So they [the Mbaya] were never lucky enough to resolve their contradictions, or to disguise them with the help of institutions artfully devised for that purpose. On the social level the remedy was lacking . . . but it never went completely out of their grasp. It was within them, never objectively formulated, but present as a source of confusion and disquiet. In fact, they dreamed of it: had they done so directly, it would have gone counter to their prejudices; but transposed, and present only in their art, it seemed harmless. The mysterious charm and . . . the gratuitous complication of Cadeveo art may well be a phantasm created by a society whose object was to give symbolical form to the institutions which it might have had in reality, had interest and superstition not stood in the way.