THE CANNIBAL IN EVOLUTION 155 



ness is in many cases sedulously hidden, even if acknow- 

 ledged, as I have reason to believe, in the confessional 

 or the physician's consulting room. I know that such 

 an analysis, however supported, is as little likely to meet 

 with approval as the suggestion that cannibalism itself 

 is responsible for much of our mental make-up. The 

 reception of the idea, even by many of those who might 

 be supposed to view all things in the " dry light " of 

 the Freudian psycho-analysis, has been almost one of 

 tumultuous opposition, although the light that Freud 

 casts, both on normal and abnormal cerebration, has been 

 of the utmost value. It may, I think, hold a lamp even 

 in anthropology, and it is possible that certain conclusions 

 drawn by its aid in the matter now discussed may 

 strengthen the growing belief in it as a weapon of dis- 

 covery. According to the views expressed in other 

 places, it is far more than probable that what proves of 

 value in individual psychology will aid to unravel the 

 tangled web of racial subconsciousness in which the in- 

 stincts have their root. Few are now totally ignorant of 

 Freud's work in the analysis of the subconscious mind. 

 However they may look upon it, or upon some of the 

 extravagances of its more indiscreet advocates, not 

 many can be found to deny that the hypothesis of hidden 

 complexes, by which is meant a series of cerebral reflex 

 arcs still in a state of subconscious tone and capable of 

 producing peculiar effects, has exerted an immense in- 

 fluence on the theory of conscious mentation, or mental 

 action. An early impression, although forgotten, or dis- 

 sociated from the general web of memory, since a memory 

 can only be the repeated passage of impulses over many 

 definite synapses, may condition for better or worse the 

 whole life of the individual to whom the incident has 



