If then the first form of association of human beings was in small groups, which led a migratory life and subsisted mainly by hunting and the consumption of fruits and roots, as the Australian natives still do, the sentiment of kinship must first have arisen, as stated by Mr.M'Lennan, in that small body which lived and hunted together, and was due simply to the fact that they were so associated, that they obtained food for each other, and on occasion protected and preserved each other's lives.

[93] These small bodies of persons were the first social units, and according to our knowledge of the savage peoples who are nearest to the original migratory and hunting condition of life, without settled habitations, domestic animals or cultivated plants, they first called themselves after some animal or plant, usually, as Sir J.G.Frazer has shown in _Totemism and Exogamy_, [94] after some edible animal or plant.

The most probable theory of totemism on _a priori_ grounds seems therefore to be that the original small bodies who lived and hunted together, or totem-clans, called themselves after the edible animal or plant from which they principally derived their sustenance, or that which gave them life.

While the real tie which connected them was that of living together, they did not realise this, and supposed themselves to be akin because they commonly ate this animal or plant together.

This theory of totemism was first promulgated by Professor Robertson Smith and, though much disputed, appears to me to be the most probable.