Does my guess at the origin of totems seem out of harmony with human nature? You, belonging to a local group, must call other groups by one name or another. Plant and animal names come very handy. The names fluctuate at first, but are at last accepted by the groups to which they are applied. The origin of the names being forgotten, an explanation of them is needed, and, as in every case where it is needed, it is provided in myths. The myths, once believed in, are acted upon; they become the parents of tabus, magic, rites of various kinds. Social rules must be developed, some already exist; and each group called by an animal, plant, or other such name, becomes, under that name, a social unit, and accepts, as such, the customary legislation, just as a parish does. You must not marry within the totem name: either because of the totem tabu in general, or because the totem comes to be conceived of as denoting kinship, and (for one reason or another) you had already a tendency not to marry within the limit of the group. The usual totem rules may be thwarted by other rules derived from a peculiar system of animism, very philosophically elaborated, as among the Arunta of Central Australia. The institution, in short, may develop or may dwindle, may persist in practice, or fade into faint survival, or blend with analogous superstitions, or wholly vanish, in varying conditions. Totemism affects art; to some extent it may have affected religious evolution. It is certainly a source of innumerable myths. But, if my guess holds water, Totemism arose out of names given from without, these names being of a serviceable sort, as they could be, and are, not only readily expressed in words, but readily conveyed _in gesture language_ from a considerable distance. The names could be ‘signalled.’[21] ‘There is an Emu man: look out!’ This could easily and silently be expressed in gesture language. Place-names, and many nicknames, could not so be signalled. This theory, of course, is not in accordance with any savage explanations of the origin of their totem. It could not be! Their explanations are such fables as only men in their intellectual condition could invent: they are _myths_, they involve impossibilities. My hypothesis (or myth) does not, I think, involve anything impossible or far-fetched, or incapable of proof in a general way. It is human, it is inevitable, that plant and animal names should be given, especially among groups more or less hostile. We call the French ‘frogs.’ It is also a fact that names given from without come to be accepted. It is a fact that names, once accepted, are explained by myths; it is a fact that myths come to be believed, and that belief influences behaviour. AN OBJECTION ANSWERED