Dr. Brinton[363] answers those who object that the cosmogonical myth of the Algonkins is “too refined for those rude savages, or that it smacks too much of reminiscences of old-world teachings,” that “it is impossible to assign to it other than an indigenous and spontaneous origin in some remote period of Algonkin tribal history.” The same reply may be given in relation to the universal totemism of the Australians, with the qualification that the tribal history of this race would have to be carried back to a period when it was in contact, on the Asiatic Continent, with peoples among whom originated or developed the ideas on which totemism is based, if, indeed, they did not belong with them to a common stock. The existence among the natives of Australia and America of that system may have been due to the establishment of the gentile institution on the basis of female kinship, and the intermingling of the gentes or family groups, owing to wives leaving their own kin on marriage to live among their husband’s kin, as the result of the practice of exogamy. Some of the Australian tribes have a legend according to which the use of totems was introduced, by command of the Supreme Being, to put a stop to consanguineous marriages. This shows that the totem was connected with marriage and kinship, but, considering how universal is the objection among savages to marriage between near relations, it is more than probable that the legend was formed to explain an already existing phenomenon, that of totemism. As the conditions of social life were changed, totemism as a system would gradually become effete, and totems would come to be regarded chiefly as curiosities of nomenclature. The preference for kinship through males, in connection with the tracing of descent, over kinship through females, combined with the practice of wives leaving their own family to live among their husband’s kin, would take from the totem one of its most important uses, as all the members of a “family” would dwell together instead of being, like the individuals belonging to the American or Australian totems, intermingled in one group. Totems would then be useful chiefly as ensigns, or as surnames to establish community of descent, and therefore the evidence of marriage disability; as with the Chinese, among whom no persons of the same family name can intermarry, however distant may be the actual relationship. When the mere possession of a common surname was no longer an absolute bar to intermarriage, and kinship came to be traced equally through both parents, totemism ceased to have any value, except so far as the study of its phenomena can throw light on the constitution and habits of ancient society. FOOTNOTES: [303] A more remarkable case even than this was the appearance to Professor De Wette of his own double. [304] This was first published in “Anthropologia,” in 1875. [305] See “Theosophy, Religion, and Occult Science” (1885), p. 236, _et seq._