TABOO AND GENETICS 113 



would be exceedingly dangerous for the trans- 

 gressor, because of this same power of trans- 

 mission of a dread and little understood force. 

 Therefore, all such persons, animals or objects 

 are taboo and must be avoided. Under these 

 circumstances it can be seen that taboos are 

 unanalyzed, unrationalized " Don'ts," con- 

 nected with the use and wont which have 

 crystallized around the wish of man to manipu- 

 late the mysterious and often desirable features 

 of his environment, notably those connected 

 with possession, food, and sex. 



The idea of the transmission of mana through 

 contact is concomitant with the notion of 

 sympathetic magic, defined as the belief that the 

 qualities of one thing can be mysteriously trans- 

 ferred to another. The most familiar illustra- 

 tion is that of the hunter who will not eat the 

 heart of the deer he has killed lest he become 

 timid like that animal, while to eat the heart 

 of a lion would be to gain all the fierce courage 

 of that beast.* This belief becomes so 

 elaborated that the qualities of one object are 

 finally thought to be transferred to another 

 which has never come into direct contact with 

 the first, the transition being accomplished 

 through the agency of a third object which has 

 been in contact with both the others and thus 



*E. B. Tylor (3) has called attention to the belief that the 

 qualities of the eaten pass into the eater as an explanation 

 of the food taboos and prejudices of savage peoples. 



