Note 97 — Chapter IX · A GENERAL COMPARISON OF CUSTOMARY AND REFLECTIVE MORALITY

Nearly every railway journey or other occasion for observing family discipline discloses the prevalence of this agency of savage morality. "If you are not quiet I'll give you to the conductor," "the black man will get you," "Santa Claus will not give presents to naughty children." That persons who in many respects are kindly and decent should aim to cultivate morality by a system of deliberate lying and more or less brutal cruelty is one of the interesting phenomena of education. The savages who used taboos believed what they said.