+522+. _Conditions favorable and unfavorable to totemistic organization._ The questions whether totemism was the earliest form of human social life and whether existing freer forms are developments out of definite totemism may be left undetermined. Data for the construction of primitive life are not accessible, and how far decay or decadence of institutions is to be recognized must be determined in every case from such considerations as are offered by the circumstances. We may, however, distinguish between social conditions in connection with which some sort of totemism flourishes and those under which it is nonexistent or feeble; we may thus note unfavorable and, by contrast, favorable general accompaniments. These may be roughly described as economic, individualistic, political, and religious.
+523+. _Economic conditions._ Of savage and slightly civilized tribes some live by hunting or fishing, some are pastoral (nomadic or settled), some practice agriculture. Without undertaking to trace minutely the history of these economic practices it may be assumed that they are fixed in general by climatic and topographical conditions. Where food is plentiful, thought and life are likely to be freer. In general, savage peoples are constantly on the alert to discover supplies of food, and they show ingenuity in devising economic methods--when one resource fails they look for another. Hunters and fishers are dependent on wild animals for food, and stand in awe of them. The domestication of animals leads men to regard them simply as material for the maintenance of life--the mystery that once attached to them vanishes; they are considered not as man's equals or superiors but as his servants. The same result follows when they are used as aids in tilling the soil or in transportation. Agricultural peoples also have generally some knowledge of the arts of life and a somewhat settled civil and political organization, and these tend to separate them from the lower animals and to diminish or destroy their sense of kinship with them.
+524+. We find, in fact, that in many cases totemic regulations are less strict where the food supply is plentiful and where agriculture is practiced. The correspondence is not exact--other considerations come in, such as isolation and the unknown quantity of natural tribal endowments; but the relation between the economic and totemic conditions is so widespread that it cannot be considered as accidental.