totemism into three groups, α) nominalistic, β) sociological, γ) psychological.
α) The Nominalistic Theories
The information about these theories will justify their summation under the headings I have used.
Garcilaso de La Vega, a descendant of the Peruvian Inkas, who wrote the history of his race in the seventeenth century is already said to have traced back what was known to him about totemic phenomena to the need of the tribes to differentiate themselves from each other by means of names.[1] The same idea appears centuries later in the “Ethnology” of A. K. Keane where totems are said to be derived from heraldic badges through which individuals, families and tribes wanted to differentiate themselves.[2]
Max Müller expresses the same opinion about the meaning of the totem in his “Contributions to the Science of Mythology.”[3] A totem is said to be, 1. a mark of the clan, 2. a clan name, 3. the name of the ancestor of the clan, 4. the name of the object which the clan reveres. J. Pikler wrote later, in 1899, that men needed a perma-
