et all the conditions of the case; one proof
in support of this view being the discovery of evidence in other
parts of the country which shows that totemism has left its stamp in
more or less perfect form upon the traditional beliefs and practices
of the nation. Though we are not able to identify further complete
examples of the same type as the seal clan of Western Ireland, or the
wolf people of Ossory, we should be able, if the explanation I have
advanced of their origin be the correct one, to produce examples of
the varying forms which such an institution as totemism must have
assumed when it had been broken up by the advance of civilising
influences. If the seal clan, or the wolf clan, is in truth the last
outpost of a savage organisation, there will be in the lands less
remote from the centres of civilisation some evidences of the break-up
of savagery as it has been driven westward. Somewhere in tradition,
somewhere in local observances of beliefs or superstition, there must
still be echoes, more or less faint, but still echoes, from totemism.
Having discovered these undoubted examples of totemism, the argument
shifts its ground. We can no longer say that the theory of totemism
may possibly explain some of the customs and traditions of the people.
We are, by the logic of the position, compelled to say that custom and
tradition must have preserved many relics of totemism, and that so far
from seeking to explain custom and tradition by the theory of
totemism, we must seek to explain the survival of totemism by custom
and tradition. I lay stress on this view of the case because it is
hard to combat the views of those who look upon "mere superstition" as
no explanation of primitive originals. To us of the present day the
beliefs of the peasantry are no doubt properly definable as "mere
superstition." But when we examine it as folklore we are seeking for
its origin, not for its modern aspect; we are asking how "mere
superstition" first arose, and in what forms, not how it exists; we
are pushing back the inquiry from to-day when it exists side by side
with a philosophical and moral religion to the time when it existed as
the sole substitute for philosophy and morals. Even if it is "mere
superstition" it has a dateless history. It is not conceivable that it
suddenly arose at a particular period before which "mere superstition"
did not exist, and all, both peasant and chief, were philosophical and
moral. It is not conceivab