EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 659 



mangled limbs, we may suspect that in this and kindred self-muti- 

 lations we see an outcome of the ambition to bear honorable scars. 

 Though, when the scars, being borne by all, are no longer distinctive, 

 discipline in endurance comes to be the reason given for inflicting 

 them, this cannot well have been the original reason ; since primi- 

 tive men, improvident in all ways, are very unlikely to have delib- 

 erately devised and instituted a usage with a view to a foreseen dis- 

 tant benefit : the assumption of anything like a legislative act is in- 

 admissible. 



However this may be, we have here a second origin for certain 

 kinds of mutilations. And hence a probable reason why markings on 

 the skin, though generally badges of subordination, become in some 

 cases honorable distinctions and occasionally signs of rank. 



Something must be added concerning a secondary motive for mu- 

 tilation ; parallel to, or sequent upon, a secondary motive for taking 

 trophies. ' 



In the last chapter we inferred that, prompted by his belief that 

 the spirit pervades all parts of the corpse, the savage preserves relics 

 of dead enemies partly in the expectation that he will be enabled 

 thereby to coerce their spirits if not himself, still by the help of the 

 medicine-man. He has a parallel reason for preserving a part cut from 

 one whom he has enslaved : both he and the slave think that he so ob- 

 tains a power to inflict injury. When we find that the sorcerer's first 

 step is to procure some hair or nail-parings of his victim, or else 

 some piece of his dress pervaded by that odor which is identified 

 with his spirit, it appears to be a necessary corollary that the master 

 who keeps by him the tooth of a slave, a joint of his finger, or even a 

 lock of his hair, thereby retains a power of delivering him over to the 

 necromancer, who may bring on him one or other fearful evil torture 

 by demons, disease, death. 



Thus it seems possible that, where the part cut off is preserved, 

 mutilation has a secondary governmental effect. The subjugated man 

 is made obedient by a dread akin to that which Caliban expresses of 

 Prospero's magically-inflicted torments. 



The evidence that bodily mutilation of the living has been a se- 

 quence of trophy-taking from the dead, is thus at once abundant and 

 varied. As the taking of the trophy implies victory carried even to 

 the death, the derived practice of cutting off" a part from the living 

 prisoner comes to imply subjugation ; and eventually the voluntary 

 surrender of such a part expresses submission, and becomes a propi- 

 tiatory ceremony because it does this. 



Hands are cut off from dead enemies ; and, answering to this, be- 

 sides some identical mutilations of criminals, we have the cutting-off 

 of fingers or portions of fingers, to pacify living chiefs, deceased per- 



