le that the mere superstition of to-day has
replaced bodily the mere superstition of other ages. Every succeeding
age of progress has influenced it, no doubt, but not eradicated it,
and hence the mere superstition of to-day has just such an unbroken
continuity of history as language or institutions. That we are able to
pick out from among its items undoubted forms of totemism, and that we
may add to these complete examples a classified grouping of customs
and beliefs in survival parallel to the customs and beliefs of savage
totemism, affords proof that at least we may carry back that history
to the era of totemism, at whatever point that era may cross the line
of, or come into contact with, political history.

This is the definite conclusion to be drawn from the anthropological
interpretation of the presence of totemic beliefs among the survivals
of folklore. The study of the anthropological conditions has occupied
a wide range of thought and inquiry, but it leads us back to a safe
basis for research, for it brings definitely within touch of that
realm of man which lies outside the civilisation wherein folklore is
embedded, the peoples who have made, and the peoples who are dominated
by, that civilisation. The savage of Britain cannot with this evidence
before us be considered as the mere product of the literature of
Greece and Rome. He is part and parcel of the savagery of the human
race. Anthropology has shown us that savagery reached the land we now
call Britain as part of the general movement of people which has
caused the whole earth to become a dwelling-place for man, and now
that we know this we must appeal to anthropology whenever we find that
the problems of folklore take us out of the culture period of a
civilisation known to history.[426]

APPENDIX

I append a synopsis of the culture-structure of the Semangs of the
Malay Peninsula (references are to Skeat and Blagden's _Pagan Races of
the Malay Peninsula_ where not otherwise specified), in order that the
position claimed for the one section of totemic belief may be tested
by the remaining characteristics of Semang culture. I claim that there
is nothing that remains which is inconsistent with the interpretation
given of the totemic items.

_Physical_:--

(a). Live exclusively in the forest surrounded by hostile fauna (i.
13).

(b). Food consists of such wild vegetable food as may happen to fall
from time to time in season (i. 109, 341, 525), together