e, and forms the basis of a consistent system of practice;
whereas, when the rules of uncleanness are made to rest on the will of
the gods, they appear altogether arbitrary and meaningless. The affinity
of such taboos with laws of uncleanness comes out most clearly when we
observe that uncleanness is treated like a contagion, which has to be
washed away or otherwise eliminated by physical means. Take the rules
about the uncleanness produced by the carcases of vermin in Lev. 11:32
ff.; whatever they touch must be washed; the water itself is then
unclean, and can propagate the contagion; nay, if the defilement affect
an (unglazed) earthen pot, it is supposed to sink into the pores, and
cannot be washed out, so that the pot must be broken. Rules like this
have nothing in common with the spirit of Hebrew religion; they can
only be remains of a primitive superstition, like that of the savage who
shuns the blood of uncleanness, and such like things, as a supernatural
and deadly virus. The antiquity of the Hebrew taboos, for such they are,
is shown by the way in which many of them reappear in Arabia; cf. for
example Deut. 21:12, 13, with the Arabian ceremonies for removing the
impurity of widowhood. In the Arabian form the ritual is of purely
savage type; the danger to life that made it unsafe for a man to marry
the woman was transferred in the most materialistic way to an animal,
which it was believed generally died in consequence, or to a bird.

B. PUBLIC OPINION

1. The Myth[266]

There is no process by which the future can be predicted scientifically,
nor even one which enables us to discuss whether one hypothesis about it
is better than another; it has been proved by too many memorable
examples that the greatest men have committed prodigious errors in thus
desiring to make predictions about even the least distant future.

And yet, without leaving the present, without reasoning about this
future, which seems forever condemned to escape our reason, we should be
unable to act at all. Experience shows that the _framing of a future, in
some indeterminate time_, may, when it is done in a certain way, be very
effective, and have very few inconveniences; this happens when the
anticipations of the future take the form of those myths, which enclose
with them all the strongest inclinations of a people, of a party, or of
a class, inclinations which recur to the mind with the insistence of
instincts in all the circumstances of