Several different explanations of this custom have been suggested.[1233] Some authors believe that it is due to hygienic motives. But circumcised and uncircumcised peoples live under the same conditions in the same neighbourhood side by side, without any difference in their physical condition.[1234] Mr. Sturt remarks that, in Australia, “you would meet with a tribe with which that custom did not prevail, between two with which it did.”[1235] Moreover, as Mr. Spencer observes, while the usage does not exist among the most cleanly races in the world, it is common among the most uncleanly.[1236] Among the Damaras and Bechuanas, the boys are circumcised, though these peoples are described as exceedingly filthy in their habits,[1237] and so also among the people of Madagascar and the Malays, who are far from being so cleanly as might be desired.[1238] Again, according to Mr. Spencer, circumcision involves an offering to the gods. He suggests that in the first instance vanquished enemies were mutilated in order that a specially valuable trophy after a battle might be presented to the king Then, “in a highly militant society governed by a divinely-descended despot, ... we may expect that the presentation to the king of these trophies taken from enslaved enemies, will develop into the offering to the god of like trophies taken from each generation of male citizens in acknowledgment of their slavery to him.”[1239] This conclusion Mr. Spencer draws from the single fact that, “among the Abyssinians, the trophy taken by circumcision from an enemy’s dead body is presented by each warrior to his chief.” But there is no evidence whatever that this curious custom is of common occurrence. Circumcision is spread over a very large part of the earth, and prevails even in societies which are not “governed by a divinely-descended despot,” who could require all his subjects to bear this badge of servitude. With regard to the Australian aborigines, many tribes of whom practise circumcision, Mr. Curr says, “On the subject of government (by which I mean the habitual exercise of authority, by one or a few individuals, over a community or a body of persons) I have made many inquiries and received written replies from the observers of about a hundred tribes to the effect that none exists. Indeed, no fact connected with our tribes seems better established.”[1240] Since there is nothing to indicate that there ever was a different state of things in Australia, how are we to reconcile these facts with the interpretation offered by Mr. Spencer?