Chapter 14: First-Fruits and Taboos

Taboo is one of the few savage words which have struck root in England. Introduced from New Zealand (tapu) and other Polynesian islands, it is used in English to denote a prohibition. This, that, or the other thing, or person, or book is ‘tabooed.’ Many of the Ten Commandments are, in this sense, taboos. But, in anthropological language, ‘taboo’ generally denotes something more than a prohibition. It commonly means a prohibition for which, to the civilised mind, there is no very obvious meaning. In this way the prohibitive Commandments are not precisely taboos; it is pretty obvious why we ought not to steal or kill, though the raison d’être of the Seventh Commandment is obscure to some advanced intelligences. But the reasons why a Sinclair must not cross the Ord on a certain ‘lawful day, ‘ or why on another ‘lawful day’ the fishermen of St. Andrews might not go a-fishing, resemble many savage taboos in the lack of a manifest reason why. Secondly, the infraction of the savage taboo generally, unlike that of the decalogue, carries its own punishment. Forbidden food is poison, tabooed land is dangerous to tread upon, to handle tabooed property may mean death; nobody knows what awful cosmic catastrophe might occur if a tabooed woman saw the sun; many words and names are taboo, and no luck will come of using them--for instance, you must not name ‘salmon, ‘ ‘pigs, ‘ or the minister when out fishing in some parts of Scotland.

In many cases the reason of this or that taboo is easily discovered. A day is unlucky because all the fishers, as at St. Andrews, were lost on that day in a past century through a storm; or the Sinclairs on another day were cut off in an expedition. Most of us have our lucky or unlucky days, clothes, and other vanities. Again, things are taboo for some reason in that kind of faith which holds that things connected in the association of ideas are mystically connected in fact. You must not mention salmon, lest they hear you and escape; or tin in Malay tin mining, lest the tin should literally ‘make itself scarce.’ You may not name the fairies, a jealous folk. Therefore you say ‘the people of peace, ‘ and so on. But many other taboos have good practical reasons. If women, among ourselves, were tabooed from salmon-fishing, eating oysters, or entering smoking-rooms (all of which things are greatly to be desired), the reason would be the convenience of the men, who wish a sanctuary or asylum in the smoking-room, and want to keep oysters and fishing to themselves. It is pretty plain why the sight of the royal treasury is tabooed to a West African king: to speak colloquially, if admitted to see the hoards he ‘would blue the lot.’ A taboo often protects by a supernatural sanction the property and persons of the privileged classes. If the umbrella of a bishop or a baronet were taboo, it would not be taken away from the club by accident.

This simple explanation covers the case of many taboos.

Brother and sister may scarcely ever see each other, still less speak to or name each other, where the law against brother and sister marriage or amour is the one most definite law of the community. ‘It is not, therefore, surprising, ‘ says Mr. Jevons, ‘that the earlier students of the custom’ (of taboo) ‘regarded it as an artificial invention, a piece of statecraft, cunningly devised in the interests of the nobility and the priests. This view is, however, now generally abandoned, ‘ because taboo ‘is most at home in communities which have no state organisation, and flourishes where there are no priests or no priesthood. Above all the belief is not artificial and imposed, but spontaneous and natural.’[1]

I hesitate about this theory. Taboo can hardly flourish more than it does in Polynesia and West Africa, where there are kings and priests. Moreover, though there are human societies without kings or priests (as in Australia), there are no societies in which artificial rules are not propagated, instituted, and enforced by the adult males meeting in councils. The Arunta of Central Australia are, of course, far from ‘primitive.’ They have institutions, ceremonies, weapons, rules, and a complete system of philosophy, which must have needed unknown ages to develop. They have local head-men, or Alatunjas, whose office passes always in the male line: from father to son, if the son be of age to succeed, or, if he is not, to the brother, on whose death it reverts to the son. An Alatunja dying without a son nominates a brother or nephew to succeed him. Messrs. Spencer and Gillen know no equivalent to this law among other Australian tribes, and it indicates, among the so-called ‘primitive’ Arunta, a marked advance beyond other tribes in social evolution. The Alatunja is hereditary Convener of Council, and if an able man has considerable power. He is guardian of the Sacra of the group, determines the date of the cessation of close-time for certain sorts of game, the date of the magical ceremonies for fostering the game or edible plants, and directs the ceremonies. In the councils called by the Alatunja it appears that changes in stereo-typed custom may be introduced. Men learned in the customs and skilled in magic ‘settle everything.’ Definite proof of fundamental innovations thus introduced Messrs. Spencer and Gillen do not possess; but tradition indicates alterations of custom, and it is quite possible that a strong Alatunja, well backed, might bring in even a radical reform.[2] There are also recognised grades of skill among the medicine-men and the dealers with spirits, who must have their own share of social influence.

In brief, though without priests or kings these backward tribes have councils, and conveners, and directors whose office is hereditary in the male line. These persons, through unknown ages, have moulded customs and taboos, which are just as much sanctioned by tradition and authority just as little ‘spontaneous and universal, ‘ as if kings and priests had invented them for purposes of statecraft. Mr. Jevons next argues that taboo ‘cannot have been derived from experience. It is prior to and even contradictory of experience. In fine, it is an inherent tendency of the human mind.’ In the same way Gibbon’s ancestor, Blue Gown herald, when among North American Indians, declared that heraldry is an inherent tendency of the human mind, an innate idea.

An opinion is not necessarily erroneous because it is obsolete, nor a view wrong because ‘it is generally abandoned.’ I am here supporting the ‘generally abandoned’ hypothesis that many taboos, at least, are artificial and imposed, against Mr. Jevons’s idea that the taboo, like armorial bearings, results from ‘an inherent tendency of the human mind’ ‘prior to and even contradictory of experience.’[3] That ‘a new-born baby is dangerous, ‘ or that ‘the water in which a holy person has washed is dangerous, ‘ my private experience does not tell me; in fact, I never made either experiment: never tubbed in the water previously used by a bishop. But I am prepared to admit that neither babies nor bishops are proved by our experience to be dangerous. That is not the question. The savage argued, not from unbiassed and impartial scientific experiment, but from fancied experience. Thus Mr. Jevons mentions a Maori who died after rinding out that he had eaten, unawares, the remains of the luncheon of a holy person, a chief. There was experience produced by suggestion. The suggestion was suggested in the interests of holy chiefs; they were ‘tabooed an inch thick, ‘ as Mr. Manning writes. As to the baby, the Dyaks, as in our own fairy belief, hold that ‘new-born children are the especial prey of evil spirits, ‘ just as corpses were in--Scotland, where, if the door was left ajar, the corpse sat up, and mopped and mowed. If the watchers left it, and dined in the ‘but, ‘ an awful vacarme arose in the ‘ben.’ The minister entered, stilled the tumult, asked for the tongs, and came back holding in the tongs a bloody glove! This he dropped into the fire.

This kind of thing is contradictory to the experience of Mr. Jevons, but not to the fancied experience of Dyaks, Scots, and other races. Opinion therefore makes taboos in accordance with experience, or what is believed to be experience, and the belief is fortified by suggestion, which produces death or disease when the taboo is broken. On the analogy of infectious diseases, the mischief of the tabooed thing is held to be contagious.

Thus I cannot hold with Mr. Jevons that the human mind is provided with an a priori categorical imperative that there are some things which must not be done, ‘ ‘a feeling’ ‘independent of sense experience.’[4] If the choice of what things are ‘not to be done’ seems to us ‘irrational, ‘ that is merely because our reason is more enlightened than that of the savage. He prohibited just such things as his philosophy, and what he believed to be his experience, showed him to be dangerous for obscure reasons. Any fool could see that it was dangerous to eat poison berries or frolic with a bear. But it took reflection to discover that a baby or a corpse was dangerous by reason of evil spirits, Iruntarinia, whom the Alkna Buma, or clairvoyant, could see, and describe, though Mr. Jevons and I could not discern them.[5] These Iruntarinia notoriously carry off women, and probably, like the fairies, have their best chance in the hour of child-birth: at all events, the fairies have.[6] The belief is socially useful: it prevents young Arunta women from wandering off alone, and philandering out of bounds.

Thus these taboos are sanctioned by the tribal counsellors as the results of experience, not their own perhaps, but that of the Alkna Buma, or clairvoyant, or ‘sensitive, ‘ or ‘medium, ‘ or habitually hallucinated person. Other taboos, as to women, are imposed for very good reasons, though not for the reasons alleged, and broken taboos are not (in actual ordinary experience) attended by the penalties which, however, suggestion may produce.

Taboo, then, is not imposed irrationally, nor in deference to ‘an inherent tendency of the human mind’ (that Mrs. Harris of philosophy), but for a very good reason, as savage reasoning goes, and in accordance with what is believed to be experience, and, by dint of suggestion, really does become experience.

It was ‘irrational’ in Dr. Johnson to touch certain posts, and avoid certain stones, and enter a door twice, if he first entered it with the wrong foot. All my life I have had similar private taboos, though nobody knows better that they are nonsense. But some solitary experience in childhood probably suggested a relation of cause and effect, where there was only a fortuitous sequence of antecedent and consequent, and so Dr. Johnson and I (though not so conspicuously as the Doctor) imposed taboos on ourselves in deference to (fancied) experience. Early man has acted in the same way on a large scale, obeying no categorical a priori imperative, but merely acting on his philosophy and experience which is real to him, though not to civilised men. They usually do not understand it, but educated persons with a survival of savagery in their mental constitutions find the affair intelligible.

But the reason in actual practical experience for some taboos must be plain to the most civilised minds, except those of Badical voters for the Border Boroughs. Man, in the hunter stage, must have game laws and a close-time for edible animals and plants. The Border Badical will not permit a close-time for trout, preferring to destroy them, and with them their offspring, when gravid and unfit for human food, or before they recover condition.