But they saw there only an essentially archaic institution, an ethnographical curiosity, having no great interest for the historian. MacLennan was the first who undertook to attach totemism to the general history of humanity. In a series of articles in the _Fortnightly Review_,[178] he set himself to show that totemism was not only a religion, but one from which were derived a multitude of beliefs and practices which are found in much more advanced religious systems. He even went so far as to make it the source of all the animal-worshipping and plant-worshipping cults which are found among ancient peoples. Certainly this extension of totemism was abusive. The cults of animals and plants depend upon numerous causes which cannot be reduced to one, without the error of too great simplicity. But this error, by its very exaggerations, had at least the advantage, that it put into evidence the historical importance of totemism. Students of American totemism had already known for a long time that this form of religion was most intimately united to a determined social organization, that its basis is the division of the social group into clans.[179] In 1877, in his _Ancient Society_,[180] Lewis H. Morgan undertook to make a study of it, to determine its distinctive characteristics, and at the same time to point out its generality among the Indian tribes of North and Central America. At nearly the same moment, and even following the direct suggestion of Morgan, Fison and Howitt[181] established the existence of the same social system in Australia, as well as its relations with totemism. Under the influence of these directing ideas, observations could be made with better method. The researches which the American Bureau of Ethnology undertook, played an important part in the advance of these studies.[182] By 1887, the documents were sufficiently numerous and significant to make Frazer consider it time to unite them and present them to us in a systematic form. Such is the object of his little book _Totemism_,[183] where the system is studied both as a religion and as a legal institution. But this study was purely descriptive; no effort was made to explain totemism[184] or to understand its fundamental notions.