evolution we may fairly term 'the pre-formation theory'; for on this
theory each stage is pre-formed in the stage immediately preceding it,
and in the earliest stage of all were all succeeding stages contained
pre-formed, though it depended on circumstances whether the seed should
spring up, and how many stages of its growth it should accomplish.

Robertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion is in effect a
form of the pre-formation theory, and is liable to the same difficulties
as dog the theory of pre-formation in all its applications. On the
theory, if we cut open a seed we should find within it the plant
pre-formed; if we analyse totemism, the seed from which, in Robertson
Smith's view, all other forms of religion have grown in orderly
succession one after the other, we find in it religion in all its stages
pre-formed. In fact, however, if we cut open an acorn we do not find a
miniature oak-tree inside. The presumption, therefore, is that neither
in totemism, if we dissect it, shall we find religion pre-formed.
Indeed, there is the possibility that totemism, on dissection, will be
found to have no such content--that the hope or expectation of finding
anything in it is as vain, is as much doomed to disappointment, as is
the expectation of the child who cuts open his drum, thinking to find
inside it something which produces the sound.

It was, however, not on _a priori_ grounds like these that Sir James
Frazer was led eventually to combat and deny the existence, 'in the
heart of Australia, amongst the most primitive savages known to us' of
'that totem sacrament which', in 1899 he declared, 'Robertson Smith,
with the intuition of genius' had divined years before it was actually
observed. It was by the evidence of new facts, discovered by Messrs.
Spencer and Gillen, that Sir James Frazer was compelled to abandon
Robertson Smith's theory of the evolution of religion. Robertson Smith