no TABOO AND GENETICS 



among all primitive peoples gives a vivid im- 

 pression of the difficulty of the task of 

 compelling man to die to himself, that is, to 

 become a socius. The rigors and rituals of 

 initiation ceremonies at adolescence impressed 

 the duties of sociality at that impressionable 

 period. The individual who refused to bow his 

 head to the social yoke became a vagabond, an 

 outcast, an excommunicate. In view of the 

 fierceness of the struggle for food and the attitude 

 toward the stranger among all primitives, the 

 outcast's life chances were unenviable. It was 

 preferable to adapt one's self to the social 

 order. " Bad " traits were the more easily 

 suppressed in return for the re-enforcement of 

 power which was the striking feature of group 

 life ; power over enemies, power over nature, 

 and a re-enforcement of the emotional hfe of 

 the individual which became the basis on which 

 were built up the magico-religious ceremonies 

 of institutionalized religion. 



It is the purpose of this study to consider a 

 phase of social life in which there can be traced 

 a persistence into modern times of a primitive 

 form of control which in a pre-rational stage 

 of group life made possible the comparatively 

 harmonious interplay of antagonistic forces. 

 This form of control is called Taboo. A student 

 of the phenomenon, a recognized authority on 

 its ethnological interpretation, says of it : "To 



