only. At this last stage, blood kinship
has practically succeeded in expelling totemic association altogether
in favour of tribal kinship by blood descent, for totemism with male
descent as the basis of the social group is totemism in name only; the
names of totemism remain but they are applied to kinship tribes or
sections of tribes, and they do duty therefore as a convenient
name-system without reference to their origin in definite association
with the naming animal or plant; and it is already in position to
surrender also the names and outward signs. Blood kinship is therefore
the destroyer, not the generator, of totemism, and we are therefore
compelled to get at the back of blood kinship if we want to find totem
beginnings.

This is an important aspect of the case, and it is one which, I think,
cannot be ignored. We have found that rudimentary totemism was the
basis of a social system founded on artificial associations with
animal or plant, was therefore kinless in character; and we have found
that when totemism has been carried on into a society developed upon
the recognition of blood kinship, blood kinship became antagonistic to
totemism, and ultimately displaced it. These two facts point to the
rudimentary kinless system as the true origin of totemism.

III

Now we may test these conclusions by applying the theory they contain
to an actual case of totemic society. It would be well to choose for
this purpose a people who had specialised their totemic organisation,
and there are only two supreme instances of this among the races of
the world--the North American Indians and the Australians. Everywhere
else, where totemism exists, it is not the dominant feature of the
social organisation. In Asia and in Africa totemism is subordinate to,
or at all events in close or equal association with, other elements,
and we cannot be quite sure that we have in these cases pure totemism.
North American totemism is in the most advanced stage. Australian
totemism is to a very considerable degree less advanced, and it is
therefore to Australian totemism I shall turn for evidence.

But even here it is necessary to bear in mind that primitive as the
Australians are, they are not so primitive as to be in the primary
stages of totemic society. They have developed, and developed strongly
along totemic lines, and we know that such development once started
has the capacity to proceed far. What we have to do, therefore, is to
attemp