74 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of the use of their names by other men, and the custom would be 

 so far religious; but it would probably be encouraged by the 

 chiefs on governmental grounds, and would in so far be ethical. 

 Even the religious usage probably goes back to the sentiment of 

 respect felt for the chiefs as rulers. 



A number of taboo customs seem to be probably or possibly 

 social. The prohibition of the use of the flesh of a particular 

 animal or of a whole class of animals as food is of uncertain 

 origin. It is supposed by some to result from the idea of to- 

 tems, each tribe refraining from the flesh of its own totem, but 

 other considerations may have entered in part at least into the 

 usage, and the origin of totemism itself is unknown. The rule 

 among some tribes that women shall not eat human flesh is possi- 

 bly social; it was perhaps intended to guard the character of 

 women. When it is forbidden to touch a dead body or a burial- 

 ground, or a man who has slain an enemy, the idea of pollution 

 thus incurred may be physical, though it may also come from the 

 belief that the dead person is a spirit or inhabited by a spirit. It 

 is possible also that this last may be the ground of the rule that 

 persons dangerously ill should not be touched ; here, however, a 

 physical reason may have been effective. The appropriation or 

 protection of property by taboo depends on ordinary principles of 

 social organization. When a chief declares that a certain object 

 is his head or his hand, and thereby secures it for himself, this 

 is merely using the religious sanction to give authority to what 

 we may suppose to be a natural disposition in chiefs, namely, to 

 appropriate as much of the property of their tribesmen as pos- 

 sible. A private man who declares his field taboo, and thus pro- 

 hibits other men from entering it, is only asserting the right of 

 private property and calling in the aid of religion. 



It may fairly be said that those taboo usages which are really 

 ethical arise from ideas which have been established by social 

 intercourse. In the case of the sick person, for example, that cer- 

 tain persons are forbidden to touch him is a religious usage, and if 

 the prohibition were universal, it would be fatal to the sick man ; 

 but the helpfulness of those persons who actually tend him comes 

 from the kindly relations engendered by ordinary social inter- 

 course, which overbear the religious prohibition. It does not 

 appear that taboo has ever pronounced any class of actions to be 

 good or bad ; it has only brought particular acts under existing 

 moral categories. Neither it nor any other religious institution 

 has ever in the first instance taught men that it was wrong to 

 steal or right to be kind. 



So far we have regarded only the content of ethical usage. 

 We now have to ask whether, if religion has received its code 

 from ethics, it has not communicated something in return. It is 



