Note 144 — Chapter IV · THE INFANTILE RECURRENCE OF TOTEMISM

The conclusion which Frazer draws about totemism in his second work on the subject (The Origin of Totemism; Fortnightly Review, 1899) agrees with this text: “Thus, totemism has commonly been treated as a primitive system both of religion and of society. As a system of religion it embraces the mystic union of the savage with his totem; as a system of society it comprises the relations in which men and women of the same totem stand to each other and to the members of other totemic groups. And corresponding to these two sides of the system are two rough-and-ready tests or canons of totemism: first, the rule that a man may not kill or eat his totem animal or plant, and second, the rule that he may not marry or cohabit with a woman of the same totem” (p. 101). Frazer then adds something which takes us into the midst of the discussion about totemism: “Whether the two sides—the religious and the social—have always coexisted or are essentially independent, is a question which has been variously answered.”