In Guatemala organs of a slain war captive were given to an old prophetess to be eaten. She was then asked to pray to the idol which she served to give them many captives.1 Human sacrifices and sacramental cannibalism exist amongst the Bella-coola Indians in northwestern British America. Children of the poor are bought from their parents to be made sacrifices. The blood is drunk and the flesh is eaten raw. The souls of the sacrificed go to live in the sun and become birds. When the English government tried to stop these sacrifices the priests dug up corpses and ate them. Several were thus poisoned.2 351. Cult and cannibalism. The cases which have been cited show how cult kept up cannibalism, if no beast was substituted. Also, a great number of uses of blood and superstitions about blood appear to be survivals of cannibalism or deductions from it. The same may be said of holiday cakes of special shapes, made by peasants, which have long lost all known sense. In one part of France the last of the harvest which is brought in is made into a loaf in human shape, supposed to represent the spirit of corn or of fertility. It is broken up and distributed amongst all the villagers, who eat it.3 A Mogolian lama reported of a tribe, the Lhopa of Sikkim or Bhutan, that they kill and eat the bride's mother at a wedding, if they can catch no wild man.4 352. A burglar in West Prussia, in 1865, killed a maid-servant and cut flesh from her body out of which to make a candle for use in later acts of theft. He was caught while committing another burglary. He confessed that he ate a part of the corpse of his first-mentioned victim "in order to appease his conscience." 5 353. Food taboos. It is most probable that dislike to eat the human body was a product of custom, and grew in the mores after other foods became available in abundance. Unusual foods now cost us an effort. Frogs' legs, for instance, repel most people at first. We eat what we learned from our parents to eat, and other foods are adopted by "acquired taste." Light is thrown on the degree to which all food preferences and taboos 1 Brinton, Nagualism, 34. 2 Mitt. Berl. Mus., 1885, 184. 8 PSM, XLVIII, 411. 4 Rockhill, Mongolia and Thibet, 144. 5 PSM, LIV, 217. are a part of the mores by a comparison of some cases of food taboos. Porphyrius, a Christian of Tyre, who lived in the second half of the second century of the Christian era, says that a Phoenician or an Egyptian would sooner eat man's flesh than cow's flesh. A Jew would not eat swine's flesh. A Zoroastrian could not conceive it possible that any one could eat dog's flesh. We do not eat dog's flesh, probably for the same reason that we do not eat cat's or horse's, because the flesh is tough or insipid and we can get better, but some North American Indians thought dog's flesh the very best food. The Banziris, in the French Congo, reserved dog's flesh for men, and they surround meals of it with a solemn ritual. A man must not touch his wife with his finger for a day after such a feast.2 The inhabitants of Ponape will eat no eels, which "they hold in the greatest horror." The word used by them for eel means "the dreadful one.' » 3 Dyaks eat snakes, but reject eels. Some Melanesians will not eat eels because they think that there are ghosts in them.5 South African Bantus abominate fish. Some Canary Islanders ate no fish. Tasmanians would rather starve than eat fish. The Somali will eat no fish, considering it disgraceful to do so.9 They also reject game and birds. 10 These people who reject eels and fish renounce a food supply which is abundant in their habitat. 354. Food taboos in ethnography. Some Micronesians eat no fowl." Wild Veddahs reject fowl.12 Tuaregs eat no fish, birds, or eggs. 13 In eastern Africa many tribes loathe eggs and fowl as food. They are as much disgusted to see a white man eat eggs as a white man is to see savages eat offal. Some Australians will not eat pork.15 Nagas and their neighbors think roast dog a great delicacy. They will eat anything, even an elephant which has been three days buried, but they abominate milk, and find the smell of tinned lobster too strong." 16 Negroes in the French Congo "have a perfect horror of the idea of drinking milk." 17 1 De Abstinentia, II, 11. 5 Codrington, Melanesians, 177. 9 Paulitschke, Ethnog. N.O. Afr., I, 155. 10 Ibid., II, 27. 53. 11 Finsch, Ethnol. Erfahr., III, 16 JAI, XI, 63; XXII, 245. 17 Kingsley, West Afr. Studies, 451. 355. Expiation for taking life. The most primitive notion we can find as to taking life is that it is wrong to kill any living thing except as a sacrifice to some superior power. This dread of destroying life, as if it was the assumption of a divine prerogative to do so, gives a background for all the usages with regard to sacrifice and food. "In old Israel all slaughter was sacrifice, and a man could never eat beef or mutton except as a religious act." Amongst the Arabs, "even in modern times, when a sheep or camel is slain in honor of a guest, the good old custom is that the host keeps open house for all his neighbors." In modern Hindostan food which is ordinarily tabooed may be eaten if it has been killed in offering to a god. Therefore an image of the god is set up in the butcher's shop. All the animals are slaughtered nominally as an offering to it. This raises the taboo, and the meat is bought and eaten without scruple. Thus it is that the taboo on cannibalism may be raised by religion, or that cannibalism may be made a duty by religion. Amongst the ancient Semites some animals were under a food taboo for a reason which has two aspects at the same time: they were both offensive (ritually unclean) and sacred. What is holy and what is loathsome are in like manner set aside. The Jews said that the Holy Scriptures rendered him who handled them unclean. Holy and unclean have a common element opposed to profane. In the case of both there is devotion or consecration to a higher power. If it is a good power, the thing is holy; if a bad power, it is unclean. He who touches either falls under a taboo, and needs purification. The tabooed things could only be eaten sacrificially and sacramentally, i.e. as disgusting and unusual they had greater sacrificial force. This idea is to be traced in all ascetic usages, and in many medieval developments of religious usages which introduced repulsive elements, to heighten the self-discipline of conformity. In the Caroline Islands turtles are sacred to the gods and are eaten only in illness or as sacrifices." 356. Philosophy of cannibalism. If cannibalism began in the interest of the food supply, especially of meat, the wide ramifications of its relations are easily understood. While men were unable to cope with the great beasts cannibalism was a leading feature of social life, around which a great cluster of interests centered. Ideas were cultivated by it, and it became regulative and directive as to what ought to be done. The sentiments of kinship made it seem right and true that the nearest relatives 1 W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, 142, 283. 2 Wilkins, Mod. Hinduism, 168. 8 Bousset, Relig. des Judenthums, 124. 4 W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, 290; Isaiah lxv. 4; lxvi. 3, 17; swine, dog, and mouse. 5 Kubary, Karolinen Archipel, 168. should be eaten. Further deductions followed, of which the cases given are illustrations. As to enemies, the contrary sentiments found place in connection with it. It combined directly with ghost fear. The sacramental notion seems born of it. When the chase was sufficiently developed to give better food the taboo on human flesh seemed no more irrational than the other food taboos above mentioned. Swans and peacocks were regarded as great dainties in the Middle Ages. We no longer eat them. Snakes are said to be good eating, but most of us would find it hard to eat them. Yet why should they be more loathsome than frogs or eels? Shipwrecked people, or besieged and famine-stricken people, have overcome the loathing for human flesh rather than die. Others have died because they could not overcome it, and have thus rendered the strongest testimony to the power of the mores. In general, the cases show that if men are hungry enough, or angry enough, they may return to cannibalism now. Our horror of cannibalism is due to a long and broad tradition, broken only by hearsay of some far-distant and extremely savage people who now practice it. Probably the popular opinion about it is that it is wicked. It is not forbidden by the rules of any religion, because it had been thrown out of the mores before any "religion" was founded. CHAPTER IX SEX MORES Meaning of sex mores. The sex difference. - Sex difference and evolution. - The sex distinction; family institution; marriage in the mores. Regulation is conventional, not natural. Egoistic and altruistic elements. Primary definition of marriage; taboo and conventionalization. — Family, not marriage, is the institution. Endogamy and exogamy. - Polygamy and polyandry. Consistency of the mores under polygamy or polyandry. - Mother family and father family. — Change from mother family to father family. Capture and purchase become ceremonies. — Feminine honor and virtue; jealousy.- Virginity.-Chastity for men.— Love marriage; conjugal affection; wife. Heroic conjugal devotion. - Hindoo models and ideals. - Tribes of the Caucasus. Slavonic sex mores.- Russian sex mores. Mediæval sex mores. - The standard of the "good wife"; pair marriage. "One flesh."- Pair marriage. — Marriage in modern mores. — Pair marriage, its technical definition. - Ethics of pair marriage. — Pair marriage is monopolistic. The future of marriage. The normal type of sex union. Divorce. Divorce in ethnography. Rabbis on divorce.— - Pair marriage and divorce. — Divorce in the Middle Ages. Refusal of remarriage. Child marriage. Child marriage in Hindostan. Child marriage in Europe. Cloistering women. Second marriages; widows. Burning of widows. Divorce at Rome. India. Difficulty of reform of suttee in Widows and remarriage in the Christian church. -Remarriage and other-worldliness. — Free marriage. — The Japanese woman. 357. Meaning of sex mores. The sex mores are one of the greatest and most important divisions of the mores. They cover the relations of men and women to each other before marriage and in marriage, with all the rights and duties of married and unmarried respectively to the rest of the society. The mores determine what marriage shall be, who may enter into it, in what way they may enter into it, divorce, and all details of proper conduct in the family relation. In regard to all these matters it is evident that custom governs and prescribes. When positive institutions and laws are made they always take up, ordain, and regulate what the mores have long previously made facts in the social order. In the administration of law also, especially by juries, domestic relations are controlled by the |