Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 10, 1899.djvu/69

Rh but the purpose is excellent. I am not arguing that the Kurnai, for instance, are crowned with the white flower of a blameless life. I am arguing that they have the elements of consideration for unprotected women, and of regard for marriage. The Seventh Commandment is in the interests of husbands and of social peace, but it is not such a bad part of ethics as Mr. Grant Allen appears to believe. The Kurnai obey it about as much as the ancient Romans. That there are scores of taboos, who denies? who denies that they are under the sanction of the Being? As I said, similar taboos occur in Leviticus. I doubt if we have a single ethical or religious idea which the lowest savages do not possess among their ideas; civilisation has, of course, discarded many ideas which the blacks do possess, many practices, right as the social ethics of the Andamanese, wrong as the hideous rites of the Arunta. Among their ideas, the savages have the elements of a very good working religion. Among our practices are many (as Mr. Manning's black informant said when he was taken to church) wholly inconsistent with our professed creed. Any black satirist who came to England, like Voltaire's Huron, could easily make as good a case out of our contradictory religious beliefs, and contradictory practices, as the case which Mr. Hartland makes against the Australians. We are all both Jekyl and Hyde. The Australians were said to have no Jekyl. I think that I have proved them not to be all unmitigated Hyde. One Hyde-like point Mr. Hartland seems to me to exaggerate. The mysteries are "celebrated with horrible cruelty and worse than beastly filthiness" (p. 294). Where? Among the tribes which practise "the terrible rite," I grant the cruelty; but, where merely two front teeth are extracted (while the victim is patted on the back to encourage him), I doubt the