Dalton (266) says of the Oraons in India:  “It is doubtful if they see any moral guilt in murder.”  But the most astounding race of professional murderers are the Dyaks of Borneo.  “Among them,” says Earl, “the more heads a man has cut off, the more he is respected.”  “The white man reads,” said a Dyak to St. John:  “we hunt heads instead.”  “Our Dyaks,” says Charles Brooke, “were eternally requesting to be allowed to go for heads, and their urgent entreaties often bore resemblance to children crying after sugar-plums.”  “An old Dyak,” writes Dalton, “loves to dwell upon his success on these hunting excursions, and the terror of the women and children taken affords a fruitful theme of amusement at their meetings.”  Dalton speaks of one expedition from which seven hundred heads were brought home.  The young women were carried off, the old ones killed and all the men’s heads were cut off.  Not that the women always escaped.  Among the Dusun, as a rule, says Preyer,

“the heads were obtained in the most cowardly way possible, a woman’s or child’s being just as good as a man’s ... so, as easier prey, the cowards seek them by lying in ambush near the plantations.”

Families are sometimes surprised while asleep and their heads cut off.  Brooke tells of a man who for awhile kept company with a countrywoman, and then slew her and ran off with her head.  “It ought to be called head-stealing not head-hunting," says Hatton; and Earl remarks: 

“The possession of a human head cannot be considered as a proof of the bravery of the owner for it is not necessary that he should have killed the victim with his own hands, his friends being permitted to assist him or even to perform the act themselves.”

It is to be noted that the Dyaks[7] are not in other respects a fierce and diabolical race, but are at home, as Doty attests, “mild, gentle, and given to hospitality.”  I call special attention to this by way of indirectly answering an objection frequently urged against my theory:  “How is it possible to suppose that a nation so highly civilized as the Greeks of Plato’s time should have known love for women only in its lower, carnal phases?” Well, we have here a parallel case.  The Dyaks are “mild, gentle, and hospitable,” yet their chief delight and glory is murder!  And as one of the main objects of this book is to dwell on the various obstacles which impeded the growth of romantic love, it will be interesting to glance for a moment at the causes which prevented the Dyaks from recognizing the sanctity of life.  Superstition is one of them; they believe that persons killed by them will be their slaves in the next world.  Pride is another.  “How many heads did your father get?” a Dyak will ask; and if the number given is less than his own, the other will say, “Well, then you have no occasion to be proud.”  A man’s rank in this world as in the next depends on the number of his skulls; hence the owner of a large