danger attaches to their bodies (particularly to head,
hair, and nails), to their names, and to their food and other
belongings. These things must be avoided: their food must not be eaten
by common folk; their houses and other property must not be used; their
nail-cuttings must be buried so that danger may be averted from the
community; their names must not be mentioned. They themselves, being
peculiarly sensitive to malign influences, must be protected in the
house and when they walk out; and it is in some cases not safe for the
common man to look on the chief as he passes through the village.

+596+. Not all these regulations are found in any one community, but the
principle is the same everywhere. The greatest development of taboo
power in chiefs occurs in Polynesia, the home of taboo. There they are
all-powerful. Whatever a chief touches becomes his property. If he
enters a house, steps into a canoe, affixes his name to a field, it is
his. His control appears to be limited only by the accident of his
momentary desire. No one thinks of opposing his decisions--that would be
fatal to the opposer. This social situation passes when a better form of
civil government is established, but some features of the old conception
cling to later dignitaries: till recently the nail-parings of the
emperor of Japan were carefully disposed of lest, being inadvertently
touched, they should bring misfortune.

+597+. A priest also may carry taboo infection on his person. In
Ezekiel's scheme of ritual organization it is ordered that when the
priest, having offered sacrifice, goes forth into the outer court where
the people are, he shall put off the garments in which he ministered and
lay them in a sacred place, and put on other garments, lest some one
touching him should be made ritually unclean, that is taboo, forbidden
to mingle with his fellows or to do his ordinary work for a certain time
(generally till the evening).[962] In many regions there have been and
are numerous restrictions on priests, some of which are in their own
interests (to preserve their ritual purity), some in the interests of
others (to guard them against the infection of taboo).[963] Other
quasi-official or devoted persons (as, for example, the Hebrew
Nazirite[964]) were subject to restrictions of food. Strangers, who in
a primitive period were frequently put to death, in a more humane period
were subjected to purifying processes in order to remove the taboo
infect