ABSTRACT
"Incest, as people know", says Van Ossenbruggen, "is the greatest defilement imaginable". Since he is exposed to a multitude of evil influences, known or unknown, which may exert their power upon him at any moment, the primitive is ever in dread of being either attacked by some misfortune, in other words, bewitched, or else rendered unclean, which to him is pretty much the same thing. The words "clean, unclean, defiled" have many meanings for the primitive's mind; they have a figurative sense, a derivative sense, and yet others. The original meaning, according to the foregoing instances, seems to be: "exposed to an evil influence, under the threat of misfortune". To the primitive's mind, indeed, to cleanse or purify is frequently the same thing as to fortify. Every defilement entails a state of inferiority. Even in the communities where primitives do distinguish between deaths that are "natural" and the others, death still remains the King of Terrors.
