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REFLECTIONS ON
feeling which has been lost to us civilized beings.[1]
Pious souls, who would like to think us removed from contact with what is evil and mean, will surely not fail to draw satisfactory conclusions in regard to the strength of the ethical impulses which have been implanted in us from these early and forcible murder prohibitions. Unfortunately this argument proves even more for the opposite contention.
Such a powerful inhibition can only be directed against an equslly strong impulse. What no human being desires to do does not have to be forbidden, it is self-exclusive. The very emphasis of the commandment: Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we are descended from an endlessly long chain of generations of
- ↑ Totem and Taboo, Chapter IV.
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