In a passage on animal-worship, Mr. Herbert Spencer (unless I misconceive him) advances a theory of the origin of Totemism. True, he does not here speak of totems, but he suggests an hypothesis to explain why certain stocks claim descent from animals, and why these animals are treated by them with more or less of religious regard. Actual men, in savagery, are often called by ‘animal nicknames,’ and we cannot be surprised if the savage ... gets the idea that an ancestor named ‘the tiger’ was an actual tiger ... Inevitably, then, he grows up believing that his father descended from a tiger--thinking of himself as one of the tiger stock.[22] It were superfluous to dwell on this theory. Totem names are group names; and, as they occur where group names are derived from the mother, they cannot have originated in the animal nicknames of individual dead grandfathers. The names of the dead are usually tabued and forgotten; but that is of no great moment. The point is that such group names are derived through mothers, in the first instance, not through male founders of families.[23] No theory which starts from an individual male ancestor, and his name bequeathed to his descendants, can be correct. That Mr. Spencer’s does start in this way may be inferred from the following text: ‘commonly the names of the clans which are forbidden to intermarry, such as Wolf, Bear, Eagle, Whale, &c., are names given to men, implying, as I have before contended (170-173), descent from distinguished male ancestors bearing those names--descent which, notwithstanding the system of female kinship, was remembered when there was pride in the connection.’ A brief-lived joy in the name of which the male ancestor’s descendants were proud, left them, in the second generation, under exogamy and female kin. Thus my father was nicknamed ‘Tiger.’ Proud of the title, I call myself Tiger. But I must marry a woman who is Not-Tiger, and my offspring are Not-Tigers. My honour hath departed! MR. FRAZER’S THEORIES