s, which led a migratory life and
subsisted mainly by hunting and the consumption of fruits and roots,
as the Australian natives still do, the sentiment of kinship must
first have arisen, as stated by Mr. M'Lennan, in that small body
which lived and hunted together, and was due simply to the fact that
they were so associated, that they obtained food for each other, and
on occasion protected and preserved each other's lives. [93] These
small bodies of persons were the first social units, and according to
our knowledge of the savage peoples who are nearest to the original
migratory and hunting condition of life, without settled habitations,
domestic animals or cultivated plants, they first called themselves
after some animal or plant, usually, as Sir J.G. Frazer has shown in
_Totemism and Exogamy_, [94] after some edible animal or plant. The
most probable theory of totemism on _a priori_ grounds seems therefore
to be that the original small bodies who lived and hunted together, or
totem-clans, called themselves after the edible animal or plant from
which they principally derived their sustenance, or that which gave
them life. While the real tie which connected them was that of living
together, they did not realise this, and supposed themselves to be akin
because they commonly ate this animal or plant together. This theory
of totemism was first promulgated by Professor Robertson Smith and,
though much disputed, appears to me to be the most probable. It has
also been advocated by Dr. A.C. Haddon, F.R.S. [95] The Gaelic names
for family, _teadhloch_ and _cuedichc_ or _coedichc_, mean, the first,
'having a common residence,' the second, 'those who eat together.' [96]
The detailed accounts of the totems of the Australian, Red Indian and
African tribes, now brought together by Sir J.G. Frazer in _Totemism
and Exogamy_, show a considerable amount of evidence that the early
totems were not only as a rule edible animals, but the animals
eaten by the totem-clans which bore their names. [97] But after the
domestication of animals and the culture of plants had been attained
to, the totems ceased to be the chief means of subsistence. Hence the
original tie of kinship was supplanted by another and wider one in the
tribe, and though the totem-clans remained and continued to fulfil an
important purpose, they were no longer the chief social group. And in
many cases, as man had also by now begun to speculate on his origin,
the totems came t