150 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



is not so much a type of man as a missing page of human 

 history, of which the previous and following parts show 

 immense changes, we are equally within our rights 

 in filling up the lacuna by the use of an adequate 

 hypothesis as we should be in supplying to a tragic 

 play a missing scene which, to render later acts possible, 

 must have contained a murder. In such a mutilated 

 script there is a strict parallel to what was probably 

 the most tragic part of human history. The play 

 would perpetually suggest the action of the missing 

 portion, and so, in later and modern history, and in the 

 instincts of man, we have hints, and more than hints, 

 that obscene tribal survivals represent historic universal 

 truth, even if nothing is said here of cave remains, skulls, 

 or bones, which are the island peaks of the submerged 

 continent of anthropology. 



If such deep seas cover that lost land they may yet 

 be sounded, and, as it were, dredged, so that in the end, 

 by actual evidence and logical inference combined, the 

 unknown may be mapped out. If we judge from what 

 remains in those savage customs which offer the best 

 means of deduction, we get lines pointing in definite 

 directions. If more than one line indicates the same 

 solution, the inferential value of both is much in- 

 creased. Such a method is similar to that by which 

 bee-hunters seek the tree - hive where they look for 

 honey. By the observation of the flight of the insects 

 on their homeward path they obtain lines of triangula- 

 tion which are a sure guide. As regards the early 

 history of man one such line may be, perhaps, found in 

 Atkinson's Primal Law — the repository of views too 

 much neglected. From a study of " avoidance " in 

 forms well known to him, its author at least deduced 



