a, in which
region there are indications of a long period of social
development.[917]

+559+. The theory that the totem is a god, immanent in the clan,
incarnate in every member of the clan, a divine ancestor, the center of
the clan's religion,[918] is contradicted by the actual relation between
a clan and its totem: the latter is cherished as a kinsman and friend,
but not worshiped as a god.[919]

+560+. _Summing-up on the origin of totemism._ This brief survey of
proposed theories of the origin of totemism is sufficient to show the
complexity of the problem. Not one of the hypotheses just mentioned is
universally accepted, and no one of them appears to account
satisfactorily for all the known facts. Some of them are based obviously
on data derived from limited areas. Australian usage suggested the
cooeperative theory, and Australia and Melanesia the conceptional theory.
The identification of totemism with ancestor-worship comes from South
Africa; its connection with the belief in transmigration is due to
Indonesia; its derivation from the individual guardian is based on a
North American institution; and North America probably suggested the
badge theory also. It may be frankly confessed that in the present state
of knowledge all theories are guesses.

+561+. As there are communities in which it is probable or possible that
totemism has never existed, so it is conceivable that it has been
developed in different ways in different places. Considering the variety
of circumstances in primitive life, it would not be strange if human
groups found themselves impelled to take various paths in their
attempts at effective organization. The starting-point being reverence
for animals and other objects of nature, and belief in their kinship
with men, one human group may have been led by some accidental
experience to regard some nonhuman group or object as its ally. In
another case a name, adopted by a group of its own accord or given it
from without, may have induced such an alliance. Individuals may have
imposed their guardian animals or plants on communities. A badge, chosen
for convenience, may have been the beginning of a totemic organization.
In these and other ways a group of men may have come to form intimate
relations with a nonhuman group or other object.

+562+. This fundamental relation having been established (with aversion
to eating or injuring the sacred object), various usages would attach
themselves to it in acc