[56] Without doubt other feelings and conceptions than purely ethical ones are sometimes operative in the case of the guest right. The stranger may be kindly treated because of superstitious fears. Thus the primitive man’s notions of magic and sorcery may cause him to be hospitable to the stranger through fear of the consequences of a refusal, since untutored people are apt to attribute magical powers to the stranger. See Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (1906), vol. i, chap. xxiv. [57] Among some uncivilized peoples, however, where the population is thin and there is little competition wars are unknown. “To the Greenlander ... war is incomprehensible and repulsive, a thing for which their language has no word” (Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (1906), vol. i, p. 334). [58] Cannibalism springs from several roots. Sometimes savages eat the body of the enemy slain in battle because they believe that thereby they destroy the soul or double and thus secure themselves against its vengeance. Again the custom grows out of the belief that the virtues of the victim pass into him who eats the flesh. But the most common motive is the subsistence motive. Indeed, many of the incessant wars waged by primitive tribes are nothing more nor less than man-hunting expeditions for securing food. Later these expeditions became raids for securing slaves. [59] Quoted by Letourneau, _La guerre dans les diverses races humaines_ (1895), p. vi. [60] Often we find vestiges of the abandoned practice in what may be called celestial cannibalism (see W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_ (1894), p. 224). Thus the god of war of the Mexican Aztecs and the gods of many Polynesian tribes were cannibals, for human sacrifices must be regarded as a sort of celestial cannibalism, when the offering is made in the belief that the god actually repasts on the blood and the finer essences of the sacrificial victim. Where men have thus made their gods like unto themselves, and the practice of cannibalism has been consecrated by religion, the gods, because religion is always conservative, are certain to remain anthropophagi much longer than their worshipers. Consequently we find human sacrifices still lingering on as a kind of survival among peoples, as, for instance, the Mexicans, who have themselves left far behind the practice of eating human flesh. [61] Letourneau, _La guerre dans les diverses races humaines_ (1895), p. 185. [62] _Od._ i. 260. [63] Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_ (1892), vol. i, p. 350. [64] _Ibid._ vol. i, pp. 355 f. [65] _Ibid._ vol. i, pp. 368, 398, 401. [66] Spencer, _Principles of Ethics_ (1892), vol. i, pp. 359 f. [67] _Ibid._ vol. i, p. 349. [68] For the influence of the war ethics of the modern nations upon their peace ethics, see VI, International Ethics: the New International Conscience, in Chapter XVIII. [69] Breasted, _A History of Egypt_ (1905), p. 65.