DOBU 159 
behaviour at the taking of life in attempted suicide, but it 
makes it clear that the appeal in both cases is not to be 
pity and support even of one's relatives. Rather, in the 
extremity of humiliation, the Dobuan projects upon him- 
self and his possessions the maliciousness and the will to 
destroy which are required in all his institutions. He is 
limited to the same technique, though he uses it in these 
instances against himself. 
Life in Dobu fosters extreme forms of animosity and 
malignancy which most societies have minimized by their 
institutions. Dobuan institutions, on the other hand, 
exalt them to the highest degree. The Dobuan lives out 
without repression man's worst nightmares of the ill-will 
of the universe, and according to his view of life virtue 
consists in selecting a victim upon whom he can vent the 
malignancy he attributes alike to human society and to the 
powers of nature. All existence appears to him as a cut- 
throat struggle in which deadly antagonists are pitted 
against one another in a contest for each one of the goods 
of life. Suspicion and cruelty are his trusted weapons in 
the strife and he gives no mercy, as he asks none.