506 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XL. No. 103 



more, that as to their strange and grue- 

 some habit of celebrating great occasions 

 by killing their own folk. When a Fijian 

 chief died, as we should say, or, as it 

 seemed to the surviving natives when his 

 soul left the body which it had for a time 

 used, his widows, and other of his kindred 

 and dependents, unwilling to be left be- 

 hind, were strangled, often indeed helped 

 to strangle themselves, that their bodies 

 might be put into the graves, while their 

 souls went gladly with that of the chief 

 whom they had been accustomed to follow. 



Again, when a chief built a house, some 

 of his dependents, whom the great man 

 told off for the purpose, willingly stepped 

 down into the holes which had been dug 

 for the house-posts, and remained there 

 while the earth was filled in on to them, 

 and continued thereafter as permanent 

 supporters of the house. 



Again, there is a tradition, which at 

 least was not incredible to the natives, that 

 a great chief one day went a-fishing, and 

 caught many fish. Two brothers of humb- 

 ler rank who happened to have come down 

 to the same waterside, also to fish, were less 

 successful. The chief, in a characteristic 

 freak of generosity, presented his best fish 

 to the elder of the two brothers, who, 

 strictly according to Fijian custom, ac- 

 cepted the gift, but felt bound to make an 

 immediate return, but he had nothing to 

 give. Thereupon the younger brother, at 

 his own suggestion, was clubbed by the 

 elder, and his body presented to the chief 

 in token that his soul would thereafter 

 serve that chief. 



It is even said that when yams and other 

 vegetables were brought in as food for the 

 chiefs by the dependents who had grown 

 them for that purpose, the food-bearers, if 

 there was a scarcity of fish or other suitable 

 accompaniment for the vegetable diet, 

 were themselves clubbed and their bodies 



eaten. This particular atrocity probably 

 happened only after the habit of canni- 

 balism had, as already explained, been 

 unnaturally intensified. But the story is 

 noteworthy in that the food-bearers are not 

 represented as in any way dreading or 

 shirking the use to which their bodies were 

 put. 



In all these and similar cases it is to be 

 noted that the victims (as we are naturally 

 inclined to call them) were more or less 

 indifferent, if indeed they were not eagerly 

 consenting parties, to the use (cruel as it 

 seems to us) made of their material bodies. 

 Thus the widows were eager to be stran- 

 gled, and often even helped to do the deed, 

 in order that they — all that was essential 

 of them, i. e., their souls — should rejoin the 

 deceased. Similarly those others who were 

 killed on the occasion of the funeral were 

 quite willing to give their bodies, which 

 seemed of comparatively little importance, 

 as ' ' grass " to be added to the cut fern and 

 other soft material on which the body of 

 the deceased chief was couched in the grave ; 

 and quite willingly the men told off for 

 that purpose stepped down into the holes 

 in which the house-posts were grounded, 

 that they, or rather their bodies, might 

 thereafter hold up the house, while their 

 souls enjoyed life much as before but with- 

 out the encumbrance of the body. Others 

 again contentedly grew taro for the chiefs 

 to eat, and carried it in when ripe, think- 

 ing it of little importance that their mere 

 bodies might be eaten with the taro. 



In conclusion, having endeavored to real- 

 ize for myself, and to show you a glimpse, 

 of the enormous, hardly conceivable differ- 

 ence in habit of thought, and consequently 

 in character, which separates the savage 

 from the civilized man, I will offer a sug- 

 gestion which seems to me possibly the 

 most important outcome of my personal 

 experience, now closed, as an anthropolog- 



