It should finally be noticed that the duties to the departed become less stringent as time goes on. As Dr. Hertz has recently shown, the fear of the dead is greatest as long as the process of decomposition lasts and till the second funeral is performed, and this ceremony brings the period of mourning to an end.257 Moreover, the dead are gradually less and less thought of, they appear less frequently in dreams and visions, the affection for them fades away, and, being forgotten, they are no longer feared. The Chinese say that ghosts are much more liable to appear very shortly after death, than at any other period.258 The natives of Australia are only afraid of the spirits of men who have lately died.259 In the course of time savages also become more willing to speak of their dead.260 But whilst the large bulk of disembodied souls sooner or later lose their individuality and dwindle into insignificance or sink into the limbo of All Souls, it may be that some of them escape this fate, and, instead of being ignored, are raised to the rank of gods.

Progress in intellectual culture has a tendency to affect the notions of death. The change involved in it appears greater. The soul, if still thought to survive the death of the body, is more distinctly separated from it; it is rid of all sensuous desires, as also of all earthly interests. Duties to the dead which arose from the old ideas may still be maintained, but their meaning is changed.

Thus the funeral sacrifice may be continued as a mark of respect or affection. In Melanesia, for instance, at the death-meals which follow upon funerals or begin before them, and which still form one of the principal institutions of the natives, a piece of food is put aside for the dead. “It is readily denied now,” says Dr. Codrington, “that the dead … are thought to come and eat the food, which they say is given as a friendly remembrance only, and in the way of associating together those whom death has separated.”261 In many cases the offerings made to the dead have become alms given to the poor, just as has been the case with sacrifices offered to gods;262 and this almsgiving is undoubtedly looked upon as a duty to the dead. Among the Omahas goods are collected from the kindred of the dead between the death and the funeral, and when the body has been deposited in the grave they are brought forth and equally divided among the poor who are assembled on the spot.263 At a Hindu funeral in Sindh, on the road to the burning place, the relatives of the dead throw dry dates into the air over the corpse; these are considered as a kind of alms and are left to the poor.264 Among some peoples of Malabar, at the çráddha, or yearly anniversary of a death, not less than three Brahmins are well fed and presented with money and cloth;265 and according to Brahmanism the çráddha is “a debt which is transferred from one generation to another, and on the payment of which depends the happiness of the dead in the next life.”266 Among Muhammedans alms, generally consisting of food, are distributed in connection with a death in order to confer merits upon the deceased.267 Thus in Morocco bread or dried fruits are given to the poor who are assembled at the grave-side on the day of the funeral, as also on the third and sometimes on the fortieth day after it, on the tenth day of Muḥarram, and in many parts of the country on other feast-days as well, when the graves are visited by relatives of the dead. These alms are obviously survivals of offerings to the dead themselves. While residing among the Bedouins of Dukkâla, I was told that if the funeral meal were omitted the dead man’s mouth would be filled with earth; and it is a common custom among the Moors that, if a dead person appears in a dream complaining of hunger or thirst, food or drink is at once given to some poor people. Among the Christians, in former days, alms were distributed in the church when, soon after a death or on the anniversary of a death, the sacrifice of the mass was offered; and alms were also given at funerals and at graves, in the hope that their merit might be of advantage to the deceased.268 At Mykonos, in the Cyclades, on some fixed days after the burial a dish consisting of boiled wheat adorned with sugar plums or other delicacy is put on the tomb, and finally distributed to the poor at the church door;269 and in some parts of Russia the people still believe that if the usual alms are not given at a funeral the dead man’s soul will reveal itself to his relatives in the form of a moth flying about the flame of a candle.270 The supposed conferring of merits upon the dead and the prayers on their behalf, so common both in Christianity and Muhammedanism, are the last remains of a series of customs by means of which the living have endeavoured to benefit their departed friends.

But even when the dead are no longer believed to be in need of human care, nay, though death be thought to put an end to existence, there are still duties, if not to the dead, at all events to those who were once alive. A person may be wronged by an act which he can no longer feel. There are rights that are in force not only during his lifetime but after his death. A given promise is not buried with him to whom it was made. A dead man’s will is binding. His memory is protected against calumny. These rights have the same foundation as all other rights: the feelings of the person himself and the claims of others that his feelings shall be respected. We have wishes with regard to the future when we live no more. We take an interest in persons and things that survive us. We desire to leave behind a spotless name. And the sympathy felt for us by our fellow men will last when we ourselves are gone.

CHAPTER XLVI

CANNIBALISM

BEFORE we take leave of the dead we have still to consider the practice of eating them.

Habitual cannibalism, permitted or in some cases enjoined by custom, has been met with in a large number of savage tribes and, as a religious or magical rite, among several peoples of culture. It is, or has been, particularly prevalent in the South Sea Islands, Australia, Central Africa, and South and Central America. But it has also been found among various North American Indians, in certain tribes of the Malay Archipelago, and among a few peoples on the Asiatic continent. And it is proved to have occurred in many parts of Europe.1

Sometimes the whole body is eaten, with the exception of the bones, sometimes only a part of it, as the liver or the heart. Frequently the victim is an enemy or a member of a foreign tribe, but he may also be a relative or fellow tribesman. Among various savages exo- and endo-anthropophagy prevail simultaneously; but many cannibals restrict themselves to eating strangers, slain enemies, or captives taken in war, whereas others eat their own people in preference to strangers, or are exclusively endo-anthropophagous. Thus the Birhors of the Central Provinces of India are said to eat their aged relatives, but to abhor any other form of cannibalism;2 and in certain Australian tribes it is not the dead bodies of slain enemies that are eaten, but the bodies of friends, the former being left where they fell.3 Sometimes people feed on the corpses of such kinsmen as have happened to die, sometimes they kill and eat their old folks, sometimes parents eat their children, sometimes criminals are eaten by the other members of their own community. The Australian Dieyerie have a fixed order in which they partake of their dead relatives:—“The mother eats of her children. The children eat of their mother. Brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law eat of each other. Uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, grandfathers, and grandmothers eat of each other. But the father does not eat of his offspring, or the offspring of the sire.”4 Among some peoples cannibalism is an exclusively masculine custom, the women being forbidden to eat human flesh, except perhaps in quite exceptional circumstances.5

The practice of cannibalism may be traced to many different sources. It often springs from scarcity or lack of animal food.6 In the South Sea Islands, according to Ellis, “the cravings of nature, and the pangs of famine, often led to this unnatural crime.”7 The Nukahivans, who were in the habit of eating their enemies slain in battle, also killed and ate their wives and children in times of scarcity, but not unless forced to it by the utmost necessity.8 Hunger has been represented as the motive for cannibalism in some North and West Australian tribes, parents sometimes consuming even their own children when food is scarce.9 The Indians north of Lake Superior often resorted to the eating of human flesh when hard pressed by their enemies or during a famine.10 Among the Hudson Bay Eskimo “instances are reported where, in times of great scarcity, families have been driven to cannibalism after eating their dogs and the clothing and other articles made of skins.”11

But whilst among some peoples starvation is the only inducement to cannibalism, there are others who can plead no such motive for their anthropophagous habits. The Fijians, until lately some of the greatest man-eaters on earth, inhabit a country where food of every kind abounds.12 The Brazilian cannibals generally have a great plenty of game or fish.13 In Africa cannibalism prevails in many countries which are well supplied with food.14 Thus the Bangala of the Upper Congo have been known to make frequent warlike expeditions against adjoining tribes seemingly for the sole object of obtaining human flesh to eat, although their land is well provided with a variety of vegetable food and domestic animals, to say nothing of the incredible abundance of fish in its lakes and rivers.15 Of the cave-cannibals in the Trans-Gariep Country, in South Africa, a traveller remarks with some surprise:—“They were inhabiting a fine agricultural tract of country, which also abounded in game. Notwithstanding this, they were not contented with hunting and feeding upon their enemies, but preyed much upon each other also, for many of their captures were made from amongst the people of their own tribe.”16 Far from being an article of food resorted to in emergency only, human flesh is not seldom sought for as a delicacy.17 The highest praise which the Fijians could bestow on a dainty was to say that it was “tender as a dead man.”18 In various other islands of the South Seas human flesh is spoken of as a delicious food, far superior to pork.19 The Australian Kurnai said that it tasted better than beef.20 In some tribes in Australia a plump child is considered “a sweet mouthful, and, in the absence of the mother, clubs in the hands of a few wilful men will soon lay it low.”21 Of certain natives of Northern Queensland we are told that the greatest incentive to taking life is their appetite for human flesh, as they know no greater luxury than the flesh of a black man.22

However, bodily appetites, whether hunger or gourmandise, are by no means the sole motives for cannibalism. Very frequently it is described as an act of revenge.23 The Typees of the Marquesas Islands, according to Melville, are cannibals only when they seek to gratify the passion of revenge upon their foes.24 The cannibalism of the Solomon Islanders seems mainly to have been an expression of the deepest humiliation to which they could make a person subject.25 The Samoans affirmed that, when in some of their wars a body was occasionally cooked, “it was always some one of the enemy who had been notorious for provocation or cruelty, and that eating a part of his body was considered the climax of hatred and revenge, and was not occasioned by the mere relish for human flesh.” To speak of roasting him is the very worst language that can be addressed to a Samoan, and if applied to a chief of importance, he may raise war to avenge the insult.26 Among the Maoris human flesh was frequently eaten from motives of revenge and hatred, to cast disgrace on the person eaten, and to strike terror. “It was such a disgrace for a New Zealander to have his body eaten, that if crews of Englishmen and New Zealanders, all friends, were dying of starvation in separate ships, the English might resort to cannibalism, but the New Zealanders never would.”27 Even in Fiji, where cannibalism was largely indulged in for the mere pleasure of eating human flesh as food, revenge is said to have been the chief motive for it.28 Thus, “in any transaction where the national honour had to be avenged, it was incumbent upon the king and principal chiefs—in fact, a duty they owed to their exalted station—to avenge the insult offered to the country by eating the perpetrators of it.”29

The practice of eating criminals, which is quite a common form of cannibalism, seems to be largely due to revenge or indignation.30 In Lepers’ Island, in the New Hebrides, the victims of it were not generally enemies who had been killed in fighting, but “it was a murderer or particularly detested enemy who was eaten, in anger and to treat him ill.”31 Among the Bataks of Sumatra offenders condemned for certain capital crimes, such as atrocious murder, treason, and adultery, were usually eaten by the injured persons and their friends with all the signs of angry passion.32 But this form of cannibalism may also have another foundation.33 If for any reason there is a desire to eat human flesh, an unsympathetic being like a criminal is apt to be chosen as a victim. It is said that some of the Line Islanders in the South Seas began their cannibalism by eating thieves and slaves.34 In Melanesia, where human sacrifices were combined with the eating of bits of the victim, “advantage was taken of a crime, or imputed crime, to take a life and offer the man to some tindalo.”35

It has been questioned whether cannibalism can be a direct expression of hatred;36 but for no good reason. To eat a person is, according to primitive ideas, to annihilate him as an individual,37 and we can readily imagine the triumphant feelings of a savage who has his enemy between his jaws. The Fijian eats in revenge even the vermin which bite him, and when a thorn pricks him he picks it out of his flesh and eats it.38 The Cochin-Chinese express their deepest hatred of a person by saying, “I wish I could eat his liver or his flesh.”39 Other people want to “drink the blood” of their enemies.

The idea that a person is annihilated or loses his individuality by being eaten has led to cannibalism not only in revenge but as an act of protection, as a method of making a dangerous individual harmless after death.40 Among the Botocudos warriors devoured the bodies of their fallen enemies in the belief that they would thus be safe from the revengeful hatred of the dead.41 In Ashantee “several of the hearts of the enemy are cut out by the fetish men who follow the army, and the blood and small pieces being mixed (with much ceremony and incantation) with various consecrated herbs, all those who have never killed an enemy before eat a portion, for it is believed that if they did not, their vigour and courage would be secretly wasted by the haunting spirit of the deceased.”42 In Greenland “a slain man is said to have the power to avenge himself upon the murderer by rushing into him, which can only be prevented by eating a piece of his liver.”43 Many cannibals are in the habit of consuming that part of a slain enemy which is supposed to contain his soul or courage or strength, and one reason for this practice may be the wish to render him incapable of doing further harm. Queensland natives eat the kidneys of the persons whom they have killed, believing that “the kidneys are the centre of life.”44 Among the Maoris a chief was often satisfied with the left eye of his enemy, which they considered to be the seat of the soul; or they drank the blood from a corresponding belief;45 or in the case of a blood feud the heart of the enemy, representing the vital essence of him, was eaten “to fix or make firm the victory and the courage of the victor.”46 Other peoples likewise eat the hearts or suck the brains of their foes.