MORAL EVOLUTION 297 



he enters a house it is from that moment taboo : no one else may 

 go into it ever after. No one may touch him or eat or drink out 

 of a vessel which he has touched." 1 In Samoa " Tupai was the 

 name of the high priest and prophet. He was greatly dreaded. 

 His very look was poison. If he looked at a cocoa-nut tree, it 

 died, and if he glanced at a bread-fruit tree it also withered 

 away." 2 " The king of Loango may not for the same reason see 

 a river or tree, and he has to make many long detours in con- 

 sequence when he goes visiting. In some places girls, when 

 taboo, have an equally poisonous glance and are made to wear 

 broad-brimmed hats in order that they may not infect the sun." 3 



I give these few examples to show the terrible contagiousness 

 of taboo ; at this rate the whole earth would soon be infected, 

 the sun itself is in danger. 



So far as we have proceeded at present it must be owned that 

 taboo does not appear to be a very valuable social institution. 

 Yet it had a great deal to do with the building up of society. 

 In Mayumbe a woman became taboo when she married ; it was 

 death to touch her : and " elsewhere on the Loango coast 

 married women are so taboo that things must not be handed 

 directly to them by a man, but must be put down on the ground 

 for them to pick up." 4 " As for property generally, in Polynesia 

 the owner protects himself in possession by tabooing it ; where 

 fishing is conducted co-operatively, the catch is tabooed until 

 divided ; when a diamond mine was supposed to have been 

 found near Honolulu, King Tamehameha at once tabooed it, in 

 order to appropriate it exclusively to himself; and European 

 ship-masters who did not care for native visitors got their vessels 

 tabooed by a native chief." 5 Taboo now appears as the de- 

 fender of the institution of marriage and of the rights of private 

 property ! How the common-sense crops up in what seems a 

 mass of outrageous nonsense ! The catch of fish is tabooed until 

 it is divided \ In spite of all its absurdities we may look upon it 



1 Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, p. 62. 



2 Loc. at. p. 60, quoted from Turner, Samoa, p. 23. 



3 Loc. cit. p. 60. 4 Loc. cit. p. 71. 

 5 Loc. cit. p. 72. 



