Cannibalism

“ But of late cannibalism has for some reason or other fallen into disrepute, even among those who ought logically to be numbered among its supporters. Its scientific and systematic practice is now relegated to a few barbarous nations, while Europeans, although still addicted in the main to flesh-eating, become cannibals only under the pressure of some great necessity, as in time of siege or shipwreck, and even then the utmost exertions are usually made by the survivors to keep secret the manner in which they preserved their own lives. ”

“ Cannibalism is to us but a curiosity that we once practised. We find no injunction against cannibalism, or eating one's children, among the crimes on the statute books. It is no crime under the Common Law. A man who would commit cannibalism among us would be sent to an insane institution. There are no laws against a thing when no one has the least inclination to do it. Society recognises that the instinct for cannibalism is dead, but it is nevertheless in our unconscious. Our psyche never forgets the episodes in the lives of our ancestors. ”

“ They were the very worst kind of cannibals. It’s bad enough for a man to be a cannibal and to eat his fellow-man, but when he deliberately washes him down with baked beans and fresh peaches it shows a cold-blooded deliberation that is unspeakably revolting. Never let me hear you trying to defend cannibals again, or I shall think that you have not yet got over your hankering after forbidden meat. I recollect that it was some time before my grandfather could get his man Friday to see the wickedness of cannibalism. ”

“ Savage said to-day at luncheon about Individualism—though I do not think he meant it to apply to papa—suggested to me that there are other forms of cannibalism besides that practised by the degraded savages who cook and eat the dead bodies of their captives. In civilized communities a more subtle, but more cruel, kind of cannibalism is neither impossible nor infrequent—a feeding upon the intelligence, the energies and personality of those about you, which, though it does not actually kill, leaves its victims sterile and helpless. ”

“ Philosophy of cannibalism. If cannibalism began in the interest of the food supply, especially of meat, the wide ramifications of its relations are easily understood. While men were unable to cope with the great beasts cannibalism was a leading feature of social life, around which a great cluster of interests centered. ”

“ The eating of human beings, or, as it is called, cannibalism, is no idle tale invented by travellers. Men of the highest character for truth, who have had ample opportunity for observation, from the time of Cook to the present day, have assured us that the natives of those lovely regions are cannibals: that they not only eat the bodies of enemies slain in war, but even kill and eat their own slaves. ”

“ Surely one who thinks meat-eating mere cannibalism ought not to arrange vegetables so as to look like an animal. It is as if a converted cannibal in the Sandwich Islands were to arrange joints of meat in the shape of a missionary. ”

“ Cannibalism is one of the primordial mores. It dates from the earliest known existence of man on earth. It may reasonably be believed to be a custom which all peoples have practiced.1039 Only on the pastoral stage has it ceased, where the flesh of beasts was common and abundant.1040 It is indeed noticeable that the pygmies of Africa and the Kubus of Sumatra, two of the lowest outcast races, do not practice cannibalism,1041 although their superior neighbors do. Our intense abomination for cannibalism is a food taboo (secs. 353-354) , and is perhaps the strongest taboo which we have inherited. ”

“ Cannibalism.—Of all the tribes of the old world those of the Oceanic stock have most generally, and, I fear, most justly, been accused of cannibalism. For the sake, how [Pg 146] ever, of giving the full benefit of any modified form of this horrible habit to nations that have been improperly charged with feeding on the flesh and blood of their fellow-creatures, it must be remembered that the simple fact of human flesh being tasted, does not constitute cannibalism—i.e., habitual cannibalism. It has been tasted by savage tribes under three different influences. ”

“ Reversion to cannibalism under a total lack of other food ought not to be noted. We have some historical cases, however, in which during famine people became so familiarized with cannibalism that their horror of it was overcome. ”

“ The punishment for cannibalism is death, although every native, whatever his offence, is given a trial by the Belgian authorities.
So far as employing the white man as an article of diet is concerned, cannibalism has ceased in the Congo. Some of the tribes, however, still regard the flesh of their own kind as the last word in edibles. The practice must be carried on in secret. To have partaken of the human body has long been regarded as an act which endows the consumer with almost supernatural powers. The cannibal has always justified his procedure in a characteristic way. ”

“ At a low stage of development of civilisation, cannibalism was a recognised means whereby men acquired vigour, for by eating at least the heart or brain of a valiant enemy they thought that they assimilated to themselves his rare and valuable qualities. ”

“ This a very comfortable way of getting a second vengeance, and is nearly allied to the reasoning which is at the bottom of cannibalism in the South Sea Islands, to wit, belief that the blood of a brave and fallen enemy transplants his bravery to the veins of him who partakes of it. Cannibalism, for the sheer love of eating human flesh, don’t exist in the world. It is a creation of the imagination, a product of the tale telling spirit, and is not fair to the pagan races. ”

“ This is not to be interpreted as an argument for the practice of cannibalism among human beings, although we may as well face the fact that there is no physiological or dietary reason for avoiding the practice. In some of the lower animals, particularly in rats, cannibalism is a regular part of the life habit. ”

“ The discontinuance of cannibalism marks, of course, an immense step in humane progress, and so long as the kreophagist does not absurdly claim that it is a final step, his case against the anthropophagist is a sure one; but if, while denouncing anthropophagy as a barbarism of the past, he refuses to see that flesh-eating must also, in turn, be replaced by a more humane diet, he lays himself open to a raking fire of criticism. ”

“ Perhaps it is in subjective cannibalism alone that this uncanny attraction exists; objective cannibalism may not possess the same eerie charm. But the very fact that cannibalism either exists now, or ever existed, is, however, denied by some skeptical persons—mostly strict and rigid vegetarians, one would think—who argue that wild and natural races of men can not and do not lust for flesh. ”

“ It is therefore not by any means improbable that the stories of forcing human flesh on those reluctant to eat it may carry us back to an early period when cannibalism was not done away with, but when the conscience had begun to revolt against the practice.
And who were these people who were cannibals? In the story of Björn and Bera the wicked stepmother was a Finn, and consequently not an Aryan. ”

“ Cannibalism is so rampant that a chief, praising his deceased son, wound up his eulogy by saying that he would "kill his own wives if they offended him, and eat them afterward." Victims were sometimes roasted alive before being eaten ”

“ Cannibalism not abominable. Spix and Martius1053 asked a chief of the Miranhas why his people practiced cannibalism. The chief showed that it was entirely a new fact to him that some people thought it an abominable custom. "You whites," said he, "will not eat crocodiles or apes, although they taste well. If you did not have so many pigs and crabs you would eat crocodiles and apes, for hunger hurts. It is all a matter of habit. When I have killed an enemy it is better to eat him than to let him go to waste. Big game is rare because it does not lay eggs like turtles. ”

“ Cannibalism, it may be remarked, en passant, is also found to have a religious significance, on the supposition, which has unsuspected survival among advanced races, that eating the body and drinking the blood communicates the spirit of the victim to the consumer. It is not always the most savage races who practise it; for example, the Australians, despite the scarcity of large animals for food supply, rarely ate the flesh of man, whilst the New Zealanders, who rank far above them, and had not the like excuse, were systematic feeders on human flesh. ”

“ Tylor's article Cannibalism, in the Encyclopædia Britannica, may be consulted by any scholars who think our testimony on this point untrustworthy. It only remains to note that cannibalism is the most frequent form of peril in German and Modern Greek, and English and Indian, as in Zulu, Hottentot, Eskimo, and Samoyed Household Tales. ”

“ The acquisition of farinaceous food in America and of domestic animals in Asia and Europe, were the means of delivering the advanced tribes, thus provided, from the scourge of cannibalism, which as elsewhere stated, there are reasons for believing was practiced universally throughout the period of savagery upon captured enemies, and, in time of famine, upon friends and kindred. Cannibalism in war, practiced by war parties in the field, survived among the American aborigines, not only in the Lower, but also in the Middle Status of barbarism, as, for example, among the Iroquois and the Aztecs ”

“ Thus, how much is still to be learned as to the disgusting practice of cannibalism, of which Herrera is quoted as saying of the Colombian aborigines, "the living are the grave of the dead; for the husband has been seen to eat his wife, the brother his brother or sister, the son his father." ”

“ Accepting the theory of a comparatively modern origin of cannibalism, the question still remains, of the immediate occasion of its introduction. Aside from the tradition already mentioned, we can imagine but three grounds on which it could have been based. Human flesh may have been first eaten under stress of necessity, and found so palatable that the practice was continued; superstition may have suggested the idea that the eating of the flesh would secure the eater against the bad influence of the spirit of the eaten one ”

“ Yet they do, and most often do human beings commit the same crime. Cannibalism among wild animals is a common occurrence. The demand for food usually causes one animal to kill and devour another. But in captivity there are other causes for cannibalism: fear [Pg 205] and excitement will oftentimes cause a mother to destroy her offspring.
It is a case of dog eat dog! Badgers often kill and devour their young. Wolves, in cases of extreme hunger, will eat their puppies; and Arctic travellers, when food for their dogs is scarce, have to guard constantly against the stronger eating the weaker. ”

“ That true carnivores are not generally cannibals may be put down to their more ancient and perfect adaptation to a predatory life. For them persistent cannibalism would have been too destructive, and for us it belongs to the experimental stage of history; though, of course, even in recent times, under stress of famine, reversion to the practice is not unknown to civilised men. ”

“ I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual inprovement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other, when they come in contact with the more civilized."
Under a true system of civilization, cannibalism towards animals would seem as abhorrent as does now cannibalism towards humans. ”

“ The flesh-eater generally affects to look on cannibalism as something monstrous and abnormal, a dreadful perversion of taste which has no connection with the civilised meat-diet on which our welfare is supposed to depend; but the real facts show that the truth is quite otherwise, and that the position of the cannibal who is being proselytised to give up his man-eating is in many ways analogous to that of the flesh-eater who is worried by the vegetarian propagandists. The glories of the old English roast beef may be instructively compared with the glories of the old African roast man. ”

“ Some writers have questioned the deliberate practice of cannibalism, but well-attested facts [1] concerning many savage tribes leave us no room for doubt that human flesh is often used by choice as an article of diet, and not only under the pressure of necessity or from the lack of other food. ”

“ Not in the mere taking of human life, for war, the profession of killing, is everywhere held in high esteem, and it is only of late years that duelling has ceased to be equally popular. If we are thought to be justified in killing our fellow-creatures for the sake of prestige, honour, and empire, why should we be ashamed to do so for more solid dietetic advantages, if a diet of human flesh were considered wholesome and necessary ? It is obvious that the popular aversion to cannibalism is based, and justly so, on the intuitive knowledge that such a diet is unnatural, unwholesome, and disgusting ”

“ At other times cannibalism has been a necessity. In a famine in Egypt, as pictured by the Arab Abdullatif, the putrefying debris of animals, as well as their excrement, was used as food, and finally the human dead were used; then infants were killed and devoured, so great was the distress. In many sieges, shipwrecks, etc., cannibalism has been practiced as a last resort for sustaining life. When supplies have given out several Arctic explorers have had to resort to eating the bodies of their comrades. ”