g involved.
If we further add the condition that the social organization (not
necessarily exogamous) must be determined by this alliance, we have all
that can safely be demanded in a definition of totemism; but as much as
this seems necessary if totemism is to be marked off as a definite
institution.

+521+. From the point of view of religious history the important thing
in any social organization is its character as framework for religious
ideas and customs. If the central social fact is an intimate relation
between a human group and a nonhuman class of natural objects, then
conceptions regarding this relation may gather about it, and these will
be as various as the tribes of men. The elements of social and religious
institutions spring from the universal human nature and attach
themselves to any form of life that may have been suggested by
circumstances. Thus the term 'totemism' may be used loosely to denote
any combination of customs connected with the idea of an alliance
between man and other things, and the alliance itself may exist in
various degrees of intimacy. The restricted definition suggested above
is in part arbitrary, but it may serve as a working hypothesis and as a
norm by which to estimate and define the various systems or cults
involving a relation between human groups and individuals on the one
side and nonhuman things on the other side.

+522+. _Conditions favorable and unfavorable to totemistic
organization._ The questions whether totemism was the earliest form of
human social life and whether existing freer forms are developments out
of definite totemism may be left undetermined. Data for the construction
of primitive life are not accessible, and how far decay or decadence of
institutions is to be recognized must be determined in every case from
such considerations as are offered by the circumstances. We may,
however, distinguish between social conditions in connection with which
some sort of totemism flourishes and those under which it is nonexistent
or feeble; we may thus note unfavorable and, by contrast, favorable
general accompaniments. These may be roughly described as economic,
individualistic, political, and religious.

+523+. _Economic conditions._ Of savage and slightly civilized tribes
some live by hunting or fishing, some are pastoral (nomadic or settled),
some practice agriculture. Without undertaking to trace minutely the
history of these economic practices it may be assumed that t