ABSTRACT
Cannibalism figured considerably in ancient literature. Cannibalism to-day has chiefly a historic and a literary interest. We find no injunction against cannibalism, or eating one's children, among the crimes on the statute books. A man who would commit cannibalism among us would be sent to an insane institution. There are no laws against a thing when no one has the least inclination to do it. Society recognises that the instinct for cannibalism is dead, but it is nevertheless in our unconscious. Our psyche never forgets the episodes in the lives of our ancestors. The only places where there are laws against cannibalism are in savage countries where there is a disposition to practise it; and these laws are made by colonists. The custom of human sacrifices and cannibalism died out among the Greeks, and in AEschylus's trilogy we have the horror reaction of the educated Greek against these institutions.
