Note 36 — Chapter IV · THE GRAVE SUSPICIONS AROUSED BY THE STUDY OF ANCIENT BELIEFS

Herbert Spencer discusses this primitive idea in his Principles of Sociology. He explains how “attributes or properties, as we understand them, are not recognisable by the savage—are abstractions which neither his faculties can grasp nor his language express. Hence certain beliefs, everywhere conspicuous among the uncivilised. A special potency which some object or part of an object displays belongs to it in such a wise that it may be acquired by consuming or possessing this object or part. The powers of a conquered antagonist are supposed to be gained by devouring him. The Dakotah eats the heart of a slain foe to increase his own courage; the New Zealander swallows his dead enemy’s eyes that he may see further; the Abipone consumes tiger’s flesh thinking so to gain the tiger’s strength and ferocity—cases which recall the legend about Zeus devouring Metis that he might become possessed of her wisdom. Clearly the implied mode of thought, shown even in the medical prescriptions of past ages, is a mode of thought necessarily persisting until analysis has disclosed the complexities of causal relations.”36 “The belief that the qualities of any individual are appropriated by eating him is illustrated by the statement of Stanbridge, that when Australians kill an infant they feed an older child with it, believing ‘that by its eating as much as possible of the roasted infant it will possess the strength of both.’ Elsewhere dead relations are consumed in pursuance of an allied belief. We read of the Cucamas that, ‘as soon as a relation died, these people assembled and ate him roasted or boiled, according as he was thin or fat!’”37