‘I have goodly notes on Totemism and non-Totemism, and I confess it difficult to eliminate the name as an important part of the system. It covers every part--is the shell into which all the rest fits. Now I have too much respect for our savage friends to think they used myth any further than we do. We go every Sunday saying “I believe,” but we don’t build up much upon this. Our social fabric, nay our religion, is not of this. And so of the savage. If I grant you the myth of descent from an animal to have arisen out of a _pre-existing_ name system, I am no nearer the understanding of totem-kinship as the basis of a social group.’ These are natural objections, on a first view of my suggestions. Totemism _is_ a social system, but there was an age before totemism, an age of undeveloped totemism; into these we try to peer. But the method of name-giving which I postulate is hardly ‘a trifle of the human mind.’ It is, as I have proved, a widely diffused, probably an universal tendency of the human mind. Not less universal, in the savage intellectual condition, is the belief in the personality and human characteristics of all things whatsoever; man is only one tribe in the cosmic kinship, and is capable of specially close kinship with animals. Nobody denies this, and the resulting myths to explain the connection of the groups and their totems are not only natural, but inevitable--the real origin of the connection, ‘in the dark backward and abysm of time,’ being forgotten. We may go to church, and say ‘I believe,’ and we may not act up to our creeds. ‘And so of the savage.’ But it is not ‘so of the savage.’ His belief in a myth of kinship with an Emu is carried into practice, and regulates his conduct, magical and social. This is not contestable. In the same way a Christian who believes in the efficacy of masses for the welfare of his dead friends, pays for masses. At the lowest, he ‘thinks the experiment well worth trying.’ To other myths, say as to the origin of the spots on a beast, a savage may ‘give but a doubtsome credit.’ They are not of a nature to affect his conduct in any way. But the totem myths do affect his conduct, quite undeniably, and, even if there are sceptics, public opinion and customary law compel them to regulate their behaviour on the lines of the general belief. We are not to be told that nobody believes in anything! The ‘social grouping’ consequent on the beliefs is _not_ ‘without any apparent cement.’ The cement is the belief in the actual kinship of all persons having the same totem name, and sacred totem blood, even if they belong to remote and hostile tribes. All wolves are brethren in the wolf; all bears are brethren in the bear; and so men-bears are sisters to women-bears, and brothers may not marry sisters. Here is ‘apparent cement’ of the very best quality, and in abundance, given the acknowledged condition of the savage intellect.