THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 293 



bees to lead an orderly and mutually helpful life in swarms. In 

 all these communities the outsider is looked upon as an outlaw ; 

 whoever is not a kinsman is a foe, and may be assailed, despoiled, 

 enslaved, or slain with impunity. Indeed, it is considered not 

 only a right but also an imperative duty to injure the alien by 

 putting him to death or reducing him to servitude. The instinct 

 of self-preservation asserts itself in this form with gregarious 

 mammals and insects ; and all primitive associations of men are 

 founded upon this principle and cohere by force of this attraction. 



A superstitious regard for blood pervades all early ideas and 

 institutions of mankind. The ancient Hebrews were forbidden 

 to eat the blood of a slaughtered animal, because the blood is the 

 life ; and the orthodox Israelite still clings to this notion and will 

 not partake of butcher's meat that is not gosh or ceremonially 

 clean i. e., from which the blood has not been carefully drained 

 off, although he knows that this process of ritual purification de- 

 prives the flesh of much of its succulence and nutritive value as 

 food. 



It is a widely diffused belief among aboriginal and lower races 

 that the blood is the seat of the soul ; hence blood-relationship is 

 synonymous with soul-relationship. The child was also recog- 

 nized as a blood-relation, of the mother, but not of the father. 

 Out of this conception of consanguinity arose the custom of de- 

 scent in the female line, whereby the children of a man's sister 

 became his heirs to the exclusion of his own offspring. Curiously 

 enough this notion is confirmed, to some extent, by modern sci- 

 ence, which would ascribe to the female the function of conserv- 

 ing and transmitting the permanent qualities and typical char- 

 acteristics of the race, whereas the influence of the male in 

 propagation is variable, innovating, and revolutionary, and tends 

 to produce deviations from the hereditary norm. 



Cannibalism, too, as a tribal rite, originated in the belief that 

 the soul resides in the blood, and that by drinking the blood of 

 the bravest foemen their courage, cunning, and other distinctive 

 and desirable traits may be acquired and thus serve to increase 

 the fighting force and efficiency of the tribe. 



Brotherhood was also created artificially or ceremonially by 

 mingling a few drops of the blood of two persons in a cup of wine 

 and drinking it. Each received into his veins a portion of the 

 other's blood, and thus they became blood-related and were bound 

 by the same mutual obligations as they would have been if the 

 same mother had given them birth. The heroes of old German 

 sagas are represented as drinking brotherhood in this manner ; it 

 is thus that Gunther and Siegfried swear inviolable friendship 

 and fidelity in Wagner's Gotterdammerung ; and German stu- 

 dents, in the festive enthusiasm of a Commers, are fond of imi- 



