In portions of Sumatra, law-breakers are neither imprisoned nor electrocuted, but actually carved up and eaten alive — piece by piece. The Capanagugas of South America make of their own stomachs the sepulchre of their dead relatives. A funeral with them is a banquet — the collation being a corpse. The Terra Del Fuegans throttle and eat all very old women.
The Monbuttas of Central Africa carry on aggressive wars to capture flesh food. They also dry human flitches in the sun and smoke them for export.
During the Tae Ping rebellion, Chinese soldiers (under General Gordon) were in the habit of cutting out and devouring the hearts of their dead enemies (on the battle-field) like the Maoris and Britons.
Mistresses were specially kept by opulent ancient Peruvians, to breed sucklings — for the table. When these women became too old for child-bearing, they were likewise cast into the pot, as useless encumbrances. In 1782 more than forty gypsies were executed in Austria, upon a proved charge of cannibalism. The case of the herdsman Goldsmidt, must not be forgotten; not the gruesome London legends, regarding sausages being manufactured out of dead cats, dead dogs, dead paupers, and murdered sailors.
The Ancient Scandinavians, Teutons, Celts, (vide St. Jerome), Sythians, Mongols, Sarmatians, Canaanites, Goths, and Huns were all anthropophagy.
Indeed the detailed facts of how men have tortured each other for pleasure, revenge, or profit, would fill 10, 000 volumes. No man in his lifetime could read or comprehend all the horrors that have been perpetrated say in the Tower of London, the Paris Bastille, the Spanish Inquisition, the Rhine Castle Dungeons, by the Bridge of Sighs, the Bosphorous, or in the prison-hells of Chicago, Newgate, Mazas, Siberia, Sing Sing, New Caledonia, Botany Bay or Van Dieman’s Land. The cold-blooded cruelty of man to man, surpasses anything that poet-cranks could conceive of, as happening in hell.
Cannibalism undoubtedly originated amid over-crowded populations in some pre-historic age. Among moderns (civilized and savage) it merely exists as a survival of social conditions which have long since passed away. At some former era of the world’s profoundly mysterious history, men-animals increased in swarming myriads as they are doing now; until at last on the surface of the soil there was scarcely standing room for all. Then the air became laden with the reeking effluvia of their strumous bodies, leprosy, poisoning the wells and rivers, and transforming Babylons into charnel houses and tombs. The rearing of tame cattle for food in such an environment, probably became too expensive and cumbersome. Perhaps even the cattle would also be swept away by some blight or rinderpest. Under such horrible circumstances, survivors might from necessity resort to anthropophagy. Gradually the new habit would grow upon them and become a settled custom.
The segmental fragments of pre-historic civilizations are — the Cannibal Savages of to-day — the savages that we are displacing, pushing aside in order that we may enslave them and repeat over again the same weary old round of growth, power and decay.
Shiploads of dead soldiers, dug out of old battle-fields, possess a regular commercial value. They are imported into England, to be chemically treated and manufactured into fertilizers for enriching exhausted wheat fields. Human hair commands a steady sale, and “cadavers” may be bought for dissection, in any great city for a dollar, C.O.D.
The tanning of human skins for glove-making and book-binding (Meudon!) is an old established industry.
The transfusion of blood from animals into human veins, and from healthy humans into unhealthy ones (for a price), is regularly practiced by medical men. The grafting of flesh, bone, and skin, has also been successfully performed.
American sheriffs and detectives hunt down tramps and criminals with specially trained bloodhounds, just as Russians hunt wolves, and sheepfarmers hunt coyotes and dingos. It is nowise unusual for Negros to be first captured, then chained to a stake, flayed alive, soaked in kerosene, and burnt to death amid exultant shrieks of corybantic delight.
Roman Senators fattened their lampreys and eels upon the drowned bodies of old worn out slaves, and patrician maids and matrons (with uplifted thumb) sent many a gladiator to kingdom come. For innate cruelty of deed, no animal can surpass woman.
In Mohammedan Europe, boys are unsexed by the lancet, that they may thereafter be more safely employed as harem-attendants and in Christian Europe “eunuchs are made and trained and priced, to sing the praise of a risen Christ.”
Young girls are nightly bought and sold for currency, like horses and hogs, at the street corners: and upon the profits of licensed polyandry “pillars of the church” become millionaires. Even the salaries of fulminating evangelists are paid out of Rahab’s rent.
Baths of human blood are not unknown to students of history: and Jack the Ripper, with his letters written in harlots’ blood; enclosing pieces of fried woman’s liver to the London Chief of Police, is certainly not a fabulous ancient legend.
Is this the record of a breed of “dearly beloved brethren”? What hollow mockery these holy phrases are, to be sure? — The Brotherhood of man! Ha!Ha! The Brotherhood of Devils rather!
Allegorically speaking the clothes we wear — the houses we live in — the food we eat — the books we read, have been carved (by force) out of other men’s bones and flesh. Literally they are the hides, sinews, flesh, pulp, and outer woolen covering of captive animals, transmuted by human slavery into garments, lumber, implements, thoughts, shoes, and daily dinners. Indeed man’s tushes are against all other animate beings whatsoever; and in turn, their fangs are against him. So it goes on, and on, and on, as merrily as marriage bells. Viæ Victus! And behold, it is good! This world is no Nirvana, where peaceful pleasure flows. It is a gruesome butcher-shop, where slain men hang in rows.
From the scientific point of view, it is but a single step from the eating of captive cattle, horses, sheep, hares, rabbits, deer, hogs, etc. to the eating of captive men.
It may grate upon unstrung nerves to be harshly told these gruesome facts in straight language. However, calm sensible readers must unreservedly admit that Man is not a pretty, harmless little cherub; not even a “lamb,” but the fiercest of all the vertebrates. He is the fighting, roving, pillaging, lusting, cannibalistic animal, par excellence — the King of the Great Carnivore. When he takes his walks abroad, the “wild beasts” of the field and the birds of the air, even the most courageous of them, are stricken dumb. Shuddering they fly from his shadow (or his odor down the wind) hiding in trembling and quaking with terror.
It is man’s destructive energy — not his altruism; that makes him absolute monarch of all he surveys; and yet, how feeble he is if compared to the powers of Nature that gave him being? No other beast will stand and face him, except it cannot run away — not even a snake, a tiger, or a wolf.
Structurally, men are fashioned for purposes of inflicting and suffering pain. Every human anatomy is an elaborate nerve and bone infernal machine — a kind of breathing, perambulating Juggernaut — a superb engine of lethal immolation that automatically stokes its furnace fires with its victims.
Men rush upon each other (or upon their prey) with hoarse war-shouts and bloodshot eyes, as prowling beasts of the deserts and jungles do. Man banquets upon his quarry with greediness, snarling, and growling with ferocious triumphant delight, just like unto wolves: but he loves to act the hypocrite — turn up the whites of his protesting eyes to ‘heaven’ — weep crocodile tears over his mangled, bleeding, and palpitating carrion. How exultantly he lilts his Te Deum, his Kyrie Eleison, his Et in terra pax, his Glorias, and his Alleluia’s; while with blood-clotted jaw and distended paunch he licks his gaping wounds?