what beliefs a particular people possess, but
in what manner these beliefs generate custom and rite and take their
place among the influences which affect the social organism. Early man
does not live individually. His life is part of a collective group.
The group worships collectively as it lives collectively, and it is
extremely important to work out the dual conditions. If the several
items of custom and belief preserved by tradition are really ancient
in their origin, they must be floating fragments, as it were, of an
ancient _system_ of custom and belief--the cultus of the people among
whom they originated. This cultus has been destroyed, struggling
unsuccessfully against foreign and more vigorous systems of religion
and society. To be of service to history each floating fragment of
ancient custom and belief must not only be labelled "ancient," but it
must be placed back in the system from which it has been torn away. To
do this is to a great extent to restore the ancient system; and to
restore an ancient system of culture, even if the restoration be only
a mosaic and a shattered mosaic, is to bring into evidence the people
to which it belongs.

In the previous chapter it was necessary to lay somewhat special
stress upon the system of social organisation known as totemism, which
was not founded upon kinship. This was traced in survival among the
pre-Celtic peoples of Britain. If we now turn to the Celts and Teutons
of Britain we shall find that we have to deal with a social
organisation founded definitely upon kinship; and if there are
survivals of belief, custom, and rite, derived from this kinship
system, existing side by side in the same culture area with survivals
from the kinless system, it will be necessary to explain how two such
opposite streams can have been kept flowing.

It is not difficult in the case of countries occupied by Celtic or
Teutonic peoples to ascertain what the particular institution was
which linked together the beliefs of the people, though it is not easy
to trace out all the phases of it. It is the tribe--that system of
society which appears as the means by which Greek and Roman, Celt and
Teuton, Scandinavian and Slav, Hindu and Persian, were able to
conquer, overrun, and finally to settle in the lands which they have
made their own. We know something of the Celtic tribe, less of the
Teutonic tribe, but all we know is that it possesses features in
common with the tribe of its kindred. T