. I conclude from this, therefore, that the search for the
origin of totemism must be made from the women's side of the social
group. Such a search would lead straight to the industrialism of early
woman, from which originated the domestication of animals, the
cultivation of fruits and cereals, and the appropriation of such trees
and shrubs as were necessary to primitive economics.[361] The close
and intimate relationship with human life which such animals, plants,
and trees would assume under the social conditions which have been
postulated as belonging to this earliest stage of evolution, and the
aid which these friendly and always present companions would render at
all times and under most circumstances, would generate and develop
many of those savage conceptions which have become known to research.
As human friends they would become part of humanity, just as
Livingstone notes of an African people that they did not eat the beef
which he offered to them because "they looked upon cattle as human and
living at home like men,"[362] an idea which is also the basis of the
custom in India not to taste fruit of a newly planted mangrove tree
until it is formally "married" to some other tree.[363] These are but
the fortunate instances where definite record in set terms has been
made. At the back of them lies a whole collection of anthropomorphic
conceptions, indulged in by man at all stages of his career.[364] As
superhuman agencies for pregnancy and birth, they would do what the
human father in the society we are contemplating could not be expected
to do, for he would be seldom present during the long period of
pregnancy; he would have shared with other males the privileges of
sexual intercourse, and he would therefore not be so closely in
companionship with the women of the local groups as the friendly
animal, plant, or tree who did so much for the mothers. There would
thus be formed the groundwork for the fashioning of that most
incredible of all beliefs, well founded, as Mr. Hartland has proved
both from tradition and belief,[365] that the human father was not
father, and that other agencies were responsible for the birth of
children.

Gathering up the several threads of this argument, it seems to me that
there is within this sphere of primitive thought and within these
conditions of primitive life, ample room for the growth of all the
main conceptions belonging to totemism; and it will be seen how
necessary it is to sepa