Again their intelligence failed to grasp my attempts at a logical explanation. But a priestess pressed for further knowledge on the subject of the white man’s--and especially the white woman’s--tabus. Was it tabu for a husband to be either brutal to his wife---- “Yes, among the better----” I began. But the priestess hurried on: “or indelicate in his attentions to her; was she, his wife--as regards marital relations--to be tabu to him altogether before the birth of her children, and for some time afterwards? Was a disloyal husband himself so tabu that, even in the tribes where he was not beheaded or stoned to death, no self-respecting member of the community--either man or woman--would speak to him or supply him with food; so that he had to flee to the woods and live as an outcast?” I tried to explain that it was difficult to know; one could not be sure, for there were some points on which neither men nor women always told the exact truth. “But not to tell the truth!” my friends cried in chorus. “Surely the curses of their ancestors are on those who do not speak the truth!” And I thought, or tried to think, of a civilization--white or yellow--in which men and women spoke always the truth, with nothing added, nothing suppressed; where “yea” meant always _yea_, and “nay,” _nay_; where the realization that anything more “cometh of evil” was put into practice; consequently the anything more left unsaid. And still I am trying to think what civilization under these conditions would mean. Civilization--I am wondering. Since my sojourn among the men and women who live in the mountains of Formosa that word--civilization--has had a new meaning; been a new source of wonder to me. FOOTNOTES: [102] In this connection I speak of the aborigines of this particular island--Formosa. Among many of the Melanesian aborigines of other islands of the South Pacific--as among many tribes of equatorial Africa, and certain tribes of American Indians--every form of torture is applied to the vanquished enemy before death releases him from suffering. [103] See _Das Mutterrecht_, by J. J. Bachofen. [104] On this subject see _Les Formes Élémentaires de la Vie Religieuse_, by E. Durkheim. [105] See _Sex and Character_, by Otto Weininger. [106] The _Dora_ of Dickens’s _David Copperfield_. [107] See _The Female of the Species_, by Kipling. [108] A Japanese silver coin, equivalent to about a sixpence in value. [109] A Japanese coin, equivalent to about a shilling in value. INDEX