The subject of cannibalism cannot be omitted from such an inquiry. The consideration of this revolting instinct and practice becomes imperative because there are grounds, derived both from history and psychology, for believing that cannibalism, either as a primitive or corrupted instinct, has at one time or other been universally prevalent, has characterised certain states or stages in the progress of every race. This proposition does not exclude the existence, either originally or in certain stages of progress, of purely vegetarian nations. We are so accustomed to regard modern communities in their civilised and mature condition, and in the same manner as the ancients fabled Minerva starting from the front of Jove, perfect, graceful, armed, that we forget that nations had beginnings, that their growth was from a mist or a myth which we cannot grasp, or that they emerged from barbarism so gross and degraded that we can scarcely realise its enormity. It would be a vain and futile task to establish by reference the proposition that a craving for human flesh, or, at all events, its use as food, preceded the habits and manners of civilised life, and we shall confine the allegation to our own progenitors as conveying a lesson at once to our pride and to our philosophy. Montalembert, after eloquently painting the striking and pleasing contrast between the aspect and social state of the west of Scotland, between 412 and 1867, perhaps the very spot in which these words are now written, says “Dion, Strabonius, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome have emulated each other in painting the horrible cruelty, the savage and brutal habits of those inhabitants of North Britain, who, successively known under the name of Caledonians, Scots, or Picts, were most probably nothing more than the descendants of the British tribes whom Rome had not been able to subdue. All agree in denouncing the incestuous intercourse of their domestic existence, and they have even been accused of cannibalism.”