166 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



remains of a tremendous and rigid code whose sanction 

 was not merely the fear of slander or social ostracism, 

 but that of death. 



However disagreeable the conclusion may seem to many, 

 even the positive evidence obtainable is suggestive of 

 universal cannibalism. The fact that it still exists in 

 many quarters of the globe, and may be returned to any- 

 where under stress, vastly strengthens such evidence. 

 Abhorrent as it is to the modern mind, no one knows what 

 he will do on occasions of which he has no experience. I 

 once camped in the Selkirks, in British Columbia, with 

 an old prospector known as the Man-Eater, because, when 

 snowed-up and starving in the mountains, he had dug up 

 his partner's frozen body, which he had previously buried. 

 The potential cannibal may in fact exist in the most re- 

 fined, and it is not illegitimate to conclude that the habit 

 was once universal, and resulted in continued economic 

 war. To such factors may be attributed the continual 

 coalescence of many hostile tribes, who compromised 

 again and yet again with enemy after enemy, and in the 

 process established the earlier real societies, the germs of 

 nations and of races. The unknown is still the horrible, 

 and it was better to make friends with tribes near at hand 

 whose customs were at least familiar, than to be conquered 

 by dreadful far-off people, who might overthrow law and 

 lay morality in the dust. What morals, indeed, were to be 

 expected from such ? Magic itself might be in danger ! 



From a purely physiological point of view it may be 

 suggested that as character is modified or intensified by 

 special foods, containing special catalysts or toxins which 

 act as determinants, a custom like cannibalism may have 

 altered human character itself by ensuring a common 

 average stock of such determining elements. We are 



