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.