6 Hutton Webster 



hand new-born children with their mothers, strangers, man- 

 slayers, mourners, and other classes, are frequently subjected to 

 taboos which exist in the social consciousness rather as well- 

 defined customs than as specific ordinances laid down by some 

 superior authority. I must, however, express my disagreement 

 with Dr. Jevons's argument that there are some persons and 

 things inherently tahu, such as supernatural beings, new-born 

 children, corpses, and blood. ^^ Even in these striking and wxll- 

 nigh universal instances it is legitimate to suppose that a reason 

 has always existed for the ascription of the tahu character to 

 particular individuals or objects — although the explanation may 

 not now be forthcoming and although the ideas on which the 

 practice was once based may have become obscure or meaningless 

 with the lapse of time. 



A comparative study of the taboos observed by primitive 

 peoples indicates that originally things or persons are tabooed 

 because they are considered dangerous, mysterious, abnormal, 

 uncanny, "awful" — in a word because they are felt to be potent 

 for weal or woe in the life of man. Primitive psychology, refin- 

 ing these ideas and applying them to different classes of phe- 

 nomena, produces the cognate notions of pollution and sanctity. 

 The corpse is unclean ; the shedder of human blood is likewise 

 unclean ; but the chief or king who belongs to a superior order of 

 beings is sacrosanct or holy. These characteristics are naturally 

 regarded as infectious, as capable of transmission, not alone by 

 physical contact, but also by sight and mere proximity. It is 

 probably true that in using such expressions as " contagion " and 

 "infection " we are resorting to a refined terminology to express 

 what must be really simpler in the thought of the savage. Living 

 in a mental stage where distinctions of cause and effect are not 

 clearly drawn, where a rigid distinction of the natural and the 

 supernatural can scarcely be said to exist at all, he finds no diffi- 

 culty in imagining an universe in which all things have power, 

 after their kind, a power for good or a power for ill, a maiia, 



^'' Iiitrodttcfioii to tile History of Religion,' London, 1901, pp. 6g sqq. 



