To “wonder furiously”—Better Government, or Worse?—Comparison of Standards—A Conversation with Aborigine Friends—The Question of Money—Tabus.

Looking back over what I learned, during the two years that I was in Formosa, of the manners and customs—collectively speaking—of the aboriginal¹ tribes, and of the outlook on life of these Naturv?lker, I am given to “think furiously” along lines other than anthropological²; that is, along those that are sociological as well. Rather, perhaps, to “wonder furiously.”

If it be true, as Dr. Tylor—in Primitive³ Culture—points out, that “no human thought is so primitive as to have lost bearing on our own thought, or so ancient as to have broken connection with our own life,” it opens up an interesting field for speculation⁴. For one thing, as to what would have been the line of social evolution of the so-called superior races had they, like the seban, continued to regard the cutting off of an enemy head as meritorious⁵ rather than otherwise. (Yet what is war between “civilized⁶” races, except head-hunting on a grand scale;[201] only with accompanying mangling⁷ and gassing and other horrors of which the island seban[102] knows nothing?) And if, also like the seban, prostitution had remained unknown, and the breaking of a promise been regarded as so heinous⁸ a crime that only the death of the one guilty of so foul⁹ a thing could save his family and relatives and all who came into contact with him from being contaminated by his own uncleanness.

What then? One wonders. What sort of civilization would have been evolved, had culture progressed—as in Europe, for example, in the matter of learning, of arts, and of sciences—yet had the standards of right and wrong remained as they are with the primitive folk among whom I spent two years, and if the fundamental conception of government had remained the same—that of a matriarchal

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