Our author's habit of omitting references to his opponents has here
caused me infinite inconvenience. He speaks of some eccentric person who
has averred that a 'fetish' is a 'totem,' inhabited by 'an ancestral
spirit.' To myself it seems that you might as well say 'Abracadabra is
gas and gaiters.' As no reference was offered, I invented 'a wild
surmise' that Mr. Max Muller had conceivably misapprehended Mr. Frazer's
theory of the origin of totems. Had our author only treated himself
fairly, he would have referred to his own Anthropological Religion (pp.
126 and 407), where the name of the eccentric definer is given as that of
Herr Lippert. {78} Then came into my mind the words of Professor Tiele,
'Beware of weak brethren'--such as Herr Lippert seems, as far as this
definition is concerned, to be.
Nobody knows the origin of totemism. We find no race on its way to
becoming totemistic, though we find several in the way of ceasing to be
so. They are abandoning female kinship for paternity; their rules of
marriage and taboo are breaking down; perhaps various totem kindreds of
different crests and names are blending into one local tribe, under the
name, perhaps, of the most prosperous totem-kin. But we see no race on
its way to becoming totemistic, so we have no historical evidence as to
the origin of the institution. Mr. McLennan offered no conjecture,
Professor Robertson Smith offered none, nor have I displayed the spirit
of scientific exactitude by a guess in the dark. To gratify Mr. Max
Muller by defining totemism as Mr. McLennan first used the term is all
that I dare do. Here one may remark that if Mr. Max Muller really wants
'an accurate definition' of totemism, the works of McLennan, Frazer,
Robertson Smith, and myself are accessible, and contain our definitions.
He does not produce these definitions, and criticise them; he produces
Dr. Lippert's and criticises that. An argument should be met in its
strongest and most authoritative form. 'Define what you mean by a
totem,' says Professor Max Muller in his Gifford Lectures of 1891 (p.
123). He had to look no further for a definition, an authoritative
definition, than to 'totem' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or to
McLennan. Yet his large and intelligent Glasgow audience, and his
readers, may very well be under the impression that a definition of
'totem' is 'still to seek,' like Prince Charlie's religion. Controversy
simply cannot be profitably conducted on these terms.
'The best representatives of anthropology are now engaged not so much in
comparing as in discriminating.' {79} Why not refer, then, to the
results of their discriminating efforts? 'To treat all animal worship as
due to totemism is a mistake.' Do we make it?