cases from later epochs of history in which names given from without that were first meant to be derisive were accepted by those nicknamed and voluntarily born, (The Guises, Whigs and Tories). The assumption that the origin of these names was forgotten in the course of time connects this second part of the Lang theory with the first one just mentioned.
β) The Sociological Theories
S. Reinach, who successfully traced the relics of the totemic system in the cult and customs of later periods, though attaching from the very beginning only slight value to the factor of descent from the totem animal, once made the casual remark that totemism seemed to him to be nothing but “une hypertrophie de l’instinct social.”[1]
The same interpretation seems to permeate the new work of E. Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse; Le système totémique en Australie, 1912. The totem is the visible representative of the social religion of these races. It embodies the community, which is the real object of veneration.
Other authors have sought a more intimate reason for the share which social impulses have played in the formation of totemic institutions.
- ↑ 1. c., Vol. I, p. 41.
