Thus, at all events, and unluckily, the phrase ‘the totem-god’ is introduced into our speculations, and the cult of the ‘totem-god’ is confused with the much more limited respect paid by savages to actual totems. However attractive the theory of ‘the totem-god’ may be, we cannot speak of ‘totems’ where a god incarnate in a plant or animal is concerned. Such a deity may be a modified survival of Totemism, but a totem he is not. Moreover, it is hardly safe to say that, in the Samoan case, the god is ‘developed from a totem;’ we only know that the god has got into suspiciously totemistic society. On the whole, we cannot be too cautious in speaking of totems and Totemism: and we must be specially careful not to exaggerate the more or less religious respect with which totems are, in many cases, regarded. The Australians, as far as they have the idea of a creative being, Baiame, Nooreli, and so forth, do not regard their totems as shrines or incarnations of him. That appears to be the speculation of peoples who, probably by way of animism, and ancestor-worship, are already in the stage of polytheism. Totems, in their earliest known stage, have very little to do with religion, and probably, in origin, had nothing really religious about them. SAVAGE SPECULATIONS AS TO THE ORIGIN OF TOTEMISM Peoples who are still in the totemistic stage, as we have seen, know nothing about the beginnings of the institution. All that they tell the civilised inquirers is no more than the myth handed down by their own tradition. Thus the Dieri or Dieyrie, in Australia, say that the totems were appointed by the ancestors, for the purpose of regulating marriages, after consultation with Mura Mura, or with ‘the’ Muramura. The Woeworung, according to Mr. Howitt, have a similar legend.[14] It is not necessary here to ask whether Mura Mura is ‘the Supreme Being’ (Gason, Howitt), or ‘ancestral spirits’ (Fison).[15] The most common savage myth is of the Darwinian variety, each totem kin is descended from, or evolved out of, the plant or animal type which supplies its totem. Again, as in fairy tales, a woman gave birth to animals, whence the totem kins derive their descent. In North-West America, totems are often accounted for by myths of ancestral heroes. ‘The Tlingit’ (Thlinket) ‘hold that souls of ancestors are reborn in children, that a man will be reborn as a man, a wolf as a wolf, a raven as a raven.’ Nevertheless, the totems are regarded as ‘relatives and protectors,’ and it is explained that, in the past, a human ancestor had an adventure with this or that animal, whence he assumed his totem armorial bearings.[16] In precisely the same way a myth, a very late myth, was invented, about the adventure of a Stewart with a lion, to account for the Lyon of the Stewarts.[17] The Haidas and Thlinkets, believing as they do that human souls are reborn human, cannot hold that a bestial soul animates a man, say, of the Raven totem.