Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa

To treat her as a goddess has always been accounted a sure way of winning a lady's favour. To the cynic, therefore, it might seem that Mrs. McGovern was bound to speak well of her head-hunting friends of the Formosan hills, seeing that they welcomed her with a respect that bordered on veneration. But of other head-hunters, hailing, say, from Borneo or from Assam, anthropologists have reported no less well, and that though the investigators were accorded no divine honours. The key to a just estimate of savage morality is knowledge of all the conditions.

A custom that considered in itself is decidedly revolting may, on further acquaintance with the state of culture as a whole, turn out to be, if not praiseworthy, at least a drawback incidental to a normal phase of the ruder life of mankind.

The "grizzled warrior," we are told, who made oblation to our authoress, bore on his chin the honourable mark of the man-slayer. To her Chinese coolie that formidable badge would have been enough to proclaim the wearer seban-the kind of wicked animal that defends itself when attacked. Thus, if it merely served to warn an[10] invading alien to keep his distance, this crude advertisement of a head-hunting habit would be justified, from the standpoint of the survival of the hard-pressed aborigines. Even had a threat of cannibalism been thrown in, its protective value could hardly be denied; for, much as men object to be killed, they commonly deem it worse to be killed and eaten. Though reputed to be man-eaters, however, the savages of Formosa are not so in fact. Indeed, the boot is on the other foot. I remember Mr. Shinji Ishii telling us at a meeting of the Folk-lore Society that, despite their claim to a higher form of civilization, the Chinese of the adjoining districts will occasionally partake of a head-hunter, chopped up small and disguised in soup: the principle implied in the precaution being, I dare say, sound enough, namely, that of inoculation, though doubtless the application is unfortunate.

Meanwhile, head-hunting has for these wild-folk a function and significance that are not to be understood so long as we consider it as a thing apart. The same canon of interpretation holds good of any other outstanding feature of the social life. Customs are the organic parts of a body of custom. To use a technical expression, they are but so many elements composing a single "culture-complex." Modern research is greatly concerned with the tracing out of resemblances due to the spread of one or another system of associated customs. The method is to try to work back to some ethnic centre of diffusion; where the[11] characteristic elements of the system, whatever might have been their remoter derivation, have been thoroughly fused together, in the course of a long process of adaptation to a given environment. Thereupon it becomes possible to follow up the propagation of influence as it radiates from this centre in various directions outwards. Now it may well be that the tradition rarely, or never, is imparted in its entirety. Selection, or sheer accident, will cause not a little to be left behind. On the other hand, the chances are all against one custom setting forth by itself. Customs tend to emigrate in groups. Thus head-hunting, and a certain mode of tattooing, and the institution of the skull-shelf, and the requirement that a would-be husband must display a head as token of his prowess, are on the face of them associated customs, and such as are suited to have been travelling companions. Hence it is for the ethnologist to see whether he cannot refer the whole assortment to some intrusive culture of Indonesian or other origin.

Yet lest one good method should corrupt the science, we should not forget that there is another side to the study of culture; though from this side likewise there is equal need to examine customs, not apart, but in their organic connexion with each other. Whencesoever derived, the customs of a people have an ascertainable worth here and now for those who live by them. The first business, I should even venture to say, of any[12] anthropologist, be his sphere the study or the field, is to seek to appreciate a given culture as the expression of a scheme of values. Every culture represents a set of means whereby it is sought to realize a mode of life. Unconsciously for the most part, yet none the less actually, every human society pursues an ideal. To grasp this ideal is to possess the clue to the whole cultural process as a spiritual and vital movement. The social inheritance is subject to a constant revaluation, bringing readaptation in its train. There is a selective activity at work, and to apprehend its secret springs one must keep asking all the time, what does this people want, and want most? unconscious though it may largely be, the want is there. Correspondingly, since it is a question of getting into touch with a latent process, the anthropologist must employ a method which I can only describe as one of divination. He must somehow enter into the soul of a people. Introjection, or in plainer language sympathy, is the master-key. Objective methods so-called are all very well; but if, as sometimes happens, they lead one to forget that anthropology is ultimately the science of the inner man, then they but batter at a closed door.

A sure criterion, then, by which to appraise any account of a savage people consists in the measure of the sympathy shown. A summary sketch that has this saving quality will be found more illuminating than many volumes of statistics. Literally[13] or otherwise, the student of wild-folk must have undergone initiation at their hands. Having become as one of themselves, he is qualified to act as their spokesman, putting into such words as we can understand the felt needs and aspirations of a less self-conscious type of humanity. Here, for instance, Mrs. McGovern, though writing for the general public, and reserving a full digest of her material for another work, has sought to present an insider's version of the aboriginal life of Formosa. She was willing to become an initiate, and did in fact become so, almost overshooting the mark, as it were, through translation to a super-human plane. So throughout she tries to do justice to the native point of view. She says enough to make us feel that, despite certain notions more or less offensive to our conscience, the ideal of the Formosan tribesman is in important respects quite admirable. He is on the whole a good man according to his lights. Allowance being made for his handicap, he is playing the game of life as well as he can.

Having thus dealt briefly with principles of interpretation I perhaps ought to stop short, since an anthropologist as such has nothing to do with the bearing of his science on questions of political administration. Mrs. McGovern, however, has a good deal to say about the means whereby it is proposed to convert head-hunters into peaceable and useful citizens. Without going into the facts, upon which I am incompetent to throw any fresh[14] light, I might venture to make some observations of a general nature that depend on a principle already mentioned. This principle was, that to understand a people is to envisage its ideal. The practical corollary, I suggest, is that, to preserve a people, one must preserve its ideal so far as to leave its vital and vitalizing elements intact. In other words, in purging that ideal, as may be done and ought to be done when it is sought to lift a backward people out of savagery, great care should be taken not to wreck their whole scheme of values, to cause all that has hitherto made life worth living for them to seem cheap and futile. Given sympathetic insight into their dream of the good life-one that is, probably, not unlike ours in its main essentials-it ought to prove feasible to curtail noxious practices by substituting better ways of satisfying the same needs. Contact with civilization is apt to produce among savages a paralysis of the will to live. More die of depression than of disease or drink. They lose their interest in existence. Their spirit is broken. When the policy is to preserve them, the mere man of science can lend a hand by pointing out what indeed every experienced administrator knows by the time he has bought his experience at other people's expense. Given, then, the insider's point of view, a sense of what the savage people itself wants and is trying for, and given also patience in abundance, civilization may effectively undertake to fulfil, instead of destroying.

R. R. Marett.