MORAL EVOLUTION 299 



death) and holy persons. It seems, then, that taboo originates 

 from contact with some supernatural power. It was the 

 violation of a sanctity, a wrong to some spirit. But its trans- 

 missibility was very likely to obscure its origin. 



The view that taboo was in its nature religious is supported 

 by the known character of primitive religion. The savage 

 believes that all objects (whether alive or dead to us) are 

 animated by spiritual beings like in character to himself. It 

 would be strange indeed if these taboos covering nearly the 

 whole world around him had no connection with these spiritual 

 beings. The explanation which Mr Jevons himself suggests is 

 to me no explanation. His view is that the sentiment among 

 savages which forbids the doing of certain things is " primitive.' 

 This means, I suppose, that we have reached an ultimate point 

 in our investigations and that we must not try to get behind 

 taboo : it is the nature of the savage to believe in it and we 

 must accept it without inquiring into its origin. To most men 

 this will seem an unsatisfying explanation, to the Darwinian it 

 is an impossible one. Taboo cannot have existed for the 

 ancestors of man before they reached the human stage. Nor 

 can I agree with Mr Jevons as to the process by which taboo 

 was purified, so that the reasonable taboos remained while the 

 irrational ones passed away. He traces this to the taking up 

 of taboo into religion. But his separation of the religious 

 philosophy of the savage from his taboo philosophy is an 

 entirely arbitrary one : how, then, should one reform the other ? 

 And if we are told that religious reformers abolished absurd 

 restrictions and retained those which were reasonable, how did 

 these reformers discover which were reasonable and which were 

 not ? Now, there is only one way of testing the soundness of 

 one's philosophy, and that is by applying to it the touch-stone of 

 actual experience. Taboo being almost ubiquitous, must have 

 been perpetually broken inadvertently. A man might find that 

 he had broken it six weeks ago and had been ever since no whit 

 the worse. Hence doubts may have arisen in his mind. He 

 may have reflected upon the subject and obtained further 

 evidence by accident or by actual experiment. As the result 



