object for its totem; but in this case the previous existence of the
totem is assumed. In certain islands (Mota and Motlav) of the Banks
group, however, there exists, it is said, the belief that a child is the
object from which the mother received some influence at conception or at
some other period of pregnancy--the child resembles the object, and may
not eat it if it is edible.[905] The persons thus identified with a
given object would, if united, constitute a group totemic in the
respects that they believe themselves to be one with the object in
question and refrain from eating it.[906] The totemic object is
selected, in the case of every child, by the fancy of the mother, and
is, therefore, not inherited; totemic groups, thus, would be found
distributed through the larger groups (phratries or tribes), and might
also gradually coalesce and form local groups. If the belief in this
origin of birth (identity of the child with some object) were found to
be widespread, and generally effective as the ground of early social
organization, it would furnish a satisfactory explanation of totemistic
beginnings. But in point of fact it has so far been found, in full form,
only in a small region in Melanesia, and its history in this region is
not known; back of it may lie some other system of organization. And in
this region clan totemism is lacking or faint. Further testimony is
needed before it can be accepted as the solution of the problem of
totemic origins.[907]

+549+. A similar remark must be made in reference to theories based on
the belief that the souls of the dead are incarnate in animals and
plants. Such a belief is a natural outgrowth from the conception of the
identity of nature of human beings and animals, and it occurs in so many
parts of the world (Oceania, Africa, America) that it might naturally be
regarded as having been at one time universal, though it is not now
found everywhere. Reverence for an ancestor might be, and sometimes is,
transferred to the object in which he is supposed to be incarnate; from
this object a man holds himself to be descended, and he refrains from
eating or injuring it.[908] This view, a combination of reverence for
ancestors and reverence for animals and plants, thus supplies two
features of totemistic organization, but proof is lacking that it is the
basis of this organization. If it be the determining consideration in
some cases, there are many cases in which its influence is not