510 ANTHROPOPHAGY. 



The savage has only rudimentary notions of the justice, the 

 respect, and the good-will which man owes to his fellows. Never- 

 theless, if in some parts of the world he appears an intractable, cruel, 

 and perfidious being, in others his manners are gentle, inoffensive, 

 and hospitable. And nearly everywhere he seems capable of grati- 

 tude, devotion, and even of veritable heroism. But, in general, the 

 law of the strongest is the only law which he recognizes ; the fear 

 of an immediate and corporeal chastisement is the sole restraint upon 

 his passions ; and the material instincts are the most powerful 

 impulses of his actions. The want or narrowness of the moral 

 sense induces as its natural consequences among the unfortunate 

 savages every form of debauchery the absolute and brutal tyranny 

 of the chief over his tribe, of man over woman, of the father over 

 his children, of the conqueror over the conquered ; murder on the 

 slightest occasion, and with incredible refinements of cruelty ; and, 

 finally, anthropophagy that hideous custom which lowers man below 

 the most ferocious beasts, and which, nevertheless is not always, as 

 might be supposed, the sign of the lowest abasement. 



Anthropophagy springs from different causes, and clothes itself in 

 various forms. Sometimes it is but the expression of a sanguinary 

 instinct, of an atrocious sentiment of vengeance ; sometimes it 

 is the consequence of a state of misery and of famine almost per- 

 manent ; often, also, it is closely connected with the usage of human 

 sacrifices, and those who practise it consider it as a sacred duty, 

 as an act of piety, agreeable to their divinities or to the manes of 

 the victims whose very flesh they devour. 



Unknown to the stupid Eskimos, and in general to all hyper- 

 borean races, anthropophagy rages with intensity among peoples 

 comparatively civilized. The Ghoiids of Hindostan, peaceful and 

 laborious cultivators, are not exactly cannibals, but every year they 

 immolate to their divinities a multitude of children, whom they flay 

 and cut to pieces while alive, and whose flesh they distribute in 

 fragments over the fields they are about to sow. 



In Sumatra there exists a tribe, that of the Battas, which has 



