moral order, as well as mere external precepts of physical
observance, shall be placed under the sanction of the god of the
community. Breaches of social order are recognised as offences against
the holiness of the deity, and the development of law and morals is made
possible, at a stage when human sanctions are still wanting, or too
imperfectly administered to have much power, by the belief that the
restrictions on human licence which are necessary to social well-being
are conditions imposed by the god for the maintenance of a good
understanding between himself and his worshippers.

Various parallels between savage taboos and Semitic rules of holiness
and uncleanness will come before us from time to time; but it may be
useful to bring together at this point some detailed evidences that the
two are in their origin indistinguishable.

Holy and unclean things have this in common, that in both cases certain
restrictions lie on men's use of and contact with them, and that the
breach of these restrictions involves supernatural dangers. The
difference between the two appears, not in their relation to man's
ordinary life, but in their relation to the gods. Holy things are not
free to man, because they pertain to the gods; uncleanness is shunned,
according to the view taken in the higher Semitic religions, because it
is hateful to the god, and therefore not to be tolerated in his
sanctuary, his worshippers, or his land. But that this explanation is
not primitive can hardly be doubted when we consider that the acts that
cause uncleanness are exactly the same which among savage nations place
a man under taboo, and that these acts are often involuntary, and often
innocent, or even necessary to society. The savage, accordingly, imposes
a taboo on a woman in childbed, or during her courses, and on the man
who touches a corpse, not out of any regard for the gods, but simply
because birth and everything connected with the propagation of the
species on the one hand, and disease and death on the other, seem to him
to involve the action of superhuman agencies of a dangerous kind. If he
attempts to explain, he does so by supposing that on these occasions
spirits of deadly power are present; at all events the persons involved
seem to him to be sources of mysterious danger, which has all the
characters of an infection and may extend to other people unless due
precautions are observed. This is not scientific, but it is perfectly
intelligibl