The upshot of these considerations is that if the totem is, on the face of it, a name, the savage answers the question, “What’s in a name?” by finding in the name that makes him one with his brethren a wealth of mystic meaning, such as deepens for him the feeling of social solidarity to an extent that it takes a great effort on our part to appreciate.

Having separately examined the three principles of exogamy, lineage and totemism, we must now try to see how they work together.  Generalization in regard to these matters is extremely risky, not to say rash; nevertheless, the following broad statements may serve the reader as working hypotheses, that he can go on to test for himself by looking into the facts.  Firstly, exogamy and totemism, whether they be in origin distinct or not, tend in practice to go pretty closely together.  Secondly, lineage, or the one-sided system of reckoning descent, is more or less independent of the other two principles.[4]

[Footnote 4:  That is to say, either mother-right or father-right in any of their forms may exist in conjunction with exogamy and totemism.  It is certainly not the fact that, wherever totemism is in a state of vigour, mother-right is regularly found.  At most it may be urged in favour of the priority of mother-right that, if there is change, it is invariably from mother-right to father-right, and never the other way about.]

If, instead of consulting the evidence that is to hand about the savage world as it exists to-day, you read some book crammed full with theories about social origins, you probably come away with the impression that totemic society is entirely an affair of clans.  Some such notion as the following is precipitated in your mind.  You figure to yourself two small food-groups, whose respective beats are, let us say, on each side of a river.  For some unknown reason they are totemic, one group calling itself Cockatoo, the other calling itself Crow, whilst each feels in consequence that its members are “all-one-flesh” in some mysterious and moving sense.  Again, for some unknown reason each is exogamous, so that matrimonial alliances are bound to take place across the river.  Lastly, each has mother-right of the full-blown kind.  The Cockatoo-girls and the Crow-girls abide each on their own side of the river, where they are visited by partners from across the water; who, whether they tend to stay and make themselves useful, or are merely intermittent in their attentions, remain outsiders from the totemic point of view and are treated as such.  The children, meanwhile, grow up in the Cockatoo and Crow quarters respectively as little Cockatoos or Crows.  If they need to be chastised, a Cockatoo hand, not necessarily the mother’s, but perhaps her brother’s—­never the father’s, however—­administers the slap.  When they grow up, they take their chances for better and worse with the mother’s people; fighting when they fight, though it be against the father’s people; sharing in the toils and the spoils of the chase; inheriting the weapons and any other property that is handed on from one generation to another; and, last but not least, taking part in the totemic mysteries that disclose to the elect the inner meaning of being a Cockatoo or a Crow, as the case may be.