Here I foresee an objection; it will be said that, on the other hand, behaviour produces myths. Men find themselves performing some apparently idiotic rite: they ask themselves, ‘Why do we do this thing?’ and they invent a myth as an answer. Certainly they do, but you believe in a God, or in Saints, and act (or you ought to act) in a manner pleasing to these guardians of conduct. You don’t believe in a God, because you behave well, and it is not because you behave well to a totem that you believe in a totem. You treat him as game, not as vermin, because you believe in him, and your belief is based on the myth which your ancestors invented to account for their having a totem. My guess has the advantage of going behind the age of settled dwellings, agriculture, kinship through males, and the causal action of individuals. It reverts to the group stage of human life. Groups give and accept the names; invent the myths, act on their belief in the myths, and so introduce the sanction of what had perhaps been a mere tendency towards exogamy. On the other hand, my guess has the disadvantage of dealing with a hypothetical stage of society, behind experience. But this cannot be avoided, for if we base our hypotheses of the origin of Totemism on our experience of the ways of societies which have passed, or are passing, out of Totemism, our theories must necessarily be invalidated. It may be replied that I have myself given illustrations of my theory from the folk-lore of civilised society. But the only begetters of these illustrative cases are boys--and boys are in the savage stage, ‘at least as far as they are able.’ In a tone more serious, it may be reiterated that no theory of the origin of Totemism is likely to be correct which derives the totem, in the first instance, in any way, from the _individual_, the private man. Long ago, Mr. Fison wrote, ‘Sir John Lubbock considers that the “worship of plants and animals is susceptible of a very simple explanation, and has really originated from the practice of naming, first _individuals_, and then their families, after particular animals.”[22] Mr. Fison replied, ‘This is surely a reversal of the true order. The Australian divisions show that the totem is, in the first place, the badge of a group, not of an individual. The individual takes it, in common with his fellows, only because he is a member of the group. And, even if it were first given to an individual, his family, i.e. his children, could not inherit it from him,’ when descent is reckoned on the female side.[23]