[121] Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii. 384.
[122] Adair, op. cit. p. 133.
[123] Hahn, Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi, p. 106.
[124] Kropf, op. cit. p. 102.
[125] Leviticus, xi. 6, 8. Cæsar, De bello Gallico, v. 12 (ancient Britons). The Chinese have a deep-rooted prejudice against eating the flesh of the hare, which they have always regarded as an animal endowed with mysterious properties (Dennis, Folk-Lore of China, p. 64). With reference to the Biblical prohibition of eating camel’s flesh, old exegetes observed that the camel is a very revengeful animal, and that its vindictiveness would be transferred to him who partook of its meat (Wiener, in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. viii. 104); but whether the prohibition in question originated in such a belief is open to doubt.
[126] Adair, op. cit. p. 134. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 353.
[127] Leviticus, iii. 17; vii. 25 sqq.; xvii. 10 sqq.; xix. 26. Deuteronomy, xii. 16, 23 sqq.; xv. 23.
[128] Haberland, ‘Gebräuche und Aberglauben beim Essen,’ in Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsychologie, xvii. 363 sq.
The general abstinence from certain kinds of food has thus sprung from a great variety of causes. Of these I have been able to point out only some of the more general and obvious. As Sir J. G. Frazer justly remarks, to explain the ultimate reason why any particular food is prohibited to a whole tribe or to certain of its members would commonly require a far more intimate knowledge of the history and beliefs of the tribe than we possess.[129] Even explanations given by the natives themselves may be misleading, since the original motive for a custom may have been forgotten, while the custom itself is still preserved. But I think that, broadly speaking, the general avoidance of a certain food may be traced to one or several of the following sources: its disagreeable taste; disgust caused, in the case of animal food, either by the external appearance of the animal, or by its unclean habits, or by sympathy, or by associations of some kind or other, or even by the mere fact that it is commonly abstained from; the disinclination to kill an animal for food, or, generally, to reduce the supply of a certain kind of victuals; the idea, whether correct or false, that the food would injure him who partook of it. From what has been said in previous chapters it is obvious that any of these factors, if influencing the manners of a whole community and especially when supported by the force of habit, may lead not only to actual abstinence but to prohibitory rules the transgression of which is apt to call forth moral disapproval. This is particularly the case at the earlier stages of culture, where a people’s tastes and habits are most uniform, where the sway of custom is most powerful, where instinctive aversion most readily develops into moral indignation, and where man in almost every branch of action thinks he has to be on his guard against supernatural dangers. And in this, as in other cases of moral concern, the prohibition may easily be sanctioned by religion, especially when the abstinence is due to fear of some mysterious force or quality in the thing avoided. The religious aspect assumed particular prominence in Hebrewism and Brahmanism. It is said in the ‘Institutes of Vishnu’ that the eating of pure food is more essential than all external means of purification; “he who eats pure food only is truly pure, not he who is only purified with earth and water.”[130] The Koran forbids the eating of “what is dead, and blood, and flesh of swine, and whatsoever has been consecrated to other than God.”[131] Mediæval Christianity prohibited the eating of various animals, especially horses, which were not used as food in the South of Europe, but which the pagan Teutons sacrificed and ate at their religious feasts.[132] The idea that it is “unchristian” to eat horseflesh has survived even to the present day, and has, together with the aversion to feeding on a pet animal, been responsible for the loss of enormous quantities of nourishing food. Among ourselves the only eatable thing the partaking of which is generally condemned as immoral is human flesh. But there are a considerable number of people who think that we ought to abstain from all animal meat, not only for sanitary reasons, but because man is held to have no right to subject any living being to suffering and death for the purpose of gratifying his appetite.
[129] Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 391 sq.