+627+. From all the facts known it may be concluded that the conception of taboo exists or has existed in some form in a great part of the world,[1044] though its development has differed greatly in different regions. In general its prevalence appears to have been in inverse proportion to that of totemism--it is lacking or feeble in the chief totemic centers, Australia and North America, and strongest in Polynesia, where totemism is hardly recognizable. It may be said that, while totemism appears in those forms of social life that have been created by hunting communities,[1045] taboo is the product of more settled societies, in which agriculture plays an important part. But while this is true, at least in a general way, we are not able to trace all the influences that have determined the development of totemism and taboo; some of these are lost in the obscurity of the remote past, and, unfortunately for purposes of investigation, both taboo and totemism, as we now meet them in actual operation, are in process of decay. Why, for instance, taboo has flourished in Hawaii with its fishing industries and has not flourished in certain half-civilized, partly agricultural North American tribes we are unable to explain precisely. We may fall back on the vague statement that every community has accomplished that for which its genius fitted it, but how the genius of any one people has fitted it for this or that particular task it is not always possible to say.
+628+. _The disappearance of the taboo system_ in civilized nations is to be referred to the general advance in intelligence and morality. Usually this movement is a gradual and silent one, marked by a quiet dropping of usages as they come to be held unnecessary or oppressive. Sometimes a bold individual rebels against the established custom and successfully introduces a new era: thus in Yoruba, under an old custom, when a king died his eldest son was obliged to commit suicide; this custom was set at defiance by a certain Adelu in 1860, and has not since been observed.[1046] All the influences that tend to broaden thought go to displace taboo. The growth of clans into tribes, the promotion of voluntary organizations, secret societies, which displace the old totemistic groups, the growth of agriculture and of commercial relations--all things, in a word, that tend to make the individual prominent and to further family life lead naturally to the abrogation of oppressive taboos.