Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/289

Rh that which is common to all savage conjurors;" at any rate, its similarity in so many and distant regions is highly remarkable. It is to be noticed that, in this special imposture, we have in the first place the idea that a disease is caused by some extraneous substance inside the body. Among possible motives for this opinion, it has to be borne in mind that in certain cases it is the true one, as where the savage surgeon really cures his patient by extracting some splinter or fragment of stone arrow-head, or other peccant object really imbedded in his flesh. But beyond this, we have the belief turned to account in remote parts of the world by the same knavish trick, which it is hard to imagine as growing up independently in so many distant places.

In the civilized world, the prohibition from marrying kindred has usually stopped short of forbidding the marriage of cousins german. It is true that the Roman Ecclesiastical Law is, at least in theory, very different from this. Hallam says, "Gregory I. pronounces matrimony to be unlawful as far as the seventh degree, and even, if I understand his meaning, as long as any relationship could be traced, which seems to have been the maxim of strict theologians, though not absolutely enforced." But this disability may be reduced by the dispensing power to the ordinary limits; and in practice the Society of Friends go farther than the Canon Law, for they really prohibit the marriage of first cousins. If, however, we examine the law of marriage among certain of the middle and lower races scattered far and wide over the world, a variety of such prohibitions will be found which overstep the practice, and sometimes even approach the theory of the Roman Church. The matter belongs properly to that interesting, but difficult and almost unworked subject, the Comparative Jurisprudence of the lower races, and no one not versed in Civil Law could do it justice; but it may be possible for me to give a rough idea of its various modifications, as found among races widely separated from one another in place, and, so far as we know, in history.