n the other. There was this
advantage in the Christian taboo of sex that by discouraging the
physical and sensual side of love it did for the time being allow the
spiritual side to come forward. But, as I have just now indicated,
there is a limit to that process. We cannot always keep one leg first in
walking, and we do not want, in life, always to put the spiritual first,
nor always the material and sensual. The two sides in the long run have
to keep pace with each other.

And it may be that a great number of the very curious and seemingly
senseless taboos that we find among the primitive peoples can be partly
explained in this way: that is, that by ruling out certain directions
of activity they enabled people to concentrate more effectually, for
the time being, on other directions. To primitive folk the great world,
whose ways are puzzling enough in all conscience to us, must have been
simply bewildering in its dangers and complications. It was an amazement
of Fear and Ignorance. Thunderbolts might come at any moment out of the
blue sky, or a demon out of an old tree trunk, or a devastating plague
out of a bad smell--or apparently even out of nothing at all! Under
those circumstances it was perhaps wise, wherever there was the smallest
SUSPICION of danger or ill-luck, to create a hard and fast TABOO--just
as we tell our children ON NO ACCOUNT to walk under a ladder (thereby
creating a superstition in their minds), partly because it would take
too long to explain all about the real dangers of paint-pots and other
things, and partly because for the children themselves it seems simpler
to have a fixed and inviolable law than to argue over every case that
occurs. The priests and elders among early folk no doubt took the
line of FORBIDDAL of activities, as safer and simpler, even if
carried sometimes too far, than the opposite, of easy permission and
encouragement. Taboos multiplied--many of them quite senseless--but
perhaps in this perilous maze of the world, of which I have spoken,
it really WAS simpler to cut out a large part of the labyrinth, as
forbidden ground, thus rendering it easier for the people to find their
way in those portions of the labyrinth which remained. If you read in
Deuteronomy (ch. xiv) the list of birds and beasts and fishes permitted
for food among the Israelites, or tabooed, you will find the list on
the whole reasonable, but you will be struck by some curious exceptions
(according to our ideas),