Psyche's Task: A Discourse Concerning the Influence of Superstition on the Growth of Institutions

We are apt to think of superstition as an unmitigajt^ci The dark
evil, false in itself and pernicious in its consequences. - That ^"*'=°f 

' ^ _ ^ super- 

it has done much harm in the world, cannot be denied. It stition. 

has_ 3crificed countless lives, wasted untold treasures, em- 
broiled nations, severed friends, parted husbands and wives, 
parents and children, putting swords, and worse than swords 
between them : it has filled gaols and madhouses with its 
innocent or deluded victims : it has broken many hearts, 
embittered the whole of many a life, and not content with 
persecuting the living it has pursued the dead into the grave 
and beyond it, gloating over the horrors which its foul 
imagination has conjured up to appal and torture the sur- 
vivors. It has done all this and rnore^ Yet the case of The 
superstition, like that of Mr. Pickwick after the revelations ^i^f'j,^'^ 
of poor Mr. Winkle in the witness-box, can perhaps afford super- 
to be placed in a rather better light ; and without posing as ^""°"- 
the Devil's Advocate or appearing before you in a blue flame 
and sulphureous fumes, I do profess to make out what the 
charitable might call a plausible plea for a very dubious 
client. For I propose to prove, or at least make probable, 
by examples that among certain races and at certain stages 
of evolution some social institutions which we all, or most of 
us, believe to be beneficial have partially rested on a basis of 
superstition. The institutions to which I refer are purely 
secular or civil. Of religious or ecclesiastical institutions I 
shall say nothing. It might perhaps be possible to shew 
that even religion has not wholly escaped the taint or 

Four pro- 
positions 
to be 
proved. 

Prelim- 
inary 
remarks. 

dispensed with the support of superstition ; but I prefer for 
to-night to confine myself to those civil institutions which 
people commonly imagine to be bottomed on nothing but 
hard common sense and the nature of things. While the 
institutions with which I shall deal have all survived into 
civilized society and can no doubt be defended by solid and 
weighty arguments, it is practically certain that among 
savages, and even among peoples who have risen above the 
level of savagery, these very same institutions have derived 
much of their strength from beliefs which nowadays we 
should condemn unreservedly as superstitious and absurd. 
The institutions in regard to which I shall attempt to prove 
this are four, namely, government, private property, marriage, 
and the respect for human life. And what I have to say 
may be summed up in four propositions as follows : — 

I. Among certain races and at certain times superstition 
has strengthened the respect for government, especially 
monarchical government, and has thereby contributed to 
the establishment and maintenance of civil order. 

II. Among certain races and at certain times superstition 
has strengthened the respect for private property and has 
thereby contributed to the security of its enjoyment. 

III. Among certain races and at certain times superstition 
has strengthened the respect for marriage and has thereby 
contributed to a stricter observance of the rules of sexual 
morality both among the married and the unmarried. 

IV. Among certain races and at certain times superstition 
has strengthened the respect for human life and has thereby 
contributed to the security of its enjoyment. 

Before proceeding to deal with these four propositions 
separately, I wish to make two remarks, which I beg you 
will bear in mind. First, in what I have to say I shall 
confine myself to certain races of men and to certain ages 
of history, because neither my time nor my knowledge 
permits me to speak of all races of men and all ages of 
history. How far the limited conclusions which I shall draw 
for some races and for some ages are applicable to others 
must be left to future enquiries to determine. That is my 
first remark. My second is this. If it can be proved 
that in certain races and at certain times the institutions 

in question have been based partly on superstition, it by no 
means follows that even among these races they have never 
been based on anything else. On the contrary, as all the 
institutions which I shall consider have proved themselves 
stable and permanent, there is a strong presumption that 
they rest mainly on something much more solid than 
superstition. No institution founded wholly on superstition, 
that is on falsehood, can be permanent. If it does not 
answer to some real human need, if its foundations are not 
laid broad and deep in the nature of things, it must perish, 
and the sooner the better. That is my second remark. 

Supersti- 
tion as a 
prop of 
govern- 
ment. 

Super- 
stitious 
respect for 
chiefs in 
Melanesia.

With these two cautions I address myself to my first
proposition, which is, that among certain races and at 
certain times superstition has strengthened the respect for 
government, especially monarchical government, and has 
thereby contributed to the establishment and maintenance 
of civil order. 

Among many peoples the task of government has been 
greatly facilitated by a superstition that the governors 
belong to a superior order of beings and possess certain 
supernatural or magical powers to which the governed can 
make no claim and can offer no resistance. Thus Dr. 
Codrington tells us that among the Melanesians " the 
power of chiefs has hitherto rested upon the belief in their 
supernatural power derived from the spirits or ghosts with 
which they had intercourse. As this belief has failed, in 
the Banks' Islands for example some time ago, the position 
of a chief has tended to become obscure ; and as this belief 
is now being generally undermined a new kind of chief 
must needs arise, unless a time of anarchy is to begin." ^ 
According to a native Melanesian account, the authority of 
chiefs rests entirely on the belief that they hold communica- 
tion with mighty ghosts and possess that supernatural power 
or mana, as it is called, whereby they are able to bring the 
influence of the ghosts to bear on human life. If a chief 
imposed a fine, it was paid because the people firmly believed 
that he could inflict calamity and sickness upon such as 
resisted him. As soon as any considerable number of his 

1 R. H. Codrington, D.D., The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), 

p. 46. 

subjects began to disbelieve in his influence with the ghosts, 
his power to levy fines was shaken.^ It is thus that in 
Melanesia religious scepticism tends to undermine the 
foundations of civil society. 

Similarly Mr. Basil Thomson tells us that " the key to Super- 
the Melanesian system of government is Ancestor-worship, respect for 
Just as every act in a Fijian's life was controlled by his fear chiefs in 
of Unseen Powers, so was his conception of human authority '^'' 
based upon religion." The dead chief was supposed still to 
watch jealously over his people and to punish them with 
dearth, storms, and floods, if they failed to bring their 
offerings to his tomb and to propitiate his spirit. And the 
person of his descendant, the living chief, was sacred ; it was 
hedged in by a magic circle of taboo and might not even be 
touched without incurring the wrath of the Unseen. " The 
first blow at the power of the chiefs was struck unconsciously 
by the missionaries. Neither they nor the chiefs themselves 
realized how closely the government of the Fijians was 
bound up with their religion. No sooner had a missionary 
gained a foothold in a chief village than the tabu was 
doomed, and on the tabu depended half the people's rever- 
ence for rank. The tabu died hard, as such institutions 
should do. The first-fruits were still presented to the chief, 
but they were no longer carried from him to the temple, 
since their excuse — as an offering to persuade the ancestors 
to grant abundant increase — had passed away. No longer 
supported by the priests, the Sacred Chief fell upon evil 
days " ; for in Fiji, as in other places, the priest and the 
chief, when they were not one and the same person, had 
played into each other's hands, both knowing that neither 
could stand firm without the aid of the other.^ 

In Polynesia the state of things was similar. There, Super- 
too, the power of chiefs depended largely on a belief in re3p°"tfor 
their supernatural powers, in their relation to ancestral chiefs in 
spirits, and in the magical virtue of taboo, which pervaded „enerany 
their persons and interposed between them and common folk and in New 
an invisible but formidable barrier, to pass which was death, panicu- 
In New Zealand the Maori chiefs were deemed to be living '^riy. 

1 R. H. Codrington, of. cit. p. 52. Study of the Decay of Custom {London, 

2 Basil Thomson, The Fijians, a 1908), pp. 57-59, 64, 158. 

atuas or gods. Thus the Rev. Richard Taylor, who was for 
more than thirty years a missionary in New Zealand, tells 
us that in speaking a Maori chief " assumed a tone not 
natural to him, as a kind of court language ; he kept him- 
self distinct from his inferiors, eating separately ; his person 
was sacred, he had the power of holding converse with the 
gods, in fact laid claim to being one himself, making the 
tapu a powerful adjunct to obtain control over his people 
and their goods. Every means were used to acquire this 
dignity ; a large person was thought to be of the highest 
importance ; to acquire this extra size, the child of a chief 
was generally provided with many nurses, each contributing 
to his support by robbing their own offspring of their natural 
sustenance ; thus, whilst they were half-starved, miserable- 
looking little creatures, the chief's child was the contrary, 
and early became remarkable by its good appearance. Nor 
was this feeling confined to the body ; the chief was an 
atua, but there were powerful and powerless gods ; each 
naturally sought to make himself one of the former ; the 
plan therefore adopted, was to incorporate the spirits of 
others with their own ; thus, when a warrior slew a chief, 
he immediately gouged out his eyes and swallowed them, 
the atua tonga, or divinity, being supposed to reside in that 
organ ; thus he not only killed the body, but also possessed 
himself of the soul of his enemy, and consequently the more 
chiefs he slew, the greater did his divinity become. . . . 
Another great sign of a chief was oratory — a good orator 
was compared to the korimako, the sweetest singing bird in 
New Zealand ; to enable the young chief to become one, he 
was fed upon that bird, so that he might the better acquire 
its qualities, and the successful orator was termed a kori- 
mako." ^ Again, another writer informs us that the opinions 
of Maori chiefs "were held in more estimation than those 
of others, simply because they were believed to give 
utterance to the thoughts of deified men. No dazzling 
pageantry hedged them round, but their persons were 
sacred. . . . Many of them believed themselves inspired ; 

1 Rev. Richard Taylor, Te Ika A pp. 352 sq. ; as to the atuas or gods, 
Maui, or New Zealand andits Inhabit- see e'i5. pp. iTj\ sqj. 
ants, Secoud Edition (London, 1870), 

thus Te Heu Heu, the great Taupo chief and priest, 
shortly before he was swallowed up by a landslip, said 
to a European missionary : ' Think not that I am a 
man, that my origin is of the earth. I come from the 
heavens ; my ancestors are all there ; they are gods, and I 
shall return to them.'"^ So sacred was the person of a 
Maori chief that it was not lawful to touch him, even to 
save his life. A chief has been seen at the point of suffoca- 
tion and in great agony with a fish bone sticking in his 
throat, and yet not one of his people, who were lamenting 
around him, dared to touch or even approach him, for it 
would have been as much as their own life was worth to do 
so. A missionary, who was passing, came to the rescue and 
saved the chief's life by extracting the bone. As soon as 
the rescued man recovered the power of speech, which he 
did not do for half an hour, the first use he made of it 
was to demand that the surgical instruments with which the 
bone had been extracted should be given to him as com- 
pensation for the injury done him by drawing his sacred 
blood and touching his sacred head.^ 

Not only the person of a Maori chief but everything that Super- 
had come into contact with it was sacred and would kill, so fg!j^°Qf 
the Maoris thought, any sacrilegious person who dared to contact ■ 
meddle with it. Cases have been known of Maoris dying of ^-gfj ^°" 
sheer fright on learning that they had unwittingly eaten 
the remains of a chief's dinner or handled something that 
belonged to him. For example, a woman, having partaken 
of some fine peaches from a basket, was told that they 
had come from a tabooed place. Immediately the basket 
dropped from her hands and she cried out in agony that 
the atua or godhead of the chief, whose divinity had been 
thus profaned, would kill her. That happened in the 
afternoon, and next day by twelve o'clock she was dead.' 
Similarly a chief's tinder-box has proved fatal to several 
men ; for having found it and lighted their pipes with it 

1 A. S. Thomson, M.D., The Story ^ W. Brown, New Zealand and its 
of New Zealand (London, 1859), i. Aborigines (London, 1845), p. 76. 
95 sq. Compare Old New Zealand, by a 

2 Kev.'V^.YsXe, An Account of New Pakeha Maori (London, 1884), pp. 
Zealand {'LonAon, 1835), pp. 104 sq., ^6 sq. 

note. 

they actually expired of terror on learning to whom it 
belonged.^ Hence a considerate chief would throw away 
where it could not be found any garment or mat for which 
he had no further use, lest one of his subjects should find 
it and be struck dead by the shock of its inherent divinity. 
For the same reason he would never blow a fire with his 
mouth ; for his sacred breath would communicate its 
sanctity to the fire, and the fire would pass it on to the 
meat that might be cooked on it, and the meat would 
carry it into the stomach of the eater, and he would die.^ 
Thus the divinity which hedged a Maori chief was a de- 
vouring flame which shrivelled up and consumed whatever 
it touched. No wonder that such men were implicitly 
obeyed. 
Super- In the rest of Polynesia the state of things was similar. 

respect for ^°'' example, the natives of Tonga in like manner believed 
chiefs and that if any one fed himself with his own hands after touching 
Tonga''and the sacred person of a superior chief, he would swell up and 
Tahiti. die ; the sanctity of the chief, like a virulent poison, infected 
the hands of his inferior, and, being communicated through 
them to the food, proved fatal to the eater, unless he dis- 
infected himself by touching the chief's feet in a particular 
way.' When a king of Tahiti entered on office he was girded 
with a sacred girdle of red feathers, which not only raised 
him to the highest earthly station, but identified him with the 
gods.* Henceforth " every thing in the least degree connected 
with the king or queen — the cloth they wore, the houses in 
which they dwelt, the canoes in which they voyaged, the men 
by whom they were borne when they journeyed by land, 
became sacred — and even the sounds in the language, compos- 
ing their names, could no longer be appropriated to ordinary 
significations. Hence, the original names of most of the 
objects with which they were familiar, have from time to time 
undergone considerable alterations. The ground on which 
they even accidentally trod, became sacred ; and the dwelling 
under which they might enter, must for ever after be vacated 

1 Rev. R. Taylor, op. cit. p. 164. (London, 1818), i. 141 sq. note, 434, 

2 Rev. R. Taylor, op. cit. pp. 164, note, ii. 82 sq., 222 sq. 

165. * W. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, 

^ W. Mariner, Account of the Natives Second Edition (London, 1832-1836), 
of the Tonga Islands, Second Edition iii. 108. 

by its proprietors, and could be appropriated only to the use 
of these sacred personages. No individual was allowed to 
touch the body of the king or queen ; and every one who 
should stand over them, or pass the hand over their heads, 
would be liable to pay for the sacrilegious act with the 
forfeiture of his life. It was on account of this supposed 
sacredness of person that they could never enter any 
dwellings, excepting those that were specially dedicated 
to their use, and prohibited to all others ; nor might they 
tread on the ground in any part of the island but their own 
hereditary districts." ^ 

In like manner the Cazembes, in the interior of Angola, Super- 
regarded their king as so holy that no one could touch him fear°of 
without being killed by the magical power which emanated contact 
from his sacred person ; however, any one who had accident- i^'Afri'cf^ 
ally or necessarily come into personal contact with his and the 
Majesty could escape death by touching the king's hands region. 
in a special manner.^ Similar beliefs are current in the 
Malay region, where the theory of the king as the Divine 
Man is said to be held perhaps as strongly as in any other 
part of the world. " Not only is the king's person con- 
sidered sacred, but the sanctity of his body is believed to 
communicate itself to his regalia, and to slay those who 
break the royal taboos. Thus it is iirmly believed that any 
one who seriously offends the royal person, who touches 
(even for a moment) or who imitates (even with the king's 
permission) the chief objects of the regalia, or who wrong- 
fully makes use of any of the insignia or privileges of 
royalty, will be kena daulat, i.e. struck dead, by a quasi- 
electric discharge of that Divine Power which the Malays 
suppose to reside in the king's person, and which is called 
daulat or Royal Sanctity." ^ Further, the Malays firmly Marvellous 
believe that the king possesses a personal influence over the ^Hributed 
works of nature, such as the growth of the crops and the to rajahs 
bearing of fruit-trees.* Some of the Hill Dyaks of Sarawak andOyaks. 

1 W. Ellis, op. cit. iii. \oi sq. ; ']. sq. ; F. T. Valdez, Six Years of a 

Wihon, Mtsstona?y Voyage to the South- Traveller's Life in Western Africa 

em Pacific Ocean (London, 1799), pp. (London, 1861), ii. 251 sq. 

329 sq. ^ W. W. Skeat, Malay Magic 

'^ Zeitschrift filr allgemeine Erd- (London, 1900), pp. 23 sq. 

kunde (Berlin), vi. (1856) pp. 398 * W. W. Skeat, op. cit. p. 36. 

Super- 
stitious 
veneration 
for the 
rajah of 
Loowoo. 

Magical 
powers 
attributed 
to kings 
in Africa. 

The king 
of Loango. 

used to bring their seed-rice to Rajah Brooke to be fertilized 
by him ; and once when the rice-crops of a tribe were thin, 
the chief remarked that it could not be otherwise, since they 
had not been visited by the Rajah.^ Among the Toradjas 
of Central Celebes "the power of the rajah of Loowoo 
rested for the most part on superstition and on tradition. 
The ancestors had served the rajah in their day, and should 
the descendants fail to do so they would have to fear the 
wrath of the ancestors. Often Toradjas said to us, ' The 
rajah of Loowoo is our god.' They saw in him the complete 
embodiment of the old institutions. It used to be said that 
he had white blood, and the mysterious power that went 
forth from him was thought to be so great that a common 
Toradja could not see him without suffering from a swollen 
belly and dying." ^ 

Similarly in Africa kings are commonly supposed to be 
endowed with a magical power of making the rain to fall 
and the crops to grow : drought and famine are set down to 
the weakness or ill-will of the king, and accordingly he is 
punished, deposed, or put to death.^ To take two or three 
instances out of many, a writer of the eighteenth century 
speaks as follows of the kingdom of Loango in West Africa : 
" The government with these people is purely despotic. 
They say their lives and goods belong to the king; that he 
may dispose of and deprive them of them when he pleases, 
without form of process, and without their having anything 
to complain of. In his presence they pay marks of respect 
which resemble adoration. The individuals of the lower 
classes are persuaded that his power is not confined to the 
earth, and that he has credit enough to make rain fall from 
heaven : hence they fail not, when a continuance of drought 
makes them fearful about the harvest, to represent to him 
that if he does not take care to water the lands of his 
kingdom, they will die of hunger, and will find it impossible 
to make him the usual presents. The king, to satisfy the 
people, without however compromising himself with heaven. 

1 Hugh Low, Sarawak (London, 
1848), pp. 259 sq. 

2 N. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, De 
Bare^ e-spreliende Toradja' s van Midden - 

Celebes, i. (Batavia, 191 2) pp. 130 sg. 
2 For evidence see The Magic Art 
and the Evolution of Kings, i. 342 
sqq., 392 sqq. 

devolves the affair on one of his ministers, to whom he gives 
orders to cause to fall without delay upon the plains as 
much rain as is wanted to fertilize them. When the 
minister sees a cloud which he presumes must shed rain, 
he shews himself in public, as if to exercise the orders of 
his prince. The women and children troop around him, 
crying with all their might. Give us rain, give us rain : and 
he promises them some."^ The king of Loango, says 
another old writer, " is honoured among them as though he 
were a God : and is called Sambee and Pango, which mean 
God. They believe he can let them have rain when he 
likes ; and once a year, in December, which is the time 
they want rain, the people come to beg of him to grant 
it to them, on this occasion they make him presents, and 
none come empty - handed." On a day appointed, when 
the chiefs with their troops had assembled in warlike array, 
the drums used to beat and the horns to sound, and 
the king shot arrows into the air, which was believed 
to bring down the rain.^ On the other side of Africa 
a similar state of things is reported by the old Portuguese 
historian Dos Santos. He says : " The king of all these The king 
lands of the interior and of the river of Sofala is a woolly- ° °^^ 
haired Kaffir, a heathen who adores nothing whatever, and 
has no knowledge of God ; on the contrary, he esteems 
himself the god of all his lands, and is so looked upon and 
reverenced by his subjects." " When they suffer necessity 
or scarcity they have recourse to the king, firmly believing 
that he can give them all that they desire or have need 
of, and can obtain anything from his dead predecessors, with 
whom they believe that he holds converse. For this reason 
they ask the king to give them rain when it is required, and 
other favourable weather for their harvest, and in coming to 
ask for any of these things they bring him valuable presents, 
which the king accepts, bidding them return to their homes 
and he will be careful to grant their petitions. They are 
such barbarians that though they see how often the king 

1 Proyart's " History of Loango, scription de VAfrique (Amsterdam, 

Kakongo, and other Kingdoms in 1686), pp. 335 sq. 
Africa," in John Pinkerton's Voyages ^ "The Strange Adventures of 

and Travels (London, 1808-1814), Andrew Battel," in J. Pinkerton's 

xvi. 577. Compare O. Dapper, De- Voyages and Travels, xvi. 330. 

does not give them what they ask for, they are not unde- 
ceived, but make him still greater offerings, and many days 
are spent in these comings and goings, until the weather 
turns to rain, and the Kaffirs are satisfied, believing that the 
king did not grant their request until he had been well 
bribed and importuned, as he himself affirms, in order to 
maintain them in their error." ^ Nevertheless " it was 
formerly the custom of the kings of this land to commit 
suicide by taking poison when any disaster or natural 
physical defect fell upon them, such as impotence, infectious 
disease, the loss of their front teeth by which they were 
disfigured, or any other deformity or affliction. To put an 
end to such defects they killed themselves, saying that the 
king should be free from any blemish." However, in the 
time of Dos Santos the king of Sofala, in defiance of all 
precedent, persisted in living and reigning after he had lost 
a front tooth ; and he even went so far as to tax his royal 
predecessors with folly lor having made away with them- 
selves for such trifles as a decayed tooth or a little grey hair, 
declaring his firm resolution to live as long as he possibly 
could for the benefit of his loyal subjects.^ At the present 
The chief day the principal medicine-man of the Nandi, a tribe in 
man'of ^ British East Africa, is also supreme chief of the whole people. 
the Nandi. He is a diviner, and foretells the future : he makes women 
and cattle fruitful ; and in time of drought he obtains rain 
either directly or through the intervention of the rainmakers. 
The Nandi believe implicitly in these marvellous powers of 
their chief. His person is usually regarded as absolutely 
sacred. Nobody may approach him with weapons in his 
hand or speak in his presence unless he is first addressed ; 
and it is deemed most important that nobody should touch 
the chief's head, otherwise his powers of divination and so 
forth would depart from him.^ This widespread African 
conception of the divinity of kings culminated long ago in 
ancient Egypt, where the kings were treated as gods both in 
life and in death, temples being dedicated to their worship 

' J. Dos Santos, " Eastern Ethiopia," ^ j_ Dqj Santos, op. cit. pp. 194 sq. 

chapters v. and ix., in G. McCall ^ A. C. Hollis, The Nandi, their 

Theal's Records of South - Eastern Language and Folk-lore (Oxford, 1 909), 

Africa, vii, (1901) pp. 190 sq., 199. pp. 49 sq. 

and priests appointed to conduct it.^ And when tlie harvests 
failed, the ancient Egyptians, like the modern negroes, laid 
the blame of the failure on the reigning monarch.^ 

A halo of superstitious veneration also surrounded the Super- 
Yncas or governing class in ancient Peru. Thus the old veneration 
historian Garcilasso de la Vega, himself the son of an Ynca of the 
princess, tells us that " it does not appear that any Ynca of for™he^"^ 
the blood royal has ever been punished, at least publicly, Yncas. 
and the Indians deny that such a thing has ever taken place. 
They say that the Ynca never committed any fault that 
required correction ; because the teaching of their parents, 
and the common opinion that they were children of the Sun, 
born to teach and to do good to the rest of mankind, kept 
them under such control, that they were rather an example 
than a scandal to the commonwealth. The Indians also 
said that the Yncas were free from the temptations which 
usually lead to crime, such as passion for women, envy and 
covetousness, or the thirst for vengeance ; because if they 
desired beautiful women, it was lawful for them to have as 
many as they liked ; and any pretty girl they might take a 
fancy to, not only was never denied to them, but was given 
up by her father with expressions of extreme thankfulness 
that an Ynca should have condescended to take her as his 
servant. The same thing might be said of their property ; 
for, as they never could feel the want of anything, they had 
no reason to covet the goods of others ; while as governors 
they had command over all the property of the Sun and of 
the Ynca ; and those who were in charge, were bound to 
give them all that they required, as children of the Sun, and 
brethren of the Ynca. They likewise had no temptation to 
kill or wound any one either for revenge, or in passion ; for 
no one ever offended them. On the contrary, they received 
adoration only second to that offered to the royal person ; 
and if any one, how high soever his rank, had enraged any 
Ynca, it would have been looked upon as sacrilege, and very 
severely punished. But it may be affirmed that an Indian 

1 C. p. Tiele, History of the The Magic Art and the Evolution of 

Egyptian Religion (London, 1882), Kings, \. i,\% sq. 
pp. 103 sq. For fuller details see 

A. Moret, Du caradire religieux de ''■ Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. J. 

la royauti! pharaonique (Paris, 1902); 14. 

Super- 
stitious 
veneration 
for kings 
in ancient 
India. 

Super- 
stitious 
veneration 
for kings 
in ancient 
Europe. 

was never punished for offending against the person, honour, 
or property of any Ynca, because no such offence was 
ever committed, as they held the Yncas to be like 
gods." 1 

Nor have such superstitions been confined to savages and 
other peoples of alien race in remote parts of the world. 
They seem to have been shared by the ancestors of all the 
Aryan peoples from India to Ireland. Thus in the ancient 
Indian law-book called the Laws of Manu, we read : 
" Because a king has been formed of particles of those lords 
of the gods, he therefore surpasses all created beings in 
lustre ; and, like the sun, he burns eyes and hearts ; nor can 
anybody on earth even gaze on him. Through his (super- 
natural) power he is Fire and Wind, he Sun and Moon, he 
the Lord of justice (Yama), he Kubera, he Varuna, he great 
Indra. Even an infant king must not be despised (from an 
idea) that he is a (mere) mortal ; for he is a great deity in 
human form." ^ And in the same law-book the effects of 
a good king's reign are thus described : " In that (country) 
where the king avoids taking the property of (mortal) 
sinners, men are born in (due) time (and are) long-lived. 
And the crops of the husbandmen spring up, each as it was 
sown, and the children die not, and no misshaped (offspring) 
is born." ^ 

Similarly in Homeric Greece, kings and chiefs were 
described as sacred or divine ; their houses, too, were divine, 
and their chariots sacred ; * and it was thought that the 
reign of a good king caused the black earth to bring forth 
wheat and barley, the trees to be loaded with fruit, the flocks 
to multiply, and the sea to yield fish.^ When the crops 
failed, the Burgundians used to blame their kings and depose 
them." Similarly the Swedes always ascribed the abund- 
ance or scantiness of the harvest to the goodness or badness 
of their kings, and in time of dearth they have been known 

^ The Laws of Manu, ix. 246 sq., 
translated by G. Buhler, p. 385. 

■• Homer, Odyssey, ii. 409, iv. 43, 
691, vii. 167, viii. 2, xviii. 405; Iliad, 
ii. 335, xvii. 464, etc. 

s Homer, Odyssey, xix. 109-114. 

8 Ammianus Marcellinus, xxviii. 5. 
14. 

' Garcilasso de la Vega, First Part 
of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, 
translated by C. R. Markham (London, 
1869-1871), i. 154 sq. 

2 The Laws of Manu, vii. 5-8, 
translated by G. Biihler (Oxford, 1886), 
p. 2 1 7 {Sacred Books of the East, vol. 

XXV. ). 

to sacrifice them to the gods for the sake of procuring good 
crops.^ In ancient Ireland it was also believed that when 
kings observed the customs of their ancestors the seasons 
were mild, the crops plentiful, the cattle fruitful, the waters 
abounded with fish, and the fruit-trees had to be propped 
up on account of the weight of their produce. A canon 
ascribed to St. -Patrick enumerates among the blessings that 
attend the reign of a just king " fine weather, calm seas, 
crops abundant, and trees laden with fruit." ^ Superstitions Survivals 
of the kind which were thus current among the Celts of °'^"'^,. 

is supersti- 

Ireland centuries ago appear to have survived among the tion in 
Celts of Scotland down to Dr. Johnson's time ; for when he ™"'^"'^- 
travelled in Skye it was still held that the return of the 
chief of the Macleods to Dunvegan, after any considerable 
absence, produced a plentiful catch of herring ; ^ and at a 
still later time, when the potato crop failed, the clan Macleod 
desired that a certain fairy banner in the possession of their 
chief might be unfurled,* apparently in the belief that the 
magical banner had only to be displayed to produce a fine 
crop of potatoes. 

Perhaps the last relic of such superstitions which Touching 
lingered about our English kings was the notion that they king's 
could heal scrofula by their touch. The disease was accord- Evil. 
ingly known as the King's Evil ; ^ and on the analogy of the 
Polynesian superstitions which I have cited, we may perhaps 
conjecture that the skin disease of scrofula was originally 
supposed to be caused as well as cured by the king's touch. 
Certain it is that in Tonga some forms of scrofula, as well 
as indurations of the liver, to which the natives were very 
subject, were thought to be caused by touching a chief and 

1 Snorro Sturleson, The Heims- 1825, vol. vi. ). 

kringla, or Chronicle of the Kings of * J. G. Campbell, Superstitions of 

Norway, translated by S. Laing (Lon- the Highlands and Islands of Scotland 

don, 1844), saga i. chapters 18 and 47, (Glasgow, 1900), p. 5. 

vol. i. pp. 230, 256. ^ W. G. Black, Folk - Medicine 

2 P W lovce Social History of (London, 1883), pp. 140 sqq. See 
Ancient Ireland (London, 1903), i ^f^^"^^^ The Magic Art and the Evolu- 
56 sq.; J. O'Donovan, The Book of t^onofAtngs^^(>isqq; and especi- 
D- t^ iT\ i-i- o -> o . ally Raymond Crawfurd, The King s 

Rights (Dublin, 1847), p. 8, note. r- ■, iri r 3 , I- ^ ■ 

* ^ . t//) 1 ) ^^^i (Oxford, 191 1), which contams 

' S. Johnson, yi)Kr»e)/ to the Western a full history of the superstition from 

Islands, pp. 65 sq. (The Works of the eleventh century onwards, authen- 

Samtiel Johnson, LL.D., London, ticated by documentary evidence. 

C 

to be healed, on homcEopathic principles, in the very same 
fashion.^ Similarly in Loango palsy is called the king's 
disease, because the negroes imagine it to be heaven's own 
punishment for treason meditated against the king.^ The 
belief in the king's power to heal by touch is known 
to have been held both in France and England from 
the eleventh century onward. The first French king to 
touch the sick appears to have been Robert the Pious, 
the first English king Edward the Confessor.^ In England 
the belief that the king could heal scrofula by his touch 
survived into the eighteenth century. Dr. Johnson was 
touched in his childhood for scrofula by Queen Anne.* 
It is curious that so typical a representative of robust 
common sense as Dr. Johnson should in his childhood and 
old age have thus been brought into contact with these 
ancient superstitions about royalty both in England and 
Scotland. In France the superstition lingered a good deal 
longer, for whereas Queen Anne was the last reigning monarch 
in England to touch for scrofula, both Louis XV. and Louis 
XVI. at their coronation touched thousands of patients, and 
as late as 1824 Charles X. at his coronation went through 
the same solemn farce. It is said that the sceptical wits 
of Louis XVI.'s time investigated all the cases of the persons 
on whom the king had laid hands at his coronation, with the 
result that out of two thousand four hundred who were 
touched only five were made whole.^ 
Conciu- The foregoing evidence, summary as it is, may suffice 

to prove that many peoples have regarded their rulers, 
whether chiefs or kings, with superstitious awe as beings of 
a higher order and endowed with mightier powers than 
common folk. Imbued with such a profound veneration 
for their governors and with such an exaggerated concep- 
tion of their power, they cannot but have yielded them a 
prompter and more implicit obedience than if they had 

' W. Mariner, An Account of the ' Raymond Crawfurd, The Kin^s 

Natives of the Tonga Islands, Second Evil, pp. 1 1 sqq. , 1 8 sqq. 

Edition (London, 1818), i. 434, note. * J. Boswell, Life of Samuel John- 

2 Proyart's "History of Loango, son, Ninth Edition (London, 1822), i. 

Kakongo, and other Kingdoms in 18 sq. 

Africa," in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and ^ Raymond Crawfurd, The King's 

Travels, xvi. 573. Evil, pp. 144 sqq., 159 sqq. 

sion, 

known them to be men of common mould just like them- 
selves. If that is so, I may claim to have proved my first 
proposition, which is, that among certain races and at certain 
times superstition has strengthened the respect for govern- 
ment, especially monarchical government, and has thereby 
contributed to the establishment and maintenance of civil 
order. 

Super- 
stition as 
a prop of 
private 
property. 

Taboo in 
Polynesia. 

Taboo 
among the 
Maoris of 
New 
Zealand.

I PASS now to my second proposition, which is, that among
certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened 
the respect for private property, and has thereby contributed 
to the security of its enjoyment. 

Nowhere, perhaps, does this appear more plainly than 
in Polynesia, where the system of taboo reached its highest 
development ; for the effect of tabooing a thing was, in 
the opinion of the natives, to endow it with a super- 
natural or magical energy which rendered it practically 
unapproachable by any but the owner. Thus taboo became 
a powerful instrument for strengthening the ties, perhaps our 
socialist friends would say riveting the chains, of private 
property. Indeed, some good authorities who were person- 
ally acquainted with the working of taboo in Polynesia, 
have held that the system was originally devised for no 
other purpose. For example, an Irishman who lived as a 
Maori with the Maoris for years, and knew them intimately, 
writes as follows : " The original object of the ordinary tapu 
seems to have been the preservation of property. Of this 
nature in a great degree was the ordinary personal tapu. 
This form of the tapu was permanent, and consisted in a certain 
sacred character which attached to the person of a chief and 
never left him. It was his birthright, a part in fact of him- 
self, of which he could not be divested, and which was well 
understood and recognized at all times as a matter of course. 
The fighting men and petty chiefs, and every one indeed 
who could by any means claim the title of rangatira — which 
in the sense I now use it means gentleman — were all in 

some degree more or less possessed of this mysterious 
quality. It extended or was communicated to all their 
moveable property, especially to their clothes, weapons, 
ornaments, and tools, and to everything in fact which 
they touched. This prevented their chattels from being 
stolen or mislaid, or spoiled by children, or used or handled 
in any way by others. And as in the old times, as I have 
before stated, every kind of property of this kind was 
precious in consequence of the great labour and time 
necessarily, for want of iron tools, expended in the manu- 
facture, this form of the tapu was of great real service. An 
infringement of it subjected the offender to various dreadful 
imaginary punishments, of which deadly sickness was one." 
The culprit was also liable to what may be called a civil 
action, which consisted in being robbed and beaten ; but the 
writer whom I have just quoted tells us that the worst part 
of the punishment for breaking taboo was the imaginary 
part, since even when the offence had been committed un- 
wittingly the offender has been known to die of fright on 
learning what he had done.^ Similarly, another writer, 
speaking of the Maoris, observes that " violators of the tapu 
were punished by the gods and also by men. The former 
sent sickness and death ; the latter inflicted death, loss of 
property, and expulsion from society. It was a dread of the 
gods, more than of men, which upheld the tapu. Human 
eyes might be deceived, but the eyes of the gods could never 
be deceived." ^ " The chiefs, as might be expected, are fully 
aware of the advantages of the tapu, finding that it confers 
on them, to a certain extent, the power of making laws, and 
the superstition on which the tapu is founded will ensure 
the observance of them. Were they to transgress the tapu, 
they believe that the attua (God) would kill them, and so 
universal is this belief that it is, or rather was, a very rare 
occurrence to find any one daring enough to commit the 

1 Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha " The breaking of the tapu, if the 
Maori (London, 1884), pp. 94-97, crime does not become known, is, they 
compare id. p. S3. believe, punished by the atua, who 

2 A. S. Thomson, The Story of inflicts disease upon the criminal ; if 
New Zealand (London, 1859), i. 103. discovered, it is punished by him whom 
Compare E. Dieffenbach, Travels in it regards, and often becomes the cause 
New Zealand {London, 1843), ii. 105 : of war." 

sacrilege. To have preserved this influence so completely 
among a people naturally so shrewd and intelligent, great 
care must, no doubt, have been taken not to apply it unless 
in the usual and recognised manner. To have done other- 
wise would have led to its being frequently transgressed ; 
and consequently to the loss of its influence. Before the 
natives came into contact with the Europeans the tapu seems 
to have acted with the most complete success ; as the belief 
was general, that any disregard of it would infallibly subject 
the offender to the anger of the atiua, and death would be 
the consequence. Independently, however, of the support 
which the tapu derives from the superstitious fears of these 
people, it has, like most other laws, an appeal to physical 
force in case of necessity. A delinquent, if discovered, 
would be stripped of everything he possessed ; and if a 
slave, would in all probability be put to death — many 
instances of which have actually occurred. So powerful is 
this superstitious feeling, that slaves will not venture to eat 
of the same food as their master ; or even to cook at the 
same fire ; believing that the attua would kill them if they 
did so. Everything about, or belonging to, a chief is 
accounted sacred by the slaves. Fond as they are ot 
tobacco, it would be perfectly secure though left exposed 
on the roof of a chief's house ; no one would venture to 
touch it. To try them, a friend of mine gave a fig of tobacco 
to a slave ; who, after having used it, was informed that it 
had been on the roof of the chief's house. The poor fellow, 
in the greatest consternation, went immediately to the chief 
telling him what had happened, and beseeching him to 
take off the tapu from the tobacco to prevent the evil 
consequences." ^ 
Taboo as a Hencc it has been truly said that " this form of tapu was 

of'^pro™'^ a great preserver of property. The most valuable articles 
perty. might, in ordinary circumstances, be left to its protection, in 

the absence of the owners, for any length of time." ^ If any 
one wished to preserve his crop, his house, his garments, or 
anything else, he had only to taboo the property, and it was 
safe. To shew that the thing was tabooed, he put a mark 

' W. Brown, New Zealand and its ^ Old New Zealand, by a Pakeha 

Aborigines (London, 1845). pp. 12 sq. Maori (London, 1884), p. 97. 

to it. Thus, if he wished to use a particular tree in the 
forest to make a canoe, he tied a wisp of grass to the trunk ; 
if he desired to appropriate a patch of buhush in a swamp, 
he st-uck up a pole in it with a bunch of grass at the top ; 
if he left his house with all its valuables, to take care of 
itself, he secured the door with a bit of flax, and the place 
straightway became inviolable, nobody would meddle with it.^ 

Hence although the restrictions imposed by taboo were 
often vexatious and absurd, and the whole system has some- 
times been denounced by Europeans as a degrading super- 
stition, yet observers who looked a little deeper have rightly 
perceived that its enactments, enforced mainly by imaginary 
but still powerful sanctions, were often beneficial. " The 
New Zealanders," says one writer, "could not have been 
governed without some code of laws analogous to the tapu. 
Warriors submitted to the supposed decrees of the gods who 
would have spurned with contempt the orders of men, and 
it was better the people should be ruled by superstition than 
by brute force." ^ Again, an experienced missionary, who 
knew the Maoris well, writes that "the tapu in many in- 
stances was beneficial ; considering the state of society, 
absence of law, and fierce character of the people, it formed 
no bad substitute for a dictatorial form of government, and 
made the nearest approach to an organized state of society." ^ 

In other parts of Polynesia the system of taboo with its Taboo in 
attendant advantages and disadvantages, its uses and abuses, ''Jfesaj"^ 
was practically the same, and everywhere, as in New islands 
Zealand, it tightened for good or evil the ties of private 
property. This indeed was perhaps the most obvious effect 
of the institution. In the Marquesas Islands, it is, said, 
taboo was invested with a divine character as the expres- 
sion of the will of the gods revealed to the priests ; as 
such it set bounds to injurious excesses, prevented depreda- 
tions, and united the people. Especially it converted the 
tabooed or privileged classes into landed proprietors ; the 
land belonged to them alone and to their heirs ; common 

1 Rev. R. Taylor, Te Ika A Maui, 2 a. S. Thomson, The Story of New 

or New Zealand and its Inhabitants, Zealand {hondon, 1859), i. 105. 
Second Edition (London, 1870), pp. 

167, 171. ' Rev. R. Taylor, o/. cit. pp. 172 sgi. 

folk lived by industry and by fishing. Taboo was the 
bulwark of the landowners ; it was that alone which elevated 
them by a sort of divine right into a position of affluence 
and luxury above the vulgar ; it was that alone which 
ensured their safety and protected them from the encroach- 
ments of their poor and envious neighbours. " Without 
doubt," say the writers from whom I borrow these observa- 
tions, " the first mission of taboo was to establish property, 
the base of all society." ^ 
Super- In Samoa also superstition played a great part in 

fe'a"°rsa fostering a respect for private property. That it did so, we 
preserver have the testimony of a missionary. Dr. George Turner, who 
in Samoa!^ Hvcd for many years among the Samoans and has given us 
a very valuable account of their customs. He says : " I 
hasten to notice the second thing which I have already 
remarked was an auxiliary towards the maintenance of 
peace and order in Samoa, viz. superstitious fear. If the 
chief and heads of families, in their court of inquiry into 
any case of stealing, or other concealed matter, had a diffi- 
culty in finding out the culprit, they would make all involved 
swear that they were innocent. In swearing before the 
chiefs the suspected parties laid a handful of grass on the 
stone, or whatever it was, which was supposed to be the 
representative of the village god, and laying their hand on 
it, would say, ' In the presence of our chiefs now assembled, 
I lay my hand on the stone. If I stole the thing may I 
speedily die.' This was a common mode of swearing. The 
meaning of the grass was a silent additional imprecation 
that his family might all die, and that grass might grow 
over their habitation. If all swore, and the culprit was 
still undiscovered, the chiefs then wound up the affair by 
committing the case to the village god, and solemnly invok- 
ing him to mark out for speedy destruction the guilty 

1 Vincendon-Dumoulin et C. Des- This last writer, who was a missionary 
graz, lies Marquises ou Nouk-hha to the Marquesas, observes that while 
(Paris, 1843), PP- 258-260. For taboo was both a political and a re- 
details of the taboo system in the ligious institution, he preferred to class 
Marquesas Islands, see G. H. von it under the head of religion because it 
Langsdorff, Keise iitn die Welt (Franc- rested on the authority of the gods 
fort, 1812), i. 114-119; Le P. Mat- and formed the highest sanction of the 
thias G * * * Lettres sur les Isles whole religious system. 
Marquises (Paris, 1843), pp. 47 sqq. 

mischief-maker. But, instead of appealing to the chiefs, and 
calling for an oath, many were contented with their own 
individual schemes and imprecations to frighten thieves and 
prevent stealing. When a man went to his plantation and 
saw that some cocoa-nuts, or a bunch of bananas, had been 
stolen, he would stand and shout at the top of his voice two 
or three times, ' May fire blast the eyes of the person who 
has stolen my bananas ! May fire burn down his eyes and 
the eyes of his god too ! ' This rang throughout the 
adjacent plantations, and made the thief tremble. They 
dreaded such uttered imprecations. . . . But there was 
another and more extensive class of curses, which were also 
feared, and formed a powerful check on stealing, especially 
from plantations and fruit trees, viz. the silent hieroglyphic 
taboo, or iapui (Japooe), as they call it. Of this there was a 
great variety." ^ 

Among the Samoan taboos which were employed for Samoan 
the protection of property were the following : — i. The sea- ^^^°°^- 
pike taboo. To prevent his bread-fruits from being stolen a 
man would plait some coco-nut leaflets in the form of a sea- 
pike and hang one or more such effigies from the trees which 
he wished to protect. Any ordinary thief would be afraid 
to touch a tree thus guarded, for he believed that if he stole 
the fruit a sea-pike would mortally wound him the next 
time he went to sea. 2. The white-shark taboo. A man 
would plait a coco-nut leaf in the shape of a shark and 
hang it on a tree. This was equivalent to an imprecation 
that the thief might be devoured by a shark the next time 
he went to fish. 3. The cross-stick taboo. This was a stick 
hung horizontally on the tree. It expressed a wish that 
whoever stole fruit from the tree might be afflicted with a 
sore running right across his body till he died. 4. The 
ulcer taboo. This was made by burying some pieces of 
clam-shell in the ground and setting up at the spot several 
reeds tied together at the top in a bunch like the head of a 
man. By this the owner signified his wish that the thief 
might be laid low with ulcerous sores all over his body. If 
the thief happened thereafter to be troubled with swellings 
or sores, he confessed his fault and sent a present to the 

' G. Turner, 5a/«oa (London, 1884), pp. 183-184. 

Taboo in 
Tonga. 

Taboo in 
Melanesia. 

owner of the land, who in return sent to the culprit a herb 
both as a medicine and as a pledge of forgiveness. 5. The 
thunder taboo. A man would plait coco-nut leaflets in the 
form of a small square mat and suspend it from a tree, 
adding some white streamers of native cloth. A thief 
believed that for trespassing on such a tree he or his 
children might be struck by lightning, or perhaps that 
lightning might strike and blast his own trees. " From 
these few illustrations," says Dr. Turner in conclusion, " it 
will be observed that Samoa formed no exception to the 
remarkably widespread system of superstitious taboo ; and 
the extent to which it preserved honesty and order among a 
heathen people will be readily imagined." ■* 

In Tonga a man guilty of theft or of any other crime 
was said to have broken the taboo, and as such persons were 
supposed to be particularly liable to be bitten by sharks, 
all on whom suspicion fell were compelled to go into water 
frequented by sharks ; if they were bitten or devoured, they 
were guilty ; if they escaped, they were innocent.^ 

In Melanesia also a system of taboo (tambu, tapu) 
exists ; it is described as " a prohibition with a curse 
expressed or implied," and derives its sanction from a 
belief that the chief or other person who imposes a taboo 
has the support of a powerful ghost or spirit {tindalo). If a 
common man took it upon himself to taboo anything, 
people would watch to see whether a transgressor of the 
taboo fell sick ; if he did, it was a proof that the man who 
imposed the taboo was backed by a powerful ghost, and his 
reputation would rise accordingly. Each ghost affected a 
particular sort of leaf, which was his taboo mark.^ In New 
Britain plantations, coco -nut trees, and other possessions 
are protected against thieves by marks of taboo attached to 
them, and it is thought that whoever violates the taboo will 
be visited by sickness or other misfortune. The nature of 
the sickness or misfortune varies with that of the mark or 
magical object which embodies the mystic virtue of the 
taboo. One plant used for this purpose will cause the 

• G. Turner, Samoa, pp. 185-188. Edition (London, 1818), ii. 221. 

2 W. Mariner, An Account of the ^ R. H. Codrington, D.D., The 

Natives of the Tonga Islands, Second Afc/a»««a»j(Oxford, 1891), pp. 215 j^. 

thief's head to ache ; another will make his thighs swell ; 
another will break, his legs ; and so forth. Even the 
murmuring of a spell over a fence is believed to ensure 
that whoever steals sticks from the fence will have a swollen 
head.^ In Fiji the institution of taboo was the secret of 
power and the strength of despotic rule. It was wondrously 
diffused, affecting things great and small. Here it might be 
seen tending a brood of chickens and there directing the 
energies of a kingdom. The custom was much in favour 
with the chiefs, who adjusted it so that it sat lightly on 
them and heavily on others. By it they gained influence, 
supplied their wants, and commanded at will their inferiors. 
In imposing a taboo a chief need only be checked by a 
regard for ancient precedent. Inferior persons endeavoured 
by the help of the system to put their yam-beds and 
plantain-plots within a sacred pale.^ 

A system of taboo based on superstition prevails all over Taboo in 
the islands of the Malay Archipelago, where the common ^^^.^^'^^ 
term for taboo is pamali, pomali, or pemali, though in some peiago. 
places other words, such as poso, potu, or boboso are in use to 
express the same idea.^ In this great region also the super- 
stition associated with taboo is a powerful instrument to 
enforce the rights of private property. Thus, in the island 
of Timor " a prevalent custom is the pomali, exactly equiva- 
lent to the 'taboo' of the Pacific islanders, and equally 
respected. It is used on the commonest occasions, and a 
few palm leaves stuck outside a garden as a sign of the 
pomali will preserve its produce from thieves as effectually 
as the threatening notice of man-traps, spring guns, or a 
savage dog, would do with us." * In Amboyna the word for 
taboo is pamali. A man who wishes to protect his fruit- 
trees or other possessions against theft may do it in various 
ways. For example, he may make a white cross on a pot 

' R. Parkinson, Im Bismarck- de vergelijkende Volkenkunde van 

Archipel ^X-^'^V^'^'^' 1887), p. 144 ; id., Nederlandsch Indie (Leyden, 1893), 

Dreissig Jahre in der Siidsee (Stutt- pp. 596-603 ; G. W. W. C. Baron van 

gart, 1907), pp. 193 jy. HoiveW, A7iibon en meer bepaaldelij'k de 

^ Thomas Williams, Fiji and the 

Oeliasers (Dordrecht, 1875), pp. 148- 
152. 

Fyians, Second Edition (London, ^' K. V..\Nz\\^ct, The Malay Archi- 

1860), 1. 234. peiago. Sixth Edition (London, 1877), 

^ G. A. Wilken, Handleiding voor p. 196. 

and hang the pot on the fruit-tree ; then the thief who 
steals fruit from that tree will be a leper. Or he may place 
the effigy of a mouse under the tree ; then the thief will 
have marks on his nose and ears as if a mouse had gnawed 
them. Or he may plait dry sago leaves into two round 
discs and tie them to the tree ; then the thief's body will 
swell up and burst.^ In Ceram the methods of protecting 
property from thieves are similar. For example, a man 
places a pig's jaw in the branches of his fruit-tree ; after 
that any person who dares to steal the fruit from the tree 
will be rent in pieces by a wild boar. The image of a 
crocodile with a thread of red cotton tied round its neck 
will be equally efficacious ; the thief will be devoured by a 
crocodile, A wooden ^^^y of a snake will make the cul- 
prit to be stung by a serpent. A figure of a cat with a red 
band round its neck will cause all who approach the tree 
with evil intentions to suffer from excruciating pains in their 
stomachs, as if a cat were clawing their insides.^ An image 
of a swallow will cause the thief to suffer as if a swallow 
were pecking his eyes out : a piece of thorny wood and a 
red spongy stone will inflict piercing pangs on him and 
make his whole body to be red and pitted with minute 
holes : a burnt-out brand will cause his house to burst into 
flames, without any apparent reason ; and so on.^ Similarly 
in the Ceram Laut Islands a man protects his coco-nut trees 
or sago palms by placing charmed objects at the foot of 
them. For example, he puts the &^%Y of ^ ^^h under his 
coco-nut tree and says, " Grandfather fish, cause the person 
who steals my coco-nuts to be sick and vomit." The culprit 
accordingly is seized with pains in his stomach and can only 
be relieved of them by the owner of the coco-nuts, who spits 
betel-nut juice on the ailing part and blows into the sufferer's 
ear, saying, " Grandfather fish, return to the sea. You have 
there room enough and great rocks of coral where you can 

' J. G. F. Riedel, De shiik- en bruiken, benevens de vooroordeelen en 

kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en bijgeloovigheden der bevolking van de 

Papua (The Hague, 1886), pp. 61 sq. eilanden Saparoea, Havoekoe, Noessa 

„ ^   _. , , .^ Laut, en van een gedeelte van de zuid- 

2 J. G. F. Riedel, op. at. pp. 114 kust van Ceram, in vroegeren en 
^1- lateren tijd," Tijdschrift voor Netr- 

3 Van Schmidt, " Aanteekeningen lands Indie, v. Tweede deel (Batavia, 
nopens de zeden, gewoonten en ge- 1843), PP- 499-502. 

swim about." Or again he may make a miniature coffin 
and place it on the ground under the tree ; then the thief 
will suffer from shortness of breath and a feeling of suffoca- 
tion, as if he were actually shut up in a coffin. And many 
other devices there are whereby in these islands the owner 
of fruit-trees protects the fruit from the depredations of his 
unscrupulous neighbours. In every case he deposits at the 
foot of the tree or fastens to the trunk a charmed object, 
which he regards as endowed with supernatural powers, and 
he invokes its aid to guard his possessions.^ 

The Bare'e-speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes protect Charms for 
their fruit-trees, especially their sirih plants and their coco- tion^™ ^"^ 
nut palms against thieves by amulets or charms of various fruit-'rees 
sorts which they attach to the trees. The charms consist of cdebes. 
the leaves of certain plants or parts of an animal tied up in 
leaves. Before the owner fastens one of these amulets to 
the tree, he says, " O charm (oorod), if any man will take of 
these fruits, make him sick." And the people in general 
believe that sickness will overtake the thief who disregards 
the taboo and steals the fruit. The kind of sickness or other 
mishap which will visit the sinner varies with the nature of 
the charm. The qualities of the object which is fastened to 
the tree are supposed to enter into the culprit's body and to 
affect him accordingly. For example, if the charm consists 
of a particular sharp-edged grass, then the thief will feel 
sharp pains in his body ; if it is part of a white ant heap, he 
will be afflicted with leprosy ; if it is a certain weed of 
which the fruit drops off easily, his teeth will fall out ; if it 
is a plant whose leaves cause itching, his body will itch all 
over ; if it is the dracaena terminalis, he will be killed in 
war ; and so on. There is a great variety of these amulets 
for the protection of fruit-trees ; every man has his own in 
which he puts his trust. Yet while the Toradjas believe 
that sickness or other misfortune follows automatically the 
breach of such taboos, nevertheless they allege that they 
know how to evade the force and vigilance of the charm and 
to eat of the forbidden fruit with impunity. One of the 
expedients adopted for that purpose is as follows. You 
take a handful of earth and throw it at the tree ; then with 
' J. G. F. Riedel, op. cit. pp. 167 sq. 

your chopping-knife you chip a splinter from the trunk, and 
addressing the protective charm you say, " Make the earth 
sick first, and then the chopping-knife, and then me." After 
that you have practically nothing to fear from the amulet, 
and you can steal the fruit and eat it at your ease. But that 
is not all. Some artful thieves are able not merely to 
counteract the charm and render it powerless against them- 
selves ; they can even reverse its action and direct it against 
the owner of the tree himself. Indeed, so well-recognized 
is this power that many a prudent Toradja refuses to 
protect his trees with amulets at all, lest in doing so he 
should be simply putting in the hands of his enemies a 
weapon to be used by them for his own destruction. One 
of the ways in which a cunning robber will thus defeat the 
ends of justice is this. He goes boldly up to the fruit-tree 
which he intends to rob, removes the charm from it, and 
hangs it up somewhere else. Then he lays a plank on the 
ground with one end of it touching the trunk of the fruit- 
tree ; on this plank he walks up to the tree and calmly 
appropriates the fruit. The charm, of course, in the mean- 
time is helpless, since it is not on the tree. When he has 
stripped the fruit, the rascal restores the charm to its proper 
place and removes the plank. Again, the guardian charm is 
helpless ; it cannot pursue the thief, since he has carried 
away the plank, leaving no possible exit from the tree. 
Thus the faithful guardian is, as it were, imprisoned in the 
castle which he has been set to guard ; he frets and fumes 
at his confinement, and in his blind rage will fall foul of the 
owner of the tree himself when next he comes to inspect his 
property. This is, perhaps, the simplest and easiest mode 
of hoisting a fruit-farmer with his petard. There are, how- 
ever, other ways of doing it. One of them is to get up 
into the tree and hang by your feet from a branch with your 
head down, and, while thus suspended in the air, to chew the 
root of a stinging nettle. This causes the owner of the tree 
either to be eaten up by a crocodile or to perish in war. 
A very popular charm among the Mountain Toradjas of 
Central Celebes is to take the head or paw of an iguana 
and hang it on the fruit-tree which is to be protected. The 
head bites the thief's head, and the paw grabs him by the 

leg, SO that he feels excruciating pains in these portions of 
his frame. But if you hang up the whole carcase, the thief 
is a dead man.^ 

In Madagascar there is an elaborate system of taboo Taboo 
known z.s fady} It has been carefully studied in a learned j^adi-'" 
monograph by Professor A. van Gennep,^ who argues that gascar. 
originally all property was based on religion, and that marks 
of property were marks of taboo.* However, so far as the 
evidence permits us to judge, it does not appear that the 
system has been used by the Malagasy for the protection of 
property to the same extent as by the Polynesians, the 
Melanesians, and the Indonesians. But we hear of Malagasy 
charms placed in the fields to afflict with leprosy and 
other maladies any persons who should dare to steal from 
them.° And we are told that some examples of fady or 
taboo " seem to imply a curious basis for the moral code in 
regard to the rights of property among the last generation of 
Malagasy. It does not appear to have been fady to steal in 
general, but certain articles were specified, to steal which there 
were various penalties attached. Thus, to steal an egg caused 
the thief to become leprous ; to steal landy (native silk) 
caused blindness or some other infirmity. And to steal 
iron was also visited by some bodily affliction." ^ In order 
to recover stolen property the Malagasy had recourse to a 
deity called Ramanandroany. The owner would take a 
remnant of the thing that had been purloined, and going 
with it to the idol would say, " As to whoever stole our pro- 
perty, O Ramanandroany, kill him by day, destroy him by 
night, and strangle him ; let there be none amongst men 
like him ; let him not be able to increase in I'iches, not even 
a farthing, but let him pick up his livelihood as a hen pecks 
rice-grains ; let his eyes be blinded, and his knees swollen, 

' N. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, De ^ A. van Gennep, op. cit. pp. 183 

Bare e-sprekendeToradjd' s van Midden- sqq. 

Celebes, i. (Batavia, 1912) pp. 399-401. ^ A. van Gennep, Tabou et Toti- 

2 H. F. Standing, " Malagasy/arf)'," misme cl. Madagascar, p. 184. The 

The Antananarivo Annual and Mada- writer has devoted a chapter (xi. pp. 

gascar Magazine, yo\. ii. (Antananarivo, 183-193) to taboos of property. 

1896) pp. 252-265 (Reprint of the " H. F. Standing, "Malagasy y^z^/c," 

second Four Numbers). Antananarivo Annual and Mada- 

2 A. van Gennep, Tabou et Toti- gascar Magazine, vol. ii. (Antananarivo, 

misme h Madagascar (Paris, 1904). 1896) p. 256. 

Property 
protected 
by super- 
stitious 
fears else- 
where. 

O Ramanandroany." It was supposed that these curses fell 
on the thief.^ 

Similar modes of enforcing the rights of private property 
by the aid of superstitious fears have been adopted in many 
other parts of the world. The subject has been copiously 
illustrated by Dr. Edward Westermarck in his very learned 
work on the origin and development of the moral ideas.^ 
Here I will cite only a few cases out of many. The Kouis 
of Laos, on the borders of Siam, protect their plantations 
against thieves in a very simple way. They place a " shaking 
tubercule " {prateal anchoi) on the land which is to be guarded ; 
and if any thief should thereafter dare to lay hands on the 
crop, he is immediately seized by a shaking fit like that of 
a drenched dog and cannot budge from the spot. They say 
that a fisherman at Sangkeah employed this charm with the 
best results. He used always to find his bow-net empty till 
one day he had the happy thought of protecting it by a 
" shaking tubercule." It acted like magic. The thief went 
down as usual into the river and brought up the net full of 
fish. But hardly had he stepped on the bank when he began 
to shiver and shake, with the dripping net and its writhing 
silvery contents glued to his breast. Two days afterwards, 
the proprietor, making his rounds, discovered the thief on 
the same spot, shivering and chattering away as hard as" 

' W. Ellis, History of Madagascar 
(London, preface dated 1838), i. 414. 

^ E. Westermarck, The Origin and 
Development of the Moral Ideas, ii. (Lon- 
don, 1908) pp. 59-69. In an article 
on taboo published many years ago 
(Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth Edi- 
tion, xxiii. (1888) pp. 15 sqq.) I 
briefly pointed out the part which the 
system of taboo has played in the 
evolution of law and morality. I may 
be allowed to quote a passage from the 
article : ' ' The original character of the 
taboo must be looked for not in its civil 
but in its religious element. It was 
not the creation of a legislator, but the 
gradual outgrowth of animistic beliefs, 
to which the ambition and avarice of 
chiefs and priests afterwards gave an 
artificial extension. But in serving the 
cause of avarice and ambition it sub- 

served the progress of civilization, by 
fostering conceptions of the rights of 
property and the sanctity of the mar- 
riage tie, — conceptions which in tiine 
grew strong enough to stand by them- 
selves and to fling away the crutch of 
superstition which in earlier days had 
been their sole support. For we shall 
scarcely err in believing that even in 
advanced societies the moral sentiments, 
in so far as they are merely sentiments 
and are not based on an induction from 
experience, derive much of their force 
from an original system of taboo. Thus 
on the taboo were grafted the golden 
fruits of law and morality, while the 
parent stem dwindled slowly into the 
sour crabs and empty husks of popular 
superstition on which the swine of 
modern society are still content to 
feed." 

ever, but of course the fish in the net were dead and rotten.^ 
Among the Kawars, a primitive hill tribe of the Central 
Provinces in India, " the sword, the gun, the axe, the spear 
have each a special deity, and in fact in the Bangawan, the 
tract where the wilder Kawars dwell, it is believed that 
every article of household furniture is the residence of a 
spirit, and that if any one steals or injures it without the 
owner's leave the spirit will bring some misfortune on him in 
revenge. Theft is said to be unknown among them, partly 
on this account and partly perhaps because no one has much 
property worth stealing." ^ In Ceylon, when a person wishes 
to protect his fruit-trees from thieves, he hangs up certain 
grotesque figures round the orchard and dedicates it to the 
devils. After that no native will dare to touch the fruit ; 
even the owner himself will not venture to use it till the 
charm has been removed by a priest, who naturally receives 
some of the fruit for his trouble.^ The Indians of Cumana 
in South America surrounded their plantations with a single 
cotton thread, and this was safeguard enough ; for it was 
believed that any trespasser would soon die. The Juris of 
Brazil adopt the same simple means of stopping gaps in 
their fences.* 

The Annamites in the interior of Tonquin believe that Property in 
the ghosts of young girls who have been buried in a corner protected 
of the dwelling act as a vigilant police ; if thieves have by ghosts 
made their way into the house and are preparing to ^" 
depart with their booty, they hear the voice of a ghost 
enumerating the things on which they have laid hands, and 
in a panic they drop them and take to flight.* But if in 
spite of all an Annamite should chance to be robbed, he can 
easily recover the stolen property as follows. With a clod of 
earth taken from the kitchen floor, a pinch of vermilion, the 
white of an egg, and a little alcohol he makes a ball, which 
stands for the head of the thief This he puts in the fire on 

' E. Aymonier, Notes siir le Laos of Ceylon (London, 1803), p. 198. 

^'fe'ff ^>.^.wi; Ethnosrapkic ' C. F Ph. v. Martius Z«. Ethno- 

Survey, vii.. Draft Articles on 1< crest ° K . „, ' „- 

Tribes, Third Series (Allahabad, 191 1), (^"psic, ia67), p. ab. 
p. 45. ^ P. Giran, Magie et Religion Anna- 

' R. Percival, Account of the Island mites (Pans, 1912), p. 186. 

D 

cursed in 
Nias, 

the hearth, and having lit some incense sticks he pronounces 
the following incantation : " On such a day of such a month 
of such a year So-and-so was robbed of various things. The 
name of the thief is unknown. I pray the guardian-spirit of 
the kitchen to hold the rascal's head in the fire that it may 
burn." After that, if the thief does not restore the stolen 
property, he will be a dead man within a month.^ 

Thieves Similarly in Nias, an island to the west of Sumatra, when 

a thief cannot be found he is cursed, and to give weight 
to the curse a dog is burned alive. While the animal is 
expiring in torments, the man who has been robbed ex- 
presses his wish that the thief may likewise die in agony ; 
and they say that thieves who have been often cursed do 

Thieves die Screaming.^ Curses are also employed for the same 

among the purpose with excellent effect by the Sea Dyaks of Borneo. 

SeaDyaks On this point a missionary bears the following testimony. 
" With an experience of nearly twenty years in Borneo, 
during which I came into contact with thousands of the 
people, I have known of only two instances of theft among 
the Dyaks. One was a theft of rice. The woman who lost 
the rice most solemnly and publicly cursed the thief, who- 
ever it might be. The next night the rice was secretly left 
at her door. The other was a theft of money. In this 
case, too, the thief was cursed. The greater part of the 
money was afterwards found returned to the box from which 
it had been abstracted. Both these incidents show the great 
dread the Dyak has of a curse. Even an undeserved curse 
is considered a terrible thing, and, according to Dyak law, to 
curse a person for no reason at all is a fineable offence. 

" A Dyak curse is a terrible thing to listen to. I have 
only once heard a Dyak curse, and I am sure I do not want 
to do so again. I was travelling in the Saribas district, and 
at that time many of the Dyaks there had gone in for coffee- 
planting ; indeed, several of them had started coffee planta- 
tions on a small scale. A woman told me that some one had 
over and over again stolen the ripe coffee-berries from her 
plantation. Not only were the ripe berries stolen, but the 
thief had carelessly picked many of the young berries and 

' P. Giran, op. cii., pp. 190 sq. und die Mission daselbst (Barmen, 

2 H. .Sundermann, Die Insel Nias 1905), p. 34. 

thrown them on the ground, and many of the branches of 
the plants had been broken off. In the evening, when I was 
seated in the public part of the house with many Dyak men 
and women round me, we happened to talk about coffee- 
planting. The woman was present, and told us of her 
experiences, and how her coffee had been stolen by some 
thief, who, she thought, must be one of the inmates of the 
house. Then she solemnly cursed the thief She began in 
a calm voice, but worked herself up into a frenzy. We all 
listened horror-struck, and no one interrupted her. She 
began by saying what had happened, and how these thefts 
had gone on for some time. She had said nothing before, 
hoping that the thief would mend his ways ; but the matter 
had gone on long enough, and she was going to curse the 
thief, as nothing, she felt sure, would make him give up his 
evil ways. She called on all the spirits of the waters and 
the hills and the air to listen to her words and to aid her. 
She began quietly, but became more excited as she went on. 
She said something of this kind : 

" ' If the thief be a man, may he be unfortunate in all he Curses on a 
undertakes ! May he suffer from a disease that does not ""^^ 
kill him, but makes him helpless^always in pain — and a 
burden to others. May his wife be unfaithful to him, and 
his children become as lazy and dishonest as he is himself. 
If he go out on the war-path, may he be killed, and his head 
smoked over the enemy's fire. If he be boating, may his 
boat be swamped and may he be drowned. If he be out 
fishing, may an alligator kill him suddenly, and may his 
relatives never find his body. If he be cutting down a tree 
in the jungle, may the tree fall on him and crush him to 
death. May the gods curse his farm so that he may have 
no crops, and have nothing to eat, and when he begs for 
food, may he be refused, and die of starvation. 

" ' If the thief be a woman, may she be childless, or if Curses on a 
she happen to be with child let her be disappointed, and let ^'iS^° 
her child be still-born, or, better still, let her die in childbirth. 
May her husband be untrue to her, and despise her and ill- 
treat her. May her children all desert her if she live to 
grow old. May she suffer from such diseases as are peculiar 
to women, and may her eyesight grow dim as the years go 

Thieves 
cursed in 
ancient 
Greece. 

on, and may there be no one to help her or lead her about 
when she is blind.' 

" I have only given the substance of what she said ; but 
I shall never forget the silence and the awed faces of those 
who heard her. I left the house early next morning, so I 
do not know what was the result of her curse — whether the 
thief confessed or not." ^ 

The ancient Greeks seem to have made a very liberal 
use of curses as a cheap and effective mode of protecting 
property, which dispenses the injured party from resorting to 
the tedious, expensive, and too often fruitless formalities of 
the law. These curses they inscribed on tablets of lead and 
other materials and deposited either in the place which was 
to be protected from depredation or in the temple of the god 
to whose tender mercies the criminal was committed. For 
example, in a sacred precinct dedicated to Demeter, Perse- 
phone, Pluto and other deities of a stern and inflexible 
temper at Cnidus, a number of leaden tablets were found 
inscribed with curses which consigned the malefactors of 
various sorts to the vengeance of the two Infernal Goddesses, 
Demeter and her daughter. " May he or she never find 
Persephone propitious ! " is the constantly repeated burden 
of these prayers ; and in some of them the sinner is not 
only excommunicated in this world but condemned to 
eternal torments in the world hereafter. Often the persons 
who launched these curses were ladies. One irate dame 
consigns to perdition the thief who had stolen her bracelet 
or the defaulter who had failed to send back her under- 
clothes.^ Another curse, engraved on a marble slab 
found at Smyrna, purports that if any man should steal 
one of the sacred vessels of a certain goddess or injure 
her sacred fish, he may die a painful death, devoured by 
the fishes.' Sometimes, apparently, these Greek impre- 

Edwin H. Gomes, Seventeen Years Grecques (Brussels, 1900), p. 624, No. 

728. The goddess was probably the 
Syrian Atargatis or Derceto, to whom 
fish were sacred (Xenophon, Anabasis, 
i. 4. 9). For more examples of these 
ancient Greek curses, see Ch. Michel, 
op. cit., pp. 877-880, Nos. 1318- 
1329. Compare W. H. D. Rouse, 
Greek Votive Offerings (Cambridge, 
1902), pp. 337 sqq. 

among the Sea Dyaks of Borneo (Lon- 
don, 191 1 ), pp. 64-66. 

^ (Sir) Charles Thomas Newton, 
Essays on Art and Archaeology (Lon- 
don, 1880), pp. 193 sq. 

3 G. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscrip- 
tionum Graecarum'^ (Leipsic, 1898- 
1901), vol. ii. pp. 284 sq.. No. 584; 
Ch. Michel, Recueil d' Inscriptions 

cations were as effective in reclaiming sinners as Dyak curses 
are to this day. Thus we read of a curious dedication to a 
lunar deity of Asia Minor, by name Men Aziottenos, which 
declares how one Artemidorus, having been reviled by a 
couple of rude fellows, cursed them in a votive tablet, and 
how one of the culprits, having been punished by the god, 
made a propitiatory offering and mended his wicked ways.^ 
To prevent people from encroaching on their neighbours' Land- 
land by removing the boundary stones, the Greeks com- "J-otected 
mitted landmarks to the special protection of the great god by gods 
Zeus ; ^ and Plato dwells with unction on the double punish- ^"'^ ™rses. 
ment, divine and human, to which the sinner exposed him- 
self who dared to tamper with these sacred stones.^ The 
Romans went even further, for they created a god for the 
sole purpose of looking after landmarks, and he must have 
had his hands very full if he executed all the curses which 
were levelled not only at every man who shifted his neigh- 
bour's boundary stone, but even at the oxen which he 
employed to plough up his neighbour's land.* The Hebrew 
code of Deuteronomy pronounced a solemn curse on such as 
removed their neighbour's landmarks ; ^ and Babylonian 
kings exhausted their imagination in pouring out a flood 
of imprecations against the abandoned wretch who thus set 
at naught the rights of property in land.® King Nebuchad- 
nezzar in particular, before he was turned out to grass, 
appears to have distinguished himself by the richness and 
variety of his execrations, if we may judge by a specimen 
of them which has survived. A brief extract from this 
masterpiece may serve to illustrate the king's style of 
minatory eloquence. Referring to the bold bad man, " be 
it shepherd or governor, or agent or regent, levy master or 
magistrate," whosoever he might be, who " for all days to 

1 (Sir) C. T. Newton, Essays on the Roman god of boundaries, and his 
Art and Archaeology, p. 195. annual festival the Terminalia, see L. 

2 Demosthenes, De Halonneso, 40. Preller, Romische Mythologie^ (Berlin, 

1881-1883), i. 254 i'??. ; G. Wissowa, 

3 Plato, Zam, via. 9, pp. 842 J?. Religion und Kultus der Romer^ 

* Festus, s.v. "Termino," p. 368, (Munich, 1912), pp. 136 j-?. 
ed. C. O. Milller (Leipsic, 1839) ; ^ Deuteronomy, xxviii. 17. 

Varro, De lingua latina, v. 74 ; ^ C. H. W. Johns, Babylonian and 

Dionysius Halicamasensis, Antiquitates Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters 

Romanae, ii. 74. As to Terminus, (Edinburgh, 1904), p. 191. 

come, for the future of human habitations," should dare to 

tamper with the land which his Majesty had just marked 

out, " Ninib, lord of boundaries and boundary-stones, tear 

out his boundary stone. Gula, great lady, put lingering 

illness into his body, that dark and light red blood he may 

pour out like water. Ishtar, lady of countries, whose fury is 

a flood, reveal difficulties to him, that he escape not from 

misfortune. Nusku, mighty lord, powerful burner, the god, 

my creator, be his evil demon and may he burn his root. 

Whoever removes this stone, in the dust hides it, burns it 

with fire, casts it into water, shuts it up in an enclosure, 

causes a fool, a deaf man, an idiot to take it, places it in 

an invisible place, may the" great gods, who upon this stone 

are mentioned by their names, curse him with an evil curse, 

tear out his foundation and destroy his seed." ^ 

Super- In Africa also superstition is a powerful ally of the rights 

an'ai" ^of °^ private property. Thus the Balonda place beehives on 

the rights high trees in the forest and protect them against thieves by 

prmerty'^in tying a charm or " piece of medicine " round the tree-trunks. 

Africa. This provcs a sufficient protection. " The natives," says 

Livingstone, " seldom rob each other, for all believe that 

certain medicines can inflict disease and death ; and though 

they consider that these are only known to a few, they act 

on the principle that it is best to let them all alone. The 

gloom of these forests strengthens the superstitious feelings 

of the people. In other quarters, where they are not 

subjected to this influence, I have heard the chiefs issue 

proclamations to the effect, that real witchcraft medicines 

had been placed at certain gardens from which produce had 

been stolen ; the thieves having risked the power of the 

ordinary charms previously placed there." ^ 

The The Wanika of East Africa " believe in the power and 

of East efficacy of charms and amulets, and they wear them in great 

Africa. variety ; legs, arms, neck, waist, hair, and every part of the 

body are laden with them, either for the cure or prevention 

of disease ; for the expulsion or repulsion of evil spirits ; and 

to keep at bay snakes, wild animals, and every other evil. 

1 R. W. Rogers, Cuneiform Paral- ^ David Livingstone, Missionary 

lels to the Old Testament (Oxford, Travels and Researches in South Africa 
preface dated 191 1), pp. 390-392. (London, 1857), p. 285. 

They hang painted calabashes from the baobab at their hut 
doors to keep away thieves ; shells, dolls, eggs scratched over 
with Arabic characters by the Wana Chuoni (sons of the 
book) of the coast, are placed about their plantations and in 
their fruit-trees, and they believe that death would overtake 
a thief who should disregard them. A charm bound to the 
leg of a fowl is ample protection for the village. There is 
no doubt that, superstitious as the people are, they dread 
running great risks for the sake of small gains, and so these 
charms answer their purpose." * Among the Boloki of the The Boioki 
Upper Congo, when a woman finds that the cassava roots, ^ ^^^ 
which she keeps soaking in a water-hole, are being stolen, 
she takes a piece of gum copal, and fixing it in the cleft of a 
split stick she puts it on the side of the hole, while at the 
same time she calls down a curse on the thief. If the thief 
is a man, he will henceforth have no luck in fishing ; if she 
is a woman, she will have no more success in farming.^ The 
Ekoi of Southern Nigeria protect their farms against thieves 
by bundles of palm leaves to which they give the name of 
okpata. Should any one steal from a farm thus protected, 
he will fall sick and will not recover unless he gives a certain 
dance, to which the name of okpata is also applied.^ 

In the mountains of Marrah, a district of Darfur, houses. Guardian 
goods, and cattle are protected against thieves by certain ^^^"'^^^^j 
fierce and dangerous guardian-spirits called damzogs, which of property 
can be bought like watch dogs. Under the guardianship of '° 
such a spiritual protector the sheep and cows are left free to 
wander at will ; for if any one were rash enough to attempt 
to steal or kill one of the beasts, his hand with the knife in 
it would remain sticking fast to the animal's throat till the 
owner came and caught the rascal. An Arab merchant, 
travelling in Darfur, received from a friend the following 
account of the way to procure one of these useful guardians. 
" At the time when I first began to trade, my friend, I often 
heard that damzogs could be bought and sold, and that to 
procure one I must apply to the owner of a damzog, and 

1 Charles New, Life, Wanderings, CaKKziJaA- (London, 1913), pp. 310 j^. 
and labours in Eastern Africa 

(London, 1873), p. 106. ^ P. Amaury Talbot, In the Shadow 

2 John H. Weeks, Among Congo of the Bush (London, 1912), p. 296. 

discuss the price with him. When the bargain is concluded, 
it is necessary to give a large gourd of milk to the seller, 
who takes it to his house, where are his damzogs. On 
entering he salutes them, and goes and hangs up his vase to 
a hook, saying, — ' One of my friends — such a one — very rich, 
is in fear of robbers, and asks me to supply him with a 
guardian. Will one of you go and live in his house ? 
There is plenty of milk there, for it is a house of blessing, 
and the proof thereof is, that I bring you this kara of milk.' 
The damzogs at first refuse to comply with the invitation. 
' No, no,' say they, ' not one of us will go.' The master of 
the hut conjures them to comply with his desires, saying, 
' Oh ! let the one that is willing descend into the kara! He 
then retires a little, and presently one of the damzogs is heard 
to flop into the milk, upon which he hastens and claps upon 
the vase a cover made of date-leaves. Thus stopped up he 
unhooks the kara, and hands it over to the buyer, who takes 
it away and hangs it on the wall of his hut, and confides it 
to the care of a slave or of a wife, who every morning comes 
and takes it, emptying out the milk, washing it and re- 
plenishing it, and hanging it up again. From that time 
forward the house is safe from theft or loss." The merchant's 
informant, the Shereef Ahmed Bedawee, had himself 
purchased one of these guardian spirits, who proved most 
vigilant and efficient in. the discharge of his duties ; indeed 
his zeal was excessive, for he not only killed several slaves 
who tried to rob his master, but did summary execution on 
the Shereef s own son, when the undutiful young man essayed 
to pilfer from his father's shop. This was too much for the 
Shereef; he invited a party of friends to assist him in 
expelling the inflexible guardian. They came armed with 
guns and a supply of ammunition, and by raking the shop 
with repeated volleys of musketry they at last succeeded in 
putting the spirit to flight.^ 
The curses Amongst the Nandi of British East Africa nobody dares 

of smiths ^^ g^g^j anything from a smith ; for if he did, the smith 
potters. would heat his furnace, and as he blew the bellows to make 

1 Travels of an Arab Merchant Bayle St. John (London, 1854), pp, 
\Mohammed Ibn-Omar El Tounsy] in 69-73. 
Soudan, abridged from the French by 

the flames roar he would curse the thief so that he would 
die. And in like manner among these people, with whom 
the potters are women, nobody dares to filch anything from 
a potter ; for next time she heated her wares the potter 
would curse him, saying, " Burst like a pot, and may thy 
house become red," and the thief so cursed would die.^ In Charms to 
Loango, when a man is about to absent himself from home pr°pe"y 
for a considerable time he protects his hut by placing a in west 
charm or fetish before it, consisting perhaps of a branch "'^^' 
with some bits of broken pots or trash of that sort ; and we 
are told that even the most determined robber would not 
dare to cross a threshold defended by these mysterious 
signs.^ On the coast of Guinea fetishes are sometimes 
inaugurated for the purpose of detecting and punishing 
certain kinds of theft ; and not only the culprit himself, but 
any person who knows of his crime and fails to give in- 
formation is liable to be punished by the fetish. When 
such a fetish is instituted, the whole community is warned of 
it, so that he who transgresses thereafter does so at his peril. 
For example, a fetish was set up to prevent sheep-stealing 
and the people received warning in the usual way. Shortly 
afterwards a slave, who had not heard of the law, stole a 
sheep and offered to divide it with a friend. The friend 
had often before shared with him in similar enterprises, but 
the fear of the fetish was now too strong for him ; he 
informed on the thief, who was brought to justice and died 
soon after of a lingering and painful disease. Nobody in 
the country ever doubted but that the fetish had killed him.^ 
Among the Ewe-speaking tribes of the Slave Coast in West 
Africa houses and household property are guarded by amulets 
(vo-sesao), which derive their virtue from being consecrated 
or belonging to the gods. The crops, also, in solitary glades 
of the forest are left under the protection of such amulets, 
generally fastened to long sticks in some conspicuous 
position ; and so guarded they are quite safe from pillage. 
By the side of the paths, too, may be seen food and palm- 

' A. C. Hollis, The Nandi, their Africa," in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and 
Language and Folk-lore (OxioxA, l<)ogi). Travels (London, 1808- 1814), xvi. 

PP- 36, 37- _ 595- 

2 Proyart's " History of Loango, ^ Rev. J. Leighton Wilson, Western 

Kakongo, and other Kingdoms in Africa (London, 1856), pp. 275 sq. 

wine lying exposed for sale with nothing but a charm to 
protect them ; a few cowries placed on each article indicate 
its price. Yet no native would dare to take the food or 
the wine without depositing its price ; for he dreads the 
unknown evil which the god who owns the charm would 
bring upon him for thieving.-' In Sierra Leone charms, 
called greegrees, are often placed in plantations to deter 
people from stealing, and it is said that " a few old rags 
placed upon an orange tree will generally, though not 
always, secure the fruit as effectually as if guarded by the 
dragons of the Hesperides. When any person falls sick, if, 
at the distance of several months, he recollects having stolen 
fruit, etc., or having taken it softly as they term it, he 
immediately supposes wangka has caught him, and to get 
cured he must go or send to the person whose property he 
had taken, and make to him whatever recompense he 
demands." ^ 
Charms to Superstitions of the same sort have been transported 

property in ^^ '^^ negroes to the West Indies, where the name for 
the West magic is obi and the magician is called the obeah man. 
There also, we are told, the stoutest-hearted negroes 
" tremble at the very sight of the ragged bundle, the bottle 
or the egg-shells, which are stuck in the thatch or hung over 
the door of a hut, or upon the branch of a plantain tree, to 
deter marauders. . . . When a negro is robbed of a fowl or 
a hog, he applies directly to the Obeah-vazxi or woman ; it is 
then made known among his fellow blacks, that obi is set for 
the thief; and as soon as the latter hears the dreadful news, 
his terrified imagination begins to work, no resource is left 
but in the superior skill of some more eminent Obeah-m.2Ln 
of the neighbourhood, who may counteract the magical 
operations of the other ; but if no one can be found of 
higher rank and ability ; or if, after gaining such an ally, he 
should still fancy himself affected, he presently falls into a 
decline, under the incessant horror of impending calamities. 
The slightest painful sensation in the head, the bowels, or 

1 A. B. Ellis, The Ewe-speaking Africa (London, 1894), p. 118. 
Peoples of the Slave Coast of West ^ Thomas Winterbottom, An Ac- 
Africa (London, 1890), pp. 91 sq. count of the Native Africans in the 
Compare id., The Yoruba- speaking Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone 
Peoples of the Slave Coast of West (London, 1803), pp. 261 sq. 

Ill PRIVA TE PROPERTY 43 

any other part, any casual loss or hurt, confirms his 
apprehensions, and he believes himself the devoted victim 
of an invisible and irresistible agency. Sleep, appetite and 
cheerfulness forsake him ; his strength decays, his disturbed 
imagination is haunted without respite, his features wear the 
settled gloom of despondency : dirt, or any other unwhole- 
some substance, becomes his only food, he contracts a 
morbid habit of body, and gradually sinks into the grave." ^ 
Superstition has killed him. 

Similar evidence might doubtless be multiplied, but the Conciu- 
foregoing cases suffice to shew that among many peoples and ^'°°" 
in many parts of the world superstitious fear has operated as 
a powerful motive to deter men from stealing. If that is so, 
then my second proposition may be regarded as proved, 
namely, that among certain races and at certain times super- 
stition has strengthened the respect for private property and 
has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoyment. 

1 Bryan Edwards, History, Civil Indies, Fifth Edition (London, 18 19), 
and Commercial, of the British West ii. 107- 1 1 1. 

Super- 
stition as 
a prop of 
sexual 
morality. 

Adultery or 
fornication 
supposed 
by the 
Karens to 
blight the 
crops. 

Pig's blood 
used to 
expiate the 
crime.

I PASS now to my third proposition, which is, that among
certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened 
the respect for marriage, and has thereby contributed to a 
stricter observance of the rules of sexual morality both 
among the married and the unmarried. That this is true 
will appear, I think, from the following instances. 

Among the Karens of Burma " adultery, or fornication, 
is supposed to have a powerful influence to injure the crops. 
Hence, if there have been bad crops in a village for a year 
or two, and the rains fail, the cause is attributed to secret 
sins of this character, and they say the God of heaven and 
earth is angry with them on this account ; and all the 
villagers unite in making an offering to appease him." 
And when a case of adultery or fornication has come to 
light, " the elders decide that the transgressors must buy a 
hog, and kill it. Then the woman takes one foot of the 
hog, and the man takes another, and they scrape out furrows 
in the ground with each foot, which they fill with the blood 
of the hog. They next scratch the ground with their hands 
and pray : ' God of heaven and earth, God of the mountains 
and hills, I have destroyed the productiveness of the country. 
Do not be angry with me, do not hate me ; but have mercy 
on me, and compassionate me. Now I repair the mountains, 
now I heal the hills, and the streams and the lands. May 
there be no failure of crops, may there be no unsuccessful 
labours, or unfortunate efforts in my country. Let them be 
dissipated to the foot of the horizon. Make thy paddy 
fruitful, thy rice abundant. Make the vegetables to flourish. 

If we cultivate but little, still grant that we may obtain a 
little.' After each has prayed thus, they return to the 
house and say they have repaired the earth." ^ Thus, 
according to the Karens adultery and fornication are not 
simply moral offences which concern no one but the culprits 
and their families : they physically affect the course of 
nature by blighting the earth and destroying its fertility ; 
hence they are public crimes which threaten the very exist- 
ence of the whole community by cutting off its food supplies 
at the root. But the physical injury which these offences 
do to the soil can be physically repaired by saturating it 
with pig's blood. 

Some of the tribes of Assam similarly trace a connexion Disastrous 
between the crops and the behaviour of the human sexes ; ascribed to 
for they believe that so long as the crops remain ungarnered, sexual 
the slightest incontinence would ruin all.^ Again, the As^m" 
inhabitants of the hills near Rajamahal in Bengal imagine Bengal, 
that adultery, undetected and unexpiated, causes the inhabit- Annam. 
ants of the village to be visited by a plague or destroyed by 
tigers or other ravenous beasts. To prevent these evils an 
adulteress generally makes a clean breast. Her paramour has 
then to furnish a hog, and he and she are sprinkled with its 
blood, which is supposed to wash away their sin and avert 
the divine wrath. When a village suffers from plague or the 
ravages of wild beasts, the people religiously believe that the 
calamity is a punishment for secret immorality, and they 
resort to a curious form of divination to discover the culprits, 
in order that the crime may be duly expiated.^ The Khasis 
of Assam are divided into a number of clans which are 
exogamous, that is to say, no man may marry a woman of 
his own clan. Should a man be found to cohabit with a /V 
woman of his own clan, it is treated as incest and is believed 
to cause great disasters ; the people will be struck by light 
ning or killed by tigers, the women will die in child-bed, and 

1 Rev. F. Mason, D.D., "On Dwell- 2 x. C. Hodson, "The Genna 

ings, Works of Art, Laws, etc., of the amongst the Tribes of Assam," _/<;«?•««/ 

Y^zxex&" Journal of the Asiatic Society of the Anthropological Institute, xxxvi. 

of Bengal, New Series, xxxvii. (i858) {1906) p. 94. 

part ii. No. 3, pp. 147 J?. Compare ^ Lieutenant Thomas Shaw, "On 

A. K. McMahon, The Karens of the the Inhabitants of the Hills near Raja- 

Golden Chersonese (London, 1876), mahall," Asiatic Researches, Fourth 

pp. 334 sq. Edition, iv. (1807) pp. 60-62. 

Similar 
views held 
by the 
Battas of 
Sumatra. 

SO forth. The guilty couple are taken by their clansmen to 
a priest and obliged to sacrifice a pig and a goat ; after that 
they are made outcasts, for their offence is inexpiable.^ The 
Orang Glai, a savage tribe in the mountains of Annam, 
similarly suppose that illicit love is punished by tigers, which 
devour the sinners. If a girl is found with child, her family 
offers a feast of pigs, fowls, and wine to appease the offended 
spirits.^ 

The Battas of Sumatra in like manner think that if an 
unmarried woman is with child, she must be given in 
marriage at once, even to a man of lower rank ; for other- 
wise the people will be infested with tigers, and the crops 
in the fields will not be abundant. They also believe that 
the adultery of married women causes a plague of tigers, 
crocodiles, or other wild beasts. The crime of incest, in 
their opinion, would blast the whole harvest, if the wrong 
were not speedily repaired. Epidemics and other calamities 
that affect the whole people are almost always .traced by 
them to incest, by which is to be understood any marriage 
that conflicts with their customs.^ The natives of Nias, an 
island to the west of Sumatra, imagine that heavy rains are 
caused by the tears of a god weeping at the commission of 
adultery or fornication. The punishment for these crimes is 
death. The two delinquents, man and woman, are buried 
in a narrow grave with only their heads projecting above 
ground ; then their throats are stabbed with a spear or cut 
with a knife, and the grave is filled up. Sometimes, it is said, 
they are buried alive. However, the judges are not always 
incorruptible and the injured family not always inaccessible 
to the allurement of gain ; and pecuniary compensation is 
sometimes accepted as a sufficient salve for wounded honour. 
But if the wronged man is a chief, the culprits must surely 
die. As a consequence, perhaps, of this severity, the crimes 

1 Major P. R. T. Gurdon, The 
Khasis (London, 1907), pp. 94, 
123. 

2 E. Aymonier, "Notessurl'Annam," 
Excursions et Reconnaissances, x. No. 
24 (Saigon, 1885), pp. 308 sq. 

^ J. B. Neumann, "Het Pane en Bila- 
Stroomgebied op het eiland Sumatra," 

Tijdschrift van het Nederlandsch Aaar- 
drijkskundig Genootschap, Tweede 
Serie, dl. iii., afdeeling, meer uitge- 
breide artikelen, No. 3 (Amsterdam, 
1886), pp. 514 sq.; M. Joustra, "Het 
leven, de zeden en gewoonten der 
Bataks," Mededeelingen van wege het 
Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, 
xlvi. (1902) p. 411. 

of adultery and fornication are said to be far less frequent in 
Nias than in Europe.-' 

Similar views prevail among many tribes in Borneo, similar 
Thus in regard to the Sea Dyaks we are told by Archdeacon ™ong ^^^ 
Perham that " immorality among the unmarried is supposed tribes of 
to bring a plague of rain upon the earth, as a punishment 
inflicted by Petara. It must be atoned for with sacriiice and Excessive 
fine. In a function which is sometimes held to procure fine thought by 
weather, the excessive rain is represented as the result of the the Dyaks 
immorality of two young people. Petara is invoked, the caused by 
offenders are banished from their home, and the bad weather sexual 
is said to cease. Every district traversed by an adulterer is 
believed to be accursed of the gods until the proper sacrifice 
has been offered." ^ When rain pours down day after day 
and the crops are rotting in the fields, these Dyaks come to 
the conclusion that some people have been secretly indulging 
in lusts of the flesh ; so the elders lay their heads together 
and adjudicate on all cases of incest and bigamy, and purify Blood of 
the earth with the blood of pigs, which appears to these fo^expiafe 
savages, as sheep's blood appeared to the ancient Hebrews, incest and 
to possess the valuable property of atoning for moral guilt. """^ ^^ "■''■ 
Not long ago the offenders, whose lewdness had thus brought 
the whole country into danger, would have been punished 
with death or at least slavery. A Dyak may not marry his -A - 
first cousin unless he first performs a special ceremony called 
bergaput to avert evil consequences from the land. The 
couple repair to the water-side, fill a small pitcher with their 
personal ornaments, and sink it in the river ; or instead of a 
jar they fling a chopper and a plate into the water. A pig 

' H. Sundermann, Die Insel Nias Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society,'iio. 

und die Mission daselbst (Barmen, 8, December 1881, p. 150; H. Ling 

1905), pp. 34 sq., 37, 84. Compare Roth, The Natives of Sarawak and 

A. Fehr, Der Niasser im Lehen und BritishNorthBomeoCLonAon, i?>^6),i. 

Sterben (Barmen, 1901), pp. 34-36; 180. /'«/ara: is the general Dyak name 

Th. C. Rappard, " Het eiland Nias en for deity. The common idea is that 

zi]ne he^omts," Bijdragen tot de Taal- there are many petaras, indeed that 

Land- en Volkenkunde van Neder- every man has his own. The word is 

landsch-Indie, Ixii. (1909) pp. 594, said to be derived from Sanscrit and 

596. The death penalty for these to be etymologically identical with 

offences has been abolished by the Avatar, the Dyaks regularly substitut- 

Dutch Government, so far as it can ing/ or b for v. See Rev. J. Perham, 

make its arm felt in the island. op. cit. pp. 133 sqq.; H. Ling Roth's 

2 Rev. J. Perham, "Petara, or Sea Natives of Sarawak and British North 

Dyak Gods," Journal of the Straits Borneo, i. 168 sqq. 

is then sacrificed on the bank, and its carcase, drained of 
blood, is thrown in after the jar. Next the pair are pushed 
into the water by their friends and ordered to bathe together. 
Lastly, a joint of bamboo is filled with pig's blood, and the 
couple perambulate the country and the villages round about, 
sprinkling the blood on the ground. After that they are 
free to marry. This is done, we are told, for the sake of the 
whole country, in order that the rice may not be blasted by 
the marriage of cousins.^ Again, we are informed that the 
Sibuyaus, a Dyak tribe of Sarawak, are very careful of the 
honour of their daughters, because they imagine that if an 
unmarried girl is found to be with child it is offensive to the 
higher powers, who, instead of always chastising the culprits, 
punish the tribe by visiting its members with misfortunes. 
Hence when such a crime is detected they fine the lovers and 
sacrifice a pig to appease the angry powers and to avert the 
sickness or other calamities that might follow. Further, they 
inflict fines on the families of the couple for any severe 
accident or death by drowning that may have happened at 
any time within a month before the religious atonement was 
made ; for they regard the families of the culprits as re- 
sponsible for these mishaps. The fines imposed for serious 
or fatal accidents are heavy ; for simple wounds they are 
lighter. With the fear of these fines before their eyes parents 
keep a watchful eye on the conduct of their daughters. 
Among the Dyaks of the Batang Lupar river the chastity of the 
unmarried girls is not so strictly guarded ; but in respectable 
families, when a daughter proves frail, they sacrifice a pig 
and sprinkle its blood on the doors to wash away the sin.^ 
The Hill Dyaks of Borneo abhor incest and do not allow 
the marriage even of cousins. In 1846 the Baddat Dyaks 
complained to Mr. Hugh Low that one of their chiefs had 
disturbed the peace and prosperity of the village by marrying 
his own granddaughter. Since that disastrous event, they 
said, no bright day had blessed their territory ; rain and 
darkness alone prevailed, and unless the plague-spot were 

1 H. Ling Roth, "Low's Natives (1893) p. 24. 

oi 'Borneo," Journal of the Anthropo- 2 Spenser St. John, Life in the 

logical Institute, T.YA. (1892) pp, 113 Forests of the Far East, %^zon&'S.A\<iioj\ 

^1-t 133 ; compare id., ibid. xxii. (London, 1863), i. 63 sq. 

removed, the tribe would soon be ruined. The old sinner 
was degraded from office, but apparently allowed to retain 
his wife ; and the domestic brawls between this ill-assorted 
couple gave much pain to the virtuous villagers.^ 

Among the pagan tribes of Borneo in general, but of incest 
Sarawak in particular, "almost all offences are punished ^"th^death 
by fines only. Of the few offences which are felt to require by the 
a heavier punishment, the one most seriously regarded is ^lbes"of 
incest. For this offence, which is held to bring grave peril Borneo. 
to the whole house, especially the danger of starvation through 
failure of the /aif z' crop, two punishments have been customary. 
If the guilt of the culprits is perfectly clear, they are taken 
to some open spot on the river-bank at some distance from 
the house. There they are thrown together upon the ground 
and a sharpened bamboo stake is driven through their bodies, 
so that they remain pinned to the earth. The bamboo, 
taking root and growing luxuriantly on this spot, remains as 
a warning to all who pass by ; and, needless to say, the spot 
is looked on with horror and shunned by all men. The other 
method of punishment is to shut up the offenders in a strong 
wicker cage and to throw them into the river. This method 
is resorted to as a substitute for the former one, owing to the 
difficulty of getting any one to play the part of executioner 
and to drive in the stake, for this involves the shedding of 
the blood of the community. The kind of incest most 
commonly committed is the connection of a man with an 
adopted daughter, and (possibly on account of this frequency) 
this is the kind which is most strongly reprobated. . . . The 
punishment of the incestuous couple does not suffice to ward 
off the danger brought by them upon the community. The 
household must be purified with the blood of pigs and fowls ; 
the animals used are the property of the offenders or of their 
family ; and in this way a fine is imposed. When any 
calamity threatens or falls upon a house, especially a great 
rising of the river which threatens to sweep away the house 
or the tombs of the household, the Kayans are led to suspect 
that incestuous intercourse in their own or in neighbouring 
houses has taken place ; and they look round for evidences 
of it, and sometimes detect a case which otherwise would 

1 Hugh Low, Sarawak (London, 1S48), pp. 300 sg. 

E 

have remained hidden. It seems probable that there is some 
intimate relation between this belief and the second of the 
two modes of punishment described above ; but we have no 
direct evidence of such connection. All the other peoples 
also, except the Punans, punish incest with death. Among 
the Sea Dyaks the most common form of incest is that 
between a youth and his aunt, and this is regarded at least 
as seriously as any other form." ^ 
Evil and Nor is it the heinous crime of incest alone which in the 

su''"o^sed opinion of the Sea Dyaks endangers the whole community. 
by the The same effect is supposed to follow whenever an unmarried 
be^wrought woman is found with child and cannot or will not name her 
by fornica- seducer. " The greatest disgrace," we are told, " is attached 
to a woman found in a state of pregnancy, without being 
able to name her husband ; and cases of self-poisoning, to 
avoid the shame, are not of unusual occurrence. If one be 
found in this state, a fine must be paid of pigs and other 
things. Few even of the chiefs will come forward without 
incurring considerable responsibility. A pig is killed, which 
nominally becomes the father, for want, it is supposed, of 
another and better one. Then the surrounding neighbours 
have to be furnished with a share of the fine to banish the 
Jabu, which exists after such an event. If the fine be not 
forthcoming, the woman dare not move out of her room, for 
fear of being molested, as she is supposed to have brought 
evil {kudi) and confusion upon the inhabitants and their 
belongings." ^ 
Similar The foregoing accounts refer especially to the tribes of 

customs" Borneo under British rule ; but similar ideas and customs 
among the prevail among the kindred tribes of Dutch Borneo. Thus 
Dutch° the Kayans or Bahaus in the interior of the island 
Borneo. believe that adultery is punished by the spirits, who visit 
the whole tribe with failure of the crops and other mis- 
fortunes. Hence in order to avert these evil consequences 
from the innocent members of the tribe, the two culprits, 
with all their possessions, are first placed on a gravel bank 
in the middle of the river, in order to isolate or, in electrical 

1 Charles Hose and William Mc- ^ Charles Brooke, Ten Years in 

Dougall, The Pagan Tribes of Borneo Sarawak (London, 1866), i. 69 sq. 
(London, 1912), ii. 196-199. 

language, to insulate them and so prevent the moral or 
rather physical infection from spreading. Then pigs and 
fowls are killed, and with the blood priestesses smear the 
property of the guilty pair in order to disinfect it. Finally, 
the two are placed on a raft, with sixteen eggs, and allowed 
to drift down stream. They may save themselves by 
plunging into the water and swimming ashore ; but this is 
perhaps a mitigation of an older sentence of death by 
drowning, for young people still shower long grass stalks, 
representing spears, at the shamefaced and dripping couple.^ 
Certain it is, that some Dyak tribes used to punish incest 
by fastening the man and woman in separate baskets laden 
with stones and drowning them in the river. By incest 
they understood the cohabitation of parents with children, 
of brothers with sisters, and of uncles and aunts with nieces 
and nephews. A Dutch resident had much difficulty in 
saving the life of an uncle and niece who had married each 
other ; finally he procured their banishment to a distant 
part of Borneo.^ The Blu- u Kayans, another tribe in the 
interior of Borneo, believe that an intrigue between an 
unmarried pair is punished by the spirits with failure of the 
harvest, of the fishing, and of the hunt. Hence the delin- 
quents have to appease the wrath of the spirits by sacrificing 
a pig and a certain quantity of rice.^ In Pasir, a district of 
Eastern Borneo, incest is thought to bring dearth, epidemics, 
and all sorts of evils on the land.* In the island of Ceram 
a man convicted of unchastity has to smear every house 
in the village with the blood of a pig and a fowl : this is 
supposed to wipe out his guilt and ward off misfortunes 
from the village.*^ 

When the harvest fails in Southern Celebes, the Macassars Failure of 
and Bugineese regard it as a sure sign that incest has been anVoSer 
committed and that the spirits are angry. In the years disasters 

. t t 1 1 • 1 thought to 

1877 and 1878 it happened that the west monsoon did not be caused 

1 A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch (Leyden, 1900), ii. 278. in Celebes. 
Borneo (Leyden, 1904-1907), i. 367. ■* A. H. F. J. Nusselein, " Beschrij- 
„ ^^ ^ , „ , vinp- van het landschap Pasir," Bij- 

2 M. T. H. Perelaer Ethnogra- ^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^^_ ^^„^. ^„ p.^^^^„. 

phische Beuhrijvmg der Dajaks (Zalt- ^^^^^ ^^^ Nederlandsch ■ Indie, Iviii. 
Bommel, 1870), pp. 59 sq. ^j^^j) p j^8_ 

3 A. W. Nieuwenhuis, Quer durch ^ A. Bastian, Indonesien, i. (Berlin, 
Borneo, ii. 99 ; id. , In Centraal Borneo 1 884) p. 1 44. 

blow and that the rice crop in consequence came to nothing ; 
moreover many buffaloes died of a murrain. At the same 
time there was in the gaol at Takalar a prisoner, who had 
been formerly accused of incest. Some of the people of his 
district begged the Dutch governor to give the criminal up 
to them, for according to the general opinion the plagues 
would never cease till the guilty man had received the 
punishment he deserved. All the governor's powers of 
persuasion were needed to induce the petitioners to return 
quietly to their villages ; and when the prisoner, having 
served his time, was released shortly afterwards, he was, at 
his own request, given an opportunity of sailing away to 
another land, as he no longer felt safe in his own country.^ 
Disastrous Even when the incestuous couple has been brought to 
posed to"^ justice, their blood may not be shed ; for the people think 
follow from that, were the ground to be polluted by the blood of such 
thebioodof Criminals, the rivers would dry up and the supply of fish 
incestuous would run short, the harvest and the produce of the gardens 
theground. would miscarry, edible fruits would fail, sickness would be 
rife among cattle and horses, civil strife would break out, 
and the country would suffer from other widespread calamities. 
Hence the punishment of the guilty is such as to avoid the 
spilling of their blood: usually they are tied up in a sack 
and thrown into the sea to drown. Yet they get on their 
journey to eternity the necessary provisions, consisting of a 
bag of rice, salt, dried fish, coco-nuts, and other things, among 
which three quids of betel are not forgotten.^ We can now 
perhaps understand why the Romans used to sew up a 
parricide in a sack with a dog, a cock, a viper, and an ape 
for company, and fling him into the sea. They probably 
feared to defile the soil of Italy by spilling upon it the blood 
of such a miscreant.^ Amongst the Tomori of Central Celebes 

^ G. A. Wilken, Verspreide Ge- ^ Digest, nWm.g.g, "Poena pari-icidii 

schriften (The Hague, 1912), ii. 335 more majorum haec instituta est, ut 

(" Huwelijken tusschen bloedverwan- parricida virgis sanguineis verberatus 

ten," p. 26). deinde culleo insuatur cum cane, gallo 

^ B. F. Matthes, ' ' Over de &d£s of gaUinaceo et vipera et simia : deinde in 

gewoonten der Makassaren en Boe- mareprofundumculleusjactatur." Cora- 

gineezen," Verslagen en Mededeelingen pare Valerius Maximus, i. I. 13 ; VxQ- 

dcr Koninklijke Akademie van We- fessor J. E. B. Mayor's note on Juvenal, 

tenschappen, Afdeeling Letterkunde, viii. 214. If the vievif suggested above 

Derde Reeks, ii. (Amsterdam, 1885) is correct, the scourging of the criminal 

p. 1S2. to the effusion of blood [virgis san- 

a person guilty of incest is throttled ; no drop of his blood 
may fall on the ground, for if it did, the rice would never 
grow again. The union of uncle with niece is regarded by 
these people as incest, but it can be expiated by an ofTering. 
A garment of the man and one of the woman are laid on a 
copper vessel ; the blood of a sacrificed animal, either a goat 
or a fowl, is allowed to drip on the garments, and then the 
vessel with its contents is set floating down the river.^ 
Among the Tololaki, another tribe of Central Celebes, 
persons who have defiled themselves with incest are shut 
up in a basket and drowned. No drop of their blood may 
be spilt on the ground, for that would hinder the earth from 
ever bearing fruit again.^ Among the Bare'e-speaking 
Toradjas of Central Celebes in general the penalty for incest, 
that is for the sexual intercourse of parents with children or 
of brothers with sisters, is death. But whereas the death- 
sentence for adultery is executed with a spear or a sword, 
the death-sentence for incest is usually executed among the 
inland tribes by clubbing or throttling ; for were the blood 
of the culprits to drip on the ground, the earth would be 
rendered barren. The people on the coast put the guilty 
pair in a basket, weight it with stones, and fling it into the 
sea. This prescribed manner of putting the incestuous to 
death, we are informed, makes the execution very grievous. 
However, the writers who furnish us with these particulars 
and who have lived among the people on terms of intimacy 
for many years, add that " incest seldom occurs, or rather the 
cases that come to light are very few." ^ In some districts 
of Central Celebes, the marriage of cousins, provided they 
are children of two sisters, is forbidden under pain of death ; 
the people think that such an alliance would anger the 
spirits, and that the rice and maize harvests would fail. 
Strictly speaking, two such cousins who have committed the 

guineis verberatus) must have been a xliv. (1900) p. 235. 

later addition to the original penalty, 2 a. C. Kruijt, "Van Posso naar 

unless indeed some provision were jy^^;^,, Mededeelingen van wege het 

made for catching the blood before it Nederlandsche Zmddinggenootschap, 
fell on the ground. - ^,j^_ ( ^j ^(^^ 

1 A. C. Kruijt, "Eenige aanteeke- ^ ^ ^ 

ningen omtrent de Toboengkoe en de ^ N. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, De 

Tomoii," Mededeelingen van wege het Bare'e-sprekendeToradja'svanMidden- 

Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, Celebes, i. (Batavia, 1912) p. 187. 

Excessive 
rains, 
earth- 
quakes, 
and 

volcanic 
eruptions 
supposed 
to be pro- 
duced by 
incest in 
Halma- 
hera. 

Breaches 
of sexual 
morality 
thought to 

offence should be tied together, weighted with stones, and 
thrown into water to drown. In practice, however, the 
culprits are spared and their sin expiated by shedding the 
blood of a buffalo or a goat. The blood is mixed with 
water and sprinkled on the rice-fields or poured on the 
maize -fields, no doubt in order to appease the angry- 
spirits and restore its fertility to the tilled land. The 
natives of these districts believe that were a brother and 
sister to commit incest, the ground on which the tribe 
dwells would be swallowed up. If such a crime takes place, 
the guilty pair are tied together, their feet weighted with 
stones, and thrown into the sea.^ 

When it rains in torrents, the Galelareese of Halmahera, 
another large East Indian island, say that brother and sister, 
or father and daughter, or in short some near kinsfolk are 
having illicit relations with each other, and that every human 
being must be informed of it, for then only will the rain 
cease to descend. The superstition has repeatedly caused 
blood relations to be accused, rightly or wrongly, of incest. 
Further, the people think that alarming natural phenomena, 
such as a violent earthquake or the eruption of a volcano, 
are caused by crimes of the same sort. Persons charged with 
such offences are brought to Ternate ; it is said that formerly 
they were often drowned on the way or, on being haled 
thither, were condemned to be thrown into the volcano.^ In 
the Banggai Archipelago, to the east of Celebes, earth- 
quakes are explained as punishments inflicted by evil spirits 
for indulgence in illicit love.^ 

In some parts of Africa, also, it is believed that breaches 
of sexual morality disturb the course of nature, particularly 
by blighting the fruits of the earth ; and probably such views 

' Hissink, " Nota van toelichting, 
betreffende de zelbesturende land- 
schappen Paloe, Dolo, Sigi, en Bero- 
maroe," Tijdschrift voor Iiidische Taal- 
Land- en Volkenkunde^ liv. (1912), 
p. 115. 

^ M. J. van Baarda, " Fabelen, 
Verhalen en Overleveringen der Gale- 
lareezen," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- 
en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch- 
Indie, xlv. (1895) p. 514. In a letter 
to me of 14th March 1909 Sir John 

Rhys compares a Welsh expression, 
' ' Rain through sunshine, the devil 
going on his vi-ife." He adds : " I do 
not think I ever heard it except when 
it was actually raining during sunshine. 
I can now see that instead of ar i wraig 
the original must have been ar i fam 
'on his mother.' In fact I am not at 
all sure but that I have heard it so." 

' F. S. A. de Clerq, Bijdragen tot 
de kennis der Resideniie Ternate 
(Leyden, 1890), p. 132. 

are much more widely diffused in that continent than the blight the 
scanty and fragmentary evidence at our disposal might lead [he'^arth 
us to suppose. Thus, the negroes of Loango, in West and other- 
Africa, imagine that the commerce of a man with an im- ^'^^ the 
mature girl is punished by God with drought and consequent course of 
famine until the transgressors expiate their transgression by Africa. 
dancing naked before the king and an assembly of the 
people, who throw hot gravel and bits of glass at the pair 
as they run the gauntlet. The rains in that country should 
fall in September, but in 1898 there was a long drought, 
and when the month of December had nearly passed, the 
sun-scorched stocks of the fruitless Indian corn shook their 
rustling leaves in the wind, the beans lay shrivelled and 
black on the ruddy soil, and the shoots of the sweet potato 
had flowered and withered long ago. The people cried out 
against their rulers for neglecting their duty to the primeval 
powers of the earth ; the priests of the sacred groves had 
recourse to divination and discovered that God was angry 
with the land on account of the immorality of certain persons 
unknown, who were not observing the traditions and laws of 
their God and country. The feeble old king had fled, but 
the slave who acted as regent in his room sent word to the 
chiefs that there were people in their towns who were the 
cause of God's wrath. So every chief called his subjects 
together and caused enquiries to be made, and then it was 
discovered that three girls had broken the customs of 
their country ; for they were with child before they had 
passed through what is called the paint-house, that is, before 
they had been painted red and secluded for a season in 
token that they had attained to the age of puberty. The 
people were incensed and endeavoured to punish or even 
kill the three girls ; and the English writer who has re- 
corded the case has thought it worth while to add that 
on the very morning when the culprits were brought before 
the magistrate rain fell.^ Amongst the Bavili of Loango, 
who are divided into totemic clans, no man is allowed 
to marry a woman of his mother's clan ; and God is 

' 0.'D3.-pfer,Descriptiondel'Afrique Man's Mind (London, 1906), pp. 53, 
(Amsterdam, 1686), p. 326; R. E. 67-71. 
Dennett, At the Back of the Black 

believed to punish a breach of this marriage law by 
withholding the rains in their due season.'^ Similar notions 
of the blighting influence of sexual crime appear to be 
entertained by the Nandi of British East Africa ; for we 
are told that when a warrior has got a girl with child, 
Sexual she " IS punished by being put in Coventry, none of her 
''""'^ J <■ girl friends being allowed to speak to or look at her until 

required of ° ° *• 

those who after the child is born and buried. She is also regarded 
OT enter°™ "^'^^ Contempt for the rest of her life and may never look 
a granary, inside a granary for fear of spoiling the corn." ^ Among 
the Basutos in like manner " while the corn is exposed to 
view, all defiled persons are carefully kept from it. If the 
aid of a man in this state is necessary for carrying home the 
harvest, he remains at some distance while the sacks are 
filled, and only approaches to place them upon the draught 
oxen. He withdraws as soon as the load is deposited at 
the dwelling, and under no pretext can he assist in pouring 
the corn into the basket in which it is preserved." ^ The 
nature of the defilement which thus disqualifies a man from 
handling the corn is not mentioned, but we may conjecture 
that unchastity would fall under this general head. For 
amongst the Basutos after a child is born a fresh fire has to 
be kindled in the dwelling by the friction of wood, and this 
must be done by a young man of chaste habits ; it is 
believed that an untimely death awaits him who should 
dare to discharge this holy office after having lost his 
innocence.* In Morocco whoever enters a granary must 
first remove his slippers and must be sexually clean. Were 
an unclean person to enter, the people believe not only that 
the grain would lose its blessed influence {baraka), but that 
he himself would fall ill. A Berber told Dr. Westermarck 

1 R. E. Dennett, op. cit. p. 52. these people the greatest of all defile- 

2 A. C. Hollis, The Nandi, their ""^"t^- ^hus the sick, persons who 
Language and Folk-lore (Oxford, 1909), ''f"=, torched or buried a corpse, or 

_g who have dug the grave, individuals who 

' , ' „ „ ,. ,  ^ inadvertently walk over or sit upon a 

,T ^"^^ f; ^ ' g'-^^«. 'he near relatives of a person 

(London, 1861), p. 252. deceased, murderers, warriors who have 

■• Rev. E. Casalis, The Basutos, p. killed their enemies in battle, are all 

267. The writer tells us (pp. 255 J?.) considered impure."' No doubt all such 

that "death with all that immediately persons would also be prohibited from 

precedes or follows it, is in the eyes of handling the corn. 

that he had suffered from painful boils through entering a 
granary in a state of uncleanness/ The same rule applies 
in Morocco to a vegetable garden. Only the sexually clean 
may enter it, otherwise both the vegetables and the person 
entering would be the worse for it^ 

The Dinkas of the Upper Nile believe that incest angers incest 
the ancestral spirits {jok\ who punish the girl by making tT'^e'''^ 
her barren. Even should she marry, she will have no Dinkas 
children until she has confessed her sin, and atonement has punilhed 
been made for it. Her lover must provide a bullock for with 
sacrifice. His father kills the animal, and the girl's father ^'^""^' 
takes some of the contents of the large intestine and smears 
it on his daughter's abdomen and on that of her guilty 
partner. Thus the taint of sin is removed, and the woman 
is rendered capable of bearing children.^ The Maloulekes 
and Hlengoues, two tribes of Southern Africa to the north 
of the Thonga, think that if a young man gets a girl, who 
is not his wife, with child, people will die in the village. 
Hence, when the girl's pregnancy is discovered, the lover 
has to provide a girl by way of fine.* 

It is very remarkable, however, that among tribes which incest 
strongly disapprove of incestuous relations in general, the i^n^certain 
act of incest is nevertheless positively enjoined in certain ^^^^ ^s ^ 
circumstances as a mode of ensuring good luck. Thus in ensuring 
the Thonga tribe of South -Eastern Africa, round about s°°'* ^"'=''- 
Delagoa Bay, there is a class of men who devote themselves 
to the business of hunting hippopotamuses on the rivers. 
In the pursuit of their trade they observe a number of 
curious superstitions which have been handed down among 
them for generations from father to son. For example, 
they inoculate themselves with a certain drug which is 
supposed to endow them with such a power over the 
hippopotamuses that when the hunter wounds one of them 
the animal cannot go far away and the man can track and 

' Edward Westermarck, Ceremonies in Dr. J. Hastings's Encyclopaedia of 

and Beliefs connected with Agriculture, Religion and Ethics, iv. (Edinburgh, 

Certain Dates of the Solar Year, and 1911) p. 7o9- 

the Weather in Morocco (Helsingfors, ■* Henri A. Junod, " Les conceptions 

1913), p. 46. physiologiquesdesBantouSud-Africains 

2 E. Westermarck, op. cit. p. 54; eS.\t\iKi2ho\is,," Revue d' Ethnographic 

compare pp. 17, 23, 47. et de Sociologie, i. (1910) P- 146 

^ C. G. Seligmann, s.v. "Dinka," note 2. 

Incest of 
Thonga 
hippo- 
potamus 
hunter 
with his 
daughter. 

despatch it. During the day the hunter fishes in the river, 
keeping his eye all the time on the unwieldy monsters 
disporting themselves in the water or lumbering through 
the thickets on the banks. " When he sees that the pro- 
pitious season has come and when he is ready to undertake 
a hunting expedition of one month, he first calls his own 
daughter to his hut and has sexual relations with her. 
This incestuous act, which is strongly taboo in ordinary life, 
has made of him a ' murderer ' : he has killed something at 
home ; he has acquired the courage for doing great deeds 
on the river. Henceforth he will have no sexual relations 
with his wives during the whole campaign. On the same 
night, immediately after the act, he starts with his sons ; 
they close the drift where the beasts leave the river by 
putting a canoe across the track." Meantime the hippopot- 
amuses are browsing in the forest or trampling down the 
crops of the fields in their clumsy fashion. As they come 
trooping back to the river they are stopped by the canoe 
in the path, and while they are examining the strange 
obstacle, the hunters, lying in ambush, dart their spears into 
the thick hides of the beasts. The handles of the spears 
are loosely attached to the blades, but connected with them 
by a long string, so that when the wounded monster, crash- 
ing irresistibly in his rage through the thicket, plunges into 
the river and sinks out of sight in the water, the handle of 
the spear becomes detached from the blade and floats like a 
buoy on the surface, shewing the direction taken by the 
beast. As soon as the hunter has thrown his spear he runs 
home to tell his wife. She must at once shut herself up in 
the hut and remain perfectly quiet, without eating or drinking 
or crushing her mealies ; for were she to do any of these 
things, the wounded hippopotamus would shew fight and 
might kill her husband, whereas if she keeps quiet, the 
animal will be quiet too. All the hunters in the village are 
then called up, and embarking in a canoe, paddle away after 
their prey, whose retreat is marked by the bobbing of the 
spear-handle on the surface of the water and the occasional 
emergence of a great flat snout to breathe. When the beast 
has been despatched, and the carcase landed on the bank, it 
is turned on its back and the hunter creeps between its legs 

from behind and along its belly and chest as far as the 
mouth. Then he goes away. By this ceremony the man 
is supposed to take upon himself the defilement, possibly 
the nature, of the animal, so that in future when he meets 
hippopotamuses the animals will not perceive him to be a 
man but will mistake him for an hippopotamus ; and thus 
he will be able to slaughter the deluded creatures with 
impunity.^ 

So far as we can guess at the meaning of these curious Suggested 
rites, their general intention seems to be to identify the ?^'^'}^Vu 
hunter and his family with the game which he hunts in Thonga 
order to give him full power over the animals. This P'^^"='"^^- 
intention is manifested in the behaviour of the hunter's wife 
while the hippopotamus is wounded ; she so far identifies 
herself with the animal that whatever she does he is sup- 
posed to do. If she goes about her work briskly and 
refreshes herself with food and drink, the hippopotamus also 
will be brisk and refreshed, and will give warm work to 
his pursuers ; whereas if she keeps perfectly still, the animal 
will make no resistance but follow the hunters like a sheep 
to the slaughter. Perhaps the same train of thought partially 
explains the incest which the hunter has to commit with his 
own daughter before he sets out for the chase. Can it be 
that by this violence done to his offspring he is supposed 
to acquire power over the beast ? It may be so, yet it 
is difficult to see why the violence should take this parti- 
cular form, and why, on the principles of homoeopathic or 
imitative magic, a pretence of wounding and killing the girl 
with a ispear would not have served his turn better. 

Another tribe of savages who imagine that in certain incest 
circumstances incest is the road to fortune are the Antam- a^ong^'fife 
bahoaka of South-Eastern Madagascar. Before setting out Antam- 
for the chase or the fishing or war or other enterprise, every of Mada- 
Antambahoaka arranges to have sexual relations with his gascar. 
sister or with his nearest female relation ; he thinks in this 
way to ensure the success of his expedition.^ What the 

1 Henri A. Junod, The Life of a 342 sq., quoting the evidence of M. 
5o«^A4/^Va« TV/iJe (Neuchatel, 1912- Gabriel Ferrand. Similar testimony 
1913), ii. 60-62. was given to me verbally by M. Ferrand 

2 A. van Gennep, Tabou et ToU- at Paris, 19th April, 19 10. Compare 
misme ^Madagascar (^a.x\i,\<)a^),-p^. Gabriel Ferrand, Les Musulmans h 

Similar 
beliefs as 
to the 
disastrous 
effect 
of sexual 
crimes 
among the 
civilized 
peoples of 
antiquity. 

The 
Hebrews. 

exact train of thought may be which prompts these excep- 
tional and deliberate aberrations from the usual rules of 
morality, it is difficult to understand ; I mention the facts 
because they apparently contradict the ordinary savage 
view of conduct, and so far help us to perceive how little 
as yet we really know about the inmost workings of the 
savage mind. 

Leaving out of account these remarkable and as yet 
not fully explained exceptions to the rule,^ we may say 
generally that among many savage races breaches of the 
marriage laws are believed to draw down on the community 
public calamities of the most serious character, and that 
in particular they are thought to blast the fruits of the 
earth through excessive rain or excessive drought. Traces 
of similar beliefs may perhaps be detected among the 
civilized races of antiquity. Thus among the Hebrews we 
read how Job, passionately protesting his innocence before 
God, declares that he is no adulterer ; " For that," says he, 
" were an heinous crime ; yea it were an iniquity to be 
punished by the judges : for it is a fire that consumeth 
unto Destruction, and would root out all mine increase." ^ 
In this passage the Hebrew word translated "increase" 
commonly means " the produce of the earth " ; ^ and if 
we give the word its usual sense here, then Job affirms 
adultery to be destructive of the fruits of the ground, 
which is precisely what many savages still believe. This 
interpretation of his words is strongly confirmed by two 
narratives in Genesis, where we read how Sarah, Abraham's 

ascar et aux Iks Comores, 
Deuxieme Partie (Paris, 1893), PP- 
20 sq. 

1 In Fiji the rite of circumcision 
used to be followed by sexual orgies 
in which brothers and sisters appear to 
have been intentionally coupled. See 
Rev. Lorimer Fison, " The Nanga, or 
Sacred Stone Enclosure of Wainimala, 
Fiji," Journal of the Anthropological 
Institute, xiv. (1885) pp. 27-30, with 
the note of Sir Edward B. Tylor on 
pp. 28 sq. ; Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 
145-148. Such periods of general 
licence accorded to the whole com- 
munity are perhaps best explained as 

temporary revivals of an old custom of 
sexual communism. But this explana- 
tion seems scarcely applicable to cases 
like those cited in the text, where the 
licence is not granted to the whole 
people but enjoined on a few individuals 
only in special circumstances. As to 
other apparent cases of reversion to 
primitive sexual communism, see 
Totemistn and Exogamy, i. 311 sqq. 

^ Job xxxi. 1 1 sq. (Revised Version). 

3 nN!DB. See Hebrew and English 
Lexicon, by F. Brown, S. R. Driver, 
and Ch. A. Briggs (Oxford, 1906), 
p. 100. 

wife, was taken by a king into his harem, and how 
thereafter God visited the king and his household with 
great plagues, especially by closing up the wombs of the 
king's wife and his maid -servants so that they bare no 
children. It was not till the king had discovered and 
confessed his sin, and Abraham had prayed God to forgive 
him, that the king's women again became fruitful.^ These 
narratives seem to imply that adultery, even when it is com- 
mitted in ignorance, is a cause of plague and especially of 
sterility among women. Again, in Leviticus, after a long 
list of sexual crimes, we read : ^ " Defile not ye yourselves 
in any of these things : for in all these the nations are 
defiled which I cast out from before you : and the land is 
defiled : therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, 
and the land vomiteth out her inhabitants." This passage 
seems to imply that the land itself was somehow physically 
affected by sexual transgressions in such a way that it could 
no longer support the inhabitants. Apparently the ancient The 
Greeks entertained a similar view of the wasting effect of '2'''=*^- 
incest ; for according to Sophocles the land of Thebes 
suffered from blight, pestilence, and the sterility both of 
women, and cattle under the reign of Oedipus, who had 
unwittingly slain his father and married his mother ; the 
country was emptied of its inhabitants, and the Delphic 
oracle declared that the only way to restore prosperity to it 
was to banish the sinner.^ No doubt the poet and his 
hearers set down these public calamities in part to the guilt 
of parricide which rested on Oedipus ; but probably they 
also laid much of the evil at the door of the incest which 
he had committed with his mother. In the reign of the The 
emperor Claudius a Roman noble was accused of incest with °'"^"^- 
his sister. He committed suicide, his sister was banished, 
and the emperor ordered that certain ancient ceremonies 
derived from the laws of King Servius Tullius should be 
performed, and that expiation should be made by the 
pontiffs at the sacred grove of Diana.* As Diana appears 
to have been a goddess of fertility in general and of the 

1 Genesis xii. 10-20, xx. 1-18. ^ Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, 22 

sqq., 95 sqq. 

2 Leviticus xviii. 24 sq. * Tacitus, Annals, xii. 4 and 8. 

Blighting 

effect 

attributed 

to incest 

by the 

ancient 

Irish. 

fruitfulness of women in particular,^ the expiation for incest 
offered at her sanctuary may perhaps be accepted as evi- 
dence that the Romans, like other peoples, attributed to 
sexual immorality a tendency to blast the fruits both of the 
earth and of the womb. 

According to an ancient Irish legend Munster was 
afflicted in the third century of our era with a failure of the 
crops and other misfortunes. When the nobles enquired 
into the matter, they learned that these calamities were the 
result of an incest which the king had committed with his 
sister. In order to put an end to the evil they demanded 
of the king his two sons, the fruit of this unholy union, 
that they might consume them with fire and cast their ashes 
into the running stream.^ Again, Irish legend relates that 
Cairbre Muse " had two sons by his sister. Her name was 
Duben, and theirs were Core and Cormac respectively. The 
children were twins, and the story of their birth is no less 
strange than that of Dylan and Llew, for one of them was 
found to have nipped off his brother's ears before his birth. 
The crime of their parents caused the crops to fail, which, 
according to the idea prevalent in ancient Ireland, was its 
natural result, and Cairbre was obliged to confess his guilt 
to the nobles of his realm, who, when the children were 
born, ordered them to be burnt, that the incest might not 
remain in the land. ' Give me,' said Cairbre's druid, that 
Corc^ there, that I may place him outside Erinn, so that the 
incest may not be within it.' Core was given to the druid, 
and the latter, with his wife, whose name was Boi, took him 
to an island. They had a white cow with red ears, and an 
ablution was performed by them every morning on Core, 
placed on the cow's back ; so in a year's time to the day the 
cow sprang away from them into the sea, and she became a 
rock in it ; to wit, the heathenism of the boy had entered 
into her. Bo BiHi, or Boi's Cow, is the name of the rock, 
and Inis Bui, or B6i's Isle, that of the island. The boy was 

' See The Magic Art and the Evo- 
lution of Kings, i. 12, 14 sqq. 

^ G. Keating, History of Ireland, 
translated by J. O'Mahony (New York, 
1857), pp. 337 ■!■?■ ; P- W. Joyce, 
Social History of Ancient Ireland 

(London, 1903), ii. 512 sq. 

^ " Core means croppy or cropped : 
in this instance the name refers to the 
bearer's ears, and the verb used as to 
the action of his brother maiming him 
is ro-chorc. " 

afterwards brought back into Erinn. Such is the story how 
Core was purged of the virulence of his original sin, and the 
scene is one of the three islets called the Bull, the Cow and 
the Calf, not far from Dursey Island, in the gulf called 
Kenmare River." ^ 

Thus it appears that in the opinion of many peoples Thus 
sexual irregularities, whether of the married or the un- f^^^^. 
married, are not merely moral offences which affect only larities are 
the few persons immediately concerned ; they are believed posr/to 
to involve the whole people in danger and disaster either endanger 
directly by a sort of magical influence or indirectly by com- 
rousing the wrath of gods to whom these acts are offensive, munity. 
Nay they are often supposed to strike a blow at the very 
existence of the community by blighting the fruits of the 
earth and thereby cutting off the food supply. Wherever 
these superstitions prevail, it is obvious that public opinion 
and public justice will treat sexual offences with far greater 
severity than is meted out to them by peoples who, like 
most civilized nations, regard such misdemeanours as matters 
of private rather than of public concern, as sins rather than 
crimes, which may perhaps affect the eternal welfare of the 
individual sinner in a life hereafter, but which do not in any 
way imperil the temporal welfare of the innocent community 
as a whole. And conversely, wherever we find that incest. Hence the 
adultery, and fornication are treated by the community with ^^'0™^!!^ 
extreme rigour, we may reasonably infer that the original which 
motive for such treatment was superstition ; in other words, ^^™gg 
that wherever a tribe or nation, not content with leaving have been 
these transgressions to be avenged by the injured parties, has by^many 
itself punished them with exceptional severity, the reason for races. 
doing so has probably been a belief that the effect of all such 
delinquencies is to disturb the course of nature and thereby 
to endanger the whole people, who accordingly must protect 
themselves by effectually disarming and, if necessary, exter- 
minating the delinquents. This may explain, for example, Ancient 
why the Indian Laws of Manu decreed that an adulteress '=°'**^- 
should be devoured by dogs in a public place, and that an 
adulterer should be roasted to death on a red-hot iron 

1 (Sir) John Rh^s, Celtic Heathen- pp. 308 sq., referring to the Book of 
dom (London and Edinburgh, 1888), the Dun, 54^. 

Rigorous 
penalties 
inflicted in 
Africa. 

The 

Baganda, 
their 
punish- 
ments for 
breaches 
of sexual 
morality. 

bed ; ^ why the Babylonian code of Hammurabi sentenced an 
adulterous couple to be strangled and cast into the river ; 
and why the same code punished incest with a mother by 
burning both the culprits.^ On the same supposition we can 
understand the severity of the punishments meted out to 
certain sexual offences by the Mosaic law. Thus, for 
example, under it an adulteress and her paramour were 
sentenced to death : ^ a woman who at marriage was found 
not to be a maid was stoned : * the unchaste daughter of a 
priest was burned with fire ; * and if a man married a woman 
and her daughter, he and they were in like manner doomed 
to the flames.^ 

Many African tribes repress sexual crimes by rigorous 
penalties, or did so until their moral standard was modi- 
fied by contact with Europeans. Among the Baganda 
of Central Africa, " though death was usually the punishment 
inflicted for adultery, an offender's life would sometimes 
*be spared, and he be fined two women, if he were able 
to pay them ; the culprit was, however, maimed ; he lost 
a limb, or had an eye gouged out, and showed by his 
maimed condition that he had been guilty of a crime. A 
slave taken in adultery with one of his master's wives was 
invariably put to death. Women were compelled by torture 
to name their seducers ; if the accused man denied the 
charge, the woman was asked to describe some personal 
peculiarity of his, or some mark on his body which could be 
identified ; then if the man was found to have the peculiarity, 
he was either fined or put to death. In order to arrive at 
the truth, a man who denied a charge made against him was 
sometimes stretched out with his arms and feet tied to stakes 
driven firmly into the ground, a piece of barkcloth was then 
fastened about his private parts, and set smouldering. As 
soon as the fire reached his body, the pain became too great 

(Edinburgh, 1904), pp. 54, 56 ; 
Robert W. Rogers, Cuneiform Parallels 
to the Old Testament (Oxford, preface 
dated 191 1), pp. 427, 434. 

' Deuteronomy xxii. 22. 

* Deuteronomy xxii. 20 sq. 
^ Leviticus xxi. 9. 

* Leviticus xx. 14. 

^ Laws of Manu, viii. 371 sq.^ 
translated by G. Buhler, pp. 318 sq. 
[Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxv.). 
Compare Gautama, xxiii. 14 sq., 
translated by G. Buhler, p. 285 
(Sacred Books of the East, vol. ii. ). 

2 Code of Hammurabi, §§ 129, 157, 
C. H. W. Johns, Babylonian and 
Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters 

to bear, and the man would own himself guilty in order to 
be released from torture. He would then be either killed or 
fined. An adulterer was called a murderer (inusi), because 
he was looked upon as a man who deliberately set about to 
compass the death of the woman's husband ; either directly, 
for he would go armed to visit the woman, and if he was 
disturbed, he would not hesitate to strike ; or indirectly, by 
offending the fetiches. Men knew that, if they were caught 
in the act of adultery, the penalty would be death, unless 
they were related to the person wronged, in which case the 
latter might be willing to accept a fine, and might content 
himself with mutilating the culprit. The worst consequence 
to the injured husband was the anger of his fetiches and 
gods, whose custodian was his wife. By her action the wife 
had involved her husband in their displeasure ; he was thus 
left exposed to the malice of any enemy, and his danger was 
increased in the time of war, because the gods had with- 
drawn their protection from him." ^ Thus among the 
Baganda adultery was regarded not simply as a civil offence 
but as a sin, which brought down the anger of the gods, not 
as we might expect, on the adulterer, but on the injured 
husband. Further, the Baganda were divided into a number 
of totemic clans, and members of any one clan were strictly 
prohibited from marrying or having sexual relations with 
each other. " Sexual intercourse with a member of the same 
clan (kive), or with a woman of the mother's clan, was punished 
by the death of both parties, because they were considered 
to have brought the god's displeasure on the whole clan." ^ 

Among the Basoga, who border on the Baganda to the Fornica- 
east, when a man got a virgin with child, the guilty couple ^'^"{j 
used to be dragged off to the River Ntakwe ; there stones and incest 
were tied to their ankles and legs, and, along with a sacri- punished 
ficial sheep, they were thrown into the water and drowned, by other 
However, this rigorous penalty was abolished and a fine tribes!" 
substituted before the country came under British rule.^ 
Among the Kavirondo, who border on the Basoga to the 

1 Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda \T,T,sqq. One clan (the Lung- fish clan) 
(London, 191 1), pp. 261 sq. was excepted from the rule. 

2 Rev. J. Roscoe, op. cit. p. 262. ^ Sir Harry Johnston, The Uganda 
As to the totemic clans, see id. pp. Protectorate (London, 1904), ii. 719, 

F 

east, "until quite recently adultery on the part of a wife 
was punished with death, and death equally was meted 
out to young men and girls who were found guilty of 
fornication. It was thought a shameful thing if a girl 
was not found to be a virgin on her wedding day." ^ 
Among the Nandi, who border on the Kavirondo to the 
north-east, " incest, intercourse with a step-mother, step- 
daughter, cousin or other near relation, is punished by what 
is known as injoket. A crowd of people assemble outside 
the house of the culprit, who is dragged out, and the punish- 
ment is inflicted by the women, all of whom, both young 
and old, strip for the occasion. The man is flogged, his 
houses and crops destro3'ed, and some of his stock con- 
fiscated." ^ Among the Barea, a tribe on the borders of 
Abyssinia, when a single woman, whether maid or widow, 
is found with child, she is strangled by her father or brother, 
and the same punishment is inflicted on her seducer ; the 
child of their unlawful union is stabbed. This custom is 
rigorously carried out, except when the seducer is a noble 
and his paramour a vassal ; in that case both are spared, 
but the infant is killed.^ Among the Beni Amer, another 
tribe of the same region, an unmarried girl found pregnant is 
put to death by her own brother, whatever her rank, and the 
seducer is killed by his own brother ; the child also is slain. 
But the law is not so severe on a widow or divorced wife who 
is detected in a slip ; her seducer has only to pay a fine ; 
but the child is buried alive. The Beni Amer will not 
suffer a bastard to live.* Among the Anyanja of British 
Central Africa adultery was punished by drowning and 
shooting. If one of the culprits was a chief's wife, she 
was tied to her paramour, and the pair were then thrown into 
a river to drown or left in the open space of the village 
to die of hunger and exposure. A man who had com- 
mitted a rape was bound, weighted with stones, and cast 
into the lake.^ Among the Awemba of Northern Rhodesia, 

> Sir Harry Johnston, op. cit. ii. However, the child of an unmarried 

746 -f?. slave woman is brought up ; the father 

^ A. C. Hollis, The Nandi (Oxford, pays for its nurture. 

1909). P- 76. ^ H. S. Stannus, "Notes on some 

3 Werner Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Tribes of British Central Africa," 

Sludien (Schaffhausen, 1864), p. 243. Journal of the Royal Anthropological 

* W, Munzinger, op. cit. p. 322. Institute, xl. (1910) p. 290. 

when a husband detected his wife in the act of adultery, 
he killed both her and her partner in guilt. For such 
execution he might not be indicted for murder or man- 
slaughter. He would merely return the blood-stained spear 
to the woman's father, who by his words in the marriage 
ceremony, " You shall spear the man who lusts after your 
wife," was estopped from taking vengeance for the death of 
his daughter. If the husband spared the erring couple 
and the wife was again taken in adultery, the villagers 
themselves decreed the punishment. The unfaithful wife 
and her lover were dragged outside the village and impaled 
on sharp stakes amid the taunts and jeers of the bystanders, 
who only desisted from their mockery when death had stilled 
the writhing agony of the sufferers.^ " The Hottentots," says 
an old writer, " allow not marriages between first or second 
cousins. They have a traditionary law, which ordains, that 
both man and woman, so near to each other in blood, who 
shall be convicted of joining together either in marriage 
or fornication, shall be cudgel'd to death. This law, they 
say, has prevail'd through all the generations of 'em ; and 
that they execute it at once, upon a conviction, without 
any regard to wealth, power or affinity." ^ 

We have seen that in the East Indies sexual crimes, incest and 
particularly incest, adultery, and fornication, are often viewed 3g"g'jg[^ 
with grave displeasure because they are believed to draw punished in 
down the wrath of the higher powers on the whole com- jn^ie^^ 
munity. Hence it is natural that such offences should be 
treated as high treason and the offenders punished with 
death. A common punishment is drowning. For example, 
when incest between a parent and a child or between a 
brother and a sister has been detected among the Kubus, 
a primitive aboriginal tribe of Sumatra, the culprits are en- 
closed in a large fish-trap, made ot rattan or bamboo, and 
sunk in a deep pool of the river. However, they are not 
pinioned ; nay, they are even furnished with a tin knife, and 

1 CuUen Gouldsbury and Hubert Edition (London, 1738), i. 157. For 
Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northern more examples of the death penalty 
Rhodesia {}-,oxi&ox\, 191 1), p. 57- inflicted for breaches of sexual morality 

in Africa, see A. H. Post, . 

2 Peter Kolben, The Present State Jurisprudenz (Olbenburg and Leipsic, 
of the Cafe of Good Hope, Second 1887), ii. 69 sqq. 

Modes of 

execution 

adopted 

which 

avoid the 

shedding 

of blood. 

Persons 
guilty of 
incest 
buried 
alive. 

if they can cut their way out of the trap, rise through the 
bubbling water to the surface, and swim ashore, they are 
allowed to live/ In the island of Bali incest and adultery 
are punished by drowning ; the criminals are sewed up in 
a sack half-filled with stones and rice and cast into the sea. 
A like doom is incurred by a woman who marries a man of 
a lower caste ; but sometimes she dies a more dreadful death, 
being burnt alive. Both modes of execution may be adopted 
in order to avoid shedding the blood of the sinners ; for in 
Bali, the ordinary way of despatching a criminal is to stab 
him to the heart with a creese (kris) or crooked Malay 
sword.^ In the island of Celebes, as we saw, the blood of 
persons who have been guilty of certain sexual crimes is 
believed to blast the ground on which it falls ; ^ so that it 
is natural in their case to resort to a bloodless mode of 
execution such as drowning or burning. In Mamoedjoe, a 
district on the west coast of Celebes, the incest of a father 
with his daughter or of a brother wit4i his sister is punished 
by binding the culprits hand and focil, weighting them with 
stones, and flinging them into >the sea.* Among the 
Bugineese of Southern Celebes persons of princely rank who 
have committed this crime are placed on a raft of bamboos 
and set floating away out to sea.^ In Semendo, a district 
of Sumatra, the punishment for incest and murder used to 
be to bury the criminals alive. Before they were led to their 
doom, it was customary for the villagers to feast them, every 
family killing a fowl for the purpose. Then the whole 
population escorted the culprits to their grave outside the 
village and saw the earth shovelled in upon them. In the 
year 1864, at the village of Tandjong Imam, this doom was 
executed on a man and his deceased wife's sister, with whom 
he had been detected in an intrigue. "Great was my 
emotion and indignation," said the humane Dutch governor, 

1883), p. 126. 

2 See above, pp. 52 sq. 

* Hoorweg, "Notabevattendeeenige 
gegevens betreffende het landschap 
Mamoedjoe," Tijdschrift voor Indisclie 
Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde^ Ixiii. 
(1911) p. 95. 

^ G. A. Wilken, Verspreide Ge- 
schfiften (The Hague, 1912), ii. 481. 

' G. J. van Dongen, "De Koeboes," 
Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volken- 
kunde van Nederlandsch-Indie, Ixiii. 
(1910) p. 293. 

2 R. van Eck, " Schetsen van het 
eiland Bali," Tijdschrift voor Neder- 
landsch Indie, Nieuwe Serie, viii. 
(1879) pp. 370 sq. ; Julius Jacobs, 
Eenigen Tijd onder de Baliers (Batavia, 

" when I stood by the grave of these poor wretches along 
with the unworthy chiefs who had sat on the bench of justice 
during the enforced absence of Pangeran Anom and pro- 
nounced this sentence. I told them in plain language that 
judges who pronounced such a sentence of death on grounds 
so trivial (the request of the family concerned) deserved 
themselves to undergo the same punishment." The Dutch 
Government has since issued stringent orders that no one 
henceforth is to be buried alive, and has threatened with 
death any person who shall dare to disregard its orders.^ 
The same punishment for incest is, or used to be, inflicted 
by the Pasemhers, another tribe of Sumatra, but more 
merciful than the people of Semendo they gave the culprits 
at least a chance for their life. The guilty pair were bound 
back to back and buried in a deep hole, but from the mouth 
of each a hollow bamboo communicated with the upper air ; 
and if when the grave was opened after seven days the 
wretches were found to have survived a prolonged 
agony far worse than death, they were granted their 
life.^ Nor was even this dreadful fate the worst that 
could befall the sinner who broke the rules of sexual morality 
in Sumatra. The Battas or Bataks of Central Sumatra Adulterers 
condemned an adulterer to be killed and eaten ; strictly ™^^ ^""^ 
speaking he should be speared to death first and eaten 
afterwards, but as the injured husband and his friends 
were commonly the judges and executioners, it sometimes 
happened that, passion proving too strong for a strict 
adherence to the letter of the law, they cut the flesh from 
his living body, ate it, and drank his blood, before it 
occurred to them to terminate his sufferings by a spear- 
thrust. However, an adulterer occasionally escaped with 
his life on the payment of a fine, always provided that his 
accomplice was not the M'ife of a chief; for in that case 
there was no help for it but he must be killed and eaten.^ 
Even trivial misdemeanours or acts which we should 

1 J. S. G. Gramberg, " Schets der (Singapore, 1894), pp. 105 sg. 

Kesam, Semendo, Makakauw en Bla- ^ q_ a. Wilken, Verspreide Ge- 

lauw," Tijdschrift voor Indische Taal- sckriften, ii. 481 sq. 

Land- en Volkenkunde, xv. (1866) pp. ^ Franz Junghuhn, Die Baitaldnder 

456 - 458. Compare G. G. Batten, mif Sumatra (Berlin, 1847), ii. 147, 

Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago 1 56 sq. 

Extreme deem perfectly innocent may draw condign punishment on 
ftrcode°of*e thoughtless, the imprudent, the light-hearted in the 
sexul" ^ ° Indian Archipelago. Thus we read that in the island of 
Lombok'" Lombok " the men are exceedingly jealous and very strict 
with their wives. A married woman may not accept a cigar 
or a sirih leaf from a stranger under pain of death. I was 
informed that some years ago one of the English traders 
had a Balinese woman of good family living with him — the 
connexion being considered quite honourable by the natives. 
During some festival this girl offended against the law by 
accepting a flower or some such trifle from another man. 
This was reported to the Rajah (to some of whose wives the 
girl was related), and he immediately sent to the English- 
man's house ordering him to give the woman up as she must 
be ' krissed.' In vain he begged and prayed, and offered to 
pay any fine the Rajah might impose, and finally refused to 
give her up unless he was forced to do so. This the Rajah 
did not wish to resort to, as he no doubt thought he was 
acting as much for the Englishman's honour as for his own ; 
so he appeared to let the matter drop. But some time after- 
wards he sent one of his followers to the house, who beckoned 
the girl to the door, and then saying, ' The Rajah sends you 
this,' stabbed her to the heart. More serious infidelity is 
punished still more cruelly, the woman and her paramour 
being tied back to back and thrown into the sea, where some 
large crocodiles are always on the watch to devour the bodies. 
One such execution took place while I was at Ampanam, but 
I took a long walk into the country to be out of the way till 
it was all over." ^ 
The As the Malay peoples of the Indian Archipelago, from 

^h™"'d °^ whom the foregoing examples are drawn, have reached a 
based at fair level of culture, it might perhaps be thought that the 
su'ersti-™ extreme severity with which they visit offences against their 
tion. code of sexual morality springs from an excessive refinement 

of feeling rather than from a crude superstition ; and no 
doubt it may well happen that extreme sensitiveness on 
the point of honour, of which the Malays are susceptible, 
contributes in many cases to sharpen the sword of justice 

1 A. R. Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, Sixth Edition (London, 1877), pp. 
173 -f?- 

and add fresh force to the stroke. Yet under this delicacy of 
sentiment there appears to He a deep foundation of supersti- 
tion, as we may see by the extraordinary and disastrous in- 
fluence which in the opinion of these people sexual crime 
exerts, not so much on the criminals themselves, as on the 
whole realm of nature, drawing down deluges of rain from the 
clouds till the crops rot in the fields, shaking the solid earth 
beneath men's feet, and blowing up into flames the slumber- 
ing fires of the volcano, till the sky is darkened at noon by 
a black canopy of falling ashes and illumined at night by 
the sullen glow of the molten lava shot forth from the 
subterranean furnace.^ And however much an over-refine- a similar 
ment of feeling may be invoked to explain the more than 5g™"i'^ '" 
Puritanical severity of the Malay moral code in sexual matters 
matters, no such explanation can be applied to the like am^ong^the 
emotion of horror which similar offences excite among the Australian 
savage aborigines of Australia, the lowest and the least rhei'mvest' 
refined probably of all the races of men about whom we of existing 
possess accurate information. These rude savages also 
treated with rigorous severity all breaches of that widely 
ramified network of prohibitions in which throughout the 
Australian continent, before it fell under English rule, the 
two sexes lived immeshed. The whole community of a 
tribe or nation was commonly subdivided into a number of 
minute bodies, which we are accustomed to call classes 
or clans according to the principle on which they were 
variously constituted. No man might marry a woman of 
his own class or clan, and in most tribes his freedom of 
choice was still further limited by complex rules of marriage 
and descent which excluded him from seeking a wife in 
many more subdivisions of the tribe, and sometimes com- 
pelled him to look for her only in one out of them all. 
And the ordinary penalty for any violation of these rules 
was death. The offender was lucky who escaped with his 
life and a body more or less riddled with spear wounds. 
Thus one who knew the aborigines of Victoria well in the Severe 
old days, before they were first contaminated and then P™'f'': 

^ ' -' ments in- 

destroyed by contact with European civilization, tells us that flicted for 
"no marriage or betrothal is permitted without the approval ofje^^es 
1 See above, pp. 46-54. 

among the 
aborigines 
of Victoria. 

Severe 
punish- 
ments in- 
flicted for 
sexual 
offences in 
the WakeL 
bura tribe 
of Queens- 
land. 

of the chiefs of each party, who first ascertain that no 
'flesh' relationship exists, and even then their permission 
must be rewarded by presents. So strictly are the laws of 
marriage carried out, that, should any signs of affection and 
courtship be observed between those of ' one flesh,' the 
brothers, or male relatives of the woman beat her severely ; 
the man is brought before the chief, and accused of an 
intention to fall into the same flesh, and is severely repri- 
manded by the tribe. If he persists, and runs away with 
the object of his affections, they beat and ' cut his head all 
over ' ; and if the woman was a consenting party she is 
half killed. If she dies in consequence of her punishment, 
her death is avenged by the man's receiving an additional 
beating from her relatives. No other vengeance is taken, 
as her punishment is legal. A child born under such con- 
ditions is taken from the parents, and handed over to the 
care of its grandmother, who is compelled to rear it, as no 
one else will adopt it. It says much for the morality of the 
aborigines and their laws that illegitimacy is rare, and is 
looked upon with such abhorrence that the mother is always 
severely beaten by her relatives, and sometimes put to 
death and burned. Her child is occasionally killed and 
burned with her. The father of the child is also punished 
with the greatest severity, and occasionally killed. Should 
he survive the chastisement inflicted upon him, he is always 
shunned by the woman's relatives, and any efforts to con- 
ciliate them with gifts are spurned, and his presents are 
put in the fire and burned. Since the advent of the 
Europeans among them, the aborigines have occasionally 
disregarded their admirable marriage laws, and to this dis- 
regard they attribute the greater weakness and unhealthiness 
of their children." ^ 

Again, in the Wakelbura tribe of eastern Queensland 
the law was extremely strict as to unlawful connexions or 
elopements between persons too nearly related to each other. 
Such persons might be, for example, those whom we call 
cousins both on the father's and the mother's side, as well 
as those who belonged to a forbidden class. If such a man 

' James Dawson, Australian Aborigines (Melbourne, Sydney, and Adelaide, 
1881), p. 28. 

carried off a woman who had been betrothed to another, he 
would be pursued not only by the male relations of the 
woman and of her betrothed husband, but also by the men 
of his own tribal subdivision, whom he had outraged by his 
breach of the marriage law ; and wherever they overtook 
him, he would have to fight them all. His own brothers 
would challenge him to fight by throwing boomerangs or 
other weapons at him ; and if he did not accept the 
challenge, they would turn on the woman and cripple or kill 
her with their weapons, unless she could escape into the 
bush. Nay, the woman's own mother would cut and 
perhaps slay her with her own hands. Sooner or later the 
ravisher had to engage in single combat with the man he 
had injured. Both were fully armed with shield, spear, 
boomerang and knife. When they had exhausted their 
missiles, they closed on each other with their knives, a dense 
ring of blacks generally forming round the combatants to 
see fair play. In such a fight the man who had broken the 
tribal law always came off worst ; for even if he got the 
better of his adversary, the other men and even his own 
brothers would attack him and probably gash him with 
their knives. Fatal stabs were sometimes given in these 
fights, but more usually, it would seem, the onlookers inter- 
fered and wrested the weapons from the two combatants 
before they proceeded to extremities. In any case the 
woman who had eloped was terribly mauled with knives, 
and if she survived the ordeal was restored to the man 
whom she had deserted.-^ 

Among the tribes in the central parts of North- West Severe 
Queensland, if a man eloped with a single woman whom he ^™'fin. 
might lawfully marry, but who for any reason was forbidden flicted for 
to him by the tribal council, he had on returning to camp of^nces 
with his wife to run the gauntlet of the outraged community, among the 
who hacked his buttocks and shoulders with knives, beat his of other 
head and limbs with sticks and boomerangs, and pricked p^i^'s °f 

^ . . , . , . , ,. , Australia. 

the fleshy parts of his thighs with spears, taking care, how- 
ever, not to inflict fatal injuries, lest they should incur blood 
revenge. But if the woman with whom the man had eloped 

' A. W. Hewitt, Native Tribes of Sonth-East Australia (London, 1904), 
pp. 222-224. 

was of a class into which he might not marry, both the 
culprits were put to death, the relations on both sides tacitly- 
consenting to the execution.-' In the Yuin tribe of New 
South Wales, if a man eloped with a woman of his own 
tribal subdivision, all the men would pursue him ; and if he 
refused to give the woman up, the sorcerer of the place would 
probably say to his men, " This man has done very wrong, 
you must kill him " ; whereupon somebody would thrust a 
spear into him, his relatives not interfering lest the same 
fate should befall them.^ The same punishment was 
inflicted for the same offence by the Wotjobaluk tribe of 
North- Western Victoria ; but their western neighbours, the 
Mukjarawaint tribe, not content with killing the guilty man, 
cut off the flesh off his thighs and upper arms, roasted and 
ate it, his own brother partaking of the cannibal meal. As 
for the rest of the body, they chopped it up small and left 
it lying on a log. The same custom is said to have been 
observed by the Jupagalk tribe.^ Among many tribes of 
Western Australia, as well as of other parts of that continent, 
persons who bear the same class-name may not marry. 
Any such marriage is regarded as incest and rigorously 
punished. For example, " the union of Boorong and 
Boorong is to the natives the union of brother and sister, 
although there may be no real blood relationship between 
the pair, and a union of that kind is looked upon with 
horror, and the perpetrators very severely punished . and 
separated, and if the crime is repeated they are both 
killed." * On the other side of the continent the Kamilaroi 
of New South Wales similarly inflicted condign punishment 
on both the culprits who persisted in marrying each other 
contrary to the tribal law ; the male relations of the man 
killed him, and the female relations of the woman killed 
her. The Kamilaroi of the Gwydir River went further ; they 

1 Walter E. Roth, Ethnological ^ Mrs. Daisy M. Bates, "The 
Studies among the North-West-Central Marriage Laws and some Customs of 
Queejisland Aborigines (Brisbane and the West Australian Aborigines," 
London, 1897), p. 181. Victorian Geographical Journal, xxiii.- 

2 A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of '"''^- (1905-1906) p. 42. The state- 
South-East Australia, pp. 264, 266. ment m the text was made by a settler 

''^ who had lived m the Tableland dis- 

^ A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of trict, inland from Roeburne, for twenty 
South-East Australia, pp. 246 sq. years. 

killed any man who so much as spoke to or held any com- Penalty of 
munication with his mother-in-law/ for one of the most ^^fV?" 

* nicted for 

stringent laws of savage etiquette is that which prohibits any the crime 
direct social intercourse between a man and his wife's mother, "oa^'^gther^ 
The law has been variously explained,^ but a large body of in-law. 
evidence points to the conclusion that this custom of mutual 
avoidance is simply a precaution to prevent improper rela- 
tions between the two. Hence a brief consideration of it is 
appropriate in this place ; for to all appearance the custom, 
though it may be wholesome and beneficial in practice, has 
originated purely in superstition. But before giving my 
reasons for thinking so it may be well, for the sake of those 
who are unfamiliar with savage etiquette, to illustrate the 
practice itself by a few examples.* 

Speaking of the Boloki, a Bantu tribe of the Upper Thecustom 
Congo, an experienced missionary, the Rev. John H. Weeks, °'^^™)Jg^"° 
writes as follows : " Perhaps this will be the best place in in-law and 
which to make a few remarks on the mother-in-law. She °a*ons ^y 
and her son-in-law may never look on each other's face. I marriage 
have often heard a man say, ' So-and-so, your mother-in-law Boiokf of^ 
is coming,' and the person addressed would run into my the Congo, 
house and hide himself until his wife's mother had gone by. 
They can sit at a little distance from each other, with their 
backs to one another, and talk over affairs when necessary. 
Bokilo means mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, 
father-in-law, sister of mother-in-law, brother of father-in-law, 
wife of wife's brother, and in fact any relation - in - law. 
Bokilo, the noun, is derived from kila = to forbid, prohibit, 
taboo, and indicates that all bearing the relationship of 

' A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of of the Anthropological Institute, xviii. 

South-East Australia, p. 208. Simi- (1889) pp. 246-248; Salomon Reinach, 

larly among tribes on the Hunter " Le Gendre et la Belle-Mere," X'.<4«- 

River "a man is not permitted to thropologie, xxii. (1911) pp. 649-662; 

speak to his wife's mother, but can do id., Culies, Mythes et Religions, iv. 

so through a third party. In former (Paris, 1912) pp. 130-147. 
days it was death to speak to her, but 

now a man doing so is only severely ^ \n Toteinism and Exogamy (InAex, 

reprimanded and has to leave the s.w. " Avoidance" and " Mother-in- 

camp for a certain time " (A. W. law ") will be found a collection of 

Howitt, op. cit. p. 267). examples. In what follows I abstain 

'^ See for example (Sir) E. B. Tylor, for the most part from citing instances 

"On a method of investigating the which have been adduced by me 

Development of Institutions," Journal before. 

bokilo can have no intimate relationship with one another, 
for it is regarded as incestuous ; and it is according to native 
ideas just as wrong for a daughter-in-law to speak or look at 
her husband's father, as for the son-in-law to speak or look 
at his wife's mother. Some have told me that this was to 
guard against all possibility of cohabitation, ' For a person 
you never look at you never desire.' Others have said, 'Well, 
don't you see, my wife came from her womb.' I am strongly 
inclined to the opinion that the former is the real reason." ^ 
From this statement it appears that a man and his wife's 
mother are not the only persons who are bound to avoid 
each other in society ; the same rule of social avoidance is 
incumbent on a man and his son's wife, and on many other 
persons of opposite sex who are connected with each other 
by marriage ; and in regard to all such persons it is held 
that any intimate relationship between them would be in- 
cestuous. Hence we see, what is important to bear in mind, 
that the rule of social avoidance incumbent on a man and 
his wife's mother is by no means solitary of its kind, and 
cannot be considered apart from a large number of similar 
The custom rules of avoidance observed between other persons. The 
reiations'by Same large extension of the rule appears in the customs of 
marriage the Batamba, a Bantu tribe of Busoga, a country on the 
BTtambaof "orth side of the Lake Victoria Nyanza. A Catholic mis- 
Busoga. sionary, who has laboured among the Batamba for nine years, 
describes their practice in this matter as follows : — 

" There is a very strange custom which may be con- 
sidered here. If a son marries or if a daughter does the 
same, then if they are grown up, from the day the son or 
daughter marries, the mother, father of both parties, the 
brothers and sisters of both parties are not allowed to sleep 
under the same roof If a man marries, then he builds a 
house for himself, and should his parents live with him, or 
his brothers and sisters, then they must have a separate 
house near by. They are not forbidden to go in and visit 
him or her, but are not allowed to sleep there. The reason 
is this. They say that otherwise sickness is caused, and this 

1 Rev. John H. Weeks, Among Upper Congo," Journal of the Royal 

Congo Cannibals (London, 1913), pp. Anthropological Institute, xl. (1910) 

133 sq. Compare id., " Anthropo- pp. 367 j^. 
logical Notes on the Bangala of the 

is called endivade ya buko, the sickness of relationship, literally 
taken. The sickness is called bujugumiro, trembling, from 
the verb kujuguniira, to shiver or tremble. This cannot be 
got out of their heads, and no amount of talking or arguing 
will convince them of the opposite. I have attended many 
cases of this disease and I have not known one to recover. 

" Again, the father and mother of the bride and bride- 
groom, the aunts and uncles of bride and bridegroom may 
no more shake hands or touch in any way the bride and 
bridegroom, or else the same disease, bujugumiro, will follow. 
Of course much less will they commit themselves between 
each other for the fear of the same reason. And it is never 
heard of that a brother and sister, aunt and nephew, niece 
and uncle have ever committed themselves seriously. They 
are so afraid of the disease they say will follow, that, as a 
man here over seventy years of age tells me, he has never 
in his whole life heard of such a misbehaviour. The people 
say, ' Jekiyinzika = it is impossible for such a thing to 
happen.' And no doubt one is struck with the care they 
take. The disease following does not come as a punish- 
ment from the gods, but they say, 'Endwada ejja yokka, the 
illness comes by itself " ^ 

From the foregoing account it appears that among the Avoidance 
Batamba the rules of social avoidance are observed between relations 
blood-relations of opposite sexes, such as brothers and sisters, asweiiasof 
uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, as well as between ^y 
connexions by marriage. This is a further extension of the marriage. 
rule of social avoidance which it is important to bear in 
mind. We shall recur to it presently. For our present 
purpose it deserves also to be noticed that breaches of the 
custom are believed to be punished by a disease of trem- 
bling or shivering, which, though it probably springs purely 
from the imagination of the culprits, nevertheless appears to 
be always fatal. Further, we learn that the mere apprehen- 
sion of this disease acts as a most efficient check upon im- 
proper relations between persons who are connected with 
each other by blood or marriage. 

Among the Akamba, a Bantu tribe of British East Africa, 

1 Father M. A. Condon, " Contri- Basoga - Batamba, Uganda Protector- 
bution to the Ethnography of the sXe" Anthropos, vi. (\<)ii) -pp. jiT] sq. 

Thecustom " if a man meets his mother-in-law in the road they both 
motheMn-^ hide their faces and pass by in the bush on opposite sides 
law and of the path. If a man did not observe this custom and at 
daughter '^"^ ^imc Wanted to marry another wife, it would prove a 
among the serious Stigma, and parents would have nothing to do with 
British East him. Moreover, if a wife heard that her husband had 
Africa. stopped and spoken to her mother in the road, she would 
leave him. If a man has business he wishes to discuss with 
his mother-in-law, he goes to her hut at night, and she will 
talk to him from behind the partition in the hut. ... If a 
girl of the age of puberty meets her father in the road, she 
hides as he passes, nor can she ever go and sit near him 
in the village until the day comes when he tells her that it 
has been arranged for her to marry a certain man. After 
marriage she does not avoid her father in any way." ^ 
Thus among the Akamba a man must avoid his own 
marriageable, but unmarried, daughter exactly as he avoids 
his wife's mother ; but the custom of avoidance ceases when 
his daughter marries. This extension of the rule to a man's 
own daughter, and its limitation to the time during which 
the girl is nubile but single, are most significant, and point 
plainly to a fear of improper relations between father and 
daughter. To that point we shall return shortly. 
Thecustom Among the Bakerewe, a Bantu people inhabiting a large 
parenu-in-^ and fertile island in Lake Victoria Nyanza, " the wife, whether 
law among the first [omukuru) or the last [omwengd), must always belong 
tribes of ^o a family other than that of the husband, for marriages are 
Central not contracted between relations. Never in any case will 
Africa. the new household establish itself in the immediate neighbour- 
hood of the wife's parents. The reason is that the son-in-law 
ipmukwerima) and his mother-in-law {jnasard), according to 
their customs, may not see each other nor look upon each 
other ; hence in order not to run the risk of breaking a rule 
to which everybody attaches grave importance, they go as 
far away as possible." ^ Among some tribes of Eastern 
Africa which formerly acknowledged the suzerainty of the 
sultan of Zanzibar, before a young couple had children 

1 C. W. Hobley, Ethnology of A- 2 Father Eugene Hurel, " Religion 

Kamba and other East African Tribes et vie domestique des Bakerewe," 
(Cambridge, 1910), pp. 103, 104. Anthropos, vi. (1911) p. 287. 

they might meet neither their father-in-law nor their mother- 
in-law. To avoid them they must make a long roundabout. 
But if they could not do that, they must throw themselvts 
on the ground and hide their faces till the father-in-law or 
mother-in-law had passed by.^ 

Among the Anyanja, a Bantu people of British Central Thecustom 
Africa, " a man used never to speak to his mother-in-law till °^ avoiding 

' -"^ parents-in- 

after the birth of his first son. Neither a man nor his wife law among 
will eat in company of their mother or father-in-law until after of^rifeh 
birth of a child. If a man sees his mother-in-law eat, he Central 
has insulted her and is expected to pay damages. If a man Northern 
meets his mother-in-law coming along the road and does not Rhodesia. 
recognise her, she will fall down on the ground as a sign, 
when he will run away. In the same way a father-in-law 
will signal to his daughter-in-law ; the whole idea being that 
they are unworthy to be noticed till they have proved that 
they can beget children." ^ However, if a wife should prove 
barren for three years, the rules of avoidance between the 
young couple and their parents-in-law cease to be observed.^ 
Hence the custom of avoidance among these people is asso- 
ciated in some way with the wife's fertility. So among the 
Awemba, a Bantu tribe of Northern Rhodesia, " if a young 
man sees his mother-in-law coming along the path, he must 
retreat into the bush and make way for her, or if she suddenly 
comes upon him he must keep his eyes fixed on the ground, 
and only after a child is born may they converse together." * 
Among the Angoni, another Bantu tribe of British Central 
Africa, it would be a gross breach of etiquette if a man were 
to enter his son-in-law's house ; he may come within ten 
paces of the door, but no nearer. A woman may not even 
approach her son-in-law's house, and she is never allowed to 
speak to him. Should they meet accidentally on a path, 
the son-in-law gives way and makes a circuit to avoid en- 
countering his mother-in-law face to face.^ Here then we 

' Father Picarda, "Autourdu Man- ^ jj. S. Stannus, op. cit. p. 309. 

dera, Notes sur I'Ouzigoua, I'Oukwdre * Cullen Gouldsbury and Hubert 

et rOudo^ (Zanquebar)," Les Missions Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northern 

Catholiques, xviii. (1886) p. 286. Rhodesia (London, 1911), p. 259. 

2 H. S. Stannus, "Notes on Some ^ " The Angoni-ZuIus,"^;-2&/2 Cis«- 

Tribes of British Central Africa," tral Africa Gazette, No, 86, April 30th, 

Journal of the Royql Anthropological 1898, p. 2. 
Institute, xl. (1910) p. 307. 

see that a man avoids his son-in-law as well as his mother- 
in-law, though not so strictly. 
The custom ' Among the Thonga, a Bantu tribe about Delagoa Bay, 
of avoiding ^j^gj^ ^ j^j^jj meets his mother-in-law or her sister on the 

mother-in- 

law and road, he steps out of the road into the forest on the right 
wife'^^ hand side and sits down. She does the same. Then they 
brother salute each other in the usual way by clapping their hands. 
Thonga of After that they may talk to each other. When a man is in 
Delagoa a hut, his mother-in-law dare not enter it, but must sit down 
outside without seeing him. So seated she may salute him, 
" Good morning, son of So-and-so." But she would not 
dare to pronounce his name. However, when a man has 
been married many years, his mother-in-law has less fear of 
him, and will even enter the hut where he is and speak to 
him. But among the Thonga the woman whom a man is 
bound by custom to avoid most rigidly is not his wife's 
mother, but the wife of his wife's brother. If the two meet 
on a path, they carefully avoid each other ; he will step out 
of the way and she will hurry on, while her companions, if 
she has any, will stop and chat with him. She will not 
enter the same boat with him, if she can help it, to cross a 
river. She will not eat out of the same dish. If he speaks 
to her, it is with constraint and embarrassment. He will 
not enter her hut, but will crouch at the door and address 
her in a voice trembling with emotion. Should there be no 
one else to bring him food, she will do it reluctantly, watching 
his hut and putting the food inside the door when he is 
absent. It is not that they dislike each other, but that 
they feel a mutual, a mysterious fear.^ However, among 
the Thonga, the rules of avoidance between connexions 
by marriage decrease in severity as time passes. The 
strained relations between a man and his wife's mother in 
particular become easier. He begins to call her " Mother " 
and she calls him " Son." This change even goes so far 
that in some cases the man may go and dwell in the village 
of his wife's parents, especially if he has children and the 
children are grown up.^ Again, among the Ovambo, a Bantu 

' Henri A. Junod, Les Ba-Ronga (Neuchatel, 1912-1913), i. 230-232. 
(Neuchatel, 1898), pp. 79 sq. ; id., 2 Henri A. Junod, The Life of a 

The Life of a South African Tribe South African Tribe, i. 239. 

people of German South- West Africa, a man may not look 
at his future mother-in-law while he talks with her, but is 
bound to keep his eyes steadily fixed on the ground. In 
some cases the avoidance is even more stringent ; if the two 
meet unexpectedly, they separate at once. But after the 
marriage has been celebrated, the social intercourse between 
mother-in-law and son-in-law becomes easier on both 
sides.^ 

Thus far our examples of ceremonial avoidance between The custom 
mother-in-law and son-in-law have been drawn from Bantu °he^m°ther? 
tribes. But in Africa the custom, though apparently most in-law 
prevalent and most strongly marked among peoples of the other than 
great Bantu stock, is not confined to them. Among the ^antu 
Masai of British East Africa, " mothers-in-law and their sons- Africa. 
in-law must avoid one another as much as possible ; and if 
a son-in-law enters his mother-in-law's hut she must retire 
into the inner compartment and sit on the bed, whilst he 
remains in the outer compartment ; they may then talk. 
Own brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law must also avoid one 
another, though this rule does not apply to half-brothers-in- 
law and sisters-in-law."^ So, too, among the Bogos, a tribe 
on the outskirts of Abyssinia, a man never sees the face of 
his mother-in-law and never pronounces her name ; the two 
take care not to meet.^ Among the Donaglas a husband 
after marriage " lives in his wife's house for a year, without 
being allowed to see his mother-in-law, with whom he enters 
into relations only on the birth of his first son."* In Darfur, 
when a youth has been betrothed to a girl, however intimate 
he may have been with her parents before, he ceases to see 
them until the ceremony has taken place, and even avoids 
them in the street. They, on their part, hide their faces, if 
they happen to meet him unexpectedly.^ 

1 Hermann Tbnjes, Ovamboland, Recht der Bogos (Winterthur, 1859), 
Land, Leutt, Mission (Berlin, 1911), p. 63. 

p. 133. ^ G. Casati, Ten Years in Equatoria 

2 A. C. HoUis, "A Note on the 1^°°'^°" ^""^ New York, 1891), 
Masai System of Relationship and '' s^^ , ^ ^ i a^ , ^ 
other Matters connected therewith," ^ J . ^^^^^ /f T "^'f, J^'^i^"' 
Journal of the Royal Anthropological iMohammedlbn Omar El- Tounsy\ m 
-', ^ . . . ^ , , „ , „, o , Soudan, abridged from the r rench by 

Institute, Xl. (1910 p. 481. T. 1 C.. T U ,T 1 O.N 

' ^ ^ ' r T Bayle St. John (London, 1854), pp. 

^ Werner Munzinger, Sitten und 97 sg. 

G 

marriage in 
Sumatra 
and New 
Guinea. 

The custom To pass now from Africa to other parts of the world, 
reMont'by ^mong the Looboos, a primitive tribe in the tropical forests 
of Sumatra, custom forbids a woman to be in her father-in- 
law's company and a man to be in his mother-in-law's 
society. For example, if a man meets his daughter-in-law, 
he should cross over to the other side of the road to let her 
pass as far as possible from him ; but if the way is too 
narrow, he takes care in time to get out of it. But no such 
reserve is prescribed between a father-in-law and his son-in- 
law, or between a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law.^ 
Among the Bukaua, a Melanesian tribe of German New 
Guinea, the rules of avoidance between persons connected by 
marriage are very stringent ; they may not touch each other 
or mention each other's names. But contrary to the usual 
practice the avoidance seems to be quite as strict between 
persons of the same sex as between males and females. At 
least the writer who reports the custom illustrates it chiefly 
by the etiquette which is observed between a man and his 
daughter's husband. When a man eats in presence of his 
son-in-law, he veils his face ; but if nevertheless his son-in- 
law should see his open mouth, the father-in-law is so 
ashamed that he runs away into the wood. If he gives his 
son-in-law anything, such as betel or tobacco, he will never 
put it in his hand, but pours it on a leaf, and the son-in-law 
fetches it away. If father-in-law and son-in-law both take 
part in a wild boar hunt, the son-in-law will abstain from 
seizing or binding the boar, lest he should chance to touch 
his father-in-law. If, however, through any accident their 
hands or backs should come into contact, the father-in-law is 
extremely horrified, and a dog must be at once killed, which 
he gives to his son-in-law for the purpose of wiping out the 
stain on his honour. If the two should ever fall out about 
anything, the son-in-law will leave the village and his wife, 
and will stay away in some other place till his father-in-law, 
for his daughter's sake, calls him back. A man in like 
manner will never touch his sister-in-law.^ 

> J. Kreemer, " De Loeboes in ^ Stefan Lehner, " Bukaua," in R. 

Mandailing," Bijdragen tot de Taal- Neuhauss's Deutsch Neu-Guinea (Ber- 

Land- en Volkenkunde van Neder- lin, 1911), iii. 426 j^. 
landsch-Indi'e^ Ixvi. (1912) p. 324. 

Among the low savages of the Californian peninsula a man The custom 
was not allowed for some time to look into the face of his °f a™'dmg 

relations by 

mother-in-law or of his wife's other near relations ; when these marriage 
women were present he had to step aside or hide himself.^ ^&\^ *'^ 
Among the Indians of the Isla del Malhado in Florida a tribesof 
father-in-law and mother-in-law might not enter the house of '"''"'^^" 
their son-in-law, and he on his side might not appear before 
his father-in-law and his relations. If they met by accident 
they had to go apart to the distance of a bowshot, holding 
their heads down and their eyes turned to the earth. But 
a woman was free to converse with the father and mother of 
her husband.^ Among the Indians of Yucatan, if a betrothed 
man saw his future father-in-law or mother-in-law at a 
distance, he turned away as quickly as possible, believing 
that a meeting with them would prevent him from begetting 
children.^ Among the Arawaks of British Guiana a man 
may never see the face of his wife's mother. If she is in 
the house with him, they must be separated by a screen or 
partition-wall ; if she travels with him in a canoe, she steps 
in first, in order that she may turn her back to him.* Among 
the Caribs " the women never quit their father's house, and 
in that they have an advantage over their husbands in as 
much as they may talk to all sorts of people, whereas the 
husband dare not converse with his wife's relations, unless he 
is dispensed from this observance either by their tender age 
or by their intoxication. They shun meeting them and 
make great circuits for that purpose. If they are surprised 
in a place where they cannot help meeting, the person 
addressed turns his face another way so as not to be obliged 
to see the person, whose voice he is compelled to hear." * 

1 J. Baegert, " An Account of the Dhouverte de r Amirique). The orig- 
Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Califor- inal of this work was published in 
nian Peninsula," Annual Report of the Spanish at Valladolid in 1555. 
Board of Regents of the Smithsonian ^ Brasseur de Bourbourg, Histoire 
Institution for the year i86j, p. 368. des Nations civilisies du Mexique et 
This and the following American cases de P Amiriqtie-Centrale (Paris, 1857- 
have already been cited by me in 1859), ii- 5^ ■'?• 

Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 314 j^. * G. Klemm, Allgetneine Culiur- 

2 Alvar Nunez Cabeja de Vaca, geschichte der Menschheit (Leipsic, 
Relation et Naufrages (Paris, 1837), 1843-1852), ii. 77. 

pp. 109 sq. (in Ternaux - Compans' ' J. B. du Tertre, Histoire generale 

Voyages, Relations, et Mimoires origi- des Isles de S. Christophe, de la Giiade- 
naux pour servir h f Histoire de la loupe, de la Martinique et autres dans 

Among the Araucanian Indians of Chili a man's mother-in- 
law refuses to speak to or even to look at him during the 
marriage festivity, and "the point of honour is, in some 
instances, carried so far, that for years after the marriage the 
mother never addresses her son-in-law face to face ; though 
with her back turned, or with the interposition of a fence or 
a partition, she will converse with him freely." ^ 
The custom It would be easy to multiply examples of similar customs 

reiadontby ^^ avoidance between persons closely connected by marriage, 
marriage but the foregoiog may serve as specimens. Now in order to 
separated determine the meaning of such customs it is very important 
from the to observe that similar customs of avoidance are practised 
custom of in some tribes not merely between persons connected with 
avoiding each other by marriage, but also between the nearest blood 

relations by . _ , . -, 

blood; both relations of different sexes, namely, between parents and 
are prop- children and between brothers and sisters ; ^ and the customs 

ably pre- 
cautions to are so alike that it seems difficult or impossible to separate 

prevent them and to offer one explanation of the avoidance of con- 
improper ^ 
relations nexions by marriage and another different explanation of 

sexls''^""'^ the avoidance of blood relations. Yet this is what is done 

by some who attempt to explain the customs of avoidance ; 

or rather they confine their attention wholly to connexions 

by marriage, or even to mothers-in-law alone, while they 

completely ignore blood relations, although in point of fact 

it is the avoidance of blood relations which seems to furnish 

the key to the problem of such avoidances in general. The 

true explanation of all such customs of avoidance appears to 

be, as I have already indicated, that they are precautions 

designed to remove the temptation to sexual intercourse 

between persons whose marriage union is for any reason 

repugnant to the moral sense of the community. This 

explanation, while it has been rejected by theorists at home, 

FAmerique (Paris, 1654), p. 419. A rique qui n^ont pas esti encore fubliez, 

similar, but rather briefer, account of Paris, 1684). 

the custom is given by De la Borde, ^ Edmond Reuel Smith, The Arau- 

■viho may have borrowed from Du cardans (London, 1855)) ?• 217. 

Tertre. See De la Borde, "Relation ^ We have met with a custom of 

de I'origine, moeurs, coustumes, re- avoidance between father and daughter 

ligion, guerres et voyages des Caraibes, among the Akamba (above, p. 78). 

sauvages des Isles Antilles de I'Ame- For more examples see Totemism and 

rique," p. 5^ ('" Recueil de divers Exogamy, Index, s.v. "Avoidance," 

Voyages fails en Afrique et en I'Ame- vol. iv. p. 326. 

has been adopted by some of the best observers of savage 
life, whose opinion is entitled to carry the greatest weight.^ 

That a fear of improper intimacy even between the Mutual 
nearest blood relations is not baseless among races of a lower =i™''ance 

" of mother 

culture seems proved by the testimony of a Dutch mis- and son, 
sionary in regard to the Battas or Bataks of Sumatra, a °l^l^'°^^ 
people who have attained to a fairly high degree of barbaric daughter, 
civilization. The Battas "observe certain rules of avoidance brotherand 
in regard to near relations by blood or marriage ; and we sister 
are informed that such avoidance springs not from the B™t°af 
strictness but from the looseness of their moral practice. 
A Batta, it is said, assumes that a solitary meeting of a 
man with a woman leads to an improper intimacy between 
them. But at the same time he believes that incest or the 
sexual intercourse of near relations excites the anger of the 
gods and entails calamities of all sorts. Hence near relations 
are obliged to avoid each other lest they should succumb to 
temptation. A Batta, for example, would think it shocking 
were a brother to escort his sister to an evening party. 
Even in the presence of others a Batta brother and sister 
feel embarrassed. If one of them comes into the house, the 
other will go away. Further, a man may never be alone in 
the house with his daughter, nor a mother with her son. A 
man may never speak to his mother-in-law nor a woman to 
her father-in-law. The Dutch missionary who reports these 
customs adds that he is sorry to say that from what he 
knows of the Battas he believes the maintenance of most of 
these rules to be very necessary. For the same reason, he 
tells us, as soon as Batta lads have reached the age of 
puberty they are no longer allowed to sleep in the family 
house but are sent away to pass the night in a separate 
building (djambon) ; and similarly as soon as a man loses 
his wife by death he is excluded from the house." ^ 

1 Among those who incline more or missionaries who are only concerned to 

less definitely to accept this view are record the facts, and have no theories 

the late Dr. A. W. Howitt (" Notes to maintain. 

on some Australian Class Systems," ^ Totemism and Exogamy, ii. 188 

Journal of the Anthrofological Institute, sq. The authority for these statements 

xii. (1883) pp. 502 sq.]. Dr. R. H. is M. Joustra, " Het leven, de zeden 

Codrington (see below, p. 86), M. en gewoonten der Bataks," Mede- 

Joustra (see below, p. 85), and the deelingen van wege het Nederlandsche 

Rev. J. H. Weeks (see above, p. 76). Zendelmggenootschap, xlvi. (1902) pp. 

Three of these writers are experienced 391 sq. 

Mutual 
avoidance 
of mother 
and son 
and of 
brother and 
sister 

atnong the 
Melane- 
sians. 

Mutual 
avoidance 
of a man 
and his 
mother-in- 
law among 
the Melane- 
sians. 

In like manner among the Melanesians of the Banks' 
Islands and the New Hebrides a man must not only avoid 
his mother-in-law ; from the time when he reaches or 
approaches puberty and has begun to wear clothes instead 
of running about naked, he must avoid his mother and 
sisters, and he may no longer live in the same house with 
them ; he takes up his quarters in the clubhouse of the 
unmarried males, where he now regularly eats and sleeps. 
He may go to his father's house to ask for food, but if 
his sister is within he must go away before he eats ; if she 
is not there, he may sit down near the door and eat. If 
by chance brother and sister meet in the path, she runs 
away or hides. If a boy, walking on the sands, perceives 
footprints which he knows to be those of his sister, he will 
not follow them, nor will she follow his. This mutual 
avoidance lasts through life. Not only must he avoid the 
persons of his sisters, but he may not pronounce their 
names or even use a common word which happens to 
form part of any one of their names. In like manner his 
sisters eschew the use of his name and of all words which 
form part of it. Strict, too, is a boy's reserve towards his 
mother from the time when he begins to wear clothes, 
and the reserve increases as he grows to manhood. It 
is greater on her side than on his. He may go to the 
house and ask for food and his mother may bring it out 
for him, but she will not give it to him ; she puts it down 
for him to take. If she calls to him to come, she speaks 
to him in the plural, in a more distant manner ; " Come 
ye," she says, not " Come thou." If they talk together 
she sits at a little distance and turns away, for she is shy 
of her grown-up son. " The meaning of all this," as Dr. 
Codrington observes, " is obvious." ^ When a Melanesian 
man of the Banks' Islands marries, he is bound in like manner 
to avoid his mother-in-law. "The rules of avoidance 
are very strict and minute. As regards the avoidance of 
the person, a man will not come near his wife's mother ; 
the avoidance is mutual ; if the two chance to meet in 
a path, the woman will step out of it and stand with her 
back turned till he has gone by, or perhaps if it be more 

1 R. H. Codrington, D. D., The Melanesians (Oxford, 1891), p. 232. 

convenient he will move out of the way. At Vanua Lava, 
in Port Patteson, a man would not follow his mother-in-law 
along the beach, nor she him, until the tide had washed 
out the footsteps of the first traveller from the sand. At 
the same time a man and his mother-in-law will talk at a 
distance." ^ 

It seems obvious that these Melanesian customs of it is 
avoidance are the same, and must be explained in the significant 

^ that mutual 

same way whether the woman whom a man shuns is his avoidance 
wife's mother or his own mother or his sister. Now it is l^f ^^j*^" 

blood 

highly significant that just as among the Akamba of East relations 
Africa the mutual avoidance of father and daughter only °exes^°^"^ 
begins when the girl has reached puberty, so among the begins at 
Melanesians the mutual avoidance of a boy on the one puberty. 
side and of his mother and sisters on the other only 
begins when the boy has reached or approached puberty. 
Thus in both peoples the avoidance between the nearest 
blood relations only commences at the dangerous age when 
sexual connexion on both sides begins to be possible. It 
seems difficult, therefore, to evade the conclusion that the 
mutual avoidance is adopted for no other reason than to 
diminish as far as possible the chances of sexual unions 
which public opinion condemns as incestuous. But if that 
is the reason why a young Melanesian boy, on the verge 
of puberty, avoids his own mother and sisters, it is natural 
and almost necessary to infer that it is the same reason 
which leads him, as a full-grown and married man, to 
eschew the company of his wife's mother. 

Similar customs of avoidance between mothers and Mutual 
sons, between fathers and daughters, and between brothers ^f™ o^jjg^ 
and sisters are observed by the natives of the Caroline and son, 
Islands, and the writer who records them assigns the fear \^^ 
of incest as the motive for their observance. " The pro- daughter, 
hibition of marriage," he says, "and of sexual intercourse brother and 
between kinsfolk of the same tribe is regarded by the s's'ei'.i" 'he 
Central Caroline natives as a divine ordinance ; its breach islands. 
is therefore, in their opinion, punished by the higher powers 
with sickness or death. The law influences in a character- 
istic way the whole social life of the islanders, for efforts 

' R. H. Codrington, op. cit. p. 43. 

are made to keep members of families of different sexes 
apart from each other even in their youth. Unmarried 
men and boys, from the time when they begin to speak, 
may therefore not remain by night in the huts, but must 
sleep in the fel, the assembly-house. In the evening their 
meal [Akot) is brought thither to them by their mothers 
or sisters. Only when a son is sick may his mother receive 
him in the hut and tend him there. On the other hand 
entrance to the assembly-house {fet) is forbidden to women 
and girls except on the occasion of the pwarik festival ; 
whereas female members of other tribes are free to visit 
it, although, so far as I could observe, they seldom make 
use of the permission. Unmarried girls sleep in the huts 
with their parents. 

" These restrictions, which custom and tradition have 
instituted within the family, find expression also in the 
behaviour of the members of families toward each other. 
The following persons, namely, have to be treated with 
respect — the daughters by their father, the sons by their 
mother, the brothers by their sisters. In presence of such 
relations, as in the presence of a chief, you may not 
stand, but must sit down ; if you are obliged on narrow 
paths to pass by one of them you must first obtain per- 
mission and then do it in a stooping or creeping posture. 
You allow them everywhere to go in front ; you also 
avoid to drink out of the vessel which they have just 
used ; you do not touch them, but keep always at a 
certain distance from them ; the head especially is deemed 
sacred." ^ 
Mutual In all these cases the custom of mutual avoidance is 

of maie"and observed by persons of opposite sex who, though physically 
female capable of sexual union, are forbidden by tradition and public 
sometribes. Opinion to have any such commerce with each other. Thus 
far the blood relations whom a man is forbidden to marry and 
compelled to avoid, are his own mother, his own daughter, and 
his own sisters. But to this list some people add a man's 
female cousins or at least certain of them ; for many races 
draw a sharp line of distinction between cousins according 

1 Max Girschner, " Die Karolineninsel Namoluk und ihre Bewohner," 
Baessler-Archiv, ii. (1912) p. 164. 

as they are children of two brothers or of two sisters or 
of a brother and a sister, and while they permit or even 
prefer marriage with certain cousins, they absolutely forbid 
marriage with certain others. Now, it is highly significant 
that some tribes which forbid a man to marry certain of 
his cousins also compel him to adopt towards them the 
same attitude of social reserve which in the same or 
other tribes a man is obliged to observe towards his wife's 
mother, his own mother, and his own sisters, all of whom 
in like manner he is forbidden to marry. Thus among Mutual 
the tribes in the central part of New Ireland (New Mecklen- avoidance 

'^ ^ of male and 

burg) a male and a female cousin, the children of a brother female 
and a sister respectively, are most strictly forbidden by ^"^'"^ '" 
custom to marry each other ; indeed this prohibition is Ireland. 
described as the most stringent of all ; the usual saying 
in regard to such relations is, " The cousin is holy " {i tabu 
ra k6kup\ Now, in these tribes a man is not merely for- 
bidden to marry his female cousin, the daughter of his 
father's sister or of his niother's brother ; he must also 
avoid her socially, just as in other tribes a man must 
avoid his wife's mother, his own mother, his own daughter, 
and his own sisters. The cousins may not approach each 
other, they may not shake hands or even touch each other, 
they may not give each other presents, they may not mention 
each other's names ; but they are allowed to speak to each 
other at a distance of some paces. These rules of avoidance, 
these social barriers erected between cousins, the children of 
a brother and a sister respectively, are interpreted most 
naturally and simply as precautions intended to obviate the 
danger of a criminal intercourse between persons whose 
sexual union would be regarded by public opinion with deep 
displeasure. Indeed the Catholic missionary, to whom we 
are indebted for the information, assumes this interpretation 
of the rules as if it were too obvious to call for serious 
discussion. He says that all the customs of avoidance 
" are observed as outward symbols of this" prohibition of 
marriage " ; and he adds that " were the outward sign of the 
prohibition of marriage, to which the natives cleave with 
genuine obstinacy, abolished or even weakened, there would 
be an immediate danger of the natives contracting such 

9° 

Mutual 
avoidance 
of certain 
male and 
female 
cousins 
among the 
Baganda ; 
marriage or 
sexual 
intercourse 
forbidden 
between 
these 
cousins 
under pain 
of death. 

marriages." ^ It seems difficult for a rational man to draw 
any other inference. If any confirmation were needed, it would 
be furnished by the fact that among these tribes of New 
Ireland brothers and sisters are obliged to observe precisely 
the same rules of mutual avoidance, and that incest between 
brother and sister is a crime which is punished with hanging ; 
they may not come near each other, they may not shake 
hands, they may not touch each other, they may not give 
each other presents ; but they are allowed to speak to each 
other at a distance of some paces. And the penalty for 
incest with a daughter is also death by hanging.^ 

Amongst the Baganda of Central Africa in like manner 
a man was forbidden under pain of death to marry or have 
sexual intercourse with his cousin, the daughter either of 
his father's sister or of his mother's brother ; and such 
cousins might not approach each other, nor hand each other 
anything, nor enter the same house, nor eat out of the same 
dish. Were cousins to break these rules of social avoidance, 
in other words, if they were to approach each other or hand 
each other anything, it was believed that they would fall ill, 
that their hands would tremble, and that they would be unfit 
for any work.^ Here, again, the prohibition of social inter- 
course was in all probability merely a precaution against 
sexual intercourse, for which the penalty was death. And 
the same may be said of the similar custom of avoidance 
which among these same Baganda a man had to observe 
towards his wife's mother. " No man might see his mother- 
in-law, or speak face to face with her ; she covered her face, 
if she passed her son-in-law, and he gave her the path and 
made a detour, if he saw her coming. If she was in the 
house, he might not enter, but he was allowed to speak 
to her from a distance. This was said to be because he had 
seen her daughter's nakedness. If a son-in-law accidentally 

1 P. G. Peckel, "Die Verwandt- 
schaftsnamen des mittleren Neumeck- 
lenburg," Anthropos, iii. (1908) pp. 
467, 470 sq. 

2 P. G. Peckel, op. cit. pp. 463, 467. 
^ Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda 

(London, 191 1), pp. 128 sq., 131 ; Sir 
W-i.xx'j]fiax&\.axi,TheUganda Protectorate 
(London, 1904), ii. 695. The latter 

writer says generally : " Cousins cannot 
enter the same house, and must not eat 
out of the same dish. A man cannot 
marry his cousin." But from Mr. 
Roscoe's researches it appears that 
a man has only to avoid certain 
cousins, called kizibwewe, that is, the 
daughters either of his father's sisters 
or of his mother's brothers. 

saw his mother-in-law's breasts, he sent her a barkcloth in 
compensation, to cover herself, lest some illness, such as 
tremor, should come upon him. The punishment for incest 
was death ; no member of a clan would shield a person 
guilty thereof ; the offender was disowned by the clan, 
tried by the chief of the district, and put to death." ^ 

The prohibition of marriage with certain cousins appears Marriage 
to be widespread among African peoples of the Bantu stock, ce'tat™ 
Thus in regard to the Bantus of South Africa we read that cousins 
"every man of a coast tribe regarded himself as the among 
protector of those females whom we would call his cousins, sorne South 
second cousins, third cousins, and so forth, on the father's tribes but 
side, while some had a similar feeling towards the same allowed 
relatives on the mother's side as well, and classified them all others. 
as sisters. Immorality with one of them would have been 
considered incestuous, something horrible, something un- 
utterably disgraceful. Of old it was punished by the death 
of the male, and even now a heavy fine is inflicted upon him, 
while the guilt of the female must be atoned by a sacrifice 
performed with due ceremony by the tribal priest, or it is 
believed a curse will rest upon her and her issue. ... In 
contrast to this prohibition the native of the interior almost 
as a rule married the daughter of his father's brother, in 
order, as he said, to keep property from being lost to his 
family. This custom more than anything else created a 
disgust and contempt for them by the people of the coast, 
who term such intermarriages the union of dogs, and 
attribute to them the insanity and idiocy which in recent 
times has become prevalent among the inland tribes." ^ 

1 Rev. J. Roscoe, op. cit. p. 129. 432. The writer adds : "Among the 
Among the women with whom man tribes within the Cape Colony at the 
was forbidden to have sexual relations present time the differences are as 
under pain of death were (besides his follows : — 

cousins mentioned above) his father's "Xosas,Tembus, and Pondos: marry 

sister, his daughter, and his wife's no relative by blood, however distant, 

sister's daughter. See J. Roscoe, op. on either father's or mother's side. 
c;V. pp. 131, 132. The reason alleged " Hlubis and others commonly called 

for avoiding a mother-in-law, namely, Fingos : may marry the daughter of 

because a man has seen her daughter's mother's brother and other relatives on 

nakedness (compare above, p. 76) is that side, but not on father's side, 
probably a later misinterpretation of " Basuto, Batlaro, Batlapin, and 

the custom. Barolong : very frequently marry 

2 Q.yiQ.Cs&.'Vaz'iX, Records of South- cousins on father's side, and know of 
Eastern Africa, vii. (1901) pp. 431, no restrictions beyond actual sisters. " 

Marriage 
between 
cousins 
allowed in 
some 
African 
tribes on 
condition 
that an 
expiatory 
sacrifice is 
offered. 

Among the Thonga, a Bantu tribe about Delagoa Bay, 
marriages between cousins are as a rule prohibited, and it is 
believed that such unions are unfruitful. However, custom 
permits cousins to marry each other on condition that they 
perform an expiatory ceremony which is supposed to avert 
the curse of barrenness from the wife. A goat is sacrificed, 
and the couple are anointed with the green liquid extracted 
from the half-digested grass in the animal's stomach. Then 
a hole is cut in the goat's skin and through this hole the 
heads of the cousins are inserted. The goat's liver is then 
handed to them, quite raw, through the hole in the skin, and 
they must tear it out with their teeth without using a knife. 
Having torn it out, they eat it. The word for liver (shibindjt) 
also means " patience," " determination." So they say to 
the couple, " You have acted with strong determination. 
Eat the liver now ! Eat it in the full light of the day, not 
in the dark ! It will be an offering to the gods." Then the- 
family priest prays, saying : " You, our gods, So-and-so, 
look ! We have done it in the daylight. It has not been 
done by stealth. Bless them, give them children ! " When 
he has done praying, the assistants take all the half-digested 
grass from the goat's stomach and place it on the wife's head, 
saying, " Go and bear children ! "^ Among the Wagogo of 
German East Africa marriage is forbidden between cousins 
who are the children of two brothers or of two sisters, but is 
permitted between cousins who are the children of a brother 
and sister respectively. However, in this case it is usual for 
the wife's father to kill a sheep and put on a leather armlet, 
made presumably from the sheep's skin ; otherwise it is 
supposed that the marriage would be unfruitful.^ Thus the 
Wagogo, like the Thonga, imagine that the marriage of 
cousins is doomed to infertility unless an expiatory sacrifice 
is offered and a peculiar use made of the victim's skin. 
Again, the Akikuyu of British East Africa forbid the 
marriage of cousins and second cousins, the children and 
grandchildren of brothers and sisters. If such persons 

1 Henri A. Junod, The Life of a 
South African TVz'fe (Neuchatel, 1912— 
1913), i. 243-245. As to the rules 
concerning the marriage of cousins in 

this tribe, see id. i. 241 sq. 

2 Heinrich Claus, Die Wagogo 
(Leipsic and Berlin, 1911), p. 58. 

married, they would commit a grave sin, and all their 
children would surely die ; for the curse or ceremonial 
pollution ithahu) incurred by such a crime cannot be purged 
away. Nevertheless it sometimes happens that a man 
unwittingly marries a first or second cousin ; for instance, if 
a part of the family moves away to another district, it may 
come about that a man makes the acquaintance of a girl and 
marries her before he discovers the relationship. In such a 
case, where the sin has been committed unknowingly, the 
curse can be averted by the performance of an expiatory 
rite. The elders take a sheep and place it on the woman's 
shoulders ; there it is killed and the intestines taken out. 
Then the elders solemnly sever the intestines with a sharp 
splinter of wood taken from a bush of a certain sort {muked), 
"and they announce that they are cutting the, clan 
kutinyarurira, by which they mean that they are severing the 
bond of relationship which exists between the pair. A 
medicine man then comes and purifies the couple." ^ In all 
these cases we may assume with a fair degree of probability 
that the old prohibition of marriage between cousins is 
breaking down, and that the expiatory sacrifice offered when 
such a marriage does take place is merely a salve to the 
uneasy conscience of those who commit or connive at a 
breach of the ancient taboo. 

Thus the prohibition of marriage between cousins, and The mutual 
the rules of ceremonial avoidance observed in some tribes ^^^'^ance 

of male 

between persons who stand in that relationship to each and female 
other, appear both to spring from a belief, right or wrong, p°obabi'\ 
in the injurious effects of such unions and from a desire precaution 
to avoid them. The mutual avoidance of the cousins is cfimtaaf 
merely a precaution to prevent a closer and more criminal intimacy 

, . between 

intimacy between them. If that is so, it furnishes a con- them. 
firmation of the view that all the customs of ceremonial 
avoidance between blood relations or connexions by 
marriage of opposite sexes are based simply on a fear 
of incest. 

The theory is perhaps confirmed by the observation 
that in some tribes the avoidance between a man and his 

1 C. W. Hobley, " Kikuyu Customs Anthropological Institute, xl. (1910) 
and Beliefs," Journal of the Royal p. 438. 

The mutual wife's mother lasts only until he has had a child by his wife ; ^ 
baween'^a ^'^''^ i" Others, though avoidance continues longer, it 
man and gradually wears away with time as the man and woman 
reiatiins^ advance in years,^ and in others, again, it is observed only 
seems to be between a man and his future mother-in-law, and comes to an 
grounded end With his marriage.^ These customs suggest that in the 
on a fear of minds of the people who practise them there is a close 
the wife Connexion between the avoidance of the wife's relations 
infertile. ^nd the dread of an infertile marriage. The Indians of 
Yucatan, as we saw, believe that if a betrothed man were 
to meet his future mother-in-law or father-in-law, he would 
thereby lose the power of begetting children. Such a fear 
seems to be only an extension by false analogy of that 
belief in the disastrous consequences of illicit sexual relations 
which we dealt with in an earlier part of this chapter,* and 
of which we shall have more to say presently.^ From think- 
ing, rightly or wrongly, that sexual intercourse between 
certain persons is fraught with serious dangers, the savage 
jumped to the conclusion that social intercourse between 
them may be also perilous by virtue of a sort of physical 
infection acting through simple contact or even at a distance ; 
or if, in many cases, he did not go so far as to suppose that 
for a man merely to see or touch his mother-in-law sufficed to 
blast the fertility of his wife's womb, yet he may have thought, 
with much better reason, that intimate social converse 
between him and her might easily lead to something worse, 
and that to guard against such a possibility it was best to 
raise a strong barrier of etiquette between them. It is not, 
of course, to be supposed that these rules of avoidance were 
the result of deliberate legislation ; rather they were the 
spontaneous and gradual growth of feelings and thoughts 
of which the savages themselves perhaps had no clear 
consciousness. In what precedes I have merely attempted 
to sum up in language intelligible to civilized man the 
outcome of a long course of moral and social evolution. 

These considerations perhaps obviate to some extent the 
only serious difficulty which lies in the way of the theory 

' See above, pp. 78 sg., 8i. * See above, pp. 44 sgq. 

'' See above, pp. 80, 81, 84. ' See below, pp. 102 sqq. 

' See above, p. 81. 

here advocated. If the custom of avoidance was adopted in The mutual 
order to guard against the danger of incest, how comes it b™^^een'^'^ 
that the custom is often observed towards persons of the persons of 
same sex, for example, by a man towards his father-in-law sex wa^^ 
as well as towards his mother-in-law ? The difficulty is probably 
undoubtedly serious : the only way of meeting it that I can sjon by 
suggest is the one I have already indicated. We may sup- ^^^^'^ 
pose that the deeply rooted beliefs of the savage in the the mutual 
fatal effects of marriage between certain classes of persons, avoidance 

^ ^ ' between 

whether relations by blood or connexions by marriage, persons of 
gradually spread in his mind so as to embrace the relations s*gg™' 
between men and men as well as between men and women ; 
till he had worked himself into the conviction that to see or 
touch his father-in-law, for example, was nearly or quite as 
dangerous as to touch or have improper relations with his 
mother-in-law. It is no doubt easy for us to detect the flaw 
in this process of reasoning ; but we should beware of casting 
stones at the illogical savage, for it is possible or even prob- 
able that many of our own cherished convictions are no 
better founded. 

Viewed from this standpoint the customs of ceremonial Thecustom 

. , . , of mutual 

avoidance among savages assume a serious aspect very avoidance 
different from the appearance of arbitrariness and absurdity between 
which they are apt to present to the civilized observer who tions has 
does not look below the surface of savage society. So far as p™babiy 
these customs have helped, as they probably have done, to effect of 
suppress the tendency to inbreeding, that is, to the marriage '^heckmg 
of near relations, we must conclude that their effect has been of inbreed- 
salutary,if, as many eminent biologists hold, long-continued in- '"^^ 
breeding is injurious to the stock, whether animal or vegetable, 
by rendering it in the end infertile.^ However, men of science 
are as yet by no means agreed as to the results of con- 
sanguineous marriages, and a living authority on the subject 
has recently closed a review of the evidence as follows : 
" When we take into account such evidence as there is from 
animals and plants, and such studies as those of Huth,^ and 

1 On the question of the effect of in- Near Kin considered with respect to the 
breeding see Totemism and Exogamy, Laws of Nations, the Results of Experi- 
iv. 1 60 sqq. eiice, and the Teachings of Biology, 

2 A. H. Huth, The Marriage of Second Edition (London, 1887). 

the instances and counter-instances of communities with a 
high degree of consanguinity, we are led to the conclusion 
that the prejudices and laws of many peoples against the 
marriage of near kin rest on a basis not so much biological 
as social." ^ Whatever may be the ultimate verdict of science 
on this disputed question, it will not affect the result of the 
present enquiry, which merely affirms the deep and far- 
reaching influence which in the long course of human history 
superstition has exercised on morality. Whether the influ- 
ence has on the whole been for good or evil does not concern 
us. It suffices for our purpose to shew that superstition has 
been a crutch to morality, whether to support it in the fair 
way of virtue or to precipitate it into the miry pit of vice. 
To return to the point from which we wandered into this 
digression, we must leave in suspense the question whether 
the Australian savages were wise or foolish who forbade a 
man under pain of death to speak to his mother-in-law. 
Qji^gj. I will conclude this part of my subject with a few more 

exampiesof instances of the extreme severity with which certain races 
punish- have visited what they deemed improper connexions between 
ment of the sexcs. 

crime. Among the Indians who inhabited the coast of Brazil near 

The Rio de Janeiro about the middle of the sixteenth century, a 

Brazt"^ ° married woman who gave birth to an illegitimate child was 

either killed or abandoned to the caprice of the young men 

who could not afford to keep a wife. Her child was buried 

alive ; for they said that were he to grow up he would only 

serve to perpetuate his mother's disgrace ; he would not be 

allowed to go to war with the rest for fear of the misfortunes 

and disasters he might draw down upon them, and no one 

would eat any food, whether venison, fish, or what not, which 

The natives the miserable outcast had touched.^ In Ruanda, a district 

of Ruanda, ^j- Central Africa, down to recent years any unmarried 

woman who was got with child used to be put to death 

with her baby, whether born or unborn. A spot at the 

mouth of the Akanyaru river was the place of execution, 

1 J. Arthur Thomson, article " Con- 2 Andre Thevet, La Cosmographie 

sanguinity," in Dr. James Hastings's Universelle (Paris, 1575), "• 933 

Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, [967]. 
iv. (Edinburgh, 191 1) p. 30. 

where the guilty women and their innocent offspring were 
hurled into the water. As usual, this Puritanical strictness 
of morality has been relaxed under European influence ; 
illegitimate children are still killed, but their mothers escape 
with the fine of a cow.^ Among the Saxons down The 
to the days of St. Boniface the adulteress or the maiden ^™'^- 
who had dishonoured her father's house was compelled to 
hang herself, was burned, and her paramour hung over the 
blazing pile ; or she was scourged or cut to pieces with 
knives by all the women of the village till she was dead.^ 
Among the Slav peoples of the Balkan peninsula women The 
convicted of immoral conduct used to be stoned to death. s°avs^™ 
About the year 1770 a young betrothed couple were thus 
executed near Cattaro in Dalmatia, because the girl was 
found to be with child. The youth offered to marry her, 
and the priest begged that the sentence of death might 
be commuted to perpetual banishment ; but the people 
declared that they would not have a bastard born among 
them ; and the two fathers of the luckless couple threw the 
first stones at them. When Miss M. Edith Durham related 
this case to some Montenegrin peasantry, they all said 
that in the old days stoning was the proper punishment 
for unchaste women ; the male paramours were shot by 
the relations of the girls whom they had seduced. When 
" that modern Messalina," Queen Draga of Servia, was 
murdered, a decent peasant woman remarked that " she 
ought to be under the cursed stone heap " (J>od prokletu 
gomilu). The country-folk of Montenegro, who heard the 
news of the murder from Miss Durham, " looked on it as 
a cleansing — a casting out of abominations — and genuinely 
believed that Europe would commend the deed, and that 
the removal of this sinful woman would bring prosperity 
to the land."^ Even down to the second half of the 

' Father P. Schumacher, "Das Durham, one of our best authorities on 

Eherecht in Ruanda," Anthropos, vii. these races, was so good as to favour 

(191 2) p. 4. me. Her letter is dated 11 6a King 

2 H. H. Milman, History of Latin Henry's Road, London, N.W., October 

Christianity, New Impression (Lon- l6th, 1909. The stoning of the be- 

don, 1903), ii. 54. trothed couple near Cattaro is recorded, 

^ Tliese particulars as to the Slavonic so Miss Durham tells me, in a Servian 

peoples of the Balkan peninsula I take book, Narodne Pripovjetke i Presude, 

from a letter with which Miss M. Edith by Vuk Vrcevic. For many more 

H 

Inference 
from the 
severe 
punish- 
ments 
inflicted 
for sexual 
offences. 

nineteenth century in cases of seduction among the Southern 
Slavs the people proposed to stone both the culprits to 
death.-' This happened, for example, in Herzegovina 
in the year 1859, when a young man named Milutin 
seduced or (to be more exact) was seduced by three un- 
married girls and got them all with child. The people 
sat in judgment upon the sinners, and, though an elder 
proposed to stone them all, the court passed a milder 
sentence. The young man was to marry one of the girls, 
to rear the infants of the other two as his legitimate 
children, and next time there was a iight with the Turks 
he was to prove his manhood by rushing unarmed upon 
the enemy and wresting their weapons from them, alive or 
dead. The sentence was fulfilled to the letter, though many 
years passed before the culprit could carry out the last part 
of it. However, his time came in 1875, when Herzegovina 
revolted against the Turks. Then Milutin ran unarmed 
upon a regiment of the enemy and found among the Turkish 
bayonets a hero's death.^ Even now the Old Catholics 
among the South Slavs believe that a village in which a 
seducer is not compelled to marry his victim will be punished 
with hail and excessive rain. For this article of faith, how- 
ever, they are ridiculed by their enlightened Catholic neigh- 
bours, who hold the far more probable view that thunder 
and lightning are caused by the village priest to revenge 
himself for unreasonable delays in the payment of his salary. 
A heavy hail-storm has been known to prove almost fatal 
to the local incumbent, who was beaten within an inch of 
his life by his enraged parishioners.^ 

It is difficult to believe that in these and similar cases 
the community would inflict such severe punishment for 
sexual offences if it did not believe that its own safety, and 
not merely the interest of a few individuals, was imperilled 
thereby. 

examples of the death penalty and other 
severe punishments inflicted for sexual 
offences, see E. Westermarck, The 
Origin and Development of Moral 
Ideas (London, 1906-1908), ii. 366 
sqq., 425 sqq. 

' F. S. Krauss, Sitte zmd Branch 
der SUdslaven (Vienna, 1885), pp. 

209, 216, 217. Compare F. DemelicS, 
Le Droit Coutumier des Slaves M^ri- 
dionaux (Paris, 1876), p. 76. 

^ F. S. Krauss, op. cit. pp. 208-212, 
citing as his authority Vuk Vrfievic, Niz 
srpskih pripovijedaka, pp. 129-137. 

^ F. S. Krauss, Sitte und Branch 
der SUdslaven, p. 204. 

If now we ask why illicit relations between the sexes why 
should be supposed to disturb the balance of nature and ^^^^ 
particularly to blast the fruits of the earth, a partial answer relations 
may be conjecturally suggested. It is not enough to say n^g^exes 
that such relations are displeasing to the gods, who punish bethought 
indiscriminately the whole community for the sins of a few. the balance 
For we must always bear in mind that the gods are creations of nature? 
of man's fancy ; he fashions them in human likeness, and 
endows them with tastes and opinions which are merely vast 
cloudy projections of his own. To affirm, therefore, that 
something is a sin because the gods will it so, is only to push 
the enquiry one stage farther back and to raise the further 
question, Why are the gods supposed to dislike and punish 
these particular acts? In the case with which we are here con- The reason 
cerned, the reason why so many savage gods prohibit adultery, gg^^'^f^ 
fornication, and incest under pain of their severe displeasure savages are 
may perhaps be found in the analogy which many savage to^u°ni5}i 
men trace between the reproduction of the human species sexual 
and the reproduction of animals and plants. The analogy severely 
is not purely fanciful, on the contrary it is real and vital ; may per- 

, ... , , . . r 1 • - haps be 

but primitive peoples have given it a false extension in a found in a 

vain attempt to apply it practically to increasing the food mistaken 
^. , ^^ . K , . r , , r ■ I'si'sf 'bat 

supply. Ihey have imagined, in fact, that by performing irregu- 

or abstaining from certain sexual acts they thereby directly if'"'^=' °f 

^ J J J the human 

promoted the reproduction of animals and the multiplication sexes pre- 
of plants.-' All such acts and abstinences, it is obvious, are rg°y]'4_ 
purely superstitious and wholly fail to effect the desired tion of 

1 For examples of the attempt to 1841), ii. 181, 263-267 (multiplication 

multiply edible plants in this fashion, or attraction of buffaloes) ; Reports of 

see The Magic Art and the Evolution the Cambridge Anthropological Expedi- 

of Kings, ii. 97 sqq. The reported tion to Torres Straits, v. (1904) p. 271 

examples of similar attempts to assist (multiplication of turtles) ; J. Roscoe, 

the multiplication of animals seem to "Further Notes on the Manners and 

be rarer. For some instances see Customs of the Baganda," Journal of 

George Catlin, 0-Kee-Pa, a Religious the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. 

Ceremony and other Customs of the (1902) p. 53 ; id.. The Baganda (Lon- 

Mandans (London, 1867), Folium don, 191 1), p. 144 (multiplication of 

Reservatum, pp. i.-iii. (multiplication edible green locusts) ; S. Gason, in 

oi\mS2\oa); History of the Expedition JourncU of the Anthropological Insti- 

tinder the Command of Captains Lewis tute, xxiv. (iSgjjp- 174 (multiplication 

and Clark to the Sources of the Mis- of edible rats) ; id. , ' ' The Dieyerie 

souri (London, 1905), i. 209 sq. (multi- Tribe," in Native Tribes of South 

plication or attraction of buffaloes) ; Australia (Adelaide, 1879), P- 280 

Maximilian Prinz zu Wied, Reise in das (multiplication of dogs and snakes). 
innere Nord-America (Coblentz, 1839- 

edible result. They are not religious but magical ; that is, they 
anirtants compass their end, not by an appeal to the gods, but by 
and manipulating natural forces in accordance with certain false 

s!!riw i<i^3.s of physical causation. In the present case the prin- 
fatai blow ciple on which savages seek to propagate animals and plants 
suppry!°°'^ is that of magical sympathy or imitation : they fancy that 
they assist the reproductive process in nature by mimicking 
or performing it among themselves. Now in the evolution 
of society such efforts to control the course of nature directly 
by means of magical rites appear to have preceded the efforts 
to control it indirectly by appealing to the vanity and 
cupidity, the good-nature and pity of the gods ; in short, 
magic seems to be older than religion.^ In most races, it is 
true, the epoch of unadulterated magic, of magic untinged 
by religion, belongs to such a remote past that its existence, 
like that of our ape-like ancestors, can be a matter of infer- 
ence only ; almost everywhere in history and the world we 
find magic and religion side by side, at one time allies, at 
another enemies, now playing into each other's hands, now 
cursing, objurgating, and vainly attempting to exterminate 
one another. On the whole the lower intelligences cling 
closely, though secretly, to magic, while the higher intelli- 
gences have discerned the vanity of its pretensions and 
turned to religion instead. The result has been that beliefs 
and rites which were purely magical in origin often contract 
in course of time a religious character ; they are modified in 
accordance with the advance of thought, they are translated 
into terms of gods and spirits, whether good and beneficent, 
or evil and malignant. We may surmise, though we cannot 
prove, that a change of this sort has come over the minds of 
many races with regard to sexual morality. At some former 
time, perhaps, straining a real analogy too far, they believed 
that those relations of the human sexes which for any 
reason they regarded as right and natural had a tendency 
to promote sympathetically the propagation of animals and 
plants and thereby to ensure a supply of food for the com- 
munity ; while on the contrary they may have imagined 
that those relations of the human sexes which for any reason 

1 I have given my reasons for thinking so elsewhere {The Magic Art and the 
Evolution of Kings, i. 220 sqq.^. 

they deemed wrong and unnatural had a tendency to thwart 
and impede the propagation of animals and plants and 
thereby to diminish the common supply of food. 

Such a belief, it is obvious, would furnish a sufficient motive Such a 
for the strict prohibition of what were deemed improper "^^^^^ 
relations between men and women ; and it would explain the account 
deep horror and detestation with which sexual irregularities t]^eijo°ror 
are viewed by many, though certainly not by all, savage tribes, with which 
For if improper relations between the human sexes prevent ^^ages 
animals and plants from multiplying, they strike a fatal blow regard 
at the existence of the tribe by cutting off its supply of food crimes, 
at the roots. No wonder, therefore, that wherever such and for 

1 .1 1 . 11 • 1 1- • the seventy 

superstitions have prevailed the whole community, believing with which 
its very existence to be put in jeopardy by sexual im- theypumsh 
morality, should turn savagely on the culprits, and beat, 
burn, drown or otherwise exterminate them in order to rid 
itself of so dangerous a pollution. And when with the 
advance of knowledge men began to perceive the mistake 
they had made in imagining that the commerce of the 
human sexes could affect the propagation of animals and 
plants, they would still through long habit be so inured to 
the idea of the wickedness of certain sexual relations that 
they could not dismiss it from their minds, even when they 
discerned the fallacious nature of the reasoning by which 
they had arrived at it. The old practice would therefore 
stand, though the old theory had fallen : the old rules of 
sexual morality would continue to be observed, but if they 
were to retain the respect of the community, it was neces- 
sary to place them on a new theoretical basis. That basis, 
in accordance with the general advance of thought, was 
supplied by religion. Sexual relations which had once been 
condemned as wrong and unnatural because they were sup- 
posed to thwart the natural multiplication of animals and 
plants and thereby to diminish the food supply, would now 
be condemned because it was imagined that they were dis- 
pleasing to gods or spirits, those stalking-horses which 
savage man rigs out in the cast-off clothes of his still more 
savage ancestors. The moral practice would therefore re- 
main the same, though its theoretical basis had been shifted 
from magic to religion. In this or some such way as this 

we may conjecture that the Karens, Dyaks, and other 
savages reached those curious conceptions of sexual immo- 
rality and its consequences which we have been considering. 
But from the nature of the case the development of moral 
theory which I have sketched is purely hypothetical and 
hardly admits of verification. 
But the However, even if we assume for a moment that the 

reason why g^vages in qucstion reached their present view of sexual 
came to immorality in the way I have surmised, there still remains 
cm'^a'i^ the question, How did they originally come to regard cer- 
sexuai tain relations of the sexes as immoral ? For clearly the 
tae^iar''' notion that such immorality interferes with the course of 
and nature must have been secondary and derivative : people 

renTains must on independent grounds have concluded that cer- 
obscure. j-j^jj^ relations between men and women were wrong and 
injurious before they extended the conclusion by false 
analogy to nature. The question brings us face to face 
with the deepest and darkest problem in the history of 
society, the problem of the origin of the laws which still 
regulate marriage and the relations of the sexes among civi- 
lized nations ; for broadly speaking the fundamental laws 
which we recognize in these matters are recognized also by 
savages, with this difference, that among many savages the 
sexual prohibitions are far more numerous, the horror ex- 
cited by breaches of them far deeper, and the punishment 
inflicted on the offenders far sterner than with us. The 
problem has often been attacked, but never solved. Perhaps 
it is destined, like so many riddles of that Sphinx which we 
call nature, to remain for ever insoluble. At all events this 
is not the place to broach so intricate and profound a 
discussion.. I return to my immediate subject. 
Sexual In the opinion of many savages the effect of sexual 

irtToushT immorality is not merely to disturb, directly or indirectly, 
by many the course of nature by blighting the crops, causing the 
fnjur?the earth to quake, volcanoes to vomit fire, and so forth : the 
delinquents delinquents themselves, their offspring, or their innocent 

thGms6lv6s 

their off- ' spouses are supposed to suffer in their own persons for the 
spring, and gi^ that has been committed. Thus among the Baganda of 

their ° ° 

innocent Central Africa " adultery was also regarded as a danger to 
spouses. children ; it was thought that women who were guilty of it 

during pregnancy caused the child to die, either prior to 
birth, or at the time of birth. Sometimes the guilty woman 
would herself die in childbed ; or, if she was safely delivered, 
she would have a tendency to devour her child, and would 
have to be guarded lest she should kill it." ^ " When there 
was a case of retarded delivery, the relatives attributed it to 
adultery ; they made the woman confess the name of the 
man with whom she had had intercourse, and if she died, 
her husband was fined by the members of her clan, for they 
said : ' We did not give our daughter to you for the purpose 
of adultery, and you should have guarded her.' In most 
cases, however, the medicine -men were able to save the 
woman's life, and upon recovery she was upbraided, and 
the man whom she accused was heavily fined." ^ The 
Baganda thought that the ftifidelity of the father as well as of 
the mother endangered the life of the child. For " it was 
also supposed that a man who had sexual intercourse with 
any woman not his wife, during the time that any one of 
his wives was nursing a child, would cause the child to fall 
ill, and that unless he confessed his guilt and obtained from 
the medicine-man the necessary remedies to cancel the evil 
results, the child would die."^ The common childish ailment 
which was thought to be caused by the adultery of the father 
or mother was called aviakiro, and its symptoms were well 
recognized : they consisted of nausea and general debility, 
and the only cure for them was a frank confession by the 
guilty parent and the performance of a magical ceremony 
by the medicine-man.* 

Similar views as to the disastrous effects of adultery on Disastrous 
mother and child seem to be widespread among Bantu tribes, aduiterv'^on 
Thus among the Awemba of Northern Rhodesia, when both adulteress 
mother and child die in childbirth, great horror is expressed cwid.'^'^ 
by all, who assert that the woman must assuredly have 
committed adultery with many men to suffer such a fate. 
They exhort her even with her last breath to name the 

1 Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda tute, xxxii. (1902) p. 39. 

*^°"Rev'. J^'R^scoe^,^'/. cit. p. 55- J^ ^"^^ ^^ ^°''°'' ^'^' Baganda, p. 
Compare id., "Further Notes on tlie 

Manners and Customs of the Baganda," * Rev. J. Roscoe, op. cit. pp. 72, 

tjfournal of the Anthropological Insti- 102. 

Sym- 
pathetic 
relation be^ 
tween an 
adulterer 
and the 
injured 
husband. 

adulterer ; and whoever is mentioned by her is called the 
" murderer " (inusoka) and has afterwards to pay a heavy 
fine to the injured husband. Similarly if the child is born 
dead and the mother survives, the Awemba take it for granted 
that the woman has been unfaithful to her husband, and they 
ask her to name the murderer of her child, that is, the man 
whose guilty love has been the death of the babe/ In like 
manner the Thonga, a Bantu tribe of South Africa, about 
Delagoa Bay, are of opinion that if a woman's travail pa:ngs 
are unduly prolonged or she fails to bring her offspring to 
the birth, she must certainly have committed adultery, and 
they insist upon her making a clean breast as the only means 
of ensuring her delivery ; should she suppress the name even 
of one of several lovers with whom she may have gone astray, 
the child cannot be born. So convinced are the women of 
the sufferings which adultery, if unacknowledged, entails on 
the guilty mother in childbed, that a woman who knows her 
child to be illegitimate will privately confess her sin to the 
midwife before she is actually brought to bed, in the hope 
thereby of alleviating and shortening her travail pangs.^ 
Further, the Thonga believe that adultery establishes a 
physical relationship of mutual sympathy between the 
adulterer and the injured husband such that the life of 
the one is in a manner bound up with the life of the other ; 
indeed this relationship is thought to arise between any two 
men who have had sexual connexion with the same woman. 
As a native put it to a missionary, " They have met together in 
one life through the blood of that woman ; they have drunk 
from the same pool." To express it otherwise, they have 
formed a blood covenant with each other through the woman 
as intermediary. " This establishes between them a most 
curious mutual dependence : should one of them be ill, the 
other must not visit him ; the patient might die. If he runs 
a thorn into his foot, the other must not help him to extract 
it. It is taboo. The wound would not heal. If he dies, 
his rival must not assist at his mourning or he would die 

' Cullen Gouldsbury and Hubert 
Sheane, The Great Plateau of Northei-n 
Rhodesia (London, 191 1), pp. 57, 178. 

^ Henri A. Junod, " Les Concep- 
tions Physiologiques des Bantou Sud- 

Africains et leurs Tabous," Revue 
(V Ethnographie et lie Sociologie, i. 
(1910) p. 150; id., The Life of a 
South African Tribe (Neuchatel, 1912- 
191 3). i- 38 sq. 

himself." Hence if a man has committed adultery, as some- 
times happens, with one of his father's younger wives, and 
the father dies, his undutiful son may not take the part 
which would otherwise fall to him in the funeral rites ; 
indeed should he attempt to attend the burial, his relations 
would drive him away in pity, lest by this mark of respect 
and perhaps of remorse he should forfeit his life.^ In like injurious 

effects Ol 

manner the Akikuyu of British East Africa believe that if a adultery 
son has adulterous intercourse with one of his father's wives, °" *e 

1 . r ^ '1 innocent 

the mnocent lather, not the guilty young scapegrace, con- husband, 
tracts a dangerous pollution (thahu), the effect of which is ""^^' °^ 
to make him ill and emaciated or to break out into sores or 
boils, and even in all probability to die, if the danger is not 
averted by the timely intervention of a medicine-man.^ The 
Anyanja of British Central Africa believe that if a man com- 
mits adultery while his wife is with child, she will die ; hence 
on the death of his wife the widower is often roundly accused 
of having killed her by his infidelity.^ Without going so far 
as this, the Masai of German East Africa hold that if a father 
were to touch his infant on the day after he had been guilty 
of adultery, the child would fall sick.* According to the 
Akamba of British East Africa, if a woman after giving 
birth to a child is false to her husband before her first 
menstruation, the child will surely die.^ The Akamba are injurious 
also of opinion that if a woman is guilty of incest with her \^l^l ° 
brother she will be unable to bring to the birth the seed on the 
which she has conceived by him. In that case the man ° ^P"°^" 
must purge his sin by bringing a big goat to the elders, and 
the woman is ceremonially smeared with the contents of the 

1 Henri A. Junod, " Les Concep- p. 115, note 6. 

tions Physiologiques des Bantous Sud- 3 h. S. Stannus, "Notes on some 

Africains et leurs Tabous," Jievue Tribes of British Central Africa, "/«»-- 

d' Ethnographic et de Sociologie, \. nal of the Royal Anthropological Insti- 

(1910) p. 150; id.. The Life of a f^t^^ ^l. (1910) p. 305. Compare 

South African Tribe, i. 194 sq. r_ c. F. Maugham, Zambe%ia (Lon- 

2 C. W. Hobley, "Kikuyu Customs don, 1910), p. 326. 
and '&e\ie:k," Journal of the Soyal An- 
thropological Institute, xl. (igiojp. 433. 

* Max Weiss, Die Volkerstdnime im 

A similar state of ceremonial pollution ^'"'*'^ ^'""''' " Ostafrikas (Beriin, 

(thahu) is supposed by the Akikuyu to 191°). P- 3«5- 

arise on many other occasions, which ' C. W. Hobley, Ethnology of A- 

are enumerated by Mr. Hobley [op. Kamba and other East African Tribes 

cit. pp. 428-440). See further below, (Cambridge, 1910), p. 61. 

animal's stomach.^ Among the Washamba of German East 
Africa it happened that a married woman lost three children, 
one after the other, by death. A diviner being called in to 
ascertain the cause of this calamity, attributed it to incest of 
which she had been accidentally guilty with her father.^ 
Wife's Again, it appears to be a common notion with savages 

infidelity at ^^.^ ^^ infidelity of a wife prevents her husband from killing 

home J sr to 

thought to game, and even exposes him to imminent risk of being himself 
the absent killed or woundcd by wild beasts. This belief is entertained 
husband in by the Wagogo and other peoples of East Africa, by the 
oAhewar. Moxos Indians of Bolivia, and by Aleutian hunters of sea- 
otters. In such cases any mishap that befalls the husband 
during the chase is set down by him to the score of his wife's 
misconduct at home ; he returns in wrath and visits his ill- 
luck on the often innocent object of his suspicions even, it 
may be, to the shedding of her blood.^ While the Huichol 
Indians of Mexico are away seeking for a species of cactus 
which they regard as sacred, their women at home are bound 
to be strictly chaste ; otherwise they believe that they would 
be visited with illness and would endanger the success of the 
men's expedition.* An old writer on Madagascar tells us that 
though Malagasy women are voluptuous they will not allow 
themselves to be drawn into an intrigue while their husbands 
are absent at the wars, for they believe that infidelity at 
such a time would cause the absent spouse to be wounded or 
slain.* The Baganda of Central Africa held similar views as 
to the fatal effect which a wife's adultery at home might have 
on her absent husband at the wars ; they thought that the 
gods resented her misconduct and withdrew their favour and 
protection from her warrior spouse, thus punishing the 
innocent instead of the guilty. Indeed, it was believed that 

' C. W. Hobley, op. cit. p. 103. 

^ A. Karasek, ' ' Beitrage zur Kennt- 
nis3derWaschambaa,"5ae«/«r-^re,^zz', 
i. (1911) p. 186. 

5 P. Reichard, DeiUsch Ostafrika 
(Leipsic, 1892), p. 427 ; H. Cole, 
" Notes on the Wagogo of German 
East Afnc3.y" Journal of the Anthropo- 
logical Institute, xxxii. (1902) pp. 318 
sq. ; A. D'Orbigny, Voyage dans 
r Amerique miridionale, iii. Part i. 
(Paris and Strasburg, 1844) p. 226; 

Ivan Petroff, Report on the Population, 
Industries, and Resources of Alaska, 
p. 155. 

* C. Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico 
(London, 1903), ii. 128 sq. 

5 De Flacourt, Histoire de la Grande 
Isle Madagascar (Paris, 1658), pp. 97 
sq. Compare John Struys, Voiages 
and Travels (London, 1684), p. 22 ; 
Abb^ Rochon, Voyage to Madagascar 
and the East Indies, translated from 
the French (London, 1792), pp. 46 jy. 

if a woman were even to touch a man's clothing while her 
husband was away with the army, it would bring misfortune 
on her husband's weapon, and might even cost him his life. 
The gods of the Baganda were most particular about women 
strictly observing the taboos during their husbands' absence 
and having nothing to do with other men all that time. On 
his return from the war a man tested his wife's fidelity by 
drinking water from a gourd which she handed to him before 
he entered his house. If she had been unfaithful to him 
during his absence, the water was supposed to make him 
ill ; hence should it chance that he fell sick after drinking the 
draught, his wife was at once clapped into the stocks and tried 
for adultery ; and if she confessed her guilt and named her 
paramour, the offender was heavily fined or even put to 
death.^ Similarly among the Bangala or the Boloki of the 
Upper Congo, " when men went to fight distant towns their 
wives were expected not to commit adultery with such men 
as were left in the town, or their husbands would receive 
spear wounds from the enemy. The sisters of the fighters 
would take every precaution to guard against the adultery 
of their brothers' wives while they were on the expedition." ^ 
So among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, 
while the men were away at the wars, their wives " all slept 
in one house to keep watch over each other ; for, if a woman 
were unfaithful to her husband while he was with a war- 
party, he would probably be killed." ^ If only King David 
had held this belief he might have contented himself with 
a single instead of a double crime, and need not have sent 
his Machiavellian order to put the injured husband in the 
forefront of the battle.* 

The Zulus imagine that an unfaithful wife who touches injurious 
her husband's furniture without first eating certain herbs ''^^^°^ 
causes him to be seized with a fit of coughing of which he infidelity 
soon dies. Moreover, among the Zulus " a man who has husband. 

1 Rev. J. Roscoe, The Baganda Cannibals (London, 1913), p. 224. 
(London, 1911), pp. 352, 362, 363, 8 j. R. Swanton, " Contributions to 
sq. the Ethnology of the Haida," p. 56 

2 Rev. John H. Weeks, " Anthro- (The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 
pological Notes on the Bangala of the Memoir of the American Museum of 
Upper Congo B.\\e^," Journal of the JVaturallfistor}', vol. v. P&iti.,'Leydea 
Royal Anthropological Institute, xl. and New York, 1905). 

(19 10) p. 413; id., Among Congo ' 2 Samuel xi. 

African 
chiefs 
thought 
to be 

injuriously 
affected by 
the incon- 
tinence of 
their sub- 
jects. 

Injurious 
effects of 
adultery 
on the 
adulteress. 

had criminal intercourse with a sick person's wife is pro- 
hibited from visiting the sick-chamber ; and, if the sick 
person is a woman, any female who has committed adultery 
with her husband must not visit her. They say that, if 
these visits ever take place, the patient is immediately 
oppressed with a cold perspiration and dies. This prohibi- 
tion was thought to find out the infidelities of the women 
and to make them fear discovery." ^ For a similar reason, 
apparently, during the sickness of a Caffre chief his tribe 
was bound tcj observe strict continence under pain of death.^ 
The notion seems to have been that any act of incontinence 
would through some sort of magical sympathy prove fatal 
to the sick chief The Ovakumbi, a tribe in the south of 
Angola, think that the carnal intercourse of young people 
under the age of puberty would cause the king to die within 
the year, if it were not severely punished. The punishment 
for such a treasonable offence used to be death.' Similarly, 
in the kingdom of Congo, when the sacred pontiff, called the 
Chitom^, was going his rounds throughout the country, all 
his subjects had to live strictly chaste, and any person found 
guilty of incontinence at such times was put to death with- 
out mercy. They thought that universal chastity was 
essential to the preservation of the life of the pontiff, whom 
they revered as the head of their religion and their common 
father. Accordingly when he was abroad he took care to 
warn his faithful subjects by a public crier, that no man 
might plead ignorance as an excuse for a breach of the 
law.* 

Speaking of the same region of West Africa, an old 
writer tells us that " conjugal chastity is singularly respected 
among these people ; adultery is placed in the list of the 
greatest crimes. By an opinion generally received, the 
women arc persuaded that if they were to render themselves 
guilty of infidelity, the greatest misfortunes would overwhelm 

1 " Mr. Farewell's Account of 
Chaka, the King of Natal," Appendix 
to W. F. W. Owen's Nartative of 
Voyages to explore the Shores of Africa, 

Arabia, and Madagascar (London, 

1833). "• 395- 

2 L. Alberti, De Kaffers (Amster- 
dam, 1810), p. 171. 

^ C. Wunenberger, " La Mission et 
le Royaume de Humb^, sur les bords 
du Cun^ne," Les Missions Catholiques, 
XX. (1888), p. 262. 

* J.^ B. Labat, Relation historique 
de VEthiopie occidentale (Paris, 1732), 
i. 259 sq. 

them, unless they averted them by an avowal made to their 
husbands, and in obtaining their pardon for the injury they 
might have done." ^ The Looboos of Sumatra think that Dangerous 
an unmarried young woman who has been got with child supposed 
falls thereby into a dangerous state called looi, which is such to be in- 
that she spreads misfortune wherever she goes. Hence unchastity. 
when she enters a house, the people try to drive her 
out by force.^ Amongst the Sulka of New Britain un- 
married people who have been guilty of unchastity are 
believed to contract thereby a fatal pollution {sle) of which 
they will die, if they do not confess their fault and undergo 
a public ceremony of purification. Such persons are avoided : 
no one will take anything at their hands : parents point 
them out to their children and warn them not to go near 
them. The infection which they are supposed to spread is 
apparently physical rather than moral in its nature ; for 
special care is taken to keep the paraphernalia of the dance 
out of their way, the mere presence of persons so polluted 
being thought to tarnish the paint on the instruments. Men 
who have contracted this dangerous taint rid themselves of 
it by drinking sea-water mixed with shredded coco-nut and 
ginger, after which they are thrown into the sea. Emerging 
from the water they put off the dripping clothes which they 
wore during their state of defilement and cast them away. 
This purification is believed to save their lives, which other- 
wise must have been destroyed by their unchastity.^ Among 
the Buduma of Lake Chad, in Central Africa, at the present 
day " a child born out of wedlock is looked on as a disgrace, 
and must be drowned. If this is not done, great misfortunes 

1 Proyart, " History of Loango, gart, 1907), pp. 179 sq. In the East 
Kakongo, and other Kingdoms in Indian island of Buru a man's death is 
Africa," in J. Pinkerton's Voyages and sometimes supposed to be due to the 
Travels (London, 1808-1814), xvi. adultery of his wife; but apparently 
569. the notion is that the death is brought 

2 J. Kreemer, " De Loeboes in about rather by the evil magic of the 
Mandailing," Bijdragen tot de Taal- adulterer than by the act of adultery it- 
Land- en Volkenkunde van Neder- self. See J. H. W. van der Miesen, 
landsch- Indie, Ixvi. (1912) p. 323. " Een en ander over Boeroe, inzonder- 

3 P. Rascher, M.S.C., "Die Sulka, heit wat betreft het distrikt Waisama, 
ein Beitrag zur Ethnographic Neu- gelegen aan de Z.O. Kust," Mededee- 
Pommern," Archiv fur Anthropologie, lingen van wege het Nederlandsche 
xxix. (1904) p. 211 ; R. Parkinson, Zendelinggenootschap, xlvi. (1902) pp. 
Drcissig Jahre in der Siidsee (Stutt- 451-454. 

sion 

will happen to the tribe. All the men will fall sick, and the 
women, cows and goats will become barren." ^ 
Conciu- These examples may suffice to shew that among many 

races sexual immorality, whether in the form of adultery, 
fornication, or incest, is believed of itself to entail, naturally 
and inevitably, without the intervention of society, most 
serious consequences not only on the culprits themselves, but 
also on the community, often indeed to menace the very 
existence of the whole people by destroying the food supply. 
I need hardly remind you that all these beliefs are entirely 
baseless ; no such consequences flow from such acts ; in 
short, the beliefs in question are a pure superstition. Yet 
we cannot doubt that wherever this superstition has existed 
it must have served as a powerful motive to deter men 
from adultery, fornication, and incest. If that is so, then 
I think I have proved my third proposition, which is, that 
among certain races and at certain times superstition has 
strengthened the respect for marriage, and has thereby con- 
tributed to the stricter observance of the rules of sexual 
morality both among the married and the unmarried. 

' P. A. Talbot, "The Buduma of Anthropological Institute, xli. (1911) 
Lake Chad," Journal of the Royal p. 247.

I PASS now to my fourth and last proposition, which is, that Supersti-
among certain races and at certain times superstition has "°" ^ ^, 

" ^ pj^op to the 

strengthened the respect for human life and has thereby security of 
contributed to the security of its enjoyment. '"■™''° '''^^■ 

The particular superstition which has had this salutary The fear of 
effect is the fear of ghosts, especially the ghosts of the g^°5'=- 
murdered. The fear of ghosts is widespread, perhaps 
universal, among savages ; it is hardly extinct among our- 
selves. If it were extinct, some learned societies might put 
up their shutters. Dead or alive, the fear of ghosts has 
certainly not been an unmixed blessing. Indeed it might 
with some show of reason be maintained that no belief has 
done so much to_ jetard t he economic and thereby the social 
progress of mankind as the belief in the i mmorta lity of the 
soul ; for this belief has led race after race, generation after 
generation, to sacrifice the real wants of the living to the 
imaginary wants of the dead. The waste and destruction of 
life and property which this faith has entailed are enormous 
and incalculable. Without entering into details I will illus- Disastrous 
trate by a single example the disastrous economic, political, q°gncgs 
and moral consequences which flow from that systematic entailed by 
destruction of property which the fear of the dead has im- the d^d° 
posed on many races. Speaking of the Patagonians, the 
well-informed and intelligent traveller d'Orbigny observes : 
" They have no laws, no punishments inflicted on the guilty. 
Each lives as he pleases, and the greatest thief is the most 
highly esteemed, because he is the most dexterous. A motive 

which will always prevent them from abandoning the practice 
of theft, and at the same time will always present an obstacle 
to their ever forming fixed settlements, is the religious pre- 
judice which, on the death of one of their number, obliges 
them to destroy his property. A Patagonian, who has 
amassed during the whole of his life an estate by thieving 
from the whites or exchanging the products of the chase 
with neighbouring tribes, has done nothing for his heirs ; all 
his savings are destroyed with him, and his children are 
obliged to rebuild their fortunes afresh, — a custom which, 
I may observe in passing, is found also among the Taman- 
aques of the Orinoco, who ravage the field of the deceased 
and cut down the trees which he has planted ; ^ and among 
the Yuracares, who abandon and shut up the house of the 
dead, regarding it as a profanation to gather a single fruit 
from the trees of his field. It is easy to see that with such 
customs they can nourish no real ambition since their needs 
are limited to themselves ; it is one of the causes of their 
natural indolence and is a motive which, so long as it exists, 
will always impede the progress of their civilization. Why 
should they trouble themselves about the future when they 
have nothing to hope from it ? The present is all in all in 
their eyes, and their only interest is individual ; the son will 
take no care of his father's herd, since it will never come 
into his possession ; he busies himself only with his own 
affairs and soon turns his thoughts to looking after himself 
and getting a livelihood. This custom has certainly some- 
thing to commend it from the moral point of view in so far 
as it destroys all the motives for that covetousness in heirs 
which is too often to be seen in our cities. The desire or 
the hope of a speedy death of their parents cannot exist, 
since the parents leave absolutely nothing to their children ; 
but on the other hand, if the Patagonians had preserved 
hereditary properties, they would without doubt have been 
to-day in possession of numerous herds, and would neces- 
sarily have been more formidable to the whites, since their 
power in that case would have been more than doubled, 
whereas their present habits will infallibly leave them in a 
stationary state, from which nothing but a radical change 

1 Humboldt, Voyage aux Rigions Equinoxiales, viii. 273. 

will be able to deliver them." ^ Thus poverty, indolence, 
improvidence, political weakness, and all the hardships of 
a nomadic life are the miserable inheritance which the fear 
of the dead entails on these wretched Indians. Heavy 
indeed is the toll which superstition exacts from all who 
pass within her gloomy portal. 

But I am not here concerned with the disastrous and Fear of the 
deplorable consequences, the unspeakable follies and crimes f^°siain^a 
and miseries, which have flowed in practice from the theory check on 
of a future life. My business at present is with the more ""'^ *'^' 
cheerful side of the subject, with the wholesome, though 
groundless, terror which ghosts, apparitions, and spectres 
strike into the breasts of hardened ruffians and desperadoes. 
So far as such persons reflect at all and regulate their 
passions by the dictates of prudence, it seems plain that 
a fear of ghostly retribution, of the angry spirit of their 
victim, must act as a salutary restraint on their disorderly 
impulses ; it must reinforce the dread of purely secular 
punishment and furnish the choleric and malicious with 
a fresh motive for pausing before they imbrue their hands 
in blood. This is so obvious, and the fear of ghosts is so 
notorious, that both might perhaps be taken for granted, 
especially at this late hour of the evening. But for the 
sake of completeness I will mention a few illustrative facts, 
taking them almost at random from distant races in order 
to indicate the wide diffusion of this particular superstition. 
I shall try to shew that while all ghosts are feared, the ghosts 
of slain men are especially dreaded by their slayers. 

The ancient Greeks believed that the soul of any man Ancient 
who had just been killed was angry with his slayer and ^Jj^gJ'j^g ^^ 
troubled him ; hence even an involuntary homicide had. to the anger 

of a ghost 

1 Alcide d'Orbigny, Voyage dans the Evil Spirit, so much so that when at his 

rAmirique Miridionale, ii. (Paris and they are reproached for a theft, they slayer. 

Strasburg, 1839-1843) pp. 99 sq. always say that Achekenat-Kanet com- 

As to the thieving propensities of the manded them so to do " {op. cit. p. 104). 

Patagonians, the author tells us that Achekenat-Kanet is the supernatural 

" they do not steal among themselves, being who, under various names, is 

it is true ; but their parents, from their revered or dreaded by all the Indian 

tender infancy, teach them to consider tribes of Patagonia. Sometimes he 

theft from the enemy as the base of appears as a good and sometimes as a 

their education, as an accomplishment bad spirit. See A. d'Orbigny, op. cit. 

indispensable for every one who would ii. 87. 
succeed in life, as a thing ordained by 

Among the 
Greeks a 
manslayer 
was 

dreaded 
and 

shunned 
because he 
was 

thought to 
be haunted 
by the 
angry and 
dangerous 
ghost of 
his victim. 

depart from his country for a year until the wrath of the 
dead man had cooled down ; nor might the slayer return 
until sacrifice had been offered and ceremonies of purifica- 
tion performed. If his victim chanced to be a foreigner, 
the homicide had to shun the country of the dead man as 
well as his own.-^ The legend of the matricide Orestes, how 
he roamed from place to place pursued and maddened by 
the ghost of his murdered mother, reflects faithfully the 
ancient Greek conception of the fate which overtakes the 
murderer at the hands of the ghost.^ 

But it is important to observe that not only does the 
hag-ridden homicide go in terror of his victim's ghost ; he 
is himself an object of fear and aversion to the whole com- 
munity on account of the angry and dangerous spirit which 
dogs his steps. It was probably more in self-defence than 
out of consideration for the manslayer that Attic law com- 
pelled him to quit the country. This comes out clearly 
from the provisions of the law. For in the first place, on 
going into banishment the homicide had to follow a pre- 
scribed road : ^ obviously it would have been hazardous to 
let him stray about the country with a wrathful ghost at his 
heels. In the second place, if another charge was brought 
against a banished homicide, he was allowed to return to 
Attica to plead in his defence, but he might not set foot on 
land ; he had to speak from a ship, and even the ship might 
not cast anchor or put out a gangway. The judges avoided 
all contact with the culprit, for they judged the case sitting 
or standing on the shore.* Plainly the intention of this rule 
was literally to insulate the slayer, lest by touching Attic 
earth even indirectly through the anchor or the gangway he 
should blast it by a sort of electric shock, as we might say ; 
though doubtless the Greeks would have said that the blight 
was wrought by contact with the ghost, by a sort of effluence 
of death. For the same reason if such a man, sailing the 

1 Plato, Laws, ix. 8, pp. 865 D — 
866 A ; Demosthenes, xxiii. pp. 643 
sq. ; Hesychius, s.v. aTreviavTi<rixb^. 

'' Aeschyhis, Choephor. 1021 sqq., 
Eumenides, 85 sqq. ; Euripides, Iphig. 
in Taur. 940 sqq.; Pausanias, ii. 31. 
8, viii. 34. 1-4. 

^ Demosthenes, xxiii. pp. 643 sq. 

* Demosthenes, xxiii. pp. 645 sq. ; 
Aristotle, Constihitioii of Athens, 57 ; 
Pausanias, i. 28. 11; PoUux, viii. 120; 
Helladius, quoted by Photius, Biblio- 
theca, p. 535 A, lines 28 sqq. ed. I. 
Bekker (Berlin, 1824). 

sea, happened to be wrecked on the coast of the country 
where his crime had been committed, he was allowed to 
camp on the shore till a ship came to take him off, but he 
was expected to keep his feet in sea-water all the time,^ 
evidently to neutralise the ghostly infection and prevent it 
from spreading to the soil. For the same reason, when the 
turbulent people of Cynaetha in Arcadia had perpetrated a 
peculiarly atrocious massacre and had sent envoys to Sparta, 
all the Arcadian states through which the envoys took 
their way ordered them out of the country ; and after their 
departure the Mantineans purified themselves and their 
belongings by sacrificing victims and carrying them round the 
city and the whole of their land.^ So when the Athenians 
had heard of a massacre at Argos, they caused purificatory 
offerings to be carried round the public assembly.' 

No doubt the root of all such observances was a fear of The legend 
the dangerous ghost which haunts the murderer and against reflects the 
which the whole community as well aS the homicide himself Greek 
must be on its guard. The Greek practice in these respects mansiayer. 
is clearly mirrored in the legend of Orestes ; for it is said that 
the people of Troezen would not receive him in their houses 
until he had been purified of his guilt,* that is, until he had 
been rid of his mother's ghost. The Akikuyu of British 
East Africa think that if a man who has killed another 
comes and sleeps at a village and eats with a family in 
their hut, the persons with whom he has eaten contract a 
dangerous pollution which might prove fatal to them were 
it not removed in time by a medicine-man. The very skin 
on which the homicide slept has absorbed the taint and 
might infect any one else who slept on it. So a medicine- 
man is sent for to purify the hut and its occupants.^ The 

1 Plato, Laws, ix. 8, p. 866 c D. called ngahu, is the word used for a 

2 Polybius, iv. 17-21 condition into which a person is be- 
5 Plutarch, Praecept. ger. reipub. lieved to fall if he or she accidentally 

xvii. 9. becomes the victim of certain circum- 

* Pausanias, ii. 31. 8. stances or intentionally performs certain 

^ C. W. Hobley, " Kikuyu Customs acts which carry with them a kind of ill 

and V>€i\sk,^' Journal of the Royal An- luck or curse. A person who is thahu 

thropological Institute, xl. {1910) p. becomes emaciated and ill or breaks 

431. The nature of the ceremonial out into eruptions or boils, and if the 

pollution {thahu) thus incurred is ex- thahit is not removed will probably die. 

plained by Mr. Hobley {op. cit. p. In many cases this undoubtedly hap- 

428) as follows : " Thahu, sometimes pens by the process of auto-suggestion. 

blood by 
being 
smeared 
with the 
blood of 
pigs. 

Mansiayers Greek mode of purifying a homicide was to kill a sucking 
purged of pjg ^^^ ^^gj^ tjjg hands of the guilty man in its blood : 
human ° ° Until this ceremony had been performed the manslayer was 
not allowed to speak.^ Among the hill-tribes near Raja- 
mahal in Bengal, if two men quarrel and blood be shed, the 
one who cut the other is fined a hog or a fowl, "the blood 
of which is sprinkled over the wounded person, to purify 
him, and to prevent his being possessed by a devil." ^ In 
this case the blood -sprinkling is avowedly intended to 
prevent the man from being haunted by a spirit ; only it 
is not the aggressor but his victim who is supposed to be 
in danger and therefore to stand in need of purification. 
We have seen that among these and other savage tribes 
pig's blood is sprinkled on persons and things as a mode of 
purifying them from the pollution of sexual crimes.^ Among 
the Cameroon negroes in West Africa accidental homicide 
can be expiated by the blood of an animal. The relations 
of the slayer and of the slain assemble. An animal is 
killed, and every person present is smeared with its blood 
on his face and breast. They think that the guilt of man- 
slaughter is thus atoned for, and that no punishment will 
overtake the homicide.* In Car Nicobar a man possessed 
by devils is cleansed of them by being rubbed all over with 
pig's blood and beaten with leaves. The devils are sup- 
posed to be thus swept off like flies from the man's body to 
the leaves, which are then folded up and tied tightly with a 
special kind of string. A professional exorciser administers 
the beating, and at every stroke with the leaves he falls 
down with his face on the floor and calls out in a squeaky 

as it never occurs to the Kikuyu mind 
to be sceptical on a matter of this kind. 
It is said that the ihahu condition is 
caused by the ngoma or spirits of de- 
parted ancestors, but the process does 
not seem to have been analysed any 
further." See also above, pp. 93, 105. 
1 Aeschylus, Eumenides, 280 sqq., 
448 sqq. ; id., quoted by Eustathius 
on Homer, Iliad, xix. 254, p. 1183, 
^TTtT^Setos id6KeL Trpbs Kadapfji.6y 6 aus, ws 
SvjXoi Aio'xi'Xos eV rp, trph hv waKay/iois 
atfiaros xotpo/crifou aiJr6s e xpapai Zei>s 
/carao-Tdlas xepoiv ; Apollonius Rhodius, 
Argonaut, iv. 703-717, with the notes 

of the scholiast. Purifications of this 
sort are represented in Greek art. See 
my note on Pausanias ii. 31. 8 (vol. 
iii. pp. 276 sqq.). 

2 Lieutenant Thomas Shaw, "The 
Inhabitants of the Hills near Rajama- 
hall," Asiatic Researches, Fourth 
Edition, iv. (London, 1807) p. 78, 
compare p. 77. 

^ See above, pp. 44 sqq. 

* Missionary Autenrieth, "Zur Reli- 
gion derKamerun-Neger,"Afz««7«»^«» 
der geographischen Gesellschaft zujena, 
xii. (1893) pp. 93 sg. 

voice, " Here is a devil." This ceremony is performed by- 
night ; and before daybreak all the packets of leaves con- 
taining the devils are thrown into the sea.-^ The Greeks 
similarly used laurel leaves as well as pig's blood in purifi- 
catory ceremonies.^ In all such cases we may assume that 
the purification was originally conceived as physical rather 
than as moral, as a sort of detergent which washed, swept, 
or scraped the ghostly or demoniacal pollution from the 
person of the ghost-haunted or demon-possessed man. The 
motive for employing blood in these rites of cleansing is not 
clear. Perhaps the purgative virtue ascribed to it may have 
been based on the notion that the offended spirit accepts 
the blood as a substitute for the blood of the man or 
woman.^ However, it is doubtful whether this explanation 
could cover all the cases in which blood is sprinkled as a 
mode of purification. Certainly it is odd, as the sage 
Heraclitus long ago remarked, that blood-stains should be 
thought to be removed by blood-stains, as if a man who had 
been bespattered with mud should think to cleanse himself 
by bespattering himself with more mud.* But the ways of 
man are wonderful and sornetimes past finding out. 

There was a curious story that after Orestes had gone The matri- 
mad through murdering his mother he recovered his wits by p'^^'^O'^f ^s 

° _ ° .'IS said to 

biting off one of his own fingers ; the Furies of his murdered have re- 
mother, which had appeared black to him before, appeared ^°ts^^^y '^ 
white as soon as he had mutilated himself in this way : it biting off 
was as if the taste of his own blood sufficed to avert or own fingers. 
disarm the wrathful ghost.^ A hint of the way in which 
the blood may have been supposed to produce this result is 
furnished by the practice of some savages. The Indians of Mansiayers 
Guiana believe that an avenger of blood who has slain his ^'"'"^ly 

o taste their 

man must go mad unless he tastes the blood of his victim ; victims' 
the notion apparently is that the ghost drives him crazy, o'defnotto 

be haunted 

' V. Solomon, " Extracts from Rohde (Psyche,^ Tiibingen and Leipsic, by their 

Diaries kept in Car '^izoh'ax," Journal 1903, ii. 77 sq.). ghosts. 

of the Anthropological Institute, xxxii. , .adalpoprac d' dXKois atp.ar, f^iawh- 

(1902) p. 7. ^ . .. iievot oXov ei tis eh irrikbv iu.Ba.% TrriXu 

2 See my note on Pausan.as, 11. 3 1- d,roWfo.ro, Heraclitus, in H. Diels's Die 
a (vol. in. pp. 27b sqq.}. ■ Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Zweite 

3 This viras the view of C. JMemers Auflaee i (Berlin 1006) d 62 
(Geschichte der Religionen, Hanover, & > • V > y ; F- 

1 806-1 807, ii. 137 sq.), and of E. * Pausanias, viii. 34. 3. 

just as the ghost of Clytemnestra did to Orestes, who was 
also, be it remembered, an avenger of blood. In order to 
avert this consequence the Indian manslayer resorts on the 
third night to the grave of his victim, pierces the corpse 
with a sharp -pointed stick, and withdrawing it sucks the 
blood of the murdered man. After that he goes home with 
an easy mind, satisfied that he has done his duty and that 
he has nothing more to fear from the ghost.^ A similar 
custom was observed by the Maoris in battle. When a 
warrior had slain his foe in combat, he tasted his blood, 
believing that this preserved him from the avenging spirit 
[atud) of his victim ; for they imagined that " the moment 
a slayer had tasted the blood of the slain, the dead man 
became a part of his being and placed him under the pro- 
tection of the atua or guardian -spirit of the deceased."^ 
Thus in the opinion of these savages, by swallowing a 
portion of their victim they made him a part of themselves 
and thereby converted him from an enemy into an ally ; 
they established, in the strictest sense of the words, a blood- 
covenant with him. The Aricara Indians also drank the 
blood of their slain foes and proclaimed the deed by the 
mark of a red hand on their faces.^ The motive for this 
practice may have been, as with the Maoris, a desire to 
appropriate and so disarm the ghost of an enemy. In 
antiquity some of the Scythians used to drink the blood 
of the first foes they killed ; and they also tasted the 
blood of the friends with whom they made a covenant, 
for " they take that to be the surest pledge of good 
Homicides faith." * The motive of the two customs was probably 
to M°mad the same. " To the present day, when a person of another 
unless they tribe has been slain by a Nandi, the blood must be care- 
biood of fully washed off the spear or sword into a cup made 
theirvictim. of grass, and drunk by the slayer. If this is not done 
it is thought that the man will become frenzied."^ So 

^ Rev. J. H. Bernau, Missionary 3 John Bradbury, Travels in the 

Labours in British Guiana (London, Interior of America (iAvtfpoo\, 1817), 

1847), pp. 57 sq. ; R. Schomburgk, p. 160. 

Reisen in Britisch-Guiana (Leipsic, . „ ■ •««■ 1 ^r •• ,„ 

o o 01 •• „ > i- ' 4 Pomponms Mela, Chorogr. u. 12, 

"^''j: Dumont'^D-Urville, Voyage V- 35, ed. G. Parthey (Berlin, 1867). 

autour du monde et h la recherche de la * A. C. HoUis, The Nandi (Oxford, 

Pirouse (Paris, 1832-1833), iii. 305. 1909), p. 27. 

among some tribes of the Lower Niger " it is customary and 
necessary for the executioner to lick the blood that is on 
the blade " ; moreover " the custom of licking the blood off 
the blade of a sword by which a man has been killed in 
war is common to all these tribes, and the explanation 
given me by the Ibo, which is generally accepted, is, that 
if this was not done, the act of killing would so affect the 
strikers as to cause them to run amok among their own 
people ; because the sight and smell of blood render them 
absolutely senseless as well as regardless of all consequences. 
And this licking the blood is the only sure remedy, and the 
only way in which they can recover themselves." ^ So, too, 
among the Shans of Burma " it was the curious custom of 
executioners to taste the blood of their victims, as they be- 
lieved if this were not done illness and death would follow in 
a short time. In remote times Shan soldiers always bit the 
bodies of men killed by them in battle." ^ Strange as it may 
seem, this truly savage superstition exists apparently in Italy 
to this day. There is a widespread opinion in Calabria that 
if a murderer is to escape he must suck his victim's blood from 
the reeking blade of the dagger with which he did the deed.^ 
We can now perhaps understand why the matricide Orestes 
was thought to have recovered his wandering wits as soon as 
he had bitten off one of his fingers. By tasting his own blood, 
which was also that of his victim, since she was his mother, 
he might be supposed to form a blood-covenant with the 
ghost and so to convert it from a foe into a friend. The Various 
Kabyles of North Africa think that if a murderer leaps f^ke^by "' 
seven times over his victim's grave within three or seven mansiayers 
days of the murder, he will be quite safe. Hence the fresh g|os"fof^ 
grave of a murdered man is carefully guarded.* The Lushai their 

victims. 

1 Major A. G. Leonard, The Lower cient to kill him, and died rather from 
Niger and its Tribes (London, 1906), loss of blood than from one fatal blow" 
pp. 180, 181 sq. (Mrs. Leslie Milne, op. cit. pp. 191 

2 Mrs. Leslie Milne, Shans at Home sq, ). Perhaps each executioner feared 

(London, 1910), p. 192. Among the to be haunted by his victim's ghost if 

Shans " in a case of capital punish- he actually despatched him. 

ment more than one executioner as- , ,,. „ t -r j- ■ 

, J Ti-ji -J ■ ■ ° Vmcenzo Dorsa, La Iradizione 

sisted, and each tned to avoid givmg ... ,• • ,/ j 

. , ' , , , ii. .. 11, ■ i-1-ii' greco-latma nent usz e nelle creaenze 

the fatal blovi', so that the sm of kilhng * ^ , • , ,, r- 1 i ■ n-t ■ 

1 I 'i u u r 11 1 pofiolart della Calabria Literiore 

the culprit should fall upon several, f^ ,qo.s ,^o 

each bearing a part. The unfortunate (Cosenza, 1884), p. 138. 

man vcas killed by reason of repeated * J. Liorel, Kabylie du Jurjura 

sword cuts, no one of which was suffi- (Paris, N.D.), p. 441. 

of North-Eastern India believe that if a man kills an enemy 
the ghost of his victim w^ill haunt him and he virill go mad, 
unless he performs a certain ceremony which will make him 
master of the dead man's soul in the other world. The 
ceremony includes the sacrifice of an animal, whether a pig, 
a goat, or a mithan.^ Among the Awemba of Northern 
Rhodesia, " according to a superstition common among 
Central African tribes, unless the slayers were purified from 
blood-guiltiness they would become mad. On the night of 
return no warrior might sleep in his own hut, but lay in the 
open nsaka in the village. The next day, after bathing in 
the stream and being anointed with lustral medicine by the 
doctor, he could return to his own hearth, and resume inter- 
course with his wife." ^ In all such cases the madness of 
the slayer is probably attributed to the ghost of the slain, 
which has taken possession of him. 
The custom That the Greek practice of secluding and purifying a 
an?'^urif"^ homicIde was essentially an exorcism, in other words, that 
ing homi- its aim was to ban the dangerous ghost of his victim, is 
i^n^ended to rendered practically certain by the similar rites of seclusion 
protect and purification which among many savage tribes have to be 
against the observed by victorious warriors with the avowed intention of 
angryspirits securing them against the spirits of the men whom they have 
which are slain in battle. These rites I have illustrated elsewhere,^ but 
thought to a. few cases may be quoted here by way of example. Thus 
their among the Basutos " ablution is especially performed on 

slayers. return from battle. It is absolutely necessary that the 
warriors should rid themselves, as soon as possible, of the 
blood they have shed, or the shades of their victims would 
pursue them incessantly, and disturb their slumbers. They 
go in a procession, and in full armour, to the nearest stream. 
At the moment they enter the water a diviner, placed higher 
up, throws some purifying substances into the current."* 
According to another account of the Basuto custom, "warriors 

' Lieut. -Colonel J. Shakespear, 
" The Kuki-Lushai clans," Journal of 
the Royal Anthropological Institute, 
xxxix. (1909) p. 380 ; id.. The Lushei 
Kuki Clans (London, 19 12), pp. 
78 J?. 

2 J. H. West Sheane, " Wemba 

Warpaths," Journal of the African 
Society, No. 41 (October, 1911), pp. 
31 sq. 

^ Taboo and the Perils of the Soul, 
pp. 16S sqq. 

* Rev. E. Casalis, The Basutos 
(London, 1861), p. 258. 

who have killed an enemy are purified. The chief has to 
wash them, sacrificing an ox in the presence of the whole 
army. They are also anointed with the gall of the animal, 
which prevents the ghost of the enemy from pursuing them 
any farther."^ Among the Thonga, a Bantu tribe of South 
Africa, about Delagoa Bay, " to have killed an enemy on the 
battle-field entails an immense glory for the slayers ; but that 
glory is fraught with great danger. They have killed. . . . 
So they are exposed to the mysterious and deadly influence 
of the nuru and must consequently undergo a medical treat- 
ment. What is the nuru ? Nuru, the spirit of the slain 
which tries to take its revenge on the slayer. It haunts him 
and may drive him into insanity : his eyes swell, protrude 
and become inflamed. He will lose his head, be attacked 
by giddiness {ndzululwan) and the thirst for blood may lead 
him to fall upon members of his own family and to stab them 
with his assagay. To prevent such misfortunes, a special 
medication is required : the slayers must lurulula tiyimpi ta 
bu, take away the nuru of their sanguinary expedition. . . . 
In what consists this treatment? The slayers must remain 
for some days at the capital. They are taboo. They put 
on old clothes, eat with special spoons, because their hands 
are ' hot,' and off special plates {rnirekd) and broken pots. 
They are forbidden to drink water. Their food must be cold. 
The chief kills oxen for them ; but if the meat were hot it 
would make them swell internally ' because they are hot 
themselves, they are defiled {ba na nsila)' If they eat hot 
food, the defilement would enter into them. ' They are black 
intima). This black must be removed.' During all this 
time sexual relations are absolutely forbidden to them. 
They must not go home, to their wives. In former times 
the Ba-Ronga used to tattoo them with special marks from 
• one eyebrow to the other. Dreadful medicines were inocu- 
lated in the incisions, and there remained pimples 'which 
gave them the appearance of a buffalo when it frowns.' After 
some days a medicine-man comes to purify them, ' to remove 
their black.' There seem to be various means of doing it, 
according to Mankhelu. Seeds of all kinds are put into a 

1 Father Porte, " Les Reminiscences Missions catholiques, xxviii. (1896) 
d'un missionnaire du Basutoland," Les p. 371. 

With some 
savages 
temporary 
insanity 
seems to be 
really 
caused by 
the sight 
or even 
thought 
of blood. 

broken pot and roasted, together with drugs and psanyi ^ of a 
goat. The slayers inhale the smoke which emanates from 
the pot. They put their hands into the mixture and rub 
their limbs with it, especially the joints. . . . Insanity 
threatening those who shed blood might begin early. So, 
already on the battle-field, just after their deed, warriors are 
given a preventive dose of the medicine by those who have 
killed on previous occasions. . . . The period of seclusion 
having been concluded by the final purification, all the 
implements used by the slayers during these days, and their 
old garments, are tied together and hung by a string to 
a tree, at some distance from the capital, where they are left 
to rot." 2 

The accounts of the madness which is apt to befall 
slayers seem too numerous and too consistent to be dismissed 
as pure fictions of the savage imagination. However we 
may reject the native explanation of such fits of frenzy, the 
reports point to a real berserker fury or unbridled thirst for 
blood which comes over savages when they are excited by 
combat, and which may prove dangerous to friends as well 
as to foes. The question is one on which students of mental 
disease might perhaps throw light. Meantime it deserves 
to be noticed that even the people who have staid at home 
and have taken no share in the bloody work are liable 
to fall into a state of frenzy when they hear the war- 
whoops which proclaim the approach of the victorious 
warriors with their ghastly trophies. Thus we are told that 
among the Bare'e- speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes, 
when these notes of triumph were heard in the distance the 
whole population of the village would turn out to meet and 
welcome the returning braves. At the mere sound some of 
those who had remained at home, especially women, would be 
seized with a frenzy, and rushing forth would bite the severed 
heads of the slain foes, and they were not to be brought to 
their senses till they had drunk palm wine or water out of 
the skulls. If the warriors returned empty-handed, these 

1 Psanyi is half-digested grass found South African Tribe (Neuchatel, 

in the stomachs of sacrificed goats 1912-1913), i. 453-455. I have 

(H. A. Junod, The Life of a South omitted some of the Thonga words 

African Tribe, ii. 569). which Mr. Junod inserts in the text. 

^ Henri A. Junod, The Life of a 

furies would fall upon them and bite their arms. There was 
a regular expression for this state of temporary insanity- 
excited by the sight or even the thought of human blood ; 
it was called merata lamoanja or merata raoa, " the spirit is 
come over them," by which was probably meant that the 
madness was caused by the ghosts of the slaughtered foes. 
When any of the warriors themselves suffered from this 
paroxysm of frenzy, they were healed by eating a piece of 
the brains or licking the blood of the slain.^ 

Among the Bantu tribes of Kavirondo, in British East Means 
Africa, when a man has killed an enemy in warfare he shaves ^^^^"^y 

' _ -^ manslayers 

his head on his return home, and his friends rub a medicine, in Africa 
which generally consists of cow's dung, over his body to s°ivfs'of™ 
prevent the spirit of the slain man from troubling him.^ the ghosts 
Here cow's dung serves these negroes as a detergent of the victims'^, 
ghost, just as pig's blood served the ancient Greeks. Among 
the Wawanga, about Mount Elgon in British East Africa, 
" a man returning from a raid, on which he has killed one of 
the enemy, may not enter his hut until he has taken cow- 
dung and rubbed it on the cheeks of the women and children 
of the village and purified himself by the sacrifice of a goat, 
a strip of skin from the forehead of which he wears round the 
right wrist during the four following nights." ^ With the 
Ja-Luo of Kavirondo the custom is somewhat different. 
Three days after his return from the fight the warrior shaves 
his head. But before he may enter his village he has to 
hang a live fowl, head uppermost, round his neck ; then the 
bird is decapitated and its head left hanging round his neck. 
Soon after his return a feast is made for the slain man, in 
order that his ghost may not haunt his slayer.* In some 
of these cases the slayer shaves his head, precisely as the 
matricide Orestes is said to have shorn his hair when he 
came to his senses.^ From this Greek tradition we may 
infer with some probability that the hair of Greek homicides, 

1 N. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, Ve of the tribes of Mount Elgon, by the 
Bare' e-sfrekendeToradja's van Midden- Hon. Kenneth R. Dundas, which the 
Celebes, i. (Batavia, 1912) p. 239. author kindly sent to me. 

2 Sir H. Johnston, The Uganda 4 gj^ jj. Johnston, cp. cit. ii. 794 ; 
Protectorate (London, 1902), 11 743 c. W. Hobley, op. cit. p. 31. 

sq.\ C. W. Hobley, Eastern Uganda " ^ ^ -^ 

(London, 1902), p. 20. ^ Pausanias, viii. 34. 3 ; compare 

3 Extract from a type- written account Strabo, xii. 2. 3, p. 535. 

like that of these African warriors, was regularly cropped as 
one way of ridding them of the ghostly infection. Among 
the Ba-Yaka, a Bantu people of the Congo Free State, " a 
man who has been killed in battle is supposed to send his 
soul to avenge his death on the person of the man who killed 
him ; the latter, however, can escape the vengeance of the 
dead by wearing the red tail-feathers of the parrot in his 
hair, and painting his forehead red." ^ Perhaps, as I have 
suggested elsewhere, this costume is intended to disguise the 
Precautions slaycr from his victim's ghost.^ Among the Natchez Indians 
taken by ^f North America young braves who had taken their first 

the Natchez ^ ° 

Indians. scalps Were obliged to observe certain rules of abstinence for 

six months. They might not sleep with their wives nor eat 

flesh ; their only food was fish and hasty-pudding. If they 

broke these rules they believed that the soul of the man they 

had killed would work their death by magic.^ 

Ghosts of The Kai of German New Guinea stand in great fear of 

dreaded b ^'^^ ghosts of the men whom they have slain in war. On 

the Kai of their way back from the field of battle or the scene of 

j^g™^° massacre they hurry in order to be safe at home or in the 

Guinea. shelter of a friendly village before nightfall ; for all night 

long the spirits of the dead are believed to dog the footsteps 

of their slayers, in the hope of coming up with them and 

recovering the lost portions of their souls which adhere with 

the clots of their blood to the spears and clubs that dealt 

them the death-blow. Only so can these poor restless 

ghosts find rest and peace. Hence the slayers are careful 

not to bring back the blood-stained weapons with them into 

the village ; for that would be the first place where the 

ghosts would look for them. They hide them, therefore, in 

the forest at a safe distarlce from the village, where the 

ghosts can never find them ; and when the spirits are weary 

of the fruitless search, they go away back to their dead 

bodies lying, it may be, among the blackened ruins of their 

1 E. Torday and T. A. Joyce, (Oxford, 1907), p. 108. 

"Notes on the Ethnography of the ^ "Relation des Natchez," Recueil 

HeL-Yalka." ybamal of the Anthropo- de Vcy/ag'es au 2Vord, ix. 24 [Amsterdam, 

logical Institute, xxxvi. (1906) pp. 1737) ! lettres idifiantes et curieuses, 

50 j-^. Nouvelle Edition, vii. (Paris, 1781) 

2 J. G. Frazer, "Folk-lore in the p. 26; Charlevoix, Histoire de la 
Old Testament," in Anthropological Novvelle France (Paris, 1744), vi. 
Essays presented to E. B. Tylor j86 sq. 

desolated home. Then the victors come forth, and taking 
up the weapons from their hiding-places, wash them clean 
of blood and bring them back to the village.^ But " as 
more or less of the soul-stuff of their slain foes always sticks 
to the victors, none of their people may touch them after 
their return to the village. They are strictly shunned by 
their friends for several days. People go shyly out of their 
way. If any one in the village gets a pain in his stomach, 
it is assumed that he has sat down on the place of one of the 
warriors. If somebody complains of toothache, he must 
have eaten a fruit which had been touched by one of the 
combatants. All the leavings of the men's food must be 
most carefully put out of the way, lest a pig should get at 
them, for that would be the death of the animal. Therefore 
the remains of their meals are burnt or buried. The warriors 
themselves cannot suffer much from the soul-stuff of the 
foes, because they treat themselves with the disinfecting sap 
of a creeper. But even so they are not secure against all 
the dangers that threaten them from this quarter." ^ 

Among the tribes at the mouth of the Wanigela River, Customs 
in British New Guinea, "a man who has taken life is "t-servedby 

' manslayers 

considered to be impure until he has undergone certain in British 
ceremonies : as soon as possible after the deed he cleanses q^^^^ 
himself and his weapon. This satisfactorily accomplished, 
he repairs to his village and seats himself on the logs of 
sacrificial staging. No one approaches him or takes any 
notice whatever of him. A house is prepared for him which 
is put in charge of two or three small boys as servants. 
He may eat only toasted bananas, and only the centre 
portion of them — the ends being thrown away. On the 
third day of his seclusion a small feast is prepared by his 
friends, who also fashion some new perineal bands for him. 
This is called ivi poro. The next day the man dons all his 
best ornaments and badges for taking life, and sallies forth 
fully armed and parades the village. The next day a hunt 
is organised, and a kangaroo selected from the game cap- 
tured. It is cut open and the spleen and liver rubbed over 
the back of the man. He then walks solemnly down to the 

^ Ch. Keysser, "Aus dem Leben Neu-Guinea (Berlin, 1911), iii. 147 sq. 
der ICaileute," in R. Neuhauss's Z>£«/i'^.4 ^ qj,. Keysser, op. cit. p. 132. 

nearest water, and standing straddle-legs in it washes himself. 
All young untried warriors swim between his legs. This is 
supposed to impart his courage and strength to them. The 
following day, at early dawn, he dashes out of his house, 
fully armed, and calls aloud the name of his victim. Having 
satisfied himself that he has thoroughly scared the ghost of 
the dead man, he returns to his house. The beating of 
flooring boards and the lighting of fires is also a certain 
method of scaring the ghost. A day later his purification is 
finished. He can then enter his wife's house." ^ In this 
last case the true nature of such so-called purifications is 
clearly manifest : they are in fact rites of exorcism observed 
for the purpose of banning a dangerous spirit. 
Customs Amongst the Omaha Indians of North America a 

murdlrers^ murderer whose life was spared by the kinsmen of his 
among the victim had to observe certain stringent rules for a period 
Indians. which Varied from two to four years. He must walk bare- 
foot, and he might eat no warm food, nor raise his voice, 
nor look around. He had to pull his robe around him and 
to keep it tied at the neck, even in warm weather ; he 
might not let it hang loose or fly open. He might not 
move his hands about, but had to keep them close to his 
body. He might not comb his hair, nor might it be blown 
about by the wind. No one would eat with him, and only 
one of his kindred was allowed to remain with him in his 
tent. When the tribe went hunting, he was obliged to pitch 
his tent about a quarter of a mile from the rest of the people, 
" lest the ghost of his victim should raise a high wind which 
might cause damage." ^ The reason here alleged for banish- 
ing the murderer from the camp of the hunters gives the 
clue to all the other restrictions laid on him : he was 
haunted by the ghost and therefore dangerous ; hence people 
kept aloof from him, just as they are said to have done from 
the ghost-ridden Orestes. 

Among the Chinook Indians of Oregon and Washington, 
"when a person has been killed, an old man who has a 

1 R. E. Guise, "On the Tribes in- 2 Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, "Omaha 

habiting the mouth of the V^^anigela Sociology," Third Annual Report of 

River, New Guinea," Journal of the the Bureatt of Ethnology (Washington, 

Anthropological Institute , y.:i.m\. {1899) 1884), p. 369. 
pp. 213 sq. 

guardian spirit is asked to work over the murderer. The Ceremonies 
old man takes coal and mixes it with grease. He puts homiddts"^^ 
it on to the face of the murderer. He gives him a head among the 
ring of cedar bark. Cedar bark is also tied around his in^iln", 
ankles and knees and around his wrists. For five days 
he does not drink water. He does not sleep, and does 
not lie down. He always stands. At night he walks about 
and whistles on bone whistles. He always says ' a a a.' 
For five days he does not wash his face. Then on the 
next morning the old man washes his face. He takes 
off that coal. He removes the black paint from his face. 
He puts red paint on his face. A little coal is mixed with 
the red paint. The old man puts this again on to his face. 
Sometimes this is done by an old man, sometimes by an old 
woman. The cedar bark which was tied to his legs and 
arms is taken off and buckskin straps are tied around his arms 
and his legs. Now, after five days he is given water. He 
is given a bucket, out of which he drinks. Now food is 
roasted for him, until it is burned. When it is burned black 
it is given to him. He eats standing. He takes five 
mouthsful, and no more. After thirty days he is painted 
with new red paint. Good red paint is taken. Now he 
carries his head ring and his bucket to a spruce tree and 
hangs it on top of the tree. Then the tree will dry up. 
People never eat in company of a murderer. He never eats 
sitting, but always standing. When he sits down to rest he 
kneels on one leg. The murderer never looks at a child 
and must not see people while they are eating." ^ All these 
measures are probably intended to rid the murderer of the 
clinging ghost of his victim, and to keep him in quarantine 
till the riddance has been effected. 

While the spirit of a murdered man is thus feared Ghosts of 
by everybody, it is natural that it should be specially fotkjeiiow- 
dreaded by those against whom for any reason he may townsmen, 

, .1,1 IT- 1 ^nd fellow- 

be conceived to bear a grudge, ror example, among ciansfoik 

the Yabim of German New Guinea, when the relations of especially 

,,,,.. , , dreaded. 

a murdered man have accepted a bloodwit mstead of 
avenging his death, they must allow the family of the 
victim to mark them with chalk on the brow. Were this 

1 Franz Boas, Chinook Tex/j- (Washington, 1894), p. 258. 

not done, the ghost of their dead kinsman might come 
and trouble them for not doing their duty by him ; he 
might drive away their pigs or loosen their teeth.'' The 
ghosts of murdered kinsfolk and neighbours are naturally 
more formidable than those of foreigners and strangers ; for 
their wrath is hotter and they have more opportunities of 
wreaking their anger on the hard-hearted friends who either 
did them to death with their own hands or left their blood 
unavenged. Indeed some people only fear the wraiths of 
such persons, and regard with indifference all other ghosts, 
let them mow and gibber as much as they like. Thus 
among the Boloki of the Upper Congo " a homicide is not 
afraid of the spirit of the man he has killed when the slain 
man belongs to any of the neighbouring towns, as disem- 
bodied spirits travel in a very limited area only ; but when 
he kills a man belonging to his own town he is filled with 
fear lest the spirit shall do him some harm. There are no 
special rites that he can observe to free himself from these 
fears, but he mourns for the slain man as though he were a 
member of his own family. He neglects his personal 
appearance, shaves his head, fasts for a certain period, and 
laments with much weeping." ^ Again, a Kikuyu man does 
not incur ceremonial pollution (thahu) by the slaughter of a 
man of another tribe, nor even of his own tribe, provided his 
victim belongs to another clan ; but if the slain man is 
a member of the same clan as his slayer, the case is grave 
indeed. However, it is possible by means of a ceremony to 
bind over the ghost to keep the peace. For this purpose 
the murderer and the oldest surviving brother of his victim 
are seated facing each other on two trunks of banana trees ; 
here they are solemnly fed by two elders with vegetable food 
of all kinds, which has been provided for the purpose by their 
mothers and sprinkled with the contents of the stomach of a 
sacrificed sheep. Next day the elders proceed to the sacred 

' K. Vetter, " Uber papuanische ^ Rev. J. H. Weeks, Among Congo 

Rechtsverhaltnisse, wie solche nament- Cannibals (London, 1913), p. 268; 

lich bei den Jabim beobachtet wurden," compare id., "Anthropological Notes 

Nachrichten iiber Kaiser Wilhelms- on the Bangala of the Upper Congo 

Land und den Bismarck - Archipel, 'S.yvzx" Jou7-nal of the Royal Anthropo- 

1897, p. 99; B. Hagen, Unter den logical Institute, fX. (1910) p. 373. 
Papnas (Wiesbaden, 1899), p. 254. 

fig-tree (mugumo), which plays a great part in the religious 
rites of the Akikuyu. There they sacrifice a pig and deposit 
some of the fat, the intestines, and the more important bones 
at the foot of the tree, while they themselves feast on the 
more palatable parts of the animal. They think that the 
ghost of the murdered man will visit the tree that very night 
in the outward shape of a wild cat and consume the meat, 
and that this offering will prevent him from returning to the 
village and troubling the inhabitants/ 

The Bare'e- speaking Toradjas of Central Celebes are Ghosts of 
greatly concerned about the souls of men who have been dreaded 
slain in battle. They appear to think that men who have ^y the 
been killed in war instead of dying by disease have not of Central 
exhausted their vital energy and that therefore their departed Celebes. 
spirits are more powerful than the common ruck of ghosts ; 
and as on account of the unnatural manner of their death 
they cannot be admitted into the land of souls they continue 
to prowl about the earth, furious with the foes who have cut 
them off untimely in the prime of manhood, and demanding 
of their friends that they shall wage war on the enemy and 
send forth an expedition every year to kill some of them. If 
the survivors pay no heed to this demand of the bloodthirsty 
ghosts, they themselves are exposed to the vengeance of 
these angry spirits, who pay out their undutiful friends and 
relatives by visiting them with sickness and death. Hence 
with the Toradjas war is a sacred duty in which every 
member of the community is bound to bear a part ; even 
women and children, who cannot wage real war, must wage 
mimic warfare at home by hacking with bamboo swords at 
an old skull of the enemy, while with their shrill voices they 
utter the war-whoop.^ Thus among these people, as among 
many more tribes of savages, a belief in the immortality of 

1 C. W. Hobley, " Kikuyu Customs in the bark. This appears to have 

and Beliefs," Journal of the Royal suggested to the savages the idea that 

Anthropological InUitute, xl. (1910) the tree is a great source of fertility to 

pp. 438 sq. As to the sanctity of the men and women, to cattle, sheep, and 

fig-tree (mugumu) among the Akikuyu, goats. 

see Mervyn W. H. Beech, "The ^ n. Adriani en Alb. C. Kruijt, Z)« 

sacred fig-tree of the A-kikuyu of East Bare' e-sprekende Toradja's van Midden- 

Africa," Man, xiii. (1913) pp. 4-6. Celebes, i. (Batavia, 1912) pp. 285, 

Mr. Beech traces the reverence for the 290 sq. In recent years the wars be- 

tree to the white milky sap which tween the tribes have been suppressed 

exudes from it when an incision is made by the Dutch Government. 

K 

the soul has been one of the most fruitful causes of blood- 
shed by keeping up a perpetual state of war between neigh- 
bouring communities, who dare not make peace with each 
other for fear of mortally offending the spirits of the dead.^ 
Ghosts of But, whether friends or foes, the ghosts of all who have 

all who ijjgj ^ violent death are in a sense a public danger : for their 

have died '^ r i 

violent temper is naturally soured and they are apt to fall foul of 

dMBe^rous '^^ ^''^'- peJ'son they meet without nicely discriminating 

How the between the innocent and the guilty. The Karens of Burma, 

projMtfate fo^" example, think that the spirits of all such persons go 

suchghosts. neither to the upper regions of bliss nor to the nether world 

of woe, but linger on earth and wander about invisible. They 

make men sick to death by stealing their souls. Accordingly 

these vampire-like beings are exceedingly dreaded -by the 

people, who seek to appease their anger and repel their cruel 

assaults by propitiatory offerings and the most earnest prayers 

and supplications.^ They put red, yellow, and white rice in 

a basket and leave it in the forest, saying : " Ghosts of such 

as died by falling from a tree, ghosts of such as died of 

hunger or thirst, ghosts of such as died by the tiger's tooth 

or the serpent's fang, ghosts of the murdered dead, ghosts of 

such as died of small-pox or cholera, ghosts of dead lepers, 

ill-treat us not, seize not upon our persons, do us no 
harm. O stay here in this wood. We will bring hither 
red rice, yellow rice, and white rice for your subsistence." ^ 

The angry Howcvcr, it is not always by fair words and propitiatory 

fhe°silin'^ offerings that the community attempts to rid itself of these 
are some- invisible but dangerous intruders. People sometimes resort 
cibiy driven '^o more forcible measures. " Once," says a traveller among 
away with the Indians of North America, " on approaching in the 
clamour, night a village of Ottawas, I found all the inhabitants in 
confusion : they were all busily engaged in raising noises of 
the loudest and most inharmonious kind. Upon inquiry, 

1 found that a battle had been lately fought between the 
Ottawas and the Kickapoos, and that the object of all this 
noise was to prevent the ghosts of the departed combatants 

' Compare The Belief in Immortality Oriental Society, iv. No. 2 (New York. 

andtheWorshipoftheiiead,\.. (London, 1854), pp. 312 sq. 

1913) PP- 136-r?., 278j-{i., 468 J?. 3 Bfingau^^ "Les Karins de la 

2 Rev. E. B. Cross, "On the Birmanie," Les Missions catholiques, 

Karens," Journal of the American xx. (1888) p. 208. 

from entering the village." ^ Again, after the North 
American Indians had burned and tortured a prisoner to 
death, they used to run through the village, beating the 
walls, the furniture, and the roofs of the huts with sticks 
and yelling at the pitch of their voices to drive away the 
angry ghost of the victim, lest he should seek to avenge 
the injuries done to his scorched and mutilated body.^ 
Similarly among the Papuans of Doreh in Dutch New 
Guinea, when a murder has been committed in the village, 
the inhabitants assemble for several evenings successively 
and shriek and shout to frighten away the ghost, in case he 
should attempt to come back.^ The Yabim, a tribe in 
German New Guinea, believe that " the dead can both help 
and harm, but the fear of their harmful influence is pre- 
dominant. Especially the people are of opinion that the 
ghost of a slain man haunts his murderer and brings mis- 
fortune on him. Hence it is necessary to drive away the 
ghost with shrieks and the beating of drums. The model 
of a canoe laden with taro and tobacco is got ready to 
facilitate his departure."* So when the Bukaua of German 
New Guinea have won a victory over their foes and have 
returned home, they kindle a fire in the middle of the 
village and hurl blazing brands in the direction of the battle- 
field, while at the same time they make an ear-splitting din, 
to keep at bay the angry spirits of the slain.* When the 
cannibal Melanesians of the Bismarck Archipelago have eaten 
a human body, they shout, blow horns, shake spears, and 
beat the bushes for the purpose of driving away the ghost 
of the man or woman whose flesh has just furnished the 
banquet.^ The Fijians used to bury the sick and aged alive, 

1 W. H. Keating, Narrative of an (1891) p. lOl. 

Expedition to the Sources of St. Peter's 4 k. Vetter, " Uber papuanische 

River (London, 1825), i. 109, quoting Rechtsverhaltnisse," in Nachrichten 

Mr. Barron. aber Kaiser Wilhelms-Land und den 

^ Ch.3.x\evoi-i, Histoire de la Nouvelle Bismarck - Archipel (1897), p. 94; 

France (Paris, 1744), vi. 77, 122 sq. ; b_ Hagen, Unter den Papuas (Wies- 

J. F. Lafitau, Mxurs des sauvages baden, 1899), p. 266. 

amiriquains{^z^% 1724], n. 279. , g ^ Lehner, "Bukaua," in R. 

3 H. von Rosenberg Z).. maJayzscAe ^^^^^^^ Neu-Guinea (Ber- 

Archipel Leipsic, 1878), p. 461- ,. , ■•• 

Compare J. L. van Hasselt, "Die Im. I9H), '"• 444- 

Papuastamme an der Geelvinkbai 6 George Brown, D. D. , A/c&K6Sja«j- 

(Neuguinea)," Mitteilungen der geo- and Polynesians (London, 1910), pp. 

graphischen Gesellsckaft zu Jena, ix. 142, 145. 

Precau- 
tions taken 
against the 
ghosts of 
executed 
criminals 
and other 
dangerous 
persons. 

and having done so they always made a great uproar with 
bamboos, shell-trumpets, and so forth in order to scare away 
the spirits of the buried people and prevent them from 
returning to their homes ; and by way of removing any 
temptation to hover about their former abodes they dis- 
mantled the houses of the dead and hung them with every- 
thing that in their eyes seemed most repulsive/ Among 
the Angoni, a Zulu tribe settled to the north of the Zambesi, 
warriors who have slain foes on an expedition smear their 
bodies and faces with ashes, and hang garments of their 
victims on their persons. This costume they wear for three 
days after their return, and rising at break of day they run 
through the village uttering frightful yells to banish the 
ghosts of the slain, which otherwise might bring sickness and 
misfortune on the people.^ 

In Travancore the spirits of men who have died a 
violent death by drowning, hanging, or other means are sup- 
posed to become demons, wandering about to inflict injury 
in various ways upon mankind. Especially the ghosts of 
murderers who have been hanged are believed to haunt the 
place of execution and its neighbourhood. To prevent this 
it used to be customary to cut off the criminal's heels with a 
sword or to hamstring him as he was turned off.* The 
intention of thus mutilating the body was no doubt to 
prevent the ghost from walking. How could he walk if he 
were hamstrung or had no heels? With precisely the same 
intention it has been customary with some peoples to maim 
in various ways the dead bodies not only of executed criminals 
but of other persons ; for all ghosts are more or less dreaded. 
When any bad man died, the Esquimaux of Bering Strait 
used in the old days to cut the sinews of his arms and legs 
" in order to prevent the shade from returning to the body 
and causing it to walk at night as a ghoul." * The Omaha 

^ John Jackson, in J. E. Erskine's 
Journal of a Cruise among the Islands 
of the Western Pacific (London, 1853), 

P- 477- 

^ C. Wiese, " Beitrage zur Ge- 
schichte der Zulu im Norden des 
Zambesi," Zeitschrift fUr Ethnologie, 
xxxii. (1900) pp. 197 sq. 

^ Rev. Samuel Mateer, The Land 

of Charity^ a Descriptive Account of 
Travancore and its People (London, 
187 1), pp. 203 sq. 

* E. W. Nelson, "The Eskimo 
about Bering Strait," Eighteenth 
Annual Report of the Bureau of 
American Ethnology, Part i. (V^ashing- 
ton. 1899) p. 423. 

Indians said that when a man was killed by lightning he 
should be buried face downwards, and that the soles of his 
feet should be slit ; for if this were not done, his ghost 
would walk.'' The Herero of South Africa think that the 
ghosts of bad people appear and are just as mischievous as 
in life ; for they rob, steal, and seduce women and girls, 
sometimes getting them with child. To prevent the dead 
from playing these pranks the Herero used to cut through 
the backbone of the corpse, tie it up in a bunch, and sew it 
into an ox-hide.^ A simple way of disabling a dangerous 
ghost is to dig up his body and decapitate it. This is done 
by West African negroes and also by the Armenians ; to 
make assurance doubly sure the Armenians not only cut off 
the head but smash it or stick a needle into it or into the 
dead man's heart.^ 

The Hindoos of the Punjaub believe that if a mother Precau- 
dies within thirteen days of her delivery, she will return in i'n°in^^^'^" 
the guise of a malignant spirit to torment her husband and against the 
family. To prevent this some people drive nails through ^omenwho 
her head and eyes, while others also knock nails on either side die in 
of the door of the house.* A gentler way of attaining the chadbeX^' 
same end is to put a nail or a piece of iron in the clothes of o"" s°°" 
the poor dead mother,^ or to knock nails into the earth 
round the places where she died, and where her dead 
body was washed and cremated. Some people put pepper 
in the eyes of the corpse to prevent the ghost from 
seeing her way back to the house.® In Bilaspore, if a 
mother dies leaving very young children, they tie her hands 
and feet before burial to prevent her from getting up by 

1 Rev. J. Owen Dorsey, " A Study * H. A. Rose, "Hindu Birth 
of Siouan Cults," Eleventh Annual Observances in the Punjab," Journal 
Report of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 
(Washington, 1894), p. 420. xxxvii. (1907) pp. 225 sq. 

2 Dr. P. H. Brincker, " Character, ' G. F. D' Penha, " Superstitions 
Sitten, und Gebrauche speclell der and Customs in Salsette," The Indian 
Bantu Deutsch-SUdwestafrikas," Mit- Antiquary, xxviii. (1899) p. 115. 
teilungen des Seminars fiir orienta- ^ Census of India, igri, vol. xiv. 
lischen Sprachen zu Berlin, iii. dritte Punjab, Parti. (Lahore, 1912) p, 303. 
Abteilung (1900), pp. 89 sq. As to these perturbed and perturbing 

3 Rev. R. H. Nassau, Felichism in spirits in India, see further W. Crooke, 
West Africa (London, 1904), p. 220; Popular Religion and Folk-lo7'e of 
M. Abeghian, Der armenische Volks- Northern India (Westminster, 1896), 
glauie (Leipsic, 1899), p. II. i. 269-274. They are called churel 

night and going to see her orphaned little ones.-^ The 
Oraons of Bengal are firmly convinced that any woman who 
dies in pregnancy or childbirth becomes an evil and danger- 
ous spirit {bkui), who, if steps are not taken to keep her off, 
will come back and tickle to death those whom she loved 
best in life. " To prevent her, therefore, from coming back, 
they carry her body as far away as they can, but no woman 
will accompany her to her last resting-place lest similar mis- 
fortune should happen to her. Arrived at the burial-place, 
they break the feet above the ankle, twist them round, 
bringing the heels in front, and then drive long thorns into 
them. They bury her very deep with her face downwards, 
and with her they bury the bones of a donkey, and pro- 
nounce the anathema, ' If you come home may you turn into 
a donkey ' ; the roots of a palm-tree are also buried with 
her ; and they say, ' May you come home only when the 
leaves of the palm-tree wither,' and when they retire they 
spread mustard seeds all along the road saying, ' When 
you try to come home pick up all these.' They then 
feel pretty safe at home from her nocturnal visits, but 
woe to the man who passes at night near the place where 
she has been buried. She will pounce upon him, twist his 
neck, and leave him senseless on the ground, until brooght 
to by the incantations of a sorcerer." ^ Among the Lushais 
of Assam, when a woman died in childbed, the relatives 
offer a sacrifice to her departed soul, " but the rest of that 
village treat the day as a holiday and put a small green 
branch on the wall of each house on the outside near the 
doorpost to keep out the spirit of the dead woman." ^ 
Precau- Among the Shans of Burma, when a woman dies with an 

in°Burma° unbom child, it is believed that her spirit turns into a malign- 
against the ant ghost, " who may return to haunt her husband's home 
womenwho ^^'^ torment him, unless precautions are taken to keep her 
die in away. To begin with, her unborn child is removed by an 

or?hiu-°^ operation ; then mother and child are wrapped in separate 
I'ed. mats and buried without coffins. If this be not done, the same 

' E. M. Gordon, Indian Folk Tales No. 9 (Calcutta, 1906), pp. 139 sq. 
(London, 1908), p. 47. 3 Lieut. -Colonel H. W. G. Cole, 

2 Rev. P. Dehon, S.J., ■' Religion " The Lushais," in Census of India, 

and Customs of the Uraons," Memoirs igir, vol. iii. Assam, Part I. (Shillong, 

of the Asiatic Society of BengcU, vol. i. 1912) p. 140. 

misfortune may occur again to the woman, in her future life, 
and the widower will suffer from the attacks of the ghost. 
When the bodies are being removed from the house, part of 
the mat wall in the side of the house is taken down, and the 
dead woman and her baby are lowered to the ground through 
the aperture. The hole through which the bodies have 
passed is immediately filled with new mats, so that the ghost 
may not know how to return." ^ The Kachins of Burma 
are so afraid of the ghosts of women dying in childbed that 
no sooner has such a death taken place than the husband, 
the children, and almost all the people in the house take to 
flight lest the ghost should bite them. They bandage the 
eyes of the dead woman with her own hair to prevent her 
from seeing anything ; they wrap the corpse in a mat and 
carry it out of the house not by the ordinary door, but by 
an opening made for the purpose either in the wall or in the 
floor of the room where she breathed her last. Then they 
convey the body to a deep ravine where foot of man seldom 
penetrates, and there, having heaped her clothes, her jewellery, 
and all her belongings over her, they set fire to the pile and 
reduce the whole to ashes. " Thus they destroy all the 
property of the unfortunate woman in order that her soul 
may not think of coming to fetch it afterwards and to bite 
the people in the attempt." When this has been done, the 
officiating priest scatters some burnt grain of a climbing 
plant {shdmien), inserts in the earth the pestle which the 
dead woman used to husk the rice, and winds up the exorcism 
by cursing and railing at her ghost, saying : " Wait to come 
back to us till this grain sprouts and this pestle blossoms, 
till the fern bears fruit, and the cocks lay eggs." The house 
in which the woman died is generally pulled down, and the 
timber may only be" used as firewood or to build small 
hovels in the fields. Till a new house can be built for 
them, the widower and the orphans receive the hospitality 
of their nearest relatives, a father or a brother ; their other 
friends would not dare to receive them from fear of the ghost. 

' Mrs. Leslie Milne, Shans at Home ghost, has been observed by many 

(London, 1910), p. 96. The custom peoples in many parts of the world, 

of carrying the dead out of the house For examples see The Belief in Im- 

by a special opening, which is then mortality and the Worship of the Dead, 

blocked up to prevent the return of the i. 452 sqq. 

Occasionally the dead mother's jewels are spared from the 
fire and given away to some poor old crones, who do not 
trouble their heads about ghosts. If the medicine-man who 
attended the woman in life and officiated at the funeral is 
old, he may consent to accept the jewels as the fee for his 
services ; but in that case no sooner has he got home than 
he puts the jewels in the henhouse. If the hens remain 
quiet, it is a good omen and he can keep the trinkets with 
an easy mind ; but if the fowl flutter and cackle, it is a sign 
that the ghost is sticking to the jewels, and in a fright he 
restores them to the family. The old man or old woman 
into whose hands the trinkets of the dead woman thus some- 
times fall cannot dispose of them to other members of the 
tribe ; for nobody who knows where the things come from 
would be so rash as to buy them. However, they may find 
purchasers among the Shans or the Chinese, who do not 
fear Kachin ghosts.^ 
Precau- The ghosts of womcn who die in childbed are much 

in the^'^*^" dreaded in the Indian Archipelago ; it is supposed that they 
Indian appear in the form of birds with long claws and are exceed- 
peiago i"gly dangerous to their husbands and also to pregnant 
against the women. A common way of guarding against them is to put 
woraenwho ^'^ ^gS Under each armpit of the corpse, to press the arms 
die in close against the body, and to stick needles in the palms of 
the hands. The people believe that the ghost of the dead 
woman will be unable to fly and attack people ; for she will 
not spread out her arms for fear of letting the eggs fall, and 
she will not clutch anybody for fear of driving the needles 
deeper into her palms. Sometimes by way of additional 
precaution another egg is placed under her chin, thorns are 
thrust into the joints of her fingers and toes, her mouth is 
stopped with ashes, and her hands, feet, and hair are nailed 
to the coffin.^ Some Sea Dyaks of Borneo sow the ground 

1 Ch. Gilhodes, " Naissance et En- gewoonten op het eiland Timor," 
fance chez les Katchins (Birmanie)," Tijdschrift voor Neerlands Indie, vii. 
Anthropos, v\. (\')\l) ^^. ?>']2 sq. Negende Afievering (Batavia, 1845), 

2 Van Schmidt, " Aanteekeningen pp. 278 sq., note; B. F. Matthes, 
nopens de zeden, etc., der bevolking Bijdragen tot de Ethnologic van Zuid- 
van de eilanden Saparoea, etc.," Celebes (The Hague, 1875), P- 97 > 
Tijdschrift voor Netrlands Indie, v. W. E. Maxwell, " Folk-lore of the 
Tweede Deel (Batavia, 1843), pp. 528 M.s.\a.ys," Journal of the Straits Branch 
sqq. ; G. Heijmering, " Zeden en of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. 7 

near cemeteries with bits of sticks to imitate caltrops, in order Attempts 
that the feet of any ghosts who walk over them may be and""" 
lamed.^ The Besisi of the Malay Peninsula bury their dead otherwise 
in the ground and let fall knives on the grave to prevent the ghosts'! 
ghost from getting up out of it.^ The Tunguses of Turuk- 
hansk on the contrary put their dead up in trees, and then 
lop off all the branches to prevent the ghost from scrambling 
down and giving them chase.^ The Herbert River natives 
in Queensland used to cut holes in the stomach, shoulders, 
and lungs of their dead and fill the holes with stones, in 
order that, weighed down with this ballast, the ghost might 
not stray far afield ; to limit his range still further they com- 
monly broke his legs.^ Other Australian blacks put hot 
coals in the ears of their departed brother ; this keeps the 
ghost in the body for a time, and allows the relations to get 
a good start away from him. Also they bark the trees in a 
circle round the spot, so that when the ghost does get out 
and makes after them, he wanders round and round in a 
circle, always returning to the place from which he started.^ 
The ancient Hindoos put fetters on the feet of their dead 
that they might not return to the land of the living.® The 
Tinneh Indians of Alaska grease the hands of a corpse, so 
that when his ghost grabs at people's souls to carry them 

(June 1881), p. 28; W. W. Skeat, Zendelineggnootschaf, xlix. (1905) p. 

Malay Magic (J^ouAoTi, igoo), p. 325; 113. The common name for these 

I.G.Y.'SJ.t&tXyDesluik-enkroesharige dreaded ghosts is pontianak. For a 

rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua (The full account of them see A. C. Kruijt, 

Hague, 1886), p. 81 ; B. C. A. J. van Hei Animisme in den Indischen 

Dinter, " Eenige geographische en Archipel, pp. 245 sqq. 
ethnographische aanteekeningen betref- ^ J. Perham, "Sea Dyak Religion," 

fende het eiland Siaoe," Tijdschrift Journal of the Straits Braruh of the 

voor Indische Taal- Land- en Volken- Royal Asiatic Society, No. 14 (Singa- 

kunde, xli. (1899) p. 381 ; A. C. pore, 1885), pp. 291 sg. 
Kruijt, " Eenige ethnografische aantee- ^ W. W. Skeat and C. O. Blagden, 

keningen omtrent de Toboengkoe en de Pagan Paces of the Malay Peninsula 

Tomori," Mededeelingen van wege het (London, 1906), ii. 109. 
Nederlandsche Zendelinggenootschap, ' T. de Pauly, Description ethno- 

xliv. (Rotterdam, 1900) p. 218; id., graphique des peuples de la Russie (St. 

Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel Petersburg, 1862), Peuples ouralo- 

(The Hague, 1906), p. 252 : G. A. altdiques, p. 71. 

Wilken, Handleiding voor de vergelij- * A. W. Howitt, Native Tribes of 

kende Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch- South-East Australia (London, 1904), 

Indie (Leyden, 1893), p. 559 ; J. PI. p. 474- 

Meerwaldt, " Gebruiken der Bataks in * a_ -w. Howitt, op. cit. p. 473. 

het maatschappelijk leven," Mededeel- ' H. Zimmer, Altindisches Leben 

ingen van wege het Nederlandsche (Berlin, 1879), p. 402. 

off with him they slip through his greasy fingers and 
escape.^ 
The way Some pcoplcs bar the road from the grave to prevent 

baScaded ^^^ ghost from following them. The Tunguses make the 
against barrier of snow or trees.^ Amongst the Mangars, one of 
ghosts. jj^g fighting tribes of Nepal, " when the mourners return 
home, one of their party goes ahead and makes a barricade 
of thorn bushes across the road midway between the grave 
and the house of the deceased. On the top of the thorns 
he puts a big stone on which he takes his stand, holding a 
pot of burning incense in his left hand and some woollen 
thread in his right. One by one the mourners step on the 
stone and pass through the smoke of the incense to the 
other side of the thorny barrier. , As they pass, each takes 
a piece of thread from the man who holds the incense and 
ties it round his neck. The object of this curious ceremony 
is to prevent the spirit of the dead man from coming home 
with the mourners and establishing itself in its old haunts. 
Conceived of as a miniature man, it is believed to be unable 
to make its way on foot through the thorns, while the smell 
of the incense, to which all spirits are highly sensitive, pre- 
vents it from surmounting this obstacle on the shoulders of 
one of the mourners." ^ The Chins of Burma burn their 
dead and collect the bones in an earthen pot. Afterwards, 
at a convenient season, the pot containing the bones is 
carried away to the ancestral burial-place, which is generally 
situated in the depth of the jungle. " When the people 
convey the pot of bones to the cemetery, they take with 
them some cotton-yarn, and whenever they come to any 
stream or other water, they stretch a thread across, whereby 
the spirit of the deceased, who accompanies them, may get 
across it too. When they have duly deposited the bones 
and food for the spirit in the cemetery they return home, 

' Rev. Father Julius Jett^, " On and Castes of Bengal, Ethnographic 

the Superstitions of the Ten'a Indians," Glossary, ii. (Calcutta, 1891) pp. 75 

Anthrofos, vi. (191 1) p. 707. sq. Compare E. T. Atkinson, The 

9„, -r, , „ .,,. J, Himalayan Districts of the North- 

■" 1. de rauly. Description ethno- Tjr j n ■ j- 7 j- ■• ,»ii 

_.,. , J ^T I 1 n • western Frovmces of India, u. (AUa- 

graphique des peuples de la Russu u u j 00 » o tit /-• i 

,cC-o\ 1 ai \ n ^7 , habad, 1884) p. 832: W. Crooke, 

(bt. i'etersburg, is52), Peuples ouralo- t> , , dT- ■ J t^ ,1 , \r 

, .. ° " ^ Fopular Religion and Folk - lore of 

^ ' "■ ' ■ Northern India (Westminster, 1896), 

3 (Sir) H. H. Risley, The Tribes ii. 57. 

after bidding the spirit to remain there, and not to follow 
them back to the village. At the same time they block 
the way by which they return by putting a bamboo across 
the path." ^ Thus the mourners make the way to the grave 
as easy as possible for the ghost, but obstruct the way by 
which he might return from it. 

The Algonquin Indians, not content with beating the Devices of 
walls of their huts to drive away the ghost, stretched nets American 
round them in order to catch the spirit in the meshes, if Indians to 

lc€60 fifhosts 

he attempted to enter the house. Others made stinks to at bay. 
keep him off.^ The Ojebways also resorted to a number 
of devices for warding off the spirits of the dead. These 
have been described as follows by a writer who was himself 
an Ojebway : "If the deceased was a husband, it is often 
the custom for the widow, after the burial is over, to spring 
or leap over the grave, and then run zigzag behind the trees, 
as if she were fleeing from some one. This is called running 
away from the spirit of her husband, that it may not haunt 
her. In the evening of the day on which the burial has taken 
place, when it begins to grow dark, the men fire off their guns 
through the hole left at the top of the wigwam. As soon 
as this firing ceases, the old women commence knocking 
and making such a rattling at the door as would frighten 
away any spirit that would dare to hover near. The next 
ceremony is, to cut into narrow strips, like ribbon, thin 
birch bark. These they fold into shapes, and hang round 
inside the wigwam, so that the least puff of wind will move 
them. With such scarecrows as these, what spirit would 
venture to disturb their slumbers ? Lest this should not 
prove effectual, they will also frequently take a deer's 
tail, and after burning or singeing off all the hair, 
will rub the necks or faces of the children before they 
lie down to sleep, thinking that the offensive smell will be 
another preventive to the spirit's entrance. I well remember 
when I used to be daubed over with this disagreeable 
fumigation, and had great faith in it all. Thinking that 
the soul lingers about the body a long time before it 

1 Rev. G. Whitehead, "Notes on ^ Relations des Jhuiies, 1639, p. 44 

the Chins of Burma," Indian Anti- (Canadian reprint, Quebec, 1858). 
quary, xxxvi. (1907) pp. 214 sq. 

takes its final departure, they use these means to hasten 
it away."^ 
Spirits of The Lengua Indians of the Gran Chaco in South 

^ea'tfy'^ America live in great fear of the spirits of their dead. 
feared by They imagine that any one of these disembodied spirits can 
indians^oT become incarnate again and take a new lease of life on 
the Gran earth, if Only it can contrive to get possession of a living 
man's body during the temporary absence of his soul. For 
like many other savages they imagine that the soul absents 
itself from the body during sleep to wander far away in the 
land of dreams. So when night falls, the ghosts of the 
dead come crowding to the villages and lurk about, hoping 
to find vacant bodies into which they can enter. Such are 
to the thinking of the Lengua Indian the perils and 
dangers of the night. When he awakes in the morning 
from a dream in which he seemed to be hunting or fishing 
far away, he concludes that his soul cannot yet have 
returned from such a far journey, and that the spirit within 
him must therefore be some ghost or demon, who has taken 
possession of his corporeal tenement in the absence of its 
proper owner. And if these Indians dread the spirits of 
the departed at all times, they dread them doubly at the 
moment when they have just shuffled off the mortal coil. 
No sooner has a person died than the whole village is 
deserted. Even if the death takes place shortly before sun- 
set the place must at all costs be immediately abandoned, 
lest with the shades of night the ghost should return and do 
a mischief to the villagers. Not only is the village deserted, 
but every hut is burned down and the property of the dead 
man destroyed. For these Indians believe that, however 
good and kind a man may have been in his lifetime, his 
ghost is always a source of danger to the peace and pros- 
perity of the living. The night after his death his dis- 
embodied spirit comes back to the village, and chilled by 
the cool night air looks about for a fire at which to warm 
himself He rakes in the ashes to find at least a hot 
coal which he may blow up into a flame. But if they 
are all cold and dead, he flings a handful of them in the air 

1 Rev. Peter Jones, History of the Ojebway Indians (London, N.D.), 
pp. 99 sq. 

and departs in dudgeon. Any Indian who treads on such « 
ashes will have ill-luck, if not death, following at his heels. 
To prevent such mishaps the villagers take the greatest 
pains to collect and bury all the ash - heaps before they 
abandon the village. What the fate of a hamlet would be 
in which the returning ghost found the inhabitants still 
among their houses, no Indian dares to imagine. Hence 
it happens that many a village which was full of life at 
noon is a smoking desert at sunset. And as the Lenguas 
ascribe all sickness to the machinations of evil spirits and 
sorcerers, they mutilate the persons of their dying or dead in 
order to counteract and punish the authors of the disease. 
For this purpose they cut off the portion of the body in 
which the evil spirit is supposed to have ensconced himself. 
A common operation performed on the dying or dead man 
is this. A gash is made with a knife in his side, the edges 
of the wound are drawn apart with the fingers, and in the 
wound are deposited a dog's bone, a stone, and the claw of 
an armadillo. It is believed that at the departure of the 
soul from the body the stone will rise up to the Milky Way 
and will stay there till the author of the death has been 
discovered. Then the stone will come shooting down in 
the shape of a meteor and kill, or at least stun, the guilty 
party. That is why these Indians stand in terror of falling 
stars. The claw of the armadillo serves to grub up the 
earth and, in conjunction with the meteor, to ensure the 
destruction of the evil spirit or the sorcerer. What the 
virtue of the dog's bone is supposed to be has not yet been 
ascertained by the missionaries.^ 

The Bhotias, who inhabit the Himalayan district of a scape- 
British India, perform an elaborate ceremony for trans- l^osts"" 
ferring the spirit of a deceased person to an animal, which 
is finally beaten by all the villagers and driven away, that it 
may not come back. Having thus expelled the ghost the 

1 " Sitten und Gebrauche der Len- diseased members of a corpse, in the 

gua-Indianer, nach Missionsberichten belief that if they did not do so the 

von G. Kurze," Mitteilungen der geo- person would suffer from the same 

grapMschen Gesellschaft zujena, xxiii. disease at his next reincarnation. See 

(1905) pp. IJ sq., 19 sq., 21 sq. The Charles Partridge, Cross River Natives 

Cross River natives of Southern Nigeria, (London, 1905), pp. 238 j?. 
like the Lengua Indians, cut off the 

Precau- 
tions taken 
by widows 
in Africa 
against 
their 

husbands' 
ghosts. 

Precau- 
tions taken 
by widows 
and 

widowers 
in British 
Columbia 
against 
the ghosts 
of their 
spouses. 

people return joyfully to the village with songs and dances. 
In some places the animal which thus serves as a scapegoat 
is a yak, the forehead, back, and tail of which must be white. 
But elsewhere, under the influence of Hindooism, sheep and 
goats have been substituted for yaks.^ 

Widows and widowers are especially obnoxious to the 
ghosts of their deceased spouses, and accordingly they have 
to take special precautions against them. For example, 
among the Ewe negroes of Agome, in German Togoland, a 
widow is bound to remain for six weeks in the hut where 
her husband lies buried. She is naked, her hair is shaved 
off, and she is armed with a stick with which to repel the 
too pressing familiarities of her husband's ghost ; for were 
she to submit to them, she would die on the spot. At 
night she sleeps with the stick under her, lest the wily ghost 
should attempt to steal it from her in the hours of slumber. 
Before she eats or drinks she always puts some coals on the 
food or in the beverage, to prevent her dead husband from 
eating or drinking with her ; for if he did so, she would die. 
If any one calls to her, she may not answer, for her dead 
husband would hear her, and she would die. She may not 
eat beans or flesh or fish, nor drink palm-wine or rum, but 
she is allowed to smoke tobacco. At night a fire is kept 
up in the hut, and the widow throws powdered peppermint 
leaves and red pepper on the flames to make a stink, which 
helps to keep the ghost from the house.^ 

Among many tribes of British Columbia the conduct of 
a widow and a widower for a long time after the death of 
their spouse is regulated by a code of minute and burden- 
some restrictions, all of which appear to be based on the 
notion that these persons, being haunted by the ghost, are 
not only themselves in peril, but are also a source of danger 
to others. Thus among the Shushwap Indians of British 
Columbia widows and widowers fence their beds with thorn 
bushes to keep off the ghost of the deceased ; indeed they 

' Charles A. Sherring, Western 
Tibet afid the British Borderland 
(London, 1906), pp. 127-132. 

2 Lieutenant Herold, ' ' Bericht be- 
trefTend religiose Anschauungen und 
Gebrauche der deutschen Ewe-Neger," 

Mitteilungen von Forschungsreisenden 
und Gelehrten aus den deutschen 
SchuizgeUeten,v. Heft 4 (Berlin, 1892), 
p. 1 5 5 ; H. Klose, Togo unter deittscher 
Flagge (Berlin, 1899), p. 274. 

lie on such bushes, in order that the ghost may be under 
little temptation to share their bed of thorns. They must 
build a sweat-house on a creek, sweat there all night, and 
bathe regularly in the creek, after which they must rub 
their bodies with spruce branches. These branches may be 
used only once for this purpose ; afterwards they are stuck 
in the ground all round about the hut, probably to fence off 
the ghost. The mourners must also use cups and cooking 
vessels of their own, and they may not touch their own 
heads or bodies. Hunters may not go near them, and any 
person on whom their shadow were to fall would at once be 
ill.'^ Again, among the Tsetsaut Indians, when a man dies 
his brother is bound to marry the widow, but he may not 
do so before the lapse of a certain time, because it is 
believed that the dead man's ghost haunts his widow and 
would do a mischief to his living rival. During the time of 
her mourning the widow eats out of a stone dish, carries a 
pebble in her mouth, and a crab-apple stick up the back of 
her jacket. She sits upright day and night. Any person 
who crosses the hut in front of her is a dead man. The 
restrictions laid on a widower are similar.^ Among the 
Lkungen or Songish Indians, in Vancouver Island, widow 
and widower, after the death of husband or wife, are for- 
bidden to cut their hair, as otherwise it is believed that they 
would gain too great power over the souls and welfare of 
others. They must remain alone at their fire for a long 
time and are forbidden to mingle with other people. When 
they eat, nobody may see them. They must keep their 
faces covered for ten days. For two days after the burial 
they fast and are not allowed to speak. After that they 
may speak a little, but before addressing any one they 
must go into the woods and clean themselves in ponds and 
with cedar-branches. If they wish to harm an enemy they 
call out his name when they first break their fast, and they 
bite very hard in eating. That is believed to kill their 
enemy, probably (though this is not said) by directing the 

1 Franz Boas, in Sixth Report on ^ Pranz Boas, in Tenth Report on 

the North- Western Tribes of Canada, the North- Western Tribes of Canada, 

p. <)2 (Report of the British Association p. 45 {Report of the British Associa- 

for the Advancement of Science, Leeds, tion for the Advancement of Science, 

1890, separate reprint). Ipswich, 1895, separate reprint). 

attention of the ghost to him. They may not go near the 
water nor eat fresh salmon, or the fish might be driven away. 
They may not eat warm food, else their teeth would fall out.^ 
Among the Bella Coola Indians the bed of a mourner is 
protected against the ghost of the deceased by thorn-bushes 
stuck into the ground at each corner. He rises early in the 
morning and goes out into the- woods, where he makes a 
square with thorn-bushes, and inside of this square, where he 
is probably supposed to be safe from the intrusion of the 
ghost, he cleanses himself by rubbing his body with cedar- 
branches. He also swims in ponds, and after swimming 
he cleaves four small trees and creeps through the clefts, 
following the course of the sun. This he does on four sub- 
sequent mornings, cleaving new trees every day. We may 
surmise that the intention of creeping through the cleft trees 
is to give the slip to the ghost. The mourner also cuts his 
hair short, and the cut hair is burnt. If he did not observe 
these regulations, it is believed that he would dream of the 
deceased, which to the savage mind is another way of saying 
that he would be visited by his ghost. Amongst these 
Indians the rules of mourning for a widower or widow are 
especially strict. For four days he or she must fast and 
may not speak a word, else the dead wife or husband would 
come and lay a cold hand on the mouth of the offender, who 
would die. They may not go near water and are forbidden 
to catch or eat salmon for a whole year. During that time 
also they may not eat fresh herring or candle-fish (olachen). 
Their shadows are deemed unlucky and may not fall on any 
person.^ 
Precau- Among the Thompson Indians of British Columbia 

tions taken widows or widowers, on the death of their husbands or wives, 
and™ °"^ went out at once and passed through a patch of rose-bushes 
widowers four times. The intention of this ceremony is not reported, 

among the , ^ . , ,, , .. , , , 

Thompson but wc may conjecture that it was supposed to deter the 

Indians. ghost from following for fear of scratching himself or herself 

on the thorns. For four days after the death widows and 

1 Franz Boas, in Sixth Report on 2 Yxzxiz Boas, in Seventh Report on 

the North- Western Tribes of Canada, the North- Western Tribes of Canada, 

pp. 23 j-jf. [Report of the British Asso- p. 13 [Report of the British Associa- 

eiation for the Advancement of Science, tion for the Advancement of Science, 

Leeds, 1890, separate reprint). Cardiff, 1 89 1, separate reprint). 

widowers had to wander about at evening or break of day 
wiping their eyes with fir-twigs, which they hung up in the 
branches of trees, praying to the Dawn. They also rubbed 
their eyes with a snnall stone taken from under running 
water, then threw it away, while they prayed that they might 
not become blind. The first four days they might not touch 
their food, but ate with sharp-pointed sticks, and spat out the 
first four mouthfuls of each meal, and the first four of water, 
into the fire. For a year they had to sleep on a bed made 
of fir-branches, on which rose-bush sticks were also spread 
at the foot, head, and middle. Many also wore a few small 
twigs of rose-bush on their persons. The use of the rose- 
bush was no doubt to keep off the ghost through fear of the 
prickles. They were forbidden to eat fresh fish and flesh of 
any kind for a year. A widower might not fish at another 
man's fishing-place or with another man's net. If he did, it 
would make the station and the net useless for the season. 
If a widower transplanted a trout into another lake, before 
releasing it he blew on the head of the fish, and after chew- 
ing deer-fat, he spat some of the grease out on its head, so 
as to remove the baneful effect of his touch. Then he let it 
go, bidding the fish farewell, and asking it to propagate its 
kind. Any grass or branches upon which a widow or 
widower sat or lay down withered up. If a widow were 
to break sticks or branches, her own hands or arms would 
break. She might not cook food nor fetch water for her 
children, nor let them lie down on her bed, nor should she 
lie or sit where they slept. Some widows wore a breech- 
cloth made of dry bunch-grass for several days, lest the 
ghost of her dead husband should have connexion with her. 
A widower might not fish or hunt, because it was unlucky 
both for him and for other hunters. He did not allow his 
shadow to pass in front of another widower or of any person 
who was supposed to be gifted with more knowledge or 
magic than ordinary.^ Among the Lillooet Indians of 
British Columbia the rules enjoined on widows and widowers 
were somewhat similar. But a widower had to observe a 

' James Teit, "The Thompson In- tioit, Memoir of the American Museum 
dians of British Columbia," pp. 332 of Natural History, April, 1900). 
sg. ( The Jesup North Pa ific Expedi- 

Indians. 

singular custom in eating. He ate his food with the right 
hand passed underneath his right leg, the knee of which was 
raised.^ The motive for conveying food to his mouth in this 
roundabout fashion is not mentioned : we may conjecture 
that it was to baffle the hungry ghost, who might be supposed 
to watch every mouthful swallowed by the mourner, but who 
could hardly suspect that food passed under the knee was 
intended to reach the mouth. 
Precau- Among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia we 

tions taken ^^.^ ^^j j « ^^ regulations referring to the mourning period 
and are very severe. In case of the death of husband or wife, 

Tmong^the ^^ survivor has to observe the following rules : for four 
Kwakiutl days after the death the survivor must sit motionless, the 
knees drawn up toward the chin. On the third day all the 
inhabitants of the village, including children, must take a 
bath. On the fourth day some water is heated in a wooden 
kettle, and the widow or widower drips it upon his head. 
When he becomes tired of sitting motionless, and must 
move, he thinks of his enemy, stretches his legs slowly four 
times, and draws them up again. Then his enemy must 
die. During the following sixteen days he must remain on 
the same spot, but he may stretch out his legs. He is not 
allowed, however, to move his hands. Nobody must speak 
to him, and whosoever disobeys this command will be punished 
by the death of one of his relatives. Every fourth day he 
takes a bath. He is fed twice a day by an old woman at 
the time of low water, with salmon caught in the preceding 
year, and given to him in the dishes and spoons of the 
deceased. While sitting so his mind is wandering to and 
fro. He sees his house and his friends as though far, far 
away. If in his visions he sees a man near by, the latter is 
sure to die at no distant day ; if he sees him very far away, 
he will continue to live long. After the sixteen days have 
passed, he may lie down, but not stretch out. He takes a 
bath every eighth day. At the end of the first month he 
takes off his clothing, and dresses the stump of a tree with 
it. After another month has passed he may sit in a corner 

1 James Teit, " The Lillooet In- pedition. Memoir of the American 
dians " (Leyden and New York, 1906), Museum of Natural History), 
p. 271 {The Jesup North Pacific Ex- 

of the house, but for four months he must not mingle with 
others. He must not use the house door, but a separate 
door is cut for his use. Before he leaves the house for 
the first time he must three times approach the door and 
return, then he may leave the house. After ten months 
his hair is cut short, and after a year the mourning is at 
an end."^ 

Though the reasons for the elaborate restrictions thus 
imposed on widows and widowers by the Indians of British 
Columbia are not always stated, we may safely infer that 
one and all they are dictated by fear of the ghost, who, 
haunting the surviving spouse, surrounds him or her with a 
dangerous atmosphere, a contagion of death, which necessi- 
tates his seclusion both from the people themselves and from 
the principal sources of their food supply, especially from 
the fisheries, lest the infected person should poison them by 
his malignant presence. We can, therefore, understand the Social 
extraordinary treatment of a widower by the Papuans of °f ''^'^'™ 
Issoudun in British New Guinea. His miseries begin with widowers 
the moment of his wife's death. He is immediately stripped Guinea 
of all his ornaments, abused and beaten by his wife's rela- dictated 
tions, his house is pillaged, his gardens devastated, there is the ghosts 
no one to cook for him. He sleeps on his wife's grave till of 'heir 

'■ ° dead wives. 

the end of his mournmg. He may never marry agam. By 
the death of his wife he loses all his rights. It is civil death 
for him. Old or young, chief or plebeian, he is no longer 
anybody, he does not count. He may not hunt or fish with 
the others ; his presence would bring misfortune ; the spirit 
of his dead wife would frighten the fish or the game. He is 
no longer heard in the discussions. He has no voice in the 
council of elders. He may not take part in a dance ; he 
may not own a garden. If one of his children marries, he 
has no right to interfere in anything or receive any present. 
If he were dead, he could not be ignored more completely. 
He has become a nocturnal animal. He is forbidden to 
shew himself in public, to traverse the village, to walk in the 
roads and paths. Like a boar, he must go in the grass or 

1 Franz Boas, in Fifth Report on ciation for the Advancement of Science, 
the North- Western Tribes of Canada, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1889, separate 
pp. 43 sq. {Report of the British Asso- reprint). 

the bushes. If he hears or sees any one, especially a woman, 
coming from afar, he must hide himself behind a tree or 
a thicket. If he wishes to go hunting or fishing by himself, 
he must go at night. If he has to consult any one, even 
the missionary, he does it in great secrecy and by night. 
He seems to have lost his voice, and only speaks in a 
whisper. He is painted black from head to foot. The hair 
of his head is shaved, except two tufts which flutter on his 
temples. He wears a skull-cap which covers his head com- 
pletely to the ears ; it ends in a point at the back of his 
neck. Round his waist he wears one, two, or three sashes of 
plaited grass ; his arms and legs from the knees to the ankles 
are covered with armlets and leglets of the same sort ; and 
round his neck he wears a similar ornament. His diet is 
strictly regulated, but he does not observe it more than he 
can help, eating in secret whatever is given him or he can 
lay his hands on. " His tomahawk accompanies him every- 
where and always. He needs it to defend himself against 
the wild boars and also against the spirit of his dead wife, 
who might take a fancy to come and play him some mis- 
chievous prank ; for the souls of the dead come back often 
and their visit is far from being desired, inasmuch as all the 
spirits without exception are bad and have no pleasure but 
in harming the living. Happily people can keep them at 
bay by a stick, fire, an arrow, or a tomahawk. The con- 
dition of a widower, far from exciting pity or compassion, 
only serves to render him the object of horror and fear. 
Almost all widowers, in fact, have the reputation of being 
more or less sorcerers, and their mode of life is not fitted to 
give the lie to public opinion. They are forced to become 
idlers and thieves, since they are forbidden to work : no 
work, no gardens ; no gardens, no food : steal then they 
must, and that is a trade which cannot be plied without some 
audacity and knavery at a pinch." ^ 
The wide- It would be easy, but superfluous, to multiply evidence 

of ghostr"^ of the terror which a belief in ghosts has spread among man- 
among kind, and of the consequences, sometimes tragical, sometimes 

' Father Guis (de la Congregation du mort-deuil," Les Missions catholiques, 
Sacr^-CcEur d'Issoudun, Missionnaire xxxiv. (Lyons, 1 902) pp. 208 sq. 
en Nouvelle-Guinee), " Les Canaques, 

ludicrous, which that belief has brought in its train.^ The pre- mankind 
ceding instances may suffice for my purpose, which is merely abiv^had' 
to indicate the probability that this widespread superstition has the effect 
served a useful purpose by enhancing the sacredness of human ^en'tess^ 
life. For it is reasonable to suppose that men are more loth ^ady to 
to spill the blood of their fellows when they believe that by other's 
so doing they expose themselves to the vengeance of an I'^^s. 
angry and powerful spirit whom it is difficult either to 
evade or to deceive. Fortunately in this matter we are not 
left wholly to conjecture. In the vast empire of China, as in China 
we are assured by the best living authority on Chinese '^^ lo^er" 
religion, the fear of ghosts has actually produced this salutary of ghosts is 
result. Amongst the Chinese the faith in the existence of ""'™"^' 
the dead, in their power to reward kindness and avenge 
injury, is universal and inveterate ; it has been handed down 
from an immemorial past, and it is nourished in the experience, 
or rather iri the mind, of everybody by hundreds of ghost 
stories, all of which are accepted as authentic. Nobody 
doubts that ghosts may interfere at any moment for good 
or evil in the business of life, in the regulation of human 
destiny. To the Chinese their dead are not what our dead 
are to most ol us, a dim sad memory, a shadowy congregation 
somewhere far away, to whom we may go in time, but who 
cannot come to us or exercise any influence on the land of the 
living. On the contrary, in the opinion of the Chinese the 
dead not only exist but keep up a most lively intercourse, 
an active interchange of good and evil, with the survivors. 
There is, indeed, even in China, a line of demarcation between 
men and spirits, between the living and the dead, but it is 
said to be very faint, almost imperceptible. This perpetual 
commerce between the two worlds, the material and the 
spiritual, is a source both of bane and of blessing : the 
spirits of the departed rule human destiny with a rod of 
iron or of gold. From them man has everything to hope, 
but also much to fear. Hence as a natural consequence it 
is to the ghosts, to the souls of the dead, that the Chinaman 

1 Elsewhere I have illustrated the Theory of the Soul," Journal of the 

fear of the dead as it is displayed in Anthropological Institute, xv. (1886) 

funeral customs ("On certain Burial pp. ()\ sqq.). 
Customs as illustrative of the Primitive 

pays his devotions ; it is around their dear or dreadful figures 
as a centre that his reh'gion revolves. To ensure their good- 
will and help, to avert their wrath and fierce attacks, that is 
the first and the last object of his religious ceremonies.-^ 
In China This faith of the Chinese in the existence and power of 

huTian Hfe ^^ dead, we are informed, " indubitably exercises a mighty 
in enforced and Salutary influence upon morals. It enforces respect for 
ghostt^ ° human life and a charitable treatment of the infirm, the aged 
and the sick, especially if they stand on the brink of the 
grave. Benevolence and humanity, thus based on fears and 
selfishness, may have little ethical value in our eye ; but for 
all that, their existence in a country where culture has not 
yet taught man to cultivate good for the sake of good alone, 
may be greeted as a blessing. Those virtues are even ex- 
tended to animals, for, in fact, these too have souls which 
may work vengeance or bring reward. But the firm belief 
in ghosts and their retributive justice has still other effects. 
It deters from grievous and provoking injustice, because the 
wronged party, thoroughly sure of the avenging power of 
his own spirit when disembodied, will not always shrink 
from converting himself into a wrathful ghost by committing 
suicide," in order to wreak in death that vengeance on his 
oppressor which he could not exact in life. Cases of suicide 
committed with this intention are said to be far from rare 
in China.^ " This simple complex of tenets," says Professor 
de Groot, " lays disrespect for human lives under great 
In particu- restraint. Most salutarily also they work upon female 
LTghoste'^'^ infanticide, a monstrous custom practised extensively among 
acts as a the poor in Amoy and the surrounding farming districts, 
the prac" ^s i" many other parts of the Empire. The fear that the 
tice of souls of the murdered little ones may bring misfortune, 
induces many a father or mother to lay the girls they are 
unwilling to bring up, in the street for adoption into some 
family or into a foundling-hospital." Humane and well-to-do 
people take advantage of these superstitious fears to inculcate 
a merciful treatment of female infants ; for they print and 
circulate gratuitously tracts which set forth many gruesome 

> J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious 2 j j, m jg Groot, The Religious 

System of China, iv. (Leyden, 1901) System of China, iv. 450 jj>. 
pp. 436 sqq., especially pp. 450, 464. 

examples of punishments inflicted upon unnatural fathers 
and mothers by the ghosts of their murdered daughters. 
These highly-coloured narratives, though they bear all the 
marks of a florid fancy, are said to answer their benevolent 
purpose perfectly ; for they sink deep into the credulous 
minds to which they are addressed : they touch the seared 
conscience and the callous hea,rt which no appeal to mere 
natural affection could move to pity.^ 

But while the fear of the ghost has thus operated directly The fear 
to enhance the sanctity of human life by deterring the cruel, of ghosts 

•' / fc> ' operates in 

the passionate, and the malignant from the shedding of blood, a twofold 
it has operated also indirectly to bring about the same salu- ™^r°e 
tary result. For not only does the hag-ridden murderer respect for 
himself dread his victim's ghost, but the whole community, it'furnishes 
as we have seen, dreads it also and believes itself endangered the in- 
by the murderer's presence, since the wrathful spirit which with a 
pursues him may turn on other people and rend them. ™o«™ for 

^T • 1 - I- 1 i. . ■ 1 • abstaining 

Hence society has a strong motive for secluding, banishing, from 
or exterminating the culprit in order to free itself from what ""\rder, 
it believes to be an imminent danger, a perilous pollution, furnishes 
a contagion of death.^ To put it in another way, the com- Jjj^n'jt"' 
munity has an interest in punishing homicide. Not that the with a 
treatment of homicides by the tribe or state was originally punlJ^ng"^ 
conceived as a punishment inflicted on them : rather it was the 
viewed as a measure of self-defence, a moral quarantine, a """"^ '^^^' 
process of spiritual purification and disinfection, an exorcism. 
It was a mode of cleansing the people generally and some- 
times the homicide himself from the ghostly infection, which 
to the primitive- mind appears to be something material 
and tangible, something that can be literally washed or 
scoured away by water, pig's blood, sheep's blood, or other 
detergents. But when this purification took the form of 
laying the manslayer under restraint, banishing him from 
the country, or putting him to death in order to appease 
his victim's ghost, it was for all practical purposes indis- 
tinguishable from punishment, and the fear of it would 

' J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious curse of barrenness on the land (Anti- 

System of China, \v. /^^T -^60. phon, ed. F. Blass, Leipsic, 1871, 

2 The Greek orator Antiphon ob- pp. 13, 15, 30). See further L. R. 

serves that the presence of a homicide Farnell, The Evolution of Religion 

pollutes the whole city and brings the (London, 1905), pp. it,() sqq. 

act as a deterrent just as surely as if it had been designed 
to be a punishment and nothing else. When a man is 
about to be hanged, it is little consolation to him to be told 
that hanging is not a punishment but a purification. But 
the one conception slides easily and almost imperceptibly 
into the other ; so that what was at first a religious rite, a 
solemn consecration or sacrifice, comes in course of time to 
be a purely civil function, the penalty which society exacts 
from those who have injured it: the sacrifice becomes an 
execution, the priest steps back and the hangman comes 
forward. Thus criminal justice was probably based in large 
measure on a crude form of superstition long before the 
subtle brains of jurists and philosophers deduced it logically, 
according to their various predilections, from a rigid theory 
of righteous retribution, a far-sighted policy of making the 
law a terror to evil-doers, or a benevolent desire to reform 
the criminal's character and save his soul in another world 
by hanging or burning his body in this one. If these deduc- 
tions only profess to justify theoretically the practice of 
punishment, they may be well or ill founded ; but if they 
claim to explain it historically, they are certainly false. You 
cannot thus reconstruct the past by importing into one age 
the ideas of another, by interpreting the earliest in terms of 
the latest products of mental evolution. You may make 
revolutions in that way, but you cannot write history. 
When the If these views are correct, the dread of the ghost has 

'^h^ste has operated in a twofold way to protect human life. On the 
diminished, one hand it has made every individual for his own sake more 
the law °^ reluctant to slay his fellow, and on the other hand it has roused 
remains to the whole Community to punish the slayer. It has placed 
Uves^of ^ every man's life within a double ring-fence of morality and 
peaceful law. The hot-headed and the cold-hearted have been fur- 
nished with a double motive for abstaining from the last 
fatal step : they have had to fear the spirit of their victim 
on the one side and the lash of the law on the other : they 
are in a strait between the devil and the deep sea, between 
the ghost and the gallows. And when with the progress of 
thought the shadow of the ghost passes away, the grim 
shadow of the gallows remains to protect society without 
the aid of superstitious terrors. It is thus that custom often 

outlives the motive which originated it. If only an institu- 
tion is good in practice, it will stand firm after its old 
theoretical basis has been shattered : a new and more solid, 
because a truer, foundation will be discovered for it to rest 
upon. More and more, as time goes on, morality shifts its 
ground from the sands of superstition to the rock of reason, 
from the imaginary to the real, from the supernatural to the 
natural. In the present case the State has not ceased to 
protect the lives of its peaceful citizens because the faith in 
ghosts is shaken. It has found a better reason than old 
wives' fables for guarding with the flaming sword of Justice 
the approach to the Tree of Life.

Summary To sum Up this brief review of the influence which
of results, superstition has exercised on the growth of institutions, I 
think I have shewn, or at least made probable : — 

I. That among certain races and at certain times super- 
stition has strengthened the respect for government, especially 
monarchical government, and has thereby contributed to the 
establishment and maintenance of civil order : 

II. That among certain races and at certain times super- 
stition has strengthened the respect for private property and 
has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoyment : 

III. That among certain races and at certain times 
superstition has strengthened the respect for marriage and 
has thereby contributed to a stricter observance of the rules 
of sexual morality both among the married and the un- 
married : 

IV. That among certain races and at certain times 
superstition has strengthened the respect for human life 
and has thereby contributed to the security of its enjoy- 
ment. 

By streng- But government, private property, marriage, and respect 

thenmg the j-^j. human life are the pillars on which rests the whole fabric 

respect for '^ 

govern- of civil society. Shake them and you shake society to its 

"rtvate foundations. Therefore if government, private property, 

property, marriage, and respect for human life are all good and 

arKi human essential to the very existence of civil society, then it 

Hfe super- follows that by Strengthening every one of them superstition 

rendered a ^as rendered a great service to humanity. It has supplied 

great multitudes with a motive, a wrong motive it is true, for 

right action ; and surely it is better, far better for the world service to 
that men should do right from wrong motives than that they ^"™=i""y- 
should do wrong with the best intentions. What concerns 
society is conduct, not opinion : if only our actions are just 
and good, it matters not a straw to others whether our 
opinions be mistaken. The danger of false opinion, and it 
is a most serious one, is that it commonly leads to wrong 
action ; hence it is unquestionably a great evil and every 
effort should be made to correct it. But of the two evils 
wrong action is in itself infinitely Tjworse than false opinion ; 
and all systems of religion or philosophy which lay more 
stress on right opinion than on right action, which exalt 
orthodoxy above virtue, are so far immoral and prejudicial 
to the best interests of mankind : they invert the true 
relative importance, the real ethical value, of thought and 
action, for it is by what we do, not by what we think, that 
we are useful or useless, beneficent or maleficent to our 
fellows. As a body of false opinions, therefore, superstition 
is indeed a most dangerous guide in practice, and the evils 
which it has wrought are incalculable. But vast as are 
these evils, they ought not to blind us to the benefit which 
superstition has conferred on society by furnishing the 
ignorant, the weak, and the foolish with a motive, bad 
though it be, for good conduct. It is a reed, a broken reed, 
which has yet supported the steps of many a poor erring 
brother, who but for it might have stumbled and fallen. It 
is a light, a dim and wavering light, which, if it has lured 
many a mariner on the breakers, has yet guided some 
wanderers on life's troubled sea into a haven of rest and 
peace. Once the harbour lights are passed and the ship is 
in port, it matters little whether the pilot steered by a 
Jack-o'-lantern or by the stars. 

That, ladies and gentlemen, is my plea for Superstition. Super- 
Perhaps it might be urged in mitigation of the sentence ^''"°" ^' 
which will be passed on the hoary-headed offender when Sentence 
he stands at the judgment bar. Yet the sentence, do not °'^'^'=^"^- 
doubt it, is death. But it will not be executed in our time. 
There will be a long, long reprieve. It is as his advocate, 
not as his executioner, that I have appeared before you 

to-niglit. At Athens cases of murder were tried before the 
Areopagus by night/ and it is by night that I have spoken 
in defence of this power of darkness. But it grows late, 
and with my sinister client I must vanish before the cocks 
crow and the morning breaks grey in the east. 

1 Lucian, Hermotimus, 64, xarA iroiev: id., De domo,\^,d iif)]Tixot-Ti-^ 

rods ' ApcLOTrayiTas a^rb iroiouvTa, ot iv TravreXQ^ rui^Xds &V ^ iif vvktI &(nrep 

vvktI Kal (TK&rtf SiKd^ovffLv, ois fii) is Toijs ij i^ 'Apuov irdyov ^ovKij ttoioZto t^v 

\4yoifTas, dW is rd Xeyd/xeya diropXi- dKpdairiy,

The subject of the chair which I have the honour to hold is Social
Social Anthropology. As the subject is still comparatively p°i*™" 
new and its limits are still somewhat vague, I shall devote 
my inaugural lecture to defining its scope and marking out 
roughly, if not the boundaries of the whole study, at least 
the boundaries of that part of it which I propose to take for 
my province. 

Strange as it may seem, in the large and thriving family Anthro- 
of the sciences. Anthropology, or the Science of Man, is the stud^^o? 
latest born. So young indeed is the study that three of its recent date. 
distinguished founders in England, Professor E. B. Tylor, 
Lord Avebury, and Mr. Francis Galton, are happily still 
with us. It is true that particular departments of man's 
complex nature have long been the theme of special studies. 
Anatomy has investigated his body, psychology has explored 
his' mind, theology and metaphysics have sought to plumb 
the depths of the great mysteries by which he is encom- 
passed on every hand. But it has been reserved for the 
present generation, or rather for the generation which is 
passing away, to attempt the comprehensive study of man 
as a whole, to enquire not merely into the physical and 
mental structure of the individual, but to compare the 
various races of men, to trace their affinities, and by means 
of a wide collection of facts to follow as far as may be the 
evolution of human thought and institutions from the earliest 
times. The aim of this, as of every other science, is to 

' A lecture delivered before the University of Liverpool, May 14th, 1908. 

The scope 
of Social 
Anthro- 
pology 
more 
limited 
than that of 
Sociology ; 
it includes 
only the 
rudiment- 
ary phases 
of human 
society. 

discover the general laws to which the particular facts may 
be supposed to conform. I say, may be supposed to conform, 
because research in all departments has rendered it ante- 
cedently probable that everywhere law and order will be 
found to prevail if we search for them diligently, and that 
accordingly the affairs of man, however complex and incal- 
culable they may seem to be, are no exception to the 
uniformity of nature. Anthropology, therefore, in the widest 
sense of the word, aims at discovering the general laws 
which have regulated human history in the past, and which, 
if nature is really uniform, may be expected to regulate it 
in the future. 

Hence the science of man coincides to a certain extent 
with what has long been known as the philosophy of history 
as well as with the study to which of late years the name of 
Sociology has been given. Indeed it might with some reason 
be held that Social Anthropology, or the study of man in 
society, is only another expression for Sociology. Yet I 
think that the two sciences may be conveniently distin- 
guished, and that while the name of Sociology should be 
reserved for the study of human society in the most compre- 
hensive sense of the words, the name of Social Anthropology 
may with advantage be restricted to one particular depart- 
ment of that immense field of knowledge. At least I wish 
to make it perfectly clear at the outset that I for one do 
not pretend to treat of the whole of human society, past, 
present, and future. Whether any single man's compass of 
mind and range of learning suffice for such a vast under- 
taking, I will not venture to say, but I do say without 
hesitation or ambiguity that mine certainly do not. I can 
only speak of what I have studied, and my studies have been 
mostly confined to a small, a very small part of man's social 
history. That part is the origin, or rather the rudimentary 
phases, the infancy and childhood, of human society, and to 
that part accordingly I propose to limit the scope of Social 
Anthropology, or at all events my treatment of it. My 
successors in the chair will be free to extend their purview 
beyond the narrow boundaries which the limitation of my 
knowledge imposes on me. They may survey the latest 
developments as well as the earliest beginnings of custom 

and law, of science and art, of morality and religion, and 
from that survey they may deduce the principles which 
should guide mankind in the future, so that those who come 
after us may avoid the snares and pitfalls into which we and 
our fathers have slipped. For the best fruit of knowledge 
is wisdom, and it may reasonably be hoped that a deeper and 
wider acquaintance with the past history of mankind will- in 
time enable our statesmen to mould the destiny of the race 
in fairer forms than we of this generation shall live to see. 

'■'■Ah Love ! could you and I with Him conspire 
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, 

Would we not shatter it to bits — and then 
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's desire ! " 

But if you wish to shatter the social fabric, you must At least the 
not expect your professor of Social Anthropology to aid and {^'^(^^^^'^ 
abet you. He is no seer to discern, no prophet to foretell limits him- 
a coming heaven on earth, no mountebank with a sovran l^^^^° 
remedy for every ill, no Red Cross Knight to head a crusade phases. 
against misery and want, against disease and death, against 
all the horrid spectres that war on poor humanity. It is 
for others with higher notes and nobler natures than his to 
sound the charge and lead it in this Holy War. He is only 
a student, a student of the past, who may perhaps tell you 
a little, a very little, of what has been, but who cannot, dare 
not tell you what ought to be. Yet even the little that he 
can contribute to the elucidation of the past may have its 
utility as well as its interest when it finally takes its place 
in that great temple of science to which it is the ambition of 
every student to add a stone. For we cherish a belief that 
if we truly love and seek knowledge for its own sake, without 
any ulterior aim, every addition we may make to it, however 
insignificant and useless it may appear, will yet at last be 
found to work together with the whole accumulated store for 
the general good of mankind. 

Thus the sphere of Social Anthropology as I understand social 
it, or at least as I propose to treat it, is limited to the crude "^"jl^™' 
beginnings, the rudimentary development of human society : embraces 
it does not include the maturer phases of that complex grst^'of''' 
growth, still less does it embrace the practical problems savagery, 

M 

and, 

second, of 
folklore, 
that is, of 
the traces 
of savagery 
in civiliza- 
tion. 

All 

civilization 

evolved 

from 

savagery. 

Hence a 
study of 
savagery 
essential to 
an under- 
standing of 
the evolu- 
tion of 
humanity. 

with which our modern statesmen and lawgivers are called 
upon to deal. The study might accordingly be described as 
the embryology of human thought and^nstitutions) or, to be 
more precise, as that enquiry which seeks to ascertain, first, 
the beliefs and customs of savages, and, second, the relics of 
these beliefs and customs which have survived like fossils 
among peoples of higher culture. In this description of the 
sphere of Social Anthropology it is implied that the ancestors 
of the civilized nations were once savages, and that they 
have transmitted, or may have transmitted, to their more 
cultured descendants ideas and institutions which, however 
incongruous with their later surroundings, were perfectly in 
keeping with the modes of thought and action of the ruder 
society in which they originated. In short, the definition 
assumes that civilization has always and everywhere been 
evolved out of savagery. The mass of evidence on which 
this assumption rests is in my opinion so great as to render 
the induction incontrovertible. At least, if any one disputes 
it I do not think it worth while to argue with him. There 
are still, I believe, in civilized society people who hold that 
the earth is flat and that the sun goes round it ; but no 
sensible man will waste time in the vain attempt to con- 
vince such persons of their error, even though these flat- 
teners of the earth and circulators of the sun appeal with 
perfect justice to the evidence of their senses in support of 
their hallucination, which is more than the opponents of 
man's primitive savagery are able to do. 

Thus the study of savage life is a very important part of 
Social Anthropology. For by comparison with civilized 
man the savage represents an arrested or rather retarded 
stage of social development, and an examination of his 
customs and beliefs accordingly supplies the same sort of 
evidence of the evolution of the human mind that an ex- 
amination of the embryo supplies of the evolution of the 
human body. To put it otherwise, a savage is to a civilized 
man as a child is to an adult ; and just as the gradual 
growth of intelligence in a child corresponds to, and in a 
sense recapitulates, the gradual growth of intelligence in the 
species, so a study of savage society at various stages of 
evolution enables us to follow approximately, though of 

course not exactly, the road by which the ancestors of the 
higher races must have travelled in their progress upward 
through barbarism to civilization. In short, savagery is the 
primitive condition of mankind, and if we would understand 
what primitive man was we must know what the savage 
now is. 

But here it is necessary to guard against a common Savages of 
misapprehension. The savages of to-day are primitive only day^arT"' 
in a relative, not in an absolute sense. They are primitive primitive 
by comparison with us ; but they are not primitive by com- relative ^ 
parison with truly primaeval man, that is, with man as he s™se. 
was when he first emerged from the purely bestial stage of compari-^ 
existence. Indeed, compared with man in his absolutely son with 

civilized 

pristine state even the lowest savage of to-day is doubtless a peoples ; 
highly developed and cultured being, since all evidence and '^^"^ ™^' 

11 1 , -I- . r ^ , . , . . torasand 

all probability are in favour of the view that every existing beliefs are 
race of men, the rudest as well as the most civilized, has '" f^'^'t^e 

' ' product of 

reached its present level of culture, whether it be high or a long 
low, only after a slow and painful progress upwards, which evolution 
must have extended over many thousands, perhaps millions, as to which 
of years. Therefore when we speak of any known savages know httie 
as primitive, which the usage of the English language per- or nothing. 
mits us to do, it should always be remembered that we apply 
the term primitive to them in a relative, not in an absolute 
sense. What we mean is that their culture is rudimentary 
compared with that of the civilized nations, but not by any 
means that it is identical with that of primaeval man. It 
is necessary to emphasize this relative use of the term primi- 
tive in its application to all known savages without excep- 
tion, because the ambiguity arising from the double meaning 
of the word has been the source of much confusion and 
misunderstanding. Careless or unscrupulous writers have 
made great play with it for purposes of controversy, using 
the word now in the one sense and now in the other as it 
suited their argument at the moment, without perceiving, or 
at all events without indicating, the equivocation. In order 
to avoid these verbal fallacies it is only necessary to bear 
steadily in mind that while Social Anthropology has much 
to say of primitive man in the relative sense, it has nothing 
whatever to say about primitive man in the absolute sense. 

and that for the very simple reason that it knows nothing 
whatever about him, and, so far as we can see at present, is 
never likely to know anything. To construct a history of 
human society by starting from absolutely primordial man 
and working down through thousands or millions of years 
to the institutions of existing savages might possibly have 
merits as a flight of imagination, but it could have none as 
a work of science. To do this would be exactly to reverse 
the proper mode of scientific procedure. It would be to 
work a priori from the unknown to the known instead of a 
posteriori from the known to the unknown. For we do 
know a good deal about the social state of the savages of to- 
day and yesterday, but we know nothing whatever, I repeat, 
about absolutely primitive human society. Hence a sober 
enquirer who seeks to elucidate the social evolution of man- 
kind in ages before the dawn of history must start, not from 
an unknown and purely hypothetical primaeval man, but 
from the lowest savages whom we know or possess adequate 
records of; and from their customs, beliefs, and traditions as 
a solid basis of fact he may work back a little way hypo- 
thetically through the obscurity of the past ; that is, he may 
form a reasonable theory of the way in which these actual 
customs, beliefs, and traditions have grown up and developed 
in a period more or less remote, but probably not very re- 
mote, from the one in which they have been observed and 
recorded. But if, as I assume, he is a sober enquirer, he 
will never expect to carry back this reconstruction of human 
history very far, still less will he dream of linking it up with 
the very beginning, because he is aware that we possess no 
evidence which would enable us to bridge even hypothetic- 
ally the gulf of thousands or millions of years which divides 
the savage of to-day from primaeval man. 
For ex- It may be well to illustrate my meaning by an example. 

marrkV?^ The matrimonial customs and modes of tracing relationships 
customs which prevail among some savage races, and even among 
systems of psoples at a higher stage of culture, furnish very strong grounds 
relation- for believing that the systems of marriage and consanguinity 
valen^^ which are now in vogue among civilized peoples must have 
among been immediately preceded at a more or less distant time bv 

many . . ,  . , .  "^ 

savage Very different modes of countmg km and regulating marriage ; 

in fact, that monogamy and the forbidden degrees of kinship tribes 
have replaced an older system of much wider and looser ^'^^^l '° 

^ ^ J have been 

sexual relations. But to say this is not to affirm that such evolved 
looser and wider relations were characteristic of the absolutely prereding 
primitive condition of mankind ; it is only to say that actu- but not 
ally existing customs and traditions clearly indicate the primUive,^ 
extensive prevalence of such relations at some former time state of 
in the history of our race. How remote that time was, we promis- 
cannot tell ; but, estimated by the whole vast period of man's '='^'y- 
existence on earth, it seems probable that the era of sexual 
communism to which the evidence points was comparatively 
recent ; in other words, that for the civilized races the interval 
which divides that era from our own is to be reckoned by 
thousands rather than by hundreds of thousands of years, while 
for the lowest of existing savages, for example, the aborigines 
of Australia, it is possible or probable that the interval may 
not be greater than a few centuries. Be that as it may, 
even if on the strength of the evidence I have referred to 
we could demonstrate the former prevalence of a system of 
sexual communism among all the races of mankind, this 
would only carry us back a single step in the long history of 
our species ; it would not justify us in concluding that such 
a system had been practised by truly primaeval man, still less 
that it had prevailed among mankind from the beginning 
down to the comparatively recent period at which its exist- 
ence may be inferred from the evidence at our disposal. 
About the social condition of primaeval man, I repeat, we 
know absolutely nothing, and it is vain to speculate. Our 
first parents may have been as strict monogamists as Whiston 
or Dr. Primrose, or they may have been just the reverse. 
We have no information on the subject, and are never likely 
to get any. In the countless ages which have elapsed since 
man and woman first roamed the happy garden hand in hand 
or jabbered like apes among the leafy boughs of the virgin 
forest, their relations to each other may have undergone in- 
numerable changes. iFor human affairs, like the courses of 
the heaven, seem to run in cycles : the social pendulum 
swings to and fro from one extremity of the scale to the 
other : in the political sphere it has swung from democracy 
to despotism, and back again from despotism to democracy ; 

1 66 

The second 
department 
of Social 
Anthro- 
pology is 
folklore, or 
the study 
of savage 
survivals in 
civilization. 

Such 
survivals 
are due 
to the 
essential 
inequality 
of men, 
many of 
whom 
remain at 
heart 

and so in the domestic sphere it may have oscillated many 
a time between libertinism and monogamy. 

If I am right in my definition of Social Anthropology, 
its province may be roughly divided into two departments, 
one of which embraces the customs and beliefs of savages, 
while the other includes such relics of these customs and 
beliefs as have survived in the thought and institutions of 
more cultured peoples. The one department may be called 
the study of savagery, the other the study of folklore. I 
have said something of savagery : I now turn to folklore, 
that is, to the survivals of more primitive ideas and practices 
among peoples who in other respects have risen to a higher 
plane of culture. That suchfsurvivalsjmay be discovered in 
every civilized nation will hardly now be disputed by any- 
body. When we read, for example, of an Irishwoman roasted 
to death by her husband on a suspicion that she was not his 
wife but a fairy changeling,^ or again, of an Englishwoman 
dying of lockjaw because she had anointed the nail that 
wounded her instead of the wound,^ we may be sure that the 
beliefs to which these poor creatures fell victims were not 
learned by them in school or at church, but had been trans- 
mitted from truly savage ancestors through many generations 
of outwardly though not really civilized descendants. Beliefs 
and practices of this sort are therefore rightly called super- 
stitions, which means literally survivals. It is with superstitions 
in the strict sense of the word that the second department of 
Social Anthropology is concerned. 

If we ask how it happens that superstitions linger among 
a people who in general have reached a higher level of culture, 
the answer is to be found in the natural, universal, and in- 
eradicable inequality of men. Not only are different races 
differently endowed in respect of intelligence, courage, in- 
dustry, and so forth, but within the same nation men of the 
same generation differ enormously in inborn capacity and 
worth. No abstract doctrine is more false and mischievous 

1 This happened at Bally vadlea, in 
the county of Tipperary, in March 
1895. ^°'^ details of the evidence 
given at the trial of the murderers, see 
" The ' Witch-burning ' at Clonmel," 

Folk-lore, vi. (1895) PP- 373-384- 

2 This happened at Norwich in 
June 1902. See The People's Weekly 
Journal for Norfolk, July 19, 1902, 
p. 8. 

than that of the natural equality of men. It is true that the savages 
legislator must treat men as if they were equal, because laws ™^,'^'' ^ 

° . J -1 ' civilized 

of necessity are general and cannot be made so as to fit the exterior. 
infinite variety of individual cases. But we must not imagine 
that because men are equal before the law they are therefore 
intrinsically equal to each other. The experience of common 
life sufficiently contradicts such a vain imagination. At school 
and at the universities, at work and at play, in peace and in 
war, the mental and moral inequalities of human beings stand 
out too conspicuously to be ignored or disputed. On the 
whole the men of keenest intelligence and strongest char- 
acters lead the rest and shape the moulds into which, out- 
wardly at least, society is cast. As such men are necessarily Mankind 
few by comparison with the multitude whom they lead, it by™n"en-'' 
follows that the community is really dominated by the will lightened 
of an enlightened minority ^ even in countries where the ™"°" ^^ 
ruling power is nominally vested in the hands of the 
numerical majority. In fact, disguise it as we may, the 
government of mankind is always and everywhere essenti- 
ally aristocratic. No juggling with political machinery can 
evade this law of nature. However it may seem to lead, 
the dull-witted majority in the end follows a keener-witted 
niinority. That is its salvation and the secret of progress. 
"""^The higher human intelligence sways the lower, just as the 
intelligence of man gives him the mastery over the brutes. 
I do not mean that the ultimate direction of society rests 
with its nominal gdvernors, with its kings, its statesmen, its 
legislators. The true rulers of men are the thinkers who The un- 
advance knowledge ; for just as it is through his superior ^Ings"^'^ 
knowledge, not through his superior strength, that man 
bears rule over the rest of the animal creation, so among 
men themselves it is knowledge which in the long run 
directs and controls the forces of society. Thus the dis- 
coverers of new truths are the real though uncrowned and 
unsceptred kings of mankind ; monarchs, statesmen, and 
law-givers are but their ministers, who sooner or later do 
their bidding by carrying out the ideas of these master 

1 I say "an enlightened minority," of them are very far from enlightened, 
because in any large community there It is possible to be below as well as 
are alvvays many minorities, and some above the average level of our fellows. 

minds. The more we study the inward workings of society 
and the progress of civilization, the more clearly shall we 
perceive how both are governed by the influence of thoughts 
which, springing up at first we know not how or whence 
in a few superior minds, gradually spread till they have 
leavened the whole inert lump of a community or of man- 
kind. The origin of such mental variations, with all their 
far-reaching train of social consequences, is just as obscure 
as is the origin of those physical variations on which, if 
biologists are right, depends the evolution of species, and 
with it the possibility of progress. Perhaps the same un- 
known cause which determines the one set of variations 
gives rise to the other also. We cannot tell. All we 
can say is that on the whole in the conflict of competing 
forces, whether physical or mental, th e strongest at last 
prevails, the fittest survives. In the mental sphere the 
struggle for existence is not less fierce and internecine 
than in the physical, but in the end the better ideas, which 
we call the truth, carry the day. The clamorous opposition 
with which at their first appearance they are regularly 
greeted, whenever they conflict with old prejudices, may 
The tombs retard but cannot prevent their final victory. It is the 
of the practice of the mob first to stone and then to erect useless 

prophets. ^ 

memorials to their greatest benefactors. All who set them- 
selves to replace anc ient error arid supe rstitio n by tru th and 
reason must lay theirjLccountjyith_b rickbats in their li fb-and 
a marble monument after death. 
Super- I have been led into making these remarks by the wish 

^""d" nhe *° explain jdi^z_itjs. that superstitions of all sorts, political, 
laggards in moral, and religious, survive among peoples who have the 
oHnteUect opportunity of knowing better. The reason is that the better 
ideas, which are constantly forming in the upper stratum, 
have not yet filtered through from the highest to the lowest 
minds. Such a filtration is generally slow, and by the time 
that the new notions have penetrated to the bottom, if indeed 
they ever get there, they are often already obsolete and 
superseded by others at the top. Hence it is that if we 
could open the heads and read the thoughts of two men of 
the same generation and country but at opposite ends of the 
intellectual scale, we should probably find their minds as 

different as if the two belonged to different species. Man- 
kind, as it has been well said, advances in ichelons ; that is, 
the columns march not abreast of each other but in a 
straggling line, all lagging in various degrees behind the 
leader. The image well describes the difference not only 
between peoples, but between individuals of the same people 
and the same generation. Just as one nation is continually 
outstripping some of its contemporaries, so within the same 
nation some men are constantly outpacing their fellows, and 
the foremost in the race are those who have thrown off the 
load of superstition whic h still b urdens the harVs and rings 
the footsteps of the laggards. To drop metaphor, superstitions 
survive because, while they shock the views of enlightened 
members of the community, they are still in harmony with 
the thoughts and feelings of others who, though they are 
drilled by their betters into an appearance of civilization, 
remain barbarians or savages at heart. That is why, for 
example, the barbarous punishments for high treason and 
witchcraft and the enormities of slavery were tolerated and 
defended in this country down to modern times. Such Super- 
survivals may be divided into two sorts, according as they g-J'iJ°"^ 
are public or private ; in other words, according as they are public or 
embodied in the law of the land or are practised with or p"™'^- 
without the connivance of the law in holes and corners. 
The examples I have just cited belong to the former of these Examples 
two classes. Witches were publicly burned and traitors were \^^. "^ 
publicly disembowelled in England not so long ago, and stitions. 
slavery survived as a legal institution still later. The true 
nature of such public superstitions is apt, through their very 
publicity, to escape detection, because until they are finally 
swept away by the rising tide of progress, there are always 
plenty of people to defend them as institutions essential 
to the public welfare and sanctioned by the laws of God 
and man. 

It is otherwise with those private superstitions to which The wide 
the name of folklore is usually confined. In civilized society or^r^a'tr 
most educated people are not even aware of the extent to super- 

,. . . . . J 1 • 1 stitions 

which these relics of savage ignorance survive at their doors, constitutes 
The discovery of their wide prevalence was indeed only made ^ standing 
last century, chiefly through the researches of the brothers civilization. 

Grimm in Germany. Since their day systematic enquiries 
carried on among the less educated classes, and especially 
among the peasantry, of Europe have revealed the astonish- 
ing, nay, alarming truth that a mass, if not the majority, of 
people in every civilized country is still living in a state of 
intellectual savagery, that, in fact, the smooth surface of 
cultured society is sapped and mined by superstition. Only 
those whose studies have led them to investigate the subject 
are aware of the depth to which the ground beneath our feet 
is thus, as it were, honeycombed by unseen forces. We appear 
to be standing on a volcano which may at any moment 
break out in smoke and fire to spread ruin and devastation 
among the gardens and palaces of ancient culture wrought 
so laboriously by the hands of many generations. After 
looking on the ruined Greek temples of Paestum and 
contrasting them with the squalor and savagery of the 
Italian peasantry, Renan said, " I trembled for civiliza- 
tion, seeing it so limited, built on so weak a foundation, 
resting on so few individuals even in the country where it 
is dominant." ^ 
It is the If we examine the superstitious beliefs which are tacitly 

crudest ^""^ but firmly held by many of our fellow-countrymen, we shall 
super- find, perhaps to our surprise, that it is precisely the oldest 
that°survive ^"'^ Crudest superstitions which are most tenacious of life, 
longest, while views which, though also erroneous, are more modern 
they'^^^ ^nd refined, soon fade from the popular memory. For 
answer to example, the high gods of Egypt and Babylon, of Greece 
of the and Rome, have for ages been totally forgotten by the people 
lowest and survive only in the books of the learned ; yet the 

minds. 1 1 r /->v 

Hence peasants, who never even heard of Isis and Osiris, of Apollo 

sur'fac'^'^f ^"'^ Artemis, of Jupiter and Juno, retain to this day a firm 

society is belief in witches and fairies, in ghosts and hobgoblins, those 

chanring^ lesser creatures of the mythical fancy in which their fathers 

its depths, believed long before the great deities of the ancient world 

of the °^'^ were ever thought of, and in which, to all appearance, their 

ocean, descendants will continue to believe long after the great 

almost deities of the present day shall have gone the way of all 

motionless, their predecessors. The i-eason why the higher forms of 
superstition or religion (for the religion of one generation is 

1 E. Renan et M. Berthelot, Correspondance (Paris, 1898), pp. 75 sq. 

apt to become the superstition of the next) are less permanent 
than the lower is simply that the higher beliefs, being a 
creation of superior intelligence, have little hold on the minds 
of the vulgar, who nominally profess them for a time in 
conformity with the will of their betters, but readily shed and 
forget them as soon as these beliefs have gone out of fashion 
with the educated classes. But while they dismiss without 
a pang or an effort articles of faith which were only super- 
ficially imprinted on their minds by the weight of cultured 
opinion, the ignorant and foolish multitude cling with a sullen 
determination to far grosser beliefs which really answer to 
the coarser texture of their undeveloped intellect. Thus 
while the avowed creed of the enlightened minority is con- 
stantly changing under the influence of reflection and 
enquiry, the real, though unavowed, creed of the mass of 
mankind appears to be almost stationary, and the reason 
why it alters so little is that in the majority of men, 
whether they are savages or outwardly civilized beings, 
intellectual progress is so slow as to be hardly perceptible. 
The surface of society, like that of the sea, is in perpetual 
motion ; its depths, like those of the ocean, remain almost 
unmoved. 

Thus from an examination, first, of savagery and, second. The early 
of its survivals in civilization, the study of Social Anthro- '"s'°'7°f 

' •' mankind, 

pology attempts to trace the early history of human thought recon- 
and institutions. The history can never be complete, unless f'^^'the 
science should discover some mode of reading the faded joint testi- 
record of the past of which we in this generation can hardly ^vaLry 
dream. We know indeed that every event, however in- and folk- 
significant, implies a change, however slight, in the material of gaps, 
constitution of the universe, so that the whole history of the ^'''* '^a° 
world IS, m a sense, engraved upon its face, though our eyes imperfectly 
are too dim to read the scroll. It may be that in the 'f '"^^ed by 

•'. _ the Corn- 

future some wondrous reagent, some magic chemical, may parative 

yet be found to bring out the whole of nature's secret hand- '^^"'°'^- 

writing for a greater than Daniel to interpret to his fellows. 

That will hardly be in our time. With the resources at 

present at our command we must be content with a very 

brief, imperfect, and in large measure conjectural account of 

man's mental and social development in prehistoric ages. 

As 1 have already pointed out, the evidence, fragmentary 
and dubious as it is, only runs back a very little way into 
the measureless past of human life on earth ; we soon lose 
the thread, the faintly glimmering thread, in the thick dark- 
ness of the absolutely unknown. Even in the comparatively 
short space of time, a few thousand years at most, which 
falls more or less within our ken, there are many deep and 
wide chasms which can only be bridged by hypotheses, if 
the story of evolution is to run continuously. Such bridges 
are built in anthropology as in biology by the Comparative 
The Method, which enables us to borrow the links of one chain 

legitimacy ^f evidence to supply the gaps in another. For us who 

oftheCom- . , , ^ ^ , i-r i • i i 

parative deal, not With the various forms of animal life, but with the 
Method various products of human intelligence, the legitimacy of the 

in social ^ t> ) £> -' 

anthro- Comparative Method rests on the well-ascertained similarity 
S^^?ul'^'^^'^ of the working of the human mind in all races of men. I 

on the o 

similarity have laid strcss on the great inequalities which exist not 
human °"^y between the various races, but between men of the 
mind in same racc and generation ; but it should be clearly under- 
stood and remembered that these divergencies are quanti- 
tative rather than qualitative, they consist in differences of 
degree rather than of kind. The savage is not a different 
sort of being from his civilized brother : he has the same 
capacities, mental and moral, but they are less fully de- 
veloped : his evolution has been arrested, or rather retarded, 
at a lower level. And as savage races are not all on the 
same plane, but have stopped or tarried at different points 
of the upward path, we can to a certain extent, by compar- 
ing them with each other, construct a scale of social pro- 
gression and mark out roughly some of the stages on the 
long road that leads from savagery to civilization. In the 
kingdom of mind such a scale of mental evolution answers 
to the scale of morphological evolution in the animal 
kingdom. 
It is only From what I have said I hope you have formed some 

years that idea of the extreme importance which the study of savage 
the im- ufg possesses for a proper understanding of the early history 
of savagery of mankind. The savage is a human document, a record of 
as a docu- man's efforts to raise himself above the level of the beast. 

meut of 

human It is Only of late years that the full value of the document 

has been appreciated ; indeed, many people are probably history 
still of Dr. Johnson's opinion, who, pointing to the three un^eT-^" 
large volumes of Voyages to the South Seas which had just stood. 
come out, said : " Who will read them through ? A man 
had better work his way before the mast than read them 
through ; they will be eaten by rats and mice before they 
are read through. There can be little entertainment in such 
books ; one set of savages is like another." ^ But the world 
has learned a good deal since Dr. Johnson's day ; and the 
records of savage life, which the sage of Bolt Court con- 
signed without scruple to the rats and mice, have now their 
place among the most precious archives of humanity. Their 
fate has been like that of the Sibylline Books. They were 
neglected and despised when they might have been obtained 
complete ; and now wise men would give more than a king's 
ransom for their miserably mutilated and imperfect remains. 
It is true that before our time civilized men often viewed 
savages with interest and described them intelligently, and 
some of their descriptions are still of great scientific value. 
For example, the discovery of America naturally excited. in Great 
the minds of the European peoples an eager curiosity as to ^g^'^to 
the inhabitants of the new world, which had burst upon the study 
their gaze, as if at the waving of a wizard's wand the curtain L a™^^'^^ 
of the western sky had suddenly rolled up and disclosed discovery 
scenes of glamour and enchantment. Accordingly some of and of the' 
the Spaniards who explored and conquered these realms of Pacific. 
wonder have bequeathed to us accounts of the manners and 
customs of the Indians, which for accuracy and fulness of 
detail probably surpass any former records of an alien race. 
Such, for instance, is the great work of the Franciscan friar 
Sahagun on the natives of Mexico, and such the work of 
Garcilasso de la Vega, himself half an Inca, on the Incas of 
Peru. Again, the exploration of the Pacific in the eighteenth ' 
century, with its revelation of fairy-like islands scattered in 
profusion over a sea of eternal summer, drew the eyes and 
stirred the imagination of Europe ; and to the curiosity thus 
raised in many minds, though not in Dr. Johnson's, we owe 
some precious descriptions of the islanders, who, in those 
days of sailing ships, appeared to dwell so remote from us 
1 J. Boswell, Life of Samuel Johnson^ (London, 1822), iv. 315. 

that the poet Cowper fancied their seas might never again 
be ploughed by English keels.^ 
The pass- These and many other old accounts of savages must 

safage"'^ always retain their interest and value for the study of Social 
Anthropology, all the more because they set before us the 
natives in their natural unsophisticated state, before their 
primitive manners and customs had been altered or destroyed 
by European influence. Yet in the light of subsequent 
research these early records are often seen to be very 
defective, because the authors, unaware of the scientific 
importance of facts which to the ordinary observer might 
appear trifling or disgusting, have either passed over many 
things of the highest interest in total silence or dismissed 
them with a brief and tantalizing allusion. It is accordingly 
necessary to supplement the reports of former writers by a 
minute and painstaking investigation of the living savages in 
order to fill up, if possible, the many yawning gaps in our 
knowledge. Unfortunately this cannot always be done, since 
many savages have either been totally exterminated or so 
changed by contact with Europeans that it is no longer 
possible to obtain trustworthy information as to their old 
habits and traditions. But whenever the ancient customs 
and beliefs of a primitive race have passed away unrecorded, 
a document of human history has perished beyond recall. 
Unhappily this destruction of the archives, as we may call it, 
is going on apace. In some places, for example, in Tasmania, 
the savage is already extinct ; in others, as in Australia, he 
is dying. In others again, for instance in Central and 
Southern Africa, where the numbers and inborn vigour of 
the race shew little or no sign of succumbing in the struggle 
for existence, the influence of traders, officials, and mission- 
aries is so rapidly disintegrating and effacing the native 
customs, that with the passing of the older generation even 
the memory of them will soon in many places be gone. It 
is therefore a matter of the most urgent scientific importance 
to secure without delay full and accurate reports of these 
perishing or changing peoples, to take permanent copies, so 

1 " In boundless oceans, never to be Or plougKd perhaps by British 

passed bark again." 

By navigators uninformed as they, The Task, book i. 629 sqq. 

to say, of these precious monuments before they are destroyed. 
It is not yet too late. Much may still be learned, for 
example, in West Australia, in New Guinea, in Melanesia, 
in Central Africa, among the hill tribes of India and the 
forest Indians of the Amazons. There is still time to send 
expeditions to these regions, to subsidize men on the spot, 
who are conversant with the languages and enjoy the confi- 
dence of the natives ; for there are such men who possess or 
can obtain the very knowledge we require, yet who, unaware 
or careless of its inestimable value for science, make no effort 
to preserve the treasure for posterity, and, if we do not 
speedily come to the rescue, will suffer it to perish with them. 
In the whole range of human knowledge at the present 
moment there is no more pressing need than that of recording 
this priceless evidence of man's early history before it is too 
late. For soon, very soon, the opportunities which we still 
enjoy will be gone for ever. In another quarter of a century 
probably there will be little or nothing of the old savage life 
left to record. The savage, such as we may still see him, 
will then be as extinct as the dodo. The sands are fast 
running out : the hour will soon strike : the record will be 
closed : the book will be sealed. And how shall we of this The duty 
generation look when we stand at the bar of posterity generation 
arraigned on a charge of high treason to our race, we who to pos- 
neglected to study our perishing fellow-men, but who sent out ^" ^' 
costly expeditions to observe the stars and to explore the 
barren ice-bound regions of the poles, as if the polar ice 
would melt and the stars would cease to shine when we are 
gone? Let us awake from our slumber, let us light our 
lamps, let us gird up our loins. The Universities exist for 
the advancement of knowledge. It is their duty to add this 
new province to the ancient departments of learning which 
they cultivate so diligently. Cambridge, to its honour, has 
led the way in equipping and despatching anthropological 
expeditions ; it is for Oxford, it is for Liverpool, it is for 
every University in the land to join in the work. 

More than that, it is the public duty of every civilized The 
state actively to co-operate. In this respect the United the^st°ate. 
States of America, by instituting a bureau for the study of 
the aborigines within its dominions, has set an example 

The 
duty of 
England. 

Monu- 
menium 
acre 
perennius. 

which every enlightened nation that rules over lower races 
ought to imitate. On none does that duty, that responsi- 
bility, lie more clearly and more heavily than on our own, 
for to none in the whole course of human history has the 
sceptre been given over so many and so diverse races of men. 
We have made ourselves our brother's keepers. Woe to us 
if we neglect our duty to our brother ! It is not enough for 
us to rule in justice the peoples we have subjugated by the 
sword. We owe it to them, we owe it to ourselves, we owe 
it to posterity, who will require it at our hands, that we 
should describe them as they were before we found them, 
before they ever saw the English flag and heard, for good or 
evil, the English tongue. The voice of England speaks to 
her subject peoples in other accents than in the thunder of 
her guns. Peace has its triumphs as well as war : there are 
nobler trophies than captured flags and cannons. There 
are monuments, airy monuments, monuments of words, which 
seem so fleeting and evanescent, that will yet last when 
your cannons have crumbled and your flags have mouldered 
into dust. When the Roman poet wished to present an 
image of perpetuity, he said that he would be remembered 
so long as the Roman Empire endured, so long as the 
white-robed procession of the Vestals and Pontiffs should 
ascend the Capitol to pray in the temple of Jupiter. That 
solemn procession has long ceased to climb the slope of the 
Capitol, the Roman Empire itself has long passed away, like 
the empire of Alexander, like the empire of Charlemagne, 
like the empire of Spain, yet still amid the wreck of kingdoms 
the poet's monument stands firm, for still his verses are read 
and remembered. I appeal to the Universities, I appeal to 
the Government of this country to unite in building a 
monument, a beneficent monument, of the British Empire, 
a monument 

" Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotens 
Possit diruere, aut innunierabilis 
Annorum series, et fuga temporum.^^