking we have indications of the origin of totemism, there are some important facts to notice in the history of primitive belief. We see, from this point of view, that the phenomena of incipient totemism belong to so universal a characteristic of primitive thought that they might be produced in any race over and over again, and yet might never be acted upon and utilised to produce any development in political or social organisation. It is, thus, not the existence of the phenomena which produces totemism; it is seizing hold of the phenomena by the tribe for the purpose of a new tribal organisation. Given a tribe or race, whose habit of thought has been fossilised into a groove for ages, and the phenomena of totemism might constantly, generation after generation, be reproduced and die out again, to be again produced and to again die out. They are but vague, floating beliefs appertaining to an individual, not belonging to the community; and thus the principle which I have pointed out must be considered in studying beliefs is fully borne out by the facts presented by totemism.

When we come to take up the subject of institutions as it must be taken up, there is, therefore, much to arrest attention. Papers contributed to the late Congress serve amply to illustrate this, and both Mr. Jevons and Mr. Winternitz have made a splendid beginning in the good work. Now, there is a method of inquiry well known to mathematicians by which they first calculate what a magnitude is expected to be, and then, measuring what is actually presented to them, they arrive at the difference between the two. This difference is regarded as an indication of the presence of some agent which was either over-