Familiarize your mind with the idea, and all difficulties
vanish. It is only the last step which costs,--not the first.
There are many more reasons that might be urged in favor of the
Fijians. We are not aware that the reverend missionaries have given
any statistical tables, showing a regularity in the annual numbers of
consumed persons, male and female, classed according to the reasons why
consumed; but no one can doubt that such tables might be given, and if
so, the whole question of anthropophagism could be very easily buckled
up in a tidy little valise. The Fijians, in the plural, we take it,
have little or nothing to do with it; it is the abstract, will-less,
impersonal Fijian--who, according to the learned Ferrari,[A] would be
called, now, Podesta Fijian, now Consul Fijian, now Papa Fijianus--that
snuffs the flavor of his own dear natural _pot a feu_; and Right
or Wrong, Just or Unjust, Commendable or Revolting, are schoolboy
distinctions, no longer recognized by the philosophical historian, who
treats all moral questions and national movements like questions of
natural philosophy,--like social chemistry, in which so puerile a word
as poison has no place.
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