Moreover they only ate part of the life.

In many cases also the totem-animal only appeared at a certain season of the year, in consequence of the habit of hibernation or migration in search of food, while trees only bore fruit in their season.

The savage, regarding all animals and plants as possessed of self-conscious life and volition, would think that they came of their own accord to give him subsistence or life.

Afterwards, when they had obtained the idea of a soul or spirit, and of the survival of the soul after death, and when, on the introduction of personal names, the personality of individuals could be realised and remembered after death, they frequently thought that the spirits of ancestors went back to the totem-animal, whence they derived their life.

The idea of descent from the totem would thus naturally arise.