Meanwhile let us keep one point steadily before our minds. Totemism, at a first glance, seems a perfectly crazy and irrational set of beliefs, and we might think, with Dr. Johnson, that there is no use in looking for reason among the freaks of irrational people. But man is never irrational. His reason for doing this, or believing that, may seem a bad reason to us, but a reason he always had for his creeds and conduct, and he had a reason for his totem belief, a reason in congruity with his limited knowledge of facts, and with his theory of the universe. For all things he wanted an explanation. Now what he wanted a reason for, in Totemism, was the nature and origin of the connection between his own and the neighbouring groups, and the plant or animal names which they bore. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen write, ‘what gave rise, in the first instance, to the association of particular men with particular animals and plants, it is impossible to say.’ But it is not impossible to guess, with more or less of probability. The connection once established, savages guessed at its origin: their guesses, as always, were myths, and were of every conceivable kind. The myth of descent from or kinship with the animal or plant, the Darwinian myth, does not stand alone. Every sort of myth was fashioned, was believed, and influenced conduct. Our business is to form our own guess as to the original connection between men and their totems: a guess which shall be consistent with human nature. MR. MAX MÜLLER’S THEORY Many such guesses by civilised philosophers exist. We need not dwell long on that of Mr. Max Müller, akin, as it is, to my own early conjecture, ‘a totem is a clan mark, then a clan name, then the name of the ancestor of the clan, and lastly the name of something worshipped by the clan.’[21] We need not dwell on this, because the kind of ‘clan mark’ on a pillar outside of the quarters of the clan, in a village, is peculiar to North America, and to people dwelling in fixed settlements. Among the nomadic Australians, we have totemism without the settlements, without the totem pillar, without the ‘clan mark,’ on the pillar, which, thus, cannot be the first step in Totemism. Again, the ‘clan name,’ or group name, must be earlier than the ‘clan mark,’ which merely expresses it, just as my name is prior to my visiting card, or as the name of an inn, ‘The Red Lion,’ is prior to the sign representing that animal. Obviously we have to ask first, _whence comes the clan name, or group name?_ THE THEORY OF MR. HERBERT SPENCER