168 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



savage peoples as regards hunting areas. A French writer, 

 Toussenel, who has discoursed on the part played by dogs 

 as co-hunters with man, has, indeed, attributed the origin of 

 cannibalism to a by-effect of the chase. He says (U Esprit 

 des Betes, 1847) : "II est evident que l'anthropophagie 

 est nee d'une excessive fringale combinee avec l'habitude 

 du regime du viande. II arriva que deux hordes de chas- 

 seurs se recontrerent a la poursuite du meme animal, un 

 jour que la proie etait rare and que la faim mugissait dans 

 leur entrailles, et il eut guerre entre elles. On se battit, 

 on se tua et les cadavres de vaincus remplacerent natur- 

 ellement au foyers des vainqueurs les cadavres du gibier 

 absent." Such opinions may, perhaps, be somewhat 

 suggestive, but the attribution of cannibalism to the merest 

 accident is most certainly not sound. Toussenel thought 

 that it followed tribal organization and hunting in parties ; 

 but such organization has to be accounted for, not assumed 

 as natural. Nor can we take it for granted that warfare 

 arose of itself without some very definite and powerful 

 cause among our very early ancestors, for though social 

 animals fight among themselves, they never organize 

 against other groups of the same species. Real organiza- 

 tion for warfare, therefore, seems peculiar to man and some 

 ants who have reached a very high stage as societies with 

 great differentiation of function. Although imagination 

 has a great part to play in speculation, when explanation 

 is wanting and data are necessarily few such hypotheses 

 as are invented must at least account for fundamental 

 facts, and the view that tribal organization preceded 

 cannibalism practically leaves out of account such pheno- 

 mena as those of the Binbinga and others, which were 

 probably as unknown to Toussenel as they seem to be to 

 many modern writers on allied subjects. 



