A  man  has  killed  his  foe.  If  he  leaves  him  merely
dead  he  will  some  time  come  to  life  again  as  bad  as
ever.  If  haply  before  this  some  wild  beast  devour
him,  he  will  then  become  a  ferocious  and  malevo-
lent "  man-beast,"  —  a  worse  enemy  than  before.
There  is  no  way  of  making  the  victory  final  and  se-
cure, except  by  eating  him  up  one's  self.  Then  the
life  and  valor  of  the  slain  become  life  and  valor
to  the  slayer.  Even  the  eating  of  others  than  foes
is  in  this  way  made  intelligible.  As  the  Fan  Ne-
groes are  said  to  eat  —  "  with  a  certain  tenderness  "
—  the  bodies  of  their  wives  and  children,  so  the
primitive  man,  seeking  the  safest  possible  place  for
the  body  of  his  dead  friend,  may  have  thought  it  a
far  friendlier  act  to  eat  him  up  than  to  leave  him  to
take  his  chances  at  the  hand  of  worms  underground,
or  beasts  of  prey  above  it.  Between  the  two  mo-
tives, the  desire  to  appropriate  the  vital  forces  of
the  foe  and  the  wish  to  do  the  best  possible  thing
for  the   unwakable  friend,   our  author  thinks    that


380  PARADISE  FOUND.
anthropophagy  became  in  the  first  age  of  the  world
almost  universal.  The  very  piety  of  the  surviving
toward  the  dead  contributed  to  the  dissemination  of
the  revolting  custom.
