76 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



Yucatan] have handsome faces, though some of them were 

 marked with lines as a sign of courage.&quot; Facts 



furnished by other American tribes, suggest that the inflic 

 tion of torture on reaching maturity, originated from the 

 habit of making scars artificially in imitation of scars be 

 queathed by battle. If self -in jury to avoid service in war 

 has been not infrequent among the cowardly, we may infer 

 that among the courageous who had received no wounds, 

 self -in jury might be not infrequent, where there was gained 

 by it that character desired above everything. The reputa 

 tion achieved might make the practice, at first secret and ex 

 ceptional, gradually more common and at length general; 

 until, finally, public opinion, vented against those who did 

 not follow it, made the usage peremptory. And on reading 

 that among the Abiponcs, &quot; boys of seven years old pierce 

 their little arms in imitation of their parents, and display 

 plenty of wounds,&quot; we are shown the rise of a feeling, and a 

 consequent practice, which, growing, may end in a system 

 of initiatory tortures at manhood. Though when the scars, 

 being borne by all, are no longer distinctive, discipline in 

 endurance comes to be the reason given for inflicting them, 

 this cannot have been the original reason. Primitive men, 

 improvident in all ways, never devised and instituted a 

 usage with a view to a foreseen distant benefit: they do not 

 make laws, they fall into customs. 



Here, then, we find an additional reason why markings 

 on the skin, though generally badges of subordination, be 

 come in some cases honourable distinctions and occasionally 

 signs of rank. 



360. Something must be added concerning a second 

 ary motive for mutilating prisoners and slaves, parallel to, 

 or sequent upon, a secondary motive for taking trophies. 



Tn the last chapter we inferred that, prompted by his 

 belief that the spirit pervades the corpse, the savage pre 

 serves relics of dead enemies partly in the expectation that 



