Sin, Sacrifice, and Atonement

89:1.1Ob­ser­vance of a taboo was man’s ef­fort to dodge ill luck, to keep from of­fend­ing the spirit ghosts by the avoid­ance of some­thing. The taboos were at first non­re­li­gious, but they early ac­quired ghost or spirit sanc­tion, and when thus re­in­forced, they be­came law­mak­ers and in­sti­tu­tion builders. The taboo is the source of cer­e­mo­nial stan­dards and the an­ces­tor of prim­i­tive self-con­trol. It was the ear­li­est form of so­ci­etal reg­u­la­tion and for a long time the only one; it is still a ba­sic unit of the so­cial reg­u­la­tive struc­ture.

89:1.2The re­spect which these pro­hi­bi­tions com­manded in the mind of the sav­age ex­actly equaled his fear of the pow­ers who were sup­posed to en­force them. Taboos first arose be­cause of chance ex­pe­ri­ence with ill luck; later they were pro­posed by chiefs and shamans—fe­tish men who were thought to be di­rected by a spirit ghost, even by a god. The fear of spirit ret­ri­bu­tion is so great in the mind of a prim­i­tive that he some­times dies of fright when he has vi­o­lated a taboo, and this dra­matic episode enor­mously strength­ens the hold of the taboo on the minds of the sur­vivors.

89:1.3Among the ear­li­est pro­hi­bi­tions were re­stric­tions on the ap­pro­pri­a­tion of women and other prop­erty. As re­li­gion be­gan to play a larger part in the evo­lu­tion of the taboo, the ar­ti­cle rest­ing un­der ban was re­garded as un­clean, sub­se­quently as un­holy. The rec­ords of the He­brews are full of the men­tion of things clean and un­clean, holy and un­holy, but their be­liefs along these lines were far less cum­ber­some and ex­ten­sive than were those of many other peo­ples.

89:1.4The seven com­mand­ments of Dala­ma­tia and Eden, as well as the ten in­junc­tions of the He­brews, were def­i­nite taboos, all ex­pressed in the same neg­a­tive form as were the most an­cient pro­hi­bi­tions. But these newer codes were truly eman­ci­pat­ing in that they took the place of thou­sands of pre-ex­is­tent taboos. And more than this, these later com­mand­ments def­i­nitely prom­ised some­thing in re­turn for obe­di­ence.

89:1.5The early food taboos orig­i­nated in fet­ish­ism and to­tem­ism. The swine was sa­cred to the Phoeni­cians, the cow to the Hin­dus. The Egyp­tian taboo on pork has been per­pet­u­ated by the He­braic and Is­lamic faiths. A vari­ant of the food taboo was the be­lief that a preg­nant woman could think so much about a cer­tain food that the child, when born, would be the echo of that food. Such viands would be taboo to the child.

89:1.6Meth­ods of eat­ing soon be­came taboo, and so orig­i­nated an­cient and mod­ern ta­ble eti­quette. Caste sys­tems and so­cial lev­els are ves­ti­gial rem­nants of olden pro­hi­bi­tions. The taboos were highly ef­fec­tive in or­ga­niz­ing so­ci­ety, but they were ter­ri­bly bur­den­some; the neg­a­tive-ban sys­tem not only main­tained use­ful and con­struc­tive reg­u­la­tions but also ob­so­lete, out­worn, and use­less taboos.

89:1.7There would, how­ever, be no civ­i­lized so­ci­ety to sit in crit­i­cism upon prim­i­tive man ex­cept for these far-flung and mul­ti­far­i­ous taboos, and the taboo would never have en­dured but for the up­hold­ing sanc­tions of prim­i­tive re­li­gion. Many of the es­sen­tial fac­tors in man’s evo­lu­tion have been highly ex­pen­sive, have cost vast trea­sure in ef­fort, sac­ri­fice, and self-de­nial, but these achieve­ments of self-con­trol were the real rungs on which man climbed civ­i­liza­tion’s as­cend­ing lad­der.