CHAPTER XLVII

108Andree,op. cit.p. 98sq.Lippert,Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, ii. 279. Schurtz,Speiseverbote, p. 25. Réville,Hibbert Lectures on the Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 87. Johnston, inFortnightly Review, N.S. xlv. 28. M. Letourneau (L’évolution de la morale, p. 76) calls cannibalism “le péché originel de toutes les races humaines.”

109Westermarck,History of Human Marriage, p. 3sq.

110Steinmetz,Endokannibalismus, p. 34sqq.

It is quite likely that early man preferred cannibalism to death from starvation, and that he occasionally practised it from the same motive as has induced many shipwrecked men even among civilised peoples to have recourse to the bodies of their comrades in order to save their lives. But we are here concerned with habitual cannibalism only. Although I consider it highly probable that man was originally in the main frugivorous, there can be no doubt that he has from very early times fed largely on animal food. We may further take for granted that he has habitually eaten the flesh of whatever animals he could get for which he had a taste and from the eating of which no superstitious or sentimental motive held him back. But that he at first had no aversion to human flesh seems to me a very precarious assumption.

A large number of savage tribes have never been known to be addicted to cannibalism, but are, on the contrary, said to feel the greatest dislike of it. In times of scarcity the Eskimo will eat their clothing sooner than touch human flesh. The Fuegians have been reported to devour their old women in cases of extreme distress;111but Mr. Bridges, who has spent most part of his life among them, emphatically affirms that cannibalism is unknown amongst the natives of Cape Horn and thatthey abhor it.112Concerning the natives of South Andaman Mr. Man observes:—“Not a trace could be discovered of the existence of such a practice in their midst, even in far-off times…. They express the greatest horror of the custom, and indignantly deny that it ever held a place among their institutions.”113We meet with similar statements with reference to many African tribes. The editor of Livingstone’s ‘Last Journals’ says that it was common on the River Shiré to hear Manganja and Ajawa people speak of tribes far away to the north who eat human bodies, and that on every occasion the fact was related with the utmost abhorrence and disgust.114Amongst the Dinka the accounts of the cannibalism of the Niam-Niam excites as much horror as amongst ourselves.115The Bakongo “shudder with repugnance at the mere mention of eating human flesh.”116Among the Bayaka, in the Congo Free State, “cannibalism is never found, and is regarded as something quite abhorrent.”117No intermarriage takes place between the Fans and their non-cannibal neighbours, as “their peculiar practices are held in too great abhorrence.”118According to Burton, cannibalism “is execrated by the Efiks of Old Calabar, who punish any attempts of the kind with extreme severity.”119Even amongst the South Sea Islanders there are tribes which have been known to view cannibalism with great repugnance.120

111Darwin,Journal of Researches, p. 214. King and Fitzroy,Voyages of the“Adventure”and“Beagle,” ii. 183, 189.

112Bridges, ‘Manners and Customs of the Firelanders,’ inA Voice for South America, xiii. 207.Idem, quoted by Hyades and Deniker,Mission scientifique du Cap Horn, vii. 259.

113Man, ‘Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xii. 113.

114Livingstone,Last Journals, ii. 39.

115Schweinfurth,Heart of Africa, i. 158.

116Ward,Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, p. 37.

117Torday and Joyce, ‘Ethnography of the Ba-Yaka,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxxvi. 42.

118Du Chaillu,Explorations in Equatorial Africa, p. 97.

119Burton,Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 216sq.

120Nisbet,op. cit.ii. 136. Turner,Samoa, p. 305 (Savage Islanders). Angas,Polynesia, p. 385 (natives of Bornabi, in the Caroline Islands). Powell,Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 247 (some of the tribes in New Guinea). Calder, ‘Native Tribes of Tasmania,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.iii. 23; Ling Roth,Aborigines of Tasmania, p. 111.

It is true that the information which a traveller visiting a savage tribe receives as regards its attitude towardscannibalism is often apt to be misleading. There is nothing as to which many savages are so reticent or the practice of which they will deny so readily as cannibalism, though at the same time they are much inclined to accuse other peoples of it.121The reason why they are so anxious to conceal its prevalence among themselves is of course their knowledge of the detestation in which it is held by the visiting stranger; but not infrequently they really seem to feel that it is something to be ashamed of. It has been said of some Australian natives that, “unlike many other offences with which they are justly charged, … this one in general they knew to be wrong,” their behaviour when they were questioned on the subject showing that “they erred knowingly and wilfully.”122At all events the reproaches of the whites have been taken to heart with remarkable readiness. Even among peoples who have been extremely addicted to it, cannibalism has disappeared with a rapidity to which, I think, there is hardly any parallel in the history of morals. Erskine wrote in the middle of the last century:—“Our experience in New Zealand has proved that this unnatural propensity can be eradicated from the habits of a whole savage nation, in the course of a single generation. I have heard it asserted that there did not exist in 1845 many New Zealand males of twenty years of age who had not, in their childhood, tasted of human flesh; yet it is perfectly well known that at the present time the occurrence of a single case of cannibalism, in any part of those islands, would attract as much notice as in any country of Europe; and that, when a native can be induced to talk on the subject, his information is given reluctantly, and with an unmistakable consciousness of degradation, and a feeling of shame that he and hiscountrymen should ever have been liable to such a reproach.”123Of the Bataks it was said some time ago that the rising generation began to refrain from cannibalism, and that those of them who had submitted to European rule thought with horror of the wild times when they or their ancestors were addicted to it.124Cieza de Leon remarks with some astonishment that, as soon as the Peruvian Incas began to put a stop to this practice among all the peoples with whom they came in contact, it was in a short time forgotten throughout their empire even by those who had previously held it in high estimation.125Moreover, the extinction of cannibalism has not always been due to the intervention of superior races.126

121Curr,The Australian Race, i. 77; Brough Smyth,Aborigines of Victoria, i. p. xxxvii.sq.; Fraser,Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 56. Romilly,Western Pacific, p. 59sqq.Idem,From my Verandah in New Guinea, p. 68. Powell,op. cit.pp. 52, 59 (natives of the Duke of York Group). Erskine,op. cit.p. 190sq.(Fijians). Melville,op. cit.p. 341 (Polynesians). Reade,op. cit.p. 159; Kingsley,Travels in West Africa, p. 330 (Fans). At the same time there are many cannibals who make no attempts to conceal the practice.

122Brough Smyth,op. cit.i. p. xxxviii.

123Erskine,op. cit.p. 275sq.

124Buning, inGlimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 74.

125Cieza de Leon,Segunda parte de la Crónica del Perú, ch. 25, p. 100.

126Waitz-Gerland,Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vi. 158sqq.(Polynesians). Casalis,Basutos, p. 303. Ribot,Psychology of the Emotions, p. 295sq.Schurtz,Speiseverbote, p. 26.Cf.Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 324.

Even among peoples very notorious for cannibalism there are individuals who abhor the practice. Dr. Schweinfurth asserts that some of the Niam-Niam “turn with such aversion from any consumption of human flesh that they would peremptorily refuse to eat out of the same dish with any one who was a cannibal.”127With reference to Fijian cannibalism Dr. Seemann observes:—“It would be a mistake to suppose that all Fijians, not converted to Christianity, are cannibals. There were whole towns, as for instance Nakelo, on the Rewa river, which made a bold stand against this practice, declaring that it wastabuforbidden to them by their gods, to indulge in it. The common people throughout the group, as well as women of all classes, were by custom debarred from it. Cannibalism was thus restricted to the chiefs and gentry, and again amongst them there is a number … who never eat human flesh, nor go near the biers when any dead bodies have been brought in, and who abominate the practice as much as any white man does.”128It should also be remembered that many cannibals eat human flesh not as ordinary food, but only in special circumstances, and that their cannibalism is often restricted to the devouring of some small part of the victim’s body.

127Schweinfurth,op. cit.ii. 18sq.

128Seemann,Viti, p. 179sq.Cf.Williams and Calvert,op. cit.p. 179.

The dislike of cannibalism may be a complex feeling. In many instances sympathy for the dead is undoubtedly one of its ingredients. It is true that endo-anthropophagy is frequently described as a mark of affection, but on the other hand there are many cannibals who never eat their dead friends though they eat strangers or foes. Some cannibals exchange their own dead for those of another tribe so as to avoid feeding on their kinsmen;129the natives of Tana, in the New Hebrides, are said to do so “when they happen to have a particular regard for the deceased.”130But neither affection nor regard can be the reason why savages abstain from eating their enemies. I think that aversion to cannibalism is most likely, in the first instance, an instinctive feeling akin to those feelings which regulate the diet of the various animal species. Although our knowledge of their habits in this respect is defective, there can be little doubt that carnivorous animals as a rule refuse to eat members of their own species; and this reluctance is easy to understand considering its race-preserving tendency.

129Arbousset and Daumas,Exploratory Tour to the Cape of Good Hope, p. 123. Steinmetz,Endokannibalismus, pp. 22, 47.

130Brenchley,op. cit.p. 209.

Moreover, the eating of human flesh is regarded with some degree of superstitious dread. This is not seldom the case even among peoples who are themselves cannibals. In Lepers’ Island, in the New Hebrides, where cannibalism still prevails, the natives say that “to eat human flesh is a dreadful thing,” and that a man-eater is a person who is afraid of nothing; hence “men will buy flesh when some one has been killed, that they may get the name of valiant men by eating it.”131In those parts of Fiji where cannibalism was a national institution, only the select few, the taboo-class, the priests, chiefs, and higher orders, were deemed fit to indulge in it; andwhilst every other kind of food was eaten with the fingers, human flesh was eaten with forks, which were handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation, and with which the natives would not part even for a handsome equivalent.132The Fijians of Nakelo, again, who did not practise cannibalism, attributed to it those fearful skin diseases with which children are so often visited in Fiji.133The New Caledonians, who are exo-anthropophagous, believe that if a man eats a tribes-fellow he will break out into sores and die.134Among the Maoris no men but sacred chiefs could partake of human flesh without becomingtapu, in which state they could not return to their usual occupations without having thetapuremoved from their bodies.135So also among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia a man who has eaten human flesh as a ceremonial rite is for a long time afterwards subject to a variety of restrictions, being considered unclean. For sixteen days he must not eat any warm food. For four months he is not allowed to blow hot food in order to cool it. For the same period he uses a spoon, dish, and kettle of his own, which are thrown away after the lapse of the prescribed time. He must stay alone in his bedroom, and is not allowed to go out of the house door but must use the secret door in the rear of the house. And for a whole year he must not touch his wife, nor is he allowed to gamble or to work.136Among the West African Fans, before a cannibal meal, the corpse is carried to a hut built on the outskirts of the settlement. There “it is eaten secretly by the warriors, women and children not being allowed to be present, or even to look upon man’s flesh; and the cooking pots used for the banquet must all be broken. A joint of ‘black brother’ is never seen in the villages.”137So alsoamong the Bambala, south of the River Congo, vessels in which human flesh has been cooked are broken and the pieces thrown away.138In Eastern Central Africa the person who eats a human being is believed to run a great risk; Mr. Macdonald knew a headman whose success in war was attributed to the fact that he had eaten the whole body of a strong young man, but it was supposed that if he had not been protected by powerful charms, such cannibalism might have been dangerous to him.139

131Codrington,op. cit.p. 344.

132Seemann,Viti, pp. 179, 181sq.

133Ibid.p. 179sq.

134Atkinson, ‘Natives of New Caledonia,’ inFolk-Lore, xiv. 253.

135Thomson,op. cit.i. 147sq.

136Boas, ‘Social Organization of the Kwakiutl Indians,’ inReport of the U.S. National Museum, 1895, p. 537sq.Cf.Woldt,Kaptein Jacobsens Reiser til Nordamerikas Nordvestkyst, p. 44sqq.; Mayne,Four Years in British Columbia, p. 256sq.

137Burton,Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 212.

138Torday and Joyce, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxxv. 404.

139Macdonald,Africana, i. 170.

One reason for this superstitious dread of cannibalism is undoubtedly fear of the dead man’s spirit, which is then supposed not to be annihilated by the act, but to become a danger to him who partakes of the corpse. The Fijian cannibals avowed “that they were always frightened at night lest the spirit of the man they had eaten should haunt them.”140In the Luritcha tribe in Central Australia care is invariably taken to destroy the bones of those enemies who have been eaten, “as the natives believe that unless this is done the victims will arise from the coming together of the bones, and will follow and harm those who have killed and eaten them.”141And among the Kwakiutl Indians the taboos imposed upon a cannibal are more obligatory when he has devoured a corpse than when he has contented himself with taking bites out of a living man.142But it may also be that the superstitious fear of cannibalism is to some extent an outcome of the natural reluctance to partake of human flesh, just as the aversion to eating certain animals may give rise to the idea that their meat is unwholesome food,143and as the supernatural dangers attributed to incest spring from the instinctive horror of it.144

140Pritchard,op. cit.p. 372.

141Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 475.

142Boas,loc. cit.p. 537sq.Cf.Frazer,Golden Bough, i. 342.

143Supra,ii. 332.

144Supra,ii. 375sq.

The fact that so many peoples partake or are known to have partaken of human flesh without repugnance, or even with the greatest eagerness, by no means provesthat there was no original aversion to it in the human race. It is easy to imagine that the feeling of reluctance may have been overcome by other motives, such as hunger, revenge, the desire to acquire another person’s courage or strength, the hope of making an enemy harmless, or of gaining supernatural benefits. And everybody knows that men and even many animals, when once induced to taste a certain food which they have previously avoided, often conceive a great liking for it. There is evidence that this also applies to cannibalism. In 1200 Egypt was afflicted with a terrible famine, in consequence of which the poor fed even upon human corpses and fell to devouring children. An eyewitness, the Arabian physician ʿAbd-Allatif, writes that, when the poor began to eat human flesh, the wonder and horror excited were such, that these crimes were in every mouth, and people were never weary of the extraordinary topic. But by degrees custom operated, and produced even a taste for such detestable repasts. Many men made children their ordinary food, eating them from pure gluttony and laying up stores of their flesh. Various modes of cooking and seasoning this kind of food were invented; and the practice soon spread through the provinces, so that there was not a single district in which cannibalism became not common. By this time it caused no longer either surprise or horror, and the matter was discussed with indifference. Diverse rich people, who could have procured other food, seemed to become infatuated, and practised cannibalism as a luxury, using murderers as their purveyors and inviting their friends to dinner, without taking too much trouble to conceal the truth.145There is a similar story from Polynesia. Cannibalism, we are told, was introduced into Futuna by king Veliteki in consequence of a great tempest which brought on a disastrous famine; but in time it became a dreadful scourge, which threatened to depopulate the island. The desire to eat human flesh arrived at such a point that wars no longer sufficed tofurnish victims in sufficient numbers, hence the people took to hunting down members of their own tribes.146It has been suggested that in other islands of the South Seas cannibalism likewise arose in times of great famine, and that the inhabitants, becoming used to it, acquired a taste for human flesh.147In Western Equatorial Africa, again, gastronomic cannibalism has been supposed to be a practical extension of the sacrificial ceremony, neither the women nor the young men being allowed to touch the dainty.148That such a practice may easily grow up when the beginning has been made, is well illustrated by the words of a cannibal chief who declared that he who has once indulged in a repast of human flesh will find it very difficult to abstain from it in the future.149

145ʿAbd-Allatif,Relation de l’Égypte, p. 360sqq.

146Percy Smith, ‘Futuna,’ inJour. Polynesian Soc.i. 37.

147Macdonald,Oceania, p. 196sq.Powell,Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 248.

148Reade,op. cit.p. 158.

149Powell,op. cit.p. 248.

The question whether early man was in the habit of eating human flesh may thus, I think, be resolved into the question whether his natural shrinking from it may be assumed to have been subdued by any of those factors which in certain circumstances have induced men to become habitual cannibals. For such an assumption I find no sufficient grounds. On the contrary, I maintain that it is made highly improbable by the fact that cannibalism is much less prevalent among the lowest savages than among races somewhat more advanced in culture.150In America, instead of being confined to savage peoples, it was practised “to a greater extent and with more horrible rites among the most civilised. Its religious inception,” Mr. Dorman adds, “was the cause of this.”151Humboldt observed long ago:—“The nations who hold it a point of honour to devour their prisoners are not always the rudest and most ferocious…. The Cabres, the Guipunavis, and the Caribees, havealways been more powerful and more civilised than the other hordes of the Oroonoko; and yet the former are as much addicted to anthropophagy, as the last are repugnant to it.”152In Brazil, Martius found the cannibalism of the Central Tupis to form a strange contrast to their relatively high state of culture.153Cannibals like the Fijians and Maoris were on the verge of semi-civilisation, and the Bataks of Sumatra were already in early times so advanced as to frame an alphabet of their own, though after the Indian model. Among the African Niam-Niam and Monbuttu a great predilection for human flesh coexists with a remarkable degree of culture; whereas in the dwarf tribes of Central Africa, which are of a very low type, Mr. Burrows never heard of a single case of cannibalism.154

150See Peschel,Races of Man, p. 162sq.; Schneider,Die Naturvölker, i. 186; Bergemann,op. cit.p. 53; Ratzel,op. cit.ii. 352; Sutherland,Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, i. 372.

151Dorman,op. cit.p. 152.

152von Humboldt,op. cit.v. 424sq.

153von Martius,op. cit.i. 199sq.

154Burrows,Land of the Pigmies, p. 149.

It would be very instructive to follow the history of cannibalism among those peoples who are, or have lately been, addicted to it, if we were able to do so; but the subject is mostly obscure. The most common change which we have had an opportunity to notice is the decline and final disappearance of the practice under European influence; but we must not assume that every change has been in the direction towards extinction. Among the East African Wadoe and Wabembe cannibalism is, according to their own account, of modern origin.155Mr. Torday informs me that among some of the Congo natives it is spreading in the present day. In the Solomon Islands it has recently extended itself; it is asserted by the elder natives of Florida that man’s flesh was formerly never eaten except in sacrifice, and that human sacrifice is an innovation introduced from further west.156Erskine maintains that in Fiji cannibalism, though a very ancient custom, did not prevail in earlier times to the same extent as it did more recently;157and Mr. Fornander has arrivedat the conclusion that among the Polynesians this practice was not an original heirloom brought with them from their primitive homes in the Far West, but was adopted subsequently by a few of the tribes under conditions and circumstances now unknown.158For various reasons, then, it is an illegitimate supposition to regard the cannibalism of modern savages as a survival from the first infancy of mankind, or, more generally, from a stage through which the whole human race has passed.

155Burton,Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 214.

156Codrington,op. cit.p. 343.

157Erskine,op. cit.p. 272.

158Fornander,Account of the Polynesian Race, i. 132.

As for the moral opinions about cannibalism, we may assume that peoples who abstain from it also generally disapprove of it, or would do so if they were aware of its being practised. Aversion, as we have often noticed, leads to moral indignation, especially where the moral judgment is little influenced by reflection. Another source of the condemnation of cannibalism may be sympathetic resentment resulting from the idea that the dead is annihilated or otherwise injured by the act, or from the feeling that it is an insult to him to use his body as an article of food; but this could certainly not be the origin of savages disapproval of eating their foes. Among civilised races, as well as among non-anthropophagous savages, horror or disgust is undoubtedly the chief reason why cannibalism is condemned as wrong. This emotion is often so intense that the same people whose moral feelings are little affected by a conquest, with all its horrors, made for the purpose of gain, shudder at the stories of wars waged by famished savages for the purpose of procuring human flesh for food. On the other hand, where the natural aversion to such food is for some reason or other overcome, the disapproval of cannibalism is in consequence no longer felt. But an attitude of moral indifference towards this practice has also been advocated on a totally different ground, by persons whose moral emotions are too much tempered by thought to allow them to pronounce an act as wrong simply because it creates in themdisgust. Thus, Montaigne argued that it is more barbarous to torture a man to death under colour of piety and religion than to roast and eat him after he is dead.159And he quotes with apparent agreement the opinion of some Stoic philosophers that there is no harm in feeding upon human carcases to avoid starvation.160

159Montaigne,Essais, i. 30.

160Diogenes Laertius,Vitæ philosophorum, vii. 1. 64 (121); vii. 7. 12 (188). Zeller,Stoics, p. 307.

WEnow come to the last of those six groups of moral ideas into which we have divided our subject—ideas concerning conduct towards beings, real or imaginary, that are regarded as supernatural. But before we enter upon a discussion of human behaviour in relation to such beings, it is necessary to say some words about man’s belief in their existence and the general qualities attributed to them.

Men distinguish between two classes of phenomena—“natural” and “supernatural,”1between phenomena which they are familiar with and, in consequence, ascribe to “natural causes,” and other phenomena which seem to them unfamiliar, mysterious, and are therefore supposed to spring from causes of a “supernatural” character. We meet with this distinction at the lowest stages of culture known to us, as well as at higher stages. It may be that in the mind of a savage the natural and supernatural are often confused, and that no definite limit can be drawn between the phenomena which he refers to the one class and those which he refers to the other; but he certainly sees a difference between events of everyday occurrence or ordinary objects of nature and other events or objects which fill him with mysterious awe. The germ of such adistinction is found even in the lower animal world. The horse fears the whip but it does not make him shy; on the other hand, he may shy when he sees an umbrella opened before him or a paper moving on the ground. The whip is well known to the horse, whereas the moving paper or umbrella is strange and uncanny. Dogs and cats are alarmed by an unusual noise or appearance, and remain uneasy till they have by examination satisfied themselves of the nature of its cause.2Professor Romanes frightened a dog by attaching a fine thread to a bone and surreptitiously drawing it from the animal, giving to the bone the appearance of self-movement; and the same dog was frightened by soap-bubbles.3Even a lion is scared by an unexpected noise or the sight of an unfamiliar object; a horse, the lion’s favourite prey, has been known to wander for days in the vicinity of a troop of these animals and be left unmolested simply because it was blanketed and knee-haltered.4And we are told of a tiger which stood trembling and roaring in an ecstasy of fear when a mouse tied by a string to a stick had been inserted into its cage.5Little children are apt to be terrified by the strange and irregular behaviour of a feather as it glides along the floor or lifts itself into the air.6

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