The cannibalism of the Upper Congo tribes is much worse than this and is almost indescribable. Some of them eat their own dead. Sir Harry Johnston tells us that the Basoko tribe bury none but their chiefs. Others, who would not eat their own dead, exchange them for the dead of a neighbouring clan. This vicious taste often becomes a mania with the African, an obsession, like the ungovernable appetite for rum, until he thinks of man chiefly as food to satisfy this craving. Among such tribes raids are made on their neighbours for the express purpose of cannibalism. Sir Harry Johnston speaks of the son of a celebrated chief who once exclaimed: “Ah! I wish I could eat everybody on earth!” and also of a Bangala chief who ate his seven wives in succession, inviting his friends and close associates to the feast. It is more than possible that these lowest forms of cannibalism are due to the demoralization incident to the slave-raids of the Arabs. The Arabs were succeeded by the Belgians; but some of those who are best qualified to judge think that the régime of the Belgians has been worse than that of the Arabs. Among tribes to whom such forms of cannibalism would be revolting, there are probably individual inhuman ghouls, who exhume the bodies of the dead in the night and eat them. And it may be from this fact that witches are always accused of eating people. If it be true, then, throughout the entire Fang tribe, that they eat only their enemies it will be seen that their cannibalism is very different in extent and even in loathsomeness from that of some other tribes. It is a fact, however, that the cannibal tribes are not necessarily lower than the others, but may be quite as gentle and tractable and quite as capable. And from this some have argued that, after all, our horror of cannibalism is purely conventional, due to custom and training; and that there is no essential difference between eating human flesh and that of the lower animals, except in imagination. But the readiness with which whole tribes renounce the custom, become ashamed of it, and contract the white man’s abhorrence for it, confirms the belief that it is never legitimate and must always be regarded as a vice. In such matters imagination may be closer to our moral natures than we know.