Investigators are too apt to forget that the logics of science,—that unattainable ideal of the discovery of pure relations of cause and effect, uncontaminated by any kind of emotional bias as well as of unproved opinion,—are not the logics of life. The feelings underlying taboo are ever-present among us. I remember that as a boy, when receiving instruction in religion,—that is in dogma,—I had an insuperable inhibition against uttering the word “God”, and I could not be brought to answer a question that required the answer “God”. If I had been older I should have searched for and found a personally satisfying explanation for this inhibition. Everyone knows by experience that there are actions he will not perform, lines of thought that he will not follow, and words that he will not utter, because the actions are emotionally objectionable, or the thoughts find strong resistances and involve our innermost life so deeply that they cannot be expressed in words. We are right in calling these social taboos. It requires only a dogmatic standardization to transform them into true taboos. And magic? I believe if a boy should observe someone spitting on his photograph and cutting it to pieces he would feel duely outraged. I know if this should have happened to me when I was a student, the result would have been a duel and I should have done my level best to do to my adversary _in natura_ what he had done to me _in effigie_ and I should have considered my success as a compensation for the harm done me;—all this without any psychoanalytic meaning. I do not believe that my feelings would have differed much from those of other young men. Again a standardization and dogmatization would bring us right back to “magical” attitudes. Dr. Tozzer’s[1] collection of superstitions of College students with the enlightening remarks by those who hold the beliefs will be read with profit by all those who are convinced of our mental superiority and the lack of ability of clear thinking among the primitives. [1] A. M. Tozzer, Social Origins and Social Continuities, New York, 1925, pp. 242 et seq. Still other considerations should caution us against the assumption of a radical difference between primitive and civilized mentality. We like to see this distinction in greater individual mental freedom from social bondage expressed in a free critical attitude that makes possible individual creativeness.