VI. SLAVERY…

VI. SLAVERY

Origin and motives.--Slavery taught steady labor.--Servitude of group to group.--Slavery and polygamy.--Some men serve others.--Freedom and equality.--Figurative use of "slave."-- Ethnography of slavery.--Family slavery.--Slavery amongst North American savages.--Slavery in South America.--Slavery in Polynesia and Melanesia.--Slavery in the East Indies.--Slavery in Asia.--Slavery in Japan.--Slavery in higher civilization.-- Slavery amongst Jews.--Slavery in the classical states.-- Slavery at Rome.--Slave revolts.--Later Roman slavery.--Slaves in the civil wars; clientage.--Manumission. Natural liberty.-- Slavery as represented in the inscriptions.--Rise of freedom in industry.--Freedmen in the state.--Philosophers opponents of slavery.--The industrial colleges.--Laws changed in favor of slaves.--Christianity and slavery.--The colonate.-- Depopulation.--Summary view of Roman slavery.--The Therapeuts.--Slavery amongst the Germanic nations.--The sale of children.--Slavery and the state.--Slavery in Europe. Italy in the Middle Ages.--Slavery in France.--Slavery in Islam.-- Review of slavery in Islam.--Slavery in England.--Slavery in America.--Colonial slavery.--Slavery preferred by slaves.--The future of slavery.--Relation of slavery to the mores and to ethics.

+270. Origin and motives.+ Slavery is a thing in the mores which is not well covered by our definition. Slavery does not arise in the folkways from the unconscious experimentation of individuals who have the same need which they desire to satisfy, and who try in separate acts to do it as well as they can. It is rather due to ill feeling towards members of an out-group, to desire to get something for nothing, to the love of dominion which belongs to vanity, and to hatred of labor. "The simple wish to use the bodily powers of another person, as a means of ministering to one's own ease or pleasure, is doubtless the foundation of slavery, and as old as human nature."[625] "There is an extraordinary power of tyranny invested in the chiefs of tribes and nations of men that so vastly outweighs the analogous power possessed by the leaders of animal herds as to rank as a special attribute of human society, eminently conducive to slavishness."[626] The desire to get ease or other good by the labor of another, and the incidental gratification to vanity, seem to be the fundamental principles in slavery, when philosophically regarded, after the rule of one man over others has become established. The whole group, however, must approve of the custom and must enforce it; otherwise it cannot exist. It appears that slavery began historically with the war captive, if he or she was not put to death, as he was liable to be by the laws of war. Those laws put the defeated, with his wife, children, and property, at the mercy of the victors. The defeated might be tortured to death, as was done amongst the North American Indians, or they might be saved from death by the women. Then they were put to help the women and were rated as women. Slavery, therefore, in its origin, was a humanitarian improvement in the laws of war, and an alleviation of the status of women. It seems to be established that it began where the economic system was such that there was a gain in making a slave of a war captive instead of killing him. It follows that slavery, wherever it has existed, has affected all the mores of the society. It promised great results gratis. It will appear below that it has been a terrible afrit, a demon which promised service but which became a master. When adopted into the folkways it has dominated and given tone and color to them all. That is the reason for giving it a place here.

+271. Slavery taught steady labor.+ It seems to be also right to understand that slavery proved to be a great schoolmaster to teach men steady work. If that view is correct, we must understand that no men would do any hard, persistent work if they could help it. The defeated were forced to it, and learned to submit to it. Then they helped the whole society up to a higher status, in which they also shared.[627] Von Goetzen gives some proof of this when he states that he and his troop of carriers sat by the camp fire evenings and that one after another told his life. "Nearly all had been, as children, brought from the inner country to the coast by slave dealers. Now they were proud of this slavery, proud of belonging to the 'cultivated' and of not being any longer 'wild' men."[628] In that view slavery is a part of the discipline by which the human race has learned how to carry on the industrial organization. There are some tasks which have been very hard and very disagreeable. Comrades in an in-group have never forced these on each other. It seemed to be good fun, as well as wise policy, to make members of a rival out-group do these tasks, after defeating them in war. For women the grinding of seeds (grain) always was a heavy burden until modern machinery brought natural powers to do it. For men the rowing of boats (galleys) has been a very hard kind of work.[629] After slavery came to exist it was extended to other cases, even to some classes of cases in the in-group. Of these cases the first was that of debt. Amongst the Eveans a debtor who cannot pay is put to death. This, however, is a very exceptional rule.[630] The course of thought is, that a debtor has used another man's product and is bound to replace it. He therefore falls into servitude to his creditor in fact, whether it is so expressed or not. He must live on and work for the creditor. Another case in which slavery was introduced was that of crime. The criminal fell under obligations of restitution of value to an individual or to the whole (chief). Other cases of extension of slavery will appear below. We have many cases of groups exploited by other groups. The former are then inferior and despised groups who are tyrannized over by others who have beaten them in war or easily could do so.

+272. Servitude of group to group.+ Agriculture is a peaceful occupation, the pursuit of which breeds out the physical strength of nomadism. The cases in which nomads rule over tillers belong, in general, under this head, more especially because such a difference in the economy of life produces mutual contempt and hatred. The Israelites entered Canaan as nomads, and their relation to the Canaanites was that which is here described. Another case is presented by the smiths, who generally appear as the earliest handicraftsmen, but are regarded with doubt and suspicion. They are not slaves, but they are treated as outcasts. Very often, in case of conquest by an invading tribe, the smiths remain under the invaders as a subject and despised caste. The Masarva are descendants of Betchuanas and Bushmen. They stand in a relation of slaves to the Betchuanas, Matabele, and Marutse, in whose land they dwell, except that they may not be sold.[631] The Vaganda are subject to the Vahuma.[632] The latter keep out of sight, being inferior in civilization but greater in power. Von Goetzen also met with the Vahuma as rulers over the Vahuta, i.e. "belongers," as they called them.[633] The Arabs hold the negroes of Borku in subjection and rob them of the date harvest.[634] In other parts of the same district a nomad section rules over a settled section of the same population.[635] Nomads hold themselves to be the proper ones to rule.[636] The Hyksos's invasion of Egypt is a case of the subjection of tillers by nomads, attended by all the contempt of men on one grade of civilized effort for those on another.[637] The combination of the two, the nomads forming the ruling caste of military nobles, forms a strong state.[638] The Tuaregs of the Sahara do not allow the inhabitants of Kauar to raise vegetables or grains, but force them to buy the same of them (the Tuaregs), which they bring to them from the Sudan to buy salt, which the Kauar dwellers must have ready.[639] The Akarnanians, in 1350, sold themselves to the barbarians, in a body, in order to escape want.[640] The Masai are another group of warriors and raiders. The Varombutta do their hunting and tilling for them.[641] The Makololo hold the Makalaka in similar serfdom, but the subjection is easy and the servitude light, because the subject individuals can easily run away.[642] The Hupa of California hold their neighbors in similar subjection and in tributary servitude.[643] Other cases are furnished by the Vanyambo, west of the Victoria Nyassa,[644] and the Djur, who long served the Nubians as smiths.[645] It gives us pleasure to learn that, about sixty years ago, the inferior tribes on Uvea (Tai), of the Loyalty group, revolted against the dominant tribe and nearly exterminated it.[646]

+273. Slavery and polygamy.+ Such instances show us the existence in human nature of a tendency of stronger groups to exploit weaker ones in the struggle for existence; in other words, slavery or forced labor is one way in which, in elementary civilization, the survival of the fittest group is brought about. The slavery of individuals has not the same definite result on the competition of life. "We find polygamy and slavery continually at work dissolving the cohesion of old political institutions in the old civilized races of Asia and Africa. In an uncivilized society, like that of Zululand, they prevent such cohesion ever taking place. They help to keep the Kaffir tribes in perpetual unrest and barbarism, by destroying the germs of civilization and preventing its growth."[647] That the two have this effect in common may very probably be true, but in many respects they are antagonistic to each other. Slavery meets the necessity for many laborers which may otherwise be a cause for polygamy. Wherever slavery exists it affords striking illustrations of the tendency of the mores towards consistency with each other, and that means, of course, their tendency to cluster around some one or two leading ones. Africa now furnishes the leading proofs of this. The negro society is one in which physical force is the chief deciding element. The negroes have enslaved each other for thousands of years. Very few of them have ever become slaves to whites without having been previously slaves to other negroes. In 1875 it was reckoned that twenty thousand persons, chiefly women and children whose male relatives had generally been killed, were taken into slavery from around Lake Nyassa. The difficulties and expense of the slave trade in that region became so great that it could not be carried on except by alliance with one tribe which defeated and enslaved another and sold the survivors. The Arabs opened paths for ivory hunting. The slave dealers used these means of communication. They established garrisons in order to exploit the territory, and ended by depopulating it.[648] Junker argues earnestly against the impression which has been established in Europe that Arabs are chiefly to blame for slavery. "There are places in Africa where three men cannot be sent on a journey together for fear two of them may combine and sell the third."[649]

+274. Some men serving others. Freedom and equality. Figurative use of "slavery."+ Must we infer, then, that there is a social necessity that some men must serve others? In the New Testament it is taught that willing and voluntary service of others is the highest duty and glory of human life. If one man's strength is spent on another man's struggle for existence, the survival of the former in the competition of life is impaired. The men of talent are constantly forced to serve the rest. They make the discoveries and inventions, order the battles, write the books, and produce the works of art. The benefit and enjoyment go to the whole. There are those who joyfully order their own lives so that they may serve the welfare of mankind. The whole problem of mutual service is the great problem of societal organization. Is it a dream, then, that all men should ever be free and equal? It is at least evident that here ethical notions have been interjected into social relations, with the result that we have been taught to think of free and equal units willingly serving each other. That, at least, is an idealistic dream. Yet it no more follows from the fact that slavery has done good work in the history of civilization that slavery should forever endure than it follows from the fact that war has done good work in the history of civilization that war is, in itself, a good thing. Slavery alleviated the status of women; the domestication of beasts of draft and burden alleviated the status of slaves; we shall see below that serfs got freedom when wind, falling water, and steam were loaded with the heavy tasks. Just now the heavy burdens are borne by steam; electricity is just coming into use to help bear them. Steam and electricity at last mean coal, and the amount of coal in the globe is an arithmetical fact. When the coal is used up will slavery once more begin? One thing only can be affirmed with confidence; that is, that as no philosophical dogmas caused slavery to be abolished, so no philosophical dogmas can prevent its reintroduction if economic changes should make it fit and suitable again. As steam has had put upon it the hard work of life during the last two hundred years, the men have been emancipated from ancient hard conditions and burdens, and the generalities of the philosophers about liberty have easily won greater and greater faith and currency. However, the mass of mankind, taught to believe that they ought to have easy and pleasant times here, begin to complain again about "wages slavery," "debt slavery," "rent slavery," "sin slavery," "war slavery," "marriage slavery," etc. What men do not like they call "slavery," and so prove that it ought not to be. It appears to be still in their experience that a free man is oppressed by contracts of wages, debt, rent, and marriage, and that the cost of making ready for war and of warding off sin are very heavy. Political institutions readjust and redistribute the burdens of life over a population, and they change the form of the same perhaps, but the burdens are in the conditions of human life. They are always present, and political institutions never can do away with them at all. Therefore slavery, if we mean by it subjection to the conditions of human life, never can be abolished.

+275. Ethnographical illustrations of slavery.+ In Togo male slaves work in the fields where yams are cultivated. Each carries a basket in which he has a chicken, which will live on worms and insects in the field. The slave is soon married. He has two days in the week to work for himself. One of his grown boys can replace him on the other four. He can buy a slave to replace him. Thus they often attain to wealth, freedom, and power. A female slave, if married to a free man, becomes free. This form of slavery is only a mode of service. The slave lives with the family, and enjoys domestic consideration. There is also debt slavery, the whole family being responsible for the debt of a member.[650] Klose, however, describes the ruin wrought by slave raids. "Murder and incendiarism are the orders in this business. Great villages and districts are made deserts and are depopulated by the raids." "It is not in negro nature to subject one's self voluntarily to labor. The negro wants to be compelled to work." The fetich priest gives him a harmless drink, which is to be fatal to him if he tries to run away.[651] The Ngumba in south Kamerun hold their slaves in huts near their own houses. A mishandled slave can leave his master and demand the protection of another. A debtor who cannot pay becomes slave of his creditor until the debt is paid in value, but this does not free him. He can pay also by his wife or daughter.[652] Amongst the Ewe-speaking tribes a woman who is condemned to a fine may sell or pawn her children, if her husband will not give her the amount to be paid. The husbands often hold back until the women pawn the children to them, whereby they obtain complete control of the children.[653] Their slaves are criminals and debtors, or, if foreigners, are victims of war or of kidnapping. They are not regarded with contempt, are well treated, do not have as hard a lot as an English agricultural laborer, and often attain to wealth and honor. The master-owner may not kill a slave.[654] In Bornu the women slaves find favor in the eyes of their masters, and by amiability win affection. If they have children they win a firm position, "for only the most stringent circumstances could compel a Moslem, whose ideas are reasonably correct, to sell the mother of his children."[655] The Somal and Afar do not deal much in slaves. They use women and a pariah class. A Somal is never slave to a Somal, and war captives are not made slaves. Also amongst the Galla it appears that debtor slavery does not exist. Criminal slavery does, however, exist, and is used by the chiefs. It is honorable to treat slaves well. In Kaffa the slaves are lazy and pretentious, because they know that their owners do not look to them for labor, but speculate on their children, whom they will sell.[656] In general, in East Africa, the master-owner has not the power of life and death, and the slave has a right of property. "A headman (of a village) in debt sells first his slaves, then his sisters, then his mother, and lastly his free wives, after which he has nothing left."[657] Stuhlmann[658] says that slaves in Uganda are well treated, as members of the family. Brunache[659] says the same of the Congo tribes so far as they have not been contaminated by contact with whites. This may be regarded as characteristic of African slavery. The Vanika of eastern Africa are herding nomads. They cannot use slaves, and make war only to steal cattle.[660] Bushmen love liberty. They submit to no slavery. They are hunters of a low grade. They hate cattle, as the basis of a life which is different from (higher than) their own. They massacre cattle which they cannot steal or carry away.[661] Mungo Park described free negroes reduced to slavery by famine.[662] In Ashanti a man and a woman discovered in the act in the bush, or in the open air, are slaves of him who discovered them, but they are redeemable by their families.[663] Ashanti slavery is domestic and very mild. The slave marries his master's daughter and plays with the master. He also eats from the same dish.[664] Slavery of this form is never cruel or harsh. Debt slavery is harder, for the services of the pawn count for nothing on the debt.[665] The effect of the abolition of slavery in Algeria was stupor amongst master-owners and grief amongst slaves. The former wondered how it could be wrong to care for persons who would have been eaten by their fellow-countrymen if they had succumbed to the hard struggle for existence at home. The latter saw themselves free--really free--in the desert, with no supply of food, clothing, or other supplies, and no human ties.[666] In all families of well-to-do people little negroes are found. The author saw one who told her that the lady of the house had suckled him.[667] It is reported from eastern Borneo that a white man could hire no natives for wages. They thought it degrading to work for wages, but if he would buy them they would work for him.[668] In spite of what has been said above about slavery on the west coast of Africa it is to be remembered that the master-owner has the power of life and death and that he often uses it. If he is condemned to death for a crime, he can give a slave to be executed in his place.[669] In eastern Angola, if a woman dies in childbirth, her husband has to pay her parents. If he cannot, he becomes their slave.[670] In South Africa Holub found that the fiercest slave chasers were blacks, who had slaves at home and treated them worse than Mohammedans ever did.[671] Formerly a Kaffir would work in the diamond mines for three marks a day until he got money enough to buy cattle and to buy a woman at home, a European suit, a kettle, and a rifle. Then he went home and set up an establishment. Then he would return to earn more and buy more wives, who would support him to his life's end.[672] The stronger Hottentot tribes hold classes of their own population, or mountain Damara and Bushmen, in servitude, although no law defines a "slave." Those people hold the treatment they receive to be due to their origin. Amongst all South African tribes the rich exert their power to subjugate the poor, who hang upon them in a kind of clientage, hoping to receive something. Cruelty and even murder are not punished by the judges.[673]

+276. Family slavery.+ The savage form of slavery in Africa furnishes us one generalization which may be adopted with confidence. Whenever slaves live in a family, sharing in the family life and associating freely with the male members of it in work, religion, play, etc., the slavery is of a very light type and implies no hardship for the slave.

+277. Slavery in North America among savages.+ Slavery is believed to have existed amongst the Indians of Virginia. "They made war, not for land or goods, but for women and children, whom they put not to death, but made them do service."[674] The young men and slaves worked in the fields of the Mississippi valley. The latter were not overworked.[675] The Algonquins made slaves of their prisoners, especially of the women and children.[676] The Illinois are represented as an intermediate party who got slaves in the South and sold them in the West.[677] The Wisconsin tribes used to make captives of Pawnees, Osages, Missouris, and Mandans. When Pawnees were such captives (slaves) they were treated with severity.[678] In the Gulf region of North America slavery was common from the earliest times. That slaves might not escape, a sinew in the leg was cut, by the Six Nations.[679] On the northwestern coast of North America slavery was far more developed than east of the Rocky Mountains. In Oregon and Washington slavery was interwoven with the social polity. Slaves were also harshly treated, as property, not within the limits of humanity. For a man to kill a half dozen of his own slaves was a sign of generous magnanimity on his part. One tribe stole captives from its weaker neighbors. Hence the slave trade is an important part of the commerce of all the tribes up to Alaska.[680] In 1841 it was reckoned that one third of the entire population from northern British Columbia to southern Alaska were "slaves of the most helpless and abject description." "The great supply was obtained by trade with the southern Indians, in which the Tsimshian acted as middlemen. They were kidnapped or captured by the southern Indians from their own adjacent tribes and sold to the Tsimshian, who traded them to the northern Thlinkit and interior Tinne tribes for furs." "Slaves did all the drudgery, fished for their owner, strengthened his force in war, were not allowed to hold property or to marry, and when old and worthless were killed. The master's power was unlimited." The slave must commit any crime at the command of the master. The slaves were set free at some ceremonies, but they were put to death at the funerals of chiefs, or as foundation sacrifices, or in reparation for insults or wrongs. The northern Indians were more warlike and would not make good slaves. The Oregon flatheads were docile and industrious.[681] The Chinooks became the wealthiest tribe in the region by acting as middlemen to sell war captives taken inland as far from home as possible.[682] Amongst the Thlinkits slaves are forbidden to wear the labret, and sex intercourse with a slave woman disgraces a free man.[683] "Amongst the early Central Americans the slave who achieved any feat of valor in war received his liberty and was adopted by the Capulli, or clan."[684] In Mexico there were slaves of three classes,--criminals, war captives, and persons who had voluntarily sold themselves or had been sold by their parents. The captor generally sacrificed a prisoner, but might hold him as a slave. Those who sold themselves did so to get a fund for gambling. There was a public slave mart at Azcapuzalco. The system is described as kind, but slaves might lose their lives through the act of the master at feasts or funerals.[685] "Actual slavery of the Indians in Mexico continued as late as the middle of the seventeenth century."[686] It is evident that slavery existed all over North and Central America, but was more developed on the Pacific coast than in the Mississippi valley. The meat eaters of the buffalo region had less opportunity to use the institution.[687]

+278. Slavery in South America.+ In South America we also meet with at least one case of a tribe, or part of a tribe, which is in clientage to another tribe. This is a subdivision of the third rank of the Mbaya, who voluntarily entered into a relation of clientage to the Mbaya, giving them service under arms, and in house and field, without being their slaves, being protected in return by the powerful and feared tribe.[688] The Guykurus carry on frequent wars to get captives, whom they keep in stringent servitude. "There is, perhaps, no tribe of South American Indians, among whom the state of slavery is so distinctly marked as among them." Slaves and free do not intermarry, lest marriage be profaned. There is no way in which a slave may become free.[689] The Guykurus are the strongest tribe in the valley of the Paraguay. They have horses and were called by the Portuguese Cavalleiros.[690] In Brazil it was thought that the cultivation of the country was impossible unless the Indians were made slaves. The early laws and orders of the kings of Portugal seem to reveal a sincere desire to control greed and cruelty. In 1570 private slave raids were forbidden and slavery was confined to those captured in public and just war. Lisbon, however, became a great slave mart by the law that slaves passing from one colony (Africa) to another (America) must pass through Lisbon and pay a tax there. Peter Martyr is quoted that slavery was necessary for Indians who, if they had no master, would go on with their old customs and idolatry. Slavery killed them, however. It did not make them laborers.[691] In general, in the valley of the Yapura, in the first half of the nineteenth century, slaves were war captives who were very unkindly treated.[692] The aborigines began to sell their war captives to Europeans soon after the latter arrived. They wanted rosewood especially, and they took Indians to Africa as slaves.[693] Boggiani[694] expresses the opinion in regard to the savages of the Chaco, as the meadow region on the Paraguay river is called, that slavery amongst a people of more civilized mores, is, for them, "an incalculable benefit," and that "to hinder slavery, in such circumstances, would be a capital error." "It is necessary to force them to come out of their brutelike condition, and to awaken their intelligence, which is not wanting, if they receive practical and energetic direction." Bridges[695] says that one Fuegian is thrown into clientage to another by their mode of life. "For a young man, with no wife and few relatives, must live with some one who can protect him, and with whom he can live in comfort, whose wife or wives can catch fish for him, etc."

+279. Slavery in Polynesia and Melanesia.+ Polynesia, Melanesia, and the East Indies, especially the last, present us pictures of a society which is old and whose mores have been worn threadbare, while their stage of civilization is still very low. Codrington[696] says: "There is no such thing as slavery, properly so called. In head-hunting expeditions prisoners are made for the sake of their heads, to be used when occasion requires, and such persons live with their captors in a condition very different from that of freedom, but they are not taken or maintained for the purposes of slaves." Ratzel[697] says: "Slavery prevailed everywhere in Melanesia, originating either in war or debt. Sometimes it was hard; sometimes not." Somerville says that "slaves are kept chiefly for their heads, which are demanded whenever any occasion necessitates them, such as the death of the owner." He is speaking of the Solomon Islands.[698] What Finsch says of the Melanesians may be extended to all the inhabitants of the South Sea islands.[699] They will not work because they do not need to. They have few wants. Pfeil wants to make the people of German Melanesia work, in order that they may contribute to the tasks of the human race. The problem presents one of the great reasons for slavery in history.

+280. Slavery in the East Indies.+ The chief of Chittagong[700] wrote to the English governor, in 1774, that slavery in his district was due to the sale of himself by any person who was destitute, and had no friends or position. He and his wife must serve the master and his wife in any desired way, including services which a free servant would not perform, "through fear of demeaning himself and disgracing his family." Abolition of this slavery would produce complaints by the masters, and would not please the servants who are used to it. "Until lately the universal custom prevailed in the hills of having debtor slaves." The debtor gave one of his children or a female relative to serve as a menial until the debt should be paid. The pawned persons "were treated as members of the creditor's family and never exposed to harsh usage." The effect of interference by the English was that the wives and daughters of the great men suddenly had to do all the housework. "Debtor and creditor lost confidence in each other."[701] "There is a detestable and actual slavery in these hills, which is now only carried on by independent tribes, beyond English jurisdiction. This is the captivity to the bow and spear,--men and women taken prisoners by force in war, and sold from master to master. The origin of this custom was the want of women."[702] In the Chin hills there are slaves who are war captives, or criminals, or debtors, and others who are voluntary slaves, or slaves by birth. The master had full power of life and death, but, in fact, slaves were well treated. The people made raids on the Burmese lowlands and seized captives who were held for ransom. A slave man cohabits with a slave woman and brings up his children with affection "in the same humble, but not necessarily unhappy, position as his own."[703] In Ceylon there were slave persons of all ranks. Those of royal rank were princes who were prisoners or criminals. Any one might obtain slaves by purchase, or accept voluntary slaves who looked to him for good support.[704] A Malay will buy of a chief a number of war captives whom he takes to an island. Then he goes to a Chinaman and tells him that the slaves want to work on that island, but still owe the speaker the cost of transportation. The Chinaman pays this and gives to the slaves, on credit, clothes, etc., including money with which to gamble. Wages are low and interest high. They never can pay their debts and get their freedom again. This kind of slave trade has depopulated northern Nias.[705] On Sumatra, when a debtor is called upon to pay and cannot, or when he dies and does not leave enough property to pay his debts, his children fall into semi-slavery. They can perhaps persuade some one to pay their debts and accept their services. If their master formally three times demands payment of them which they cannot give, they fall into full slavery. Slavery exists in the Malay seaport towns, but not in the rural districts, where life is too simple.[706] In times of famine and want parents sell their children into slavery for a little rice. Children, especially daughters, constitute a large part of the fortune of a house father.[707]

At Koetei, on the Mahakkam in Borneo, all well-to-do people have debtors in pawn, whose position is somewhat better than that of slaves. The debtors seem content and submissive. Captives taken on head-hunting expeditions are held as slaves until human sacrifices are wanted.[708] The souls of all those who are put to death at the death of a Dyak rajah become his servants in the other world. In this world the killer can command, as his fetich, the soul of the killed. On the death of a great man his debtor slaves are bound to the carved village post, which indicates the glory of head-hunting, and are tortured to death.[709] "Slavery is greatly practiced" on Timorlaut. A thief, debtor, slanderer, or defamer may become the slave of the one he has wronged. The slave trade is also active between the islands.[710] The slaves of the sea Dyaks adopt their customs and become contented. Sometimes they win affection and are adopted, freed, and married to free women. Slaves and masters eat together the same food in the rural villages.[711] Among the land Dyaks slaves, by destitution and debt, "are just as happy as if perfectly free, enjoying all the liberty of their masters, who never think of ill-using them."[712] In old times one who set a house on fire was liable to become the slave of any one who was burned out.[713] Slaves on Timor do not seem to care for liberty. Their livelihood would not be so certain. There is a kind of slavery to the kingdom, not to any individual, but the slave cannot be sold by the king.[714] In the Barito valley a debtor slave has to do any kind of work. He may be punished by blows, or fines added to his debt, which may also be increased by any breaches of customs, or by the value of broken tools or vessels. A month after a child is born to him ten gulden are added, also expenses of education when the child is ready to go to work. He may be slain at a feast of the dead by his master. The owner can torment the debtor by new fines, and keep up the debt or even increase it.[715] In the Katingan valley there are no debtor slaves, because after three years a debtor who cannot pay becomes an hereditary slave, and cannot get his liberty even if he should get the means to pay his debt.[716] If he ever gets the means to pay and attempts to free himself he is compelled to pay fees, taxes, and customary dues to the "spirits of the house," etc. When he leaves his master's house he must not return to it for a year or two, nor eat anything brought from it--"to prove his independence." Then he gives a feast and becomes free.[717] "Slavery and pawnship are, in the nature of the case, the same."[718] The Dyaks put their Eden on a cloud island. They have a myth that the daughters of the great Being let down seven times seven hundred cords of gold thread in order to lower mortals upon a mountain, but the mortals were overhasty and tried to lower themselves by bamboos and rattans. The god, angry at this, condemned them to slavery. The myth, therefore, accounts for a caste of slaves. Formerly also war captives and criminals who could not pay fines became slaves. Debts cause men to fall into pawnship. Extravagant living, and gambling, lead to this condition. If a man becomes pawn for a debt his whole household goes with him. All have to work very hard to try to satisfy a greedy master. The pawn is entitled to one tenth of the harvest, or of the gain by trade. Free men despise pawns.[719] Wilken[720] says of the Bataks that a slave, by diligence and thrift, can always buy himself. In addition to all the ill chances of gambling, extravagance, making love to another man's wife, etc., by which a man may become a debtor slave, customs exist which are traps for the unwary. Sago and rice are left in the woods, in some islands, until wanted. If a man passes the store, he is supposed to take away the spirit of the goods. If caught, he and all his family become slaves. If a man dies who was wont to fish at a certain place, the place becomes taboo to his ghost. Any one who fishes there becomes a slave to his family. Also, if a district is in mourning, any one who breaks the mourning customs is made a slave.[721] The education of the Chinese in ethical doctrines has made slavery amongst them slight and mild. It is attributed to poverty, which forces parents to sell their daughters.[722] The owners must provide female slaves with husbands, and the law forbids the separation of husband and wife, or of parents and little children.[723] It appears that slavery is forbidden by law, but is tolerated in the case where the parents are poor. Boys once enslaved continue in bondage and their children follow them, but there is no legal possession. Girls become free at marriage.[724]

+281. Slavery in Asia.+ Slavery in Asia is of a kind which puts the slave largely at the mercy of his owner, but the mores have taught the slave owner to use his power with consideration. This is generally, not universally, true. Nivedita says[725] that "slavery in Asia, under the regime of great religious systems, has never meant what Europe and America have made of it.... It is a curious consequence of this humanity of custom [or rather, of the judgment in the mores as to the wisest course of conduct in a class of cases] that the word 'slave' cannot be made to sting the Asiatic consciousness as it does the European."

+282. Slavery in Japan.+ In Japan slavery was a common punishment, in early times, for crime. Debtors unable to pay became slaves of their creditors, and thieves were made slaves of those whom they had robbed. The attempt to introduce Christianity into Japan and the resistance to it led to the slavery of many Christian converts, if they refused after torture to recant. This was an alternative to death. Slaves were tattooed with marks to show ownership. "Slaves were bought and sold like cattle in early times, or presented as tribute by their owners,--a practice constantly referred to in the ancient records." Their sex unions were not recognized. "In the seventh century, however, private slaves were declared state property, and great numbers were then emancipated, including nearly all,--probably all, who were artisans, or followed useful callings. Gradually a large class of freedmen came into existence, but until modern times the great mass of the common people appear to have remained in a condition analogous to serfdom."[726]

+283. Slavery in higher civilization.+ It appears quite clear that men in savagery and barbarism used each other, if they could, to serve their interests, and slavery resulted. The hardships of life caused it. The rules of war were "Woe to the vanquished!" and "To the victors the spoils." Debt was a relation which might come about between two men from incidents in the struggle for existence, or from loans of money and goods. All mischance might be converted into lack of resources (money and goods), and he who borrowed fell into dependence and servitude. All violations of custom and law led to fines; all need of civil authority made it necessary to pay fees. The debtor pledged his future working time. His relation to his creditor was personal. That he was a borrower proved that he had nothing which could form a property security. The laws of Hammurabi provide that a debtor may give his wife and children as pawn slaves, but only for three years. In the fourth year the creditor was to set them free. The pawn persons were to be well treated. A slave given in pawn might be sold, but not if it was a female slave with children.[727] To aid or conceal a fugitive slave was a capital offense.[728] Many Chaldean contracts have been found in which the debtor bound himself to work for the creditor until he should pay the debt.[729] It appears that the Babylonian slaves could form a peculium and carry on business with it as a capital, paying their owners a tax upon it.[730]

+284. Slavery amongst Jews.+ The Jewish law had a provision like that in the law of Hammurabi, except that the limit was six years instead of three. A debtor was not to be a slave, but to give service until the year of jubilee.[731] In 2 Kings iv. 1 the widow tells Elisha that her husband's creditors will come and take her two sons to be bondmen. The creditors of some of the Jews who returned from exile threatened to make them debtor slaves. Nehemiah appealed to them not to do so.[732] In Matt. xviii. 25 the man who could not pay was to be sold with his wife and children. Kidnapping was punishable by death.[733] In Job xxxi. 15 we find the ultimate philosophico-religious reason for repudiating slavery: "Has not He who made me made him [the slave] also in his mother's womb?" The laws of the "Book of Covenants" begin with laws about slaves.[734] A male slave, with his wife, is to be freed in the seventh year, unless he prefers to remain a slave. A man may sell his daughter into slavery, i.e. to be a concubine. There was no difference in principle between a daughter given to wife and one sold to be a concubine. In Deut. xv. 12 the female slave is also set free in the seventh year, and persons so freed are to be given gifts when they depart. The slaves were war captives, or bought persons, or criminals.[735] The lot of slaves was not hard. The owners had not the power of life and death. The slave could acquire property.[736] If the slave was an Israelite he was protected by especial restrictions on the master in behalf of fellow-countrymen.[737]

+285. Slavery in the classical states.+ Slavery came to the two great classical states from the antecedent facts of savage and barbaric life. When Aristotle came to study slavery he could not find a time when it was not. We have seen how it had become one of the leading institutions of uncivilized society, and how it had been developed in different forms and degrees. The two great classical states, more especially Rome, built their power on slavery. Both states pursued their interests with little care for the pain they might inflict on others, or the cost in the happiness of others. The Roman state began by subjugating its nearest neighbors. It used its war captives as slaves, increased its power, conquered more, and repeated the process until it used up all the known world. The Phoenicians were merchants, who kidnapped men, women, and children, if they found opportunity, and sold them into slavery far from home. The Ionians, who grew rich by commerce, bought slaves and organized states in which slaves did all the productive work. In both Greece and Rome productive work came to be despised. One is amazed to find how easily any one who went on a journey might fall into slavery, or how recklessly the democracy of one city voted to sell the people of a defeated city into slavery, yet how unhesitatingly everybody accepted and repeated the current opinions about the baseness of slave character. Homer says that a slave has only half the soul of a man.[738] The love stories in the Scriptores Erotici very often contain an incident of kidnapping. The story of Eumaeus must have been that of many a slave.[739] It is also only rarely and very incidentally that the classical writers show any pity for slaves, although they often speak of the sadness of slavery.[740] If any man, especially a merchant, who went on a journey incurred a great risk of slavery, why was not slavery a familiar danger of every man, and therefore a matter for pity and sympathy? In the great tragedies the woes of slavery, especially the contrasts for princes and princesses, heroes and heroines, are often presented. Polyxena, in Euripides's Hekuba, 360, bewails her anticipated lot as a slave. A fierce master will buy her. She will have to knead bread for him, to sweep and weave, leading a miserable life, given as wife to some base slave. She prefers to be sacrificed at Achilles's tomb. When the Greeks were going to kill her, she asked them to keep their hands off. She would submit. Let her die free. "It would be a shame to me, royal, to be called a slave amongst the dead." In the Trojan Women the screams of the Trojan women are heard, as they are distributed by lot to their new Greek masters. The play is full of the woes of slavery. At Athens slaves enjoyed great freedom of manners and conduct. They dressed like the poorest freedmen. No one dare misuse the slave of another simply because he was a slave. If the master abused a slave, the latter had an asylum in the temple and could demand to be sold. Slaves could pursue any trade which they knew, paying a stipulated sum to their owners, and could thus buy their manumission. Their happiness, however, depended on the will of another.[741] In the law they were owned as things were, and could be given, lent, sold, and bequeathed. They could not possess property, nor have wives in assured exclusive possession against masters. Their children belonged to their masters. Plato thought that nature had made some to command, others to serve.[742] He thought the soul of a slave base, incapable of good, unworthy of confidence.[743] Aristotle thought that every well-appointed house needs animate and inanimate tools. The animate tools are slaves, who have souls, but not like those of their masters. They lack will. Slaves are like members of the master, ruled by his will. Their virtue is obedience.[744] He says that there were men in his time who said that slavery was an injustice due to violence and established by law.[745]

+286. Slavery at Rome.+ It is in ancient Rome that we find slavery most thoroughly developed. Any civilization which accomplishes any great results must do so by virtue of force which it has at its disposal. The Romans conquered and enslaved their nearest neighbors. By virtue of their increased power they extended their conquests. They repeated this process until they had consumed all the known world. The city of Rome was a center towards which all the wealth of the world was drawn. There was no reverse current of goods. What went out from Rome was government,--peace, order, and security. The provinces probably for a time made a good bargain, although the price was high. In the earliest times slaves were used for housework, but were few in number per household. In 150 B.C. a patrician left to his son only ten. Crassus had more than five hundred. C. Caec. Claudius, in the time of Augustus, had 4116.[746] In the early days a father and his sons cultivated a holding together. Slaves were used when more help was needed. There was one slave to three sons and they lived in constant association of work and play. When conquest rendered slaves numerous and cheap, free laborers disappeared.[747] Ti. Semp. Gracchus, in 177 B.C., after the war in Sardinia, sold so many Sardinian slaves that "cheap as a Sardinian" became a proverb.[748] His son Tiberius is reported to have been led into his agrarian enterprise by noticing that the lands of Etruria were populated only by a few slaves of foreign birth.[749] Buecher[750] puts together the following statistics of persons reduced to slavery about 200 B.C.: after the capture of Tarentum (209 B.C.), 30,000; in 207 B.C., 5400; in 200 B.C., 15,000.[751] Roman slaves were not allowed to marry until a late date. They were systematically worked as hard as it was possible to make them work, and were sold or exposed to perish when too old to work. Such was the policy taught by the older Cato.[752] The number on the market was always great; the price was low; it was more advantageous to work them so hard that they had no time or strength to plot revolts. This is the most cynical refusal to regard slaves as human beings which can be found in history. They were liable to be tortured in their owners' cases in court. They might be given over to the gladiatorial shows and set to fight each other, or wild beasts. Seventy-eight gladiators condemned to fight to the death revolted in 74 B.C. under Spartacus, who defeated five armies. Crassus was sent against him with eight legions. Lucullus was recalled from Thrace and Pompey from Spain. Spartacus was cut to pieces in his last battle. Crassus crucified six thousand prisoners along the road from Capua to Rome.[753]

+287. Slave revolts.+ The severity of the Roman system of slavery is shown by the number of revolts and the severe proceedings in each of them. There was such a revolt in 499 B.C. The guilty were crucified. The following year there was another.[754] In 416 there was another. The aim always was to take the citadel and burn the city.[755] Sicily was covered with a swarm of slaves at the beginning of the second century B.C. They were especially Syrians, very tough and patient. They were managed under Cato's plan: "Work or sleep!" In 196 B.C. the slaves in Etruria revolted and were suppressed with great severity.[756] In 104 those of Sicily revolted. They were subdued four years later and the last remnant were sent to Rome to fight beasts. They killed themselves in the arena.[757] The later Roman system was that the mob of the city put the world in the hands of one or another, and he gave them bread and games as their part of the plunder. The frumentaria were the permanent and steady pay of the "world conquerors." They made herding the best use of Italian land. "Where before industrious peasants prospered in glad contentment, now unfree herdsmen, in wide wastes, drove the immense herds of Roman senators and knights."[758] The Sicilian landowners left their shepherds to steal what they needed, so that they were educated to brigandage. The greatest sufferer was the small freeman.[759] There is a story in Diodorus,[760] of Damophilos, an owner of great latifundia, whose slaves came to him to beg clothes. He replied: "Do the travelers, then, go naked through the country? Are they not bound to pay toll to him who needs clothes?" He caused them to be flogged and sent them back to work. The misery of the slave population seems to have reached its acme at Enna where two roads across the island cross each other. The town lies 3000 feet high. It was a great fortress down into the Middle Ages.[761] At this place began a slave revolt, led by a Syrian skilled in sorcery. The slaves took the city and engaged in rapine and murder. A band was sent to capture Damophilos. The men killed him, and the women his wife. Their daughter was sent in security to her relatives.[762] It was ten years before peace was restored to the island.

+288. Later Roman slavery. Slaves in the civil wars. Clientage.+ Down to about 200 B.C. slavery, although mechanical and cruel, was domestic. The slave was a member of the household, on intimate terms with the master or his children, shared in the religious exercises, and the graves of slaves were under religious protection.[763] In the second century B.C. Roman expansion gained momentum and produced power and wealth. The factions of the city were fighting for control of the booty. Roman character became mechanical and hard. This affected the type of slavery. By 100 B.C. Carthaginians, Greeks, and Romans had developed a system of holding slaves which was cruel and reckless, and slaves had acquired a character of hatred, venom, and desire for revenge. They were malignant, cunning, and hypocritical.[764] In the civil wars each leader sought the help of slaves. Sulla set free 10,000 of them, whom he put in the tribes of the city.[765] After the battle of Cannae the Romans armed 8000 slaves whom they enfranchised.[766] AEmilius Paulus sold 15,000 Epirotes. Marius made 90,000 Teutons captives at Aquae Sextiae and 60,000 Cimbrians at Vercellae. When Marius offered liberty to slaves only three followed him.[767] Sulla promised liberty to the slaves of the proscribed, if they would bear testimony against their masters. One did so. Sulla freed him, but then put him to death. Thus the slaves were the sport of political factions and leaders. The Roman conquests caused everywhere a certain servile temper. All conquered people were depressed into quasi-slavery. All had to pay a head tax, which was a mark of servitude. The Roman system reduced all to servitude. A late emperor called the senators "slaves in the toga." When all were rendered nil under the emperor the slaves gained. They were not in worse case than the rest.[768] During the conquests entire peoples became clients. If any one did not attach himself as client to a great family he was lost. Freed women, for this reason, almost always fell into vice.[769] Clientage became the refuge of loafers. "Romans did not give anything gratis." All who were outside the social system had to seek the patronage of a great man. For his protection he took pay in money or service. The status was a modified slavery.

+289. Manumission. Natural liberty.+ The slave dealers developed tricks far surpassing those of horse dealers in modern times.[770] By enfranchisement the owner got rid of the worst worry of slavery, and tied the freedman to himself by a contract which it was for the interest of the freedman to fulfill. The owner made a crafty gain.[771] Tacitus[772] says that, in his time, the Roman people was almost entirely freedmen. If that is so, we must notice that the "people," under the empire, are a different set from what they were under the republic. When the Romans got an educated artisan as a slave they set him to teach a number of others. When no more outsiders were conquered and enslaved the slaves taught each other. The work then became gross and ran down.[773] This was another of the ways in which Rome consumed the products and culture of the world. Very few instances, real or fictitious, of sympathy with slaves can be cited. In the story of Trimalchio, Encolpius and his friends beg off a slave who is to be whipped for losing the garment of another slave in the bath. At a supper at which Augustus was present a slave broke a vase. His master ordered him cast to the murenae in a tank. The slave begged Augustus to obtain for him an easier death, which Augustus tried to do. The master refused. Augustus then gave the slave complete grace, broke the host's other vases himself, and ordered the tank filled up.[774] Under Nero, Pedanius having been murdered, his slaves, four hundred in number, were all condemned to death, according to law. The populace rose against this sentence, which was fulfilled, but it shows that there was a popular judgment which would respond upon occasion.[775] "Not once, in all antiquity, does a serious thought about the abolition of slavery arise."[776] It was the basis of the entire social and political order. They were in terror of the slaves and despised them, but could not conceive of a world without them. Probably we could not either, if we had not machines by means of which we make steam and electricity work for us. Individuals were manumitted on account of the gain to the master. The owner said, in the presence of a magistrate, "I will that this man be free, after the manner of the Quirites." The magistrate touched the head of the slave with his rod, the master boxed his ears, and he was a free man.[777] The law provided a writ, "resembling in some respects the writ of habeas corpus, to compel any one who detained an alleged freedman to present him before a judge."[778] The Roman lawyers also, if they could find a moment during gestation when the mother had been free, employed legal fiction to assume that the child had been born at that moment.[779] Florentinus defined slavery as "a custom of the law of nations by which one man, contrary to the law of nature, is subjected to the dominion of another."[780] Ulpian likewise said that, "as far as natural law is concerned, all men are equal."[781]

+290. Slavery as represented in the inscriptions.+ "The inscriptions reveal to us a better side of slave life, which is not so prominent in our literary authorities." They show cases of strong conjugal affection between slave spouses, and of affection between master and slave.[782] In the first century the waste of the fortunes won by extortion from the provinces, and the opening of industrial opportunities by commerce, with security, gave great stimulus to free industry. The inscriptions "show the enormous and flourishing development of skilled handicrafts," with minute specialization. "The immense development of the free proletariat, in the time of the early empire, is one of the most striking social phenomena which the study of the inscriptions has brought to light." The time was then past when Roman society depended entirely on slave labor for the supply of all its wants.[783] Dill thinks that "the new class of free artisans and traders had often, so far as we can judge by stone records, a sound and healthy life, sobered and dignified by honest toil, and the pride of skill and independence."[784] The slave acted only under two motives, fear and sensuality. Both made him cowardly, cringing, cunning, and false, and at the same time fond of good eating and drinking and of sensual indulgence. As he was subject to the orders of others, he lacked character, and this suited his master all the better. The morality of slaves extended in the society, and the society was guided by the views of freedmen in its intellectual activity. The strongest symptom of this was the prevalence of a morality of tips, which put on the forms of liberality. It was no more disgrace to take gifts than to give them. Senators took gifts from the emperor, and all, including the emperor, reckoned on legacies. Thus the lack of character spread.[785] Slavery proved a great corrupter of both slaves and owners. It was the chief cause of the downfall of the state which had been created by it. It made cowards of both owners and slaves. "The woes of negro slaves were insignificant, like a drop to an ocean, in comparison with the sufferings of ancient slaves, for the latter generally belonged to civilized peoples."[786]

+291. Rise of the freedmen in industry.+ The freedmen were the ones who were free from the old Roman contempt for productive labor. They seized the chances for industry and commerce and amassed wealth. "Not only are they crowding all the meaner trades [in the first and second centuries of the Christian era], from which Roman pride shrank contemptuously, but, by industry, shrewdness, and speculative daring, they are becoming great capitalists and landowners on a senatorial scale."[787] "The plebeian, saturated with Roman prejudice, looking for support to the granaries of the state or the dole of the wealthy patron, turned with disdain from the occupations which are in our days thought innocent, if not honorable."[788] "After all reservations, the ascent of the freedmen remains a great and beneficent revolution. The very reasons which made Juvenal hate it most are its best justification to a modern mind. It gave hope of a future to the slave. By creating a free industrial class it helped to break down the cramped social ideal of the slave owner and the soldier. It planted in every municipality a vigorous mercantile class, who were often excellent and generous citizens. Above all, it asserted the dignity of man."[789] But for the freedmen the society seems to have contained but two classes,--"a small class of immensely wealthy people, and an almost starving proletariat."[790]

+292. The freedmen in the state.+ Every despot needs ministers. The history of all despotisms shows that they find those best suited to their purpose in persons of humble rank. They can use such ministers against nobles or other great men, and can command their complete loyalty. Julius Caesar made some of his freedmen officers of the mint. It was simply an extension of the usage of aristocratic households. The emperor employed freedmen to write letters and administer the finances of the empire as he would have used them to manage his private estate. "Under Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, the imperial freedmen attained their greatest ascendancy. Callistus, Narcissus, and Pallas rose to the rank of great ministers, and, in the reign of Claudius, were practically masters of the world. They accumulated enormous wealth by abusing their power, and making a traffic in civic rights, in places, or pardons."[791] The freedmen favorites carried the evil effects of slavery on character to another stage and were agents of the corruption of the new form of the state by the inheritance of slavery. "The women of the freedmen class, for generations, wielded, in their own way, a power which sometimes rivaled that of the men." They often had great charms of person and mind. "Their morals were the result of an uncertain social position, combined with personal attractions, and education." Some of them did great mischief. Panthea, mistress of Lucius Verus, is celebrated as one of the most beautiful women who ever lived. She had a lovely voice, was fond of music and poetry, and had a very superior mind. She "never lost her natural modesty and simple sweetness."[792] In the first century some freedmen married daughters of senatorial houses. They were very able men. No others could have performed the duties of the three great secretaryships,--appeals, petitions, and correspondence. The fortunes of these men were often adventurous in the extreme, like those of the ministers of sultans in the Arabian Nights. A slave, advanced to a higher position in a household, then to a position of confidence, where he proved his ability and devotion, got a great office and became master of the world. Men of this kind have always been refused social status.[793] In the second century the system was changed, and knights became the great officers of administration.

+293. Philosophers opponents of slavery.+ The great neostoics of the first century first denounced slavery and uttered the great humanitarian doctrines. The real question in regard to Roman slavery was this: Is a slave not a man? If he was one, he was either the victim of misfortune or the inheritor of the misfortune of an ancestor. If he did not thereby lose human status as a member of the race he deserved pity and help. The humanitarian philosophy, therefore, had the simplest task and the most direct application. Dio Chrysostom declared the evil effects of slavery on the masters, sensuality, languor, and dependence. He pointed out the wide difference between personal status and character,--the possible nobility of a slave and the possible servility of a freeman.[794] Seneca especially taught the abstract philosophy of liberalism, kindness, and humanity. He represented a movement in public opinion. Pliny cultivated all the graces of the debonair gentleman. Dill compares him to a "kindly English squire." The inscriptions show that "his household was by no means a rare exception."[795] Slaves had such perquisites and chances that "the slave could easily purchase his own freedom." "The trusted slave was often actually a partner, with a share of the profits of an estate, or he had a commission on the returns."[796] Plutarch's whole philosophy of life is gentle and kindly. It is unemotional and nonstimulating. The neostoics had the character of an esoteric sect. We never are sure that their writings are any more than rhetorical exercises, or that they act or expect others to act by their precepts. Slavery was such a fact in the social order that no one could conceive of the abolition of it, or propose abolition as a thing within the scope of statesmanship.

+294. The industrial colleges.+ The Romans had a genius for association and organization. Under the republic artisans began to unite in colleges. In the last century of the republic the political leaders took alarm at these unions and forbade them. Caesar and Augustus abolished the right of association. In the second century a certain number of societies existed, in spite of prohibitions,--miners, salt workers, bakers, and boatmen. Until Justinian all such unions were carefully watched as dangerous to public peace and order. In the civil law they were authorized, and made like natural persons.[797] The fashion of them became very popular. "The colleges in which the artisans and traders of the Antonine age grouped themselves are almost innumerable, even in the records which time has spared. They represent almost every conceivable branch of industry, or special skill, or social service."[798] "Men formed themselves into these groups for the most trivial or whimsical reasons, or for no reason at all, except that they lived in the same quarter and often met. From the view which the inscriptions give us of the interior of some of these clubs, it is clear that their main purpose was social pleasure."[799] "And yet, many an inscription leaves the impression that these little societies of the old pagan world are nurseries, in an imperfect way, of gentle charities and brotherliness."[800] They had many honorary members from among the richer classes. Wandering merchants and military veterans, as well as young men fond of sport, formed clubs on the same type. Alexander Severus organized all the industrial colleges and assigned them defensores. In the colleges all were equal, so that they were educational in effect. "But these instances cannot make us forget the cruel contempt and barbarity of which the slave was still the victim, and which was to be his lot for many generations yet to run. Therefore the improvement in the condition of the slave, or of his poor plebeian brother, by the theoretical equality in the colleges may be easily exaggerated."[801] The statesmen had feared that the artisans might use their organization to interfere in politics. What happened in the fourth century was that the state used the organizations to reduce the artisans to servitude, and to subject them to heavy social obligations by law.

+295. Laws changed in favor of slaves.+ When the conquests ceased and the supply of new slaves was reduced those slaves who were born in the households or on the estates came into gentler relations to their owners. Slaves rose in value and were worth more care. The old plan of Cato became uneconomical. All sentiments were softened in the first century as war became less constant, less important, and more remote. The empire was an assumption by the state of functions and powers which had been family powers and functions, and part of the patria potestas. Women, children, and slaves shared in emancipation until the state made laws to execute its jurisdiction over them. Hadrian took from masters the power of life and death over slaves. Antoninus Pius confirmed this, and provided that he who killed his own slave should suffer the same penalty as he who killed the slave of another.[802] This brought the life of every slave into the protection of the state. Under Nero a judge was appointed to hear the complaints of slaves and to punish owners who misused them. Domitian forbade castration. Hadrian forbade the sale of slaves to be gladiators. The right to sell female slaves into brothels was also abolished.[803]

+296. Christianity and slavery.+ In 1853 C. Schmidt published an essay on the "Civil Society of the Roman World and its Transformation by Christianity," in which he thought it right to attribute all the softening of the mores in the first three Christian centuries to Christianity. Lecky, on the other hand, says: "Slavery was distinctly and formally recognized by Christianity, and no religion ever labored more to encourage a habit of docility and passive obedience."[804] Schmidt is obliged to take the ground that Christianity received and accepted slavery as a current institution, in which property rights existed, and that it suffered these to stand. If that is true, then Christianity could not exert much influence on civil society. What Christianity did was to counteract to a great extent the sentiment of contempt for slaves and for work. It did this ritually, because in the church, and especially in the Lord's Supper, all participated alike and equally in the rites. The doctrine that Christ died for all alike combined with the philosophical and humanitarian doctrine that men are of the same constitution and physique to produce a state of mind hostile to slavery. In the fourth century the church began to own great possessions, including slaves, and it accepted the standpoint of the property owner.[805] In the Saturnalia of Macrobius (fl. 400 A.D.) Praetextatus reaffirms the old neostoic doctrine about slavery, of Seneca and Dio Chrysostom. Dill[806] takes the doctrine to be the expression of the convictions of the best and most thoughtful men of that time. It is not to be found in Jerome, Augustine, or Chrysostom. Nevertheless the church favored manumission and took charge of the ceremony. It especially favored it when the manumitted would become priests or monks. The church came nearest to the realization of its own doctrines when it refused to consider slave birth a barrier to priesthood. In all the penitential discipline of the church also bond and free were on an equality. The intermarriage of slave and free was still forbidden. Constantine ordered that if a free woman had intercourse with her slave she should be executed and he should be burned alive.[807] The pagan law only ordered that she should be reduced to slavery. The manumissions under Constantine were believed, in the sixteenth century, to have caused almshouses and hospitals to be built, on account of the great numbers of helpless persons set adrift.[808] Basil the Macedonian ([Symbol: cross] 886) first enacted that slaves might have an ecclesiastical marriage, but the prejudice of centuries made this enactment vain.[809] The abolition of crucifixion had special value to the slave class. There was no longer a special and most infamous mode of execution for them. A law of Constantine forbade the separation of members of a family of slaves.[810] These are the most important changes in the law of slavery until the time of the codex of Justinian. Lecky thinks that Justinian advanced the law beyond what his predecessors had done more in regard to slavery than on any other point. His changes touched three points: (1) He abolished all the restrictions on enfranchisement which remained from the old pagan laws, and encouraged it. (2) He abolished the freedmen as an intermediate class, so that there remained only slave and free, and a senator could marry a freed woman, i.e. a slave whom he had already freed. (3) A slave might marry a free woman, if his master consented, and her children, born in slavery, became free if the father was enfranchised. The punishment for the rape of a slave woman was made death, the same as for the rape of a free woman.[811] Isidore of Seville ([Symbol: cross] 636) said: "A just God alloted life to men, making some slaves and some lords, that the liberty of ill-doing on the part of slaves might be restrained by the authority of rulers." Still he says that all men are equal before God, and that Christ's redemption has wiped away original sin, which was the cause of slavery.[812]

+297. The colonate.+ At the end of the empire population was declining, land was going out of use and returning to wilderness, the petty grandees in towns were crushed by taxes into poverty, artisans were running away and becoming brigands because the state was immobilizing them, and peasants were changed into colons. The imperial system went on until the man, the emperor, was above all laws, the senate were slaves, and the provinces were the booty of the emperor. The whole system then became immobilized. What the colons were and how they came into existence has been much disputed. They were immobilized peasants. We find them an object of legislation in the codex Theodosianus in the fourth century. They were personally free (they could marry, own property, could not be sold), but they were bound to the soil by birth and passed with it. They cultivated the land of a lord, and paid part of the crops or money.[813] Marquardt thinks that they arose from barbarians quartered in the Roman empire.[814] Heisterbergk[815] thinks that there are three possible sources, between which he does not decide,--impoverished freemen, emancipated slaves, barbarian prisoners. Wallon[816] ascribes the colonate to the administration. As society degenerated it became harder and harder to get the revenue, and the state adopted administrative measures to get the property of any one who had any. This system impoverished everybody. To carry it out it was necessary to immobilize everybody, to force each one to accept the conditions of his birth as a status from which he could not escape. What made the colonate, then, was misery.[817] Emancipated slaves and impoverished peasants met in the class of colons, in state servitude. The proprietors were only farmers for the state. The tribute was the due of the state. Laborers were enrolled in the census and held for the state. The interest of the fiscus held the colon to the soil.[818] The words "colon" and "slave" are used interchangeably in the codex Justinianus.

+298. Depopulation.+ The depopulation of Italy under the empire is amply proved. Vespasian moved population from Umbria and the Sabine territory to the plain of Rome.[819] Marcus Aurelius established the Marcomanni in Italy.[820] Pertinax offered land in Italy and the provinces to any one who would cultivate it.[821] Aurelian tried to get land occupied.[822] He sent barbarians to settle in Tuscany.[823] As time went on more and more land was abandoned and greater efforts were made to secure settlers. Valentinian settled German prisoners in the valley of the Po.[824] In the time of Honorius, in Campania five hundred thousand arpents were discharged from the fiscus as deserted and waste. In the third century, if the colon ran away from land which no one would take he was pursued by all the agencies of the law and brought back like a criminal.[825] The colons ran away because the curiales, their masters, put on them the taxes which the state levied first on the curiales.[826] What was wanted was men. The Roman imperial system had made men scarce by making life hard. Pliny said that the latifundia destroyed Italy. The saying has been often quoted in modern times as if it had some unquestionable authority. It is a case of the common error of confusing cause and consequence. The latifundia were a consequence and a symptom. Heisterbergk[827] thinks that the latifundia were not produced by economic causes, but by vanity and ostentation. The owners did not look to the land for revenue. He asks[828] how a strictly scientific system of grand culture with plenty of labor could ruin any country. Rodbertus[829] thinks that the latifundia went from a grand system to a petty system between the times of the elder and the younger Pliny by the operation of the law of rent. He thinks that there must have been garden culture in Italy at the beginning of the empire, and that the colonate arose from big estates with petty industry and from the law of mortgage. He thinks, further, that the colons, until the fourth century, were slaves, and that their status was softened by the legislation of the fourth century. Heisterbergk thinks that the colonate began in the corn provinces, and that it was, at the beginning of the fourth century, on the point of passing away, but the legislation of the fourth century perpetuated it. He thinks that it was injured, as an institution, by the great increase of taxation after Diocletian. Then legislation was necessary to keep the colons on the land.[830]

+299. Summary on Roman slavery.+ Chrysostom describes the misbehavior of all classes, about 400 A.D.[831] The colons were overburdened. When they could not pay they were tortured. A colon was flogged, chained, and thrown into prison, where he was forgotten. His wife and child were left in misery to support themselves, and get something for him if they could. The Roman system, after consuming all the rest of the world, began to consume itself. The Roman empire at last had only substituted one kind of slaves for another. Artisans and peasants were now slaves of the state. Slavery was at first a means. By it the subjugated countries were organized into a great state. Then it developed its corruption. It was made to furnish gladiators and harlots. Nowhere else do we see how slavery makes cowards of both slaves and owners as we see it at Rome in the days of glory. Slavery rose to control of the mores. The free men who discussed contemporary civilization groaned over the effects of slavery on the family and on private interests, but they did not see any chance of otherwise getting the work done. Then all the other social institutions and arrangements had to conform to slavery. It controlled the mores, prescribed the ethics, and made the character. In the last century of the Western empire the protest against it ceased. It seemed to be accepted as inevitable, and one of the unavoidable ills of life. It ruled society. Scarcely a man represented the old civilization who can command our respect. The social and civic virtues were dead.

+300.+ In all the ancient world we meet with distinct repudiation of slavery only amongst the Therapeuts, a communistic association amongst the Jews in the last century before Christ. They were ascetics, each of whom lived in a cell. We first hear of them through Philo Judaeus (The Contemplative Life) about the time of the birth of Christ. They had no slaves. They regarded slavery as absolutely contrary to nature. Nature produced all in a state of freedom, but the greed of some had vested some with power over others.[832] The Therapeuts, who included women, did their own work. They carried on no productive industry the products of which they could give in exchange. Their system could not endure without an endowment.[833] Bousset[834] thinks that, "if they ever existed, they can never have had more than a limited and ephemeral significance." Their central home was on a hill near lake Marea. Their place of meeting, on the seventh day, was divided by a wall, three or four cubits high, into two compartments, one for the women, the other for the men. They reduced the consumption of food and drink as much as possible. Sometimes they abstained for three or four days. They had a very simple feast on the forty-ninth day, the men and women sitting separately on coarse mattresses.[835]

+301. Slavery amongst the Germanic nations.+ According to the most primary view, the one which we might call natural, a war captive's due fate was to be killed in sacrifice to the god of the victor. During some interval of time before his public execution he was set at work, and the convenience of his services was learned. He was kept alive in order to be employed in the labors which were the most irksome and disagreeable. The joke of letting him live on to perform these tasks was not lost. When, now, we turn our attention to the Germanic invaders of the Roman empire, we are carried back to primitive barbarism. In the heroic age of Scandinavia we find that thralls are sacrificed at Upsala at solemn feasts in honor of the heathen gods. They were thrown from the cliffs, or into a hole in the ground, or tortured and hung up in the clear air, or the spine was broken.[836] In the prehistoric period of German history the unfree were tenderly handled. "A well-born youth, who grew up amongst the same herds and on the same land with an unfree youth, eating and drinking together, and sharing joy and sorrow, could not handle shamefully the comrades of the unfree man."[837] In the Scandinavian Rigsmal, Rig, the hero, begets a representative of each of three ranks,--noble, yeoman, laborer,--the first with the mother, the second with the grandmother, and the third with the great-grandmother, as if they had come from later and later strata of population.[838] Rig slept between man and wife when he begot the yeoman and thrall, but not when he begot the noble. The thrall has no marriage ceremony. The food, dwelling, dress, furniture, occupations, and manners of the three classes are carefully distinguished, also the physique, as if they were racially different, and the names of the children are in each case characteristic epithets. The great-grandfather wears the most ancient dress; his wife provides an ash-baked loaf, flat, heavy, mixed with bran. She bore Thrall, who was swarthy, had callous hands, bent knuckles, thick fingers, an ugly face, a broad back, long heels. Toddle-shankie also came sunburnt, having scarred feet, a broken nose, called Theow. Their children were named: the boys,--Sooty, Cowherd, Clumsy, Clod, Bastard, Mud, Log, Thickard, Laggard, Grey Coat, Lout, and Stumpy; the girls,--Loggie, Cloggie, Lumpy [= Leggie], Snub-nosie, Cinders, Bond-maid, Woody [= Peggy], Tatter-coatie, Crane-shankie. The story seems to present the three classes or ranks as founded in natural facts. Slaves were such by birth, by sale of themselves to get maintenance (esteemed the worst of all, debtors, war captives, perhaps victims of shipwreck), and free women who committed fornication with slave men.[839] If a debtor would not pay he was brought into court, and the creditor might cut off a piece [of his body] above or below.[840] A free man would not allow his slave to be buried by his side, even if the slave had lost his life in loyalty to his master. Slaves, criminals, and outlaws were buried dishonorably in a place by themselves on one side. They were harnessed to plows when there were no oxen at hand. When Eisten, king of Opland, wanted to annihilate the Ernds, he gave them their choice of his slave or his dog for a king. They chose the dog.[841] The sister of King Canute bought in England most beautiful slave men and women, who were sent to Denmark, and were sold for use chiefly in vice.[842] Here we see again the great contempt for slaves. It was a proverb in Scandinavia: "Put no trust in the friendship of a thrall,"[843] although in the sagas there are many cases in which the heroes profited by trusting them. Yet the sagas are also full of stories of persons who fell into slavery, e.g. Astrid, widow of King Trygve Olafson, who was found by a merchant in the slave market of Esthonia and redeemed.[844] A thrall was despised because he feared death, and when it impended over him hid, whimpered, begged, wept, lamented to leave his swine and good fare, and offered to do the meanest work if he might live. A hero bore torture bravely and met death laughing.[845] When hero children and thrall children were changed at birth, the fraud was discovered by the cowardice of the latter and the courage of the former, when grown.[846] In the heroic age a conqueror could set a princess to work at the qvern. In Valhalla the hero set thralls to work for his conquered victim, to give him footbath, light fire, bind dogs, groom horses, and feed swine. Thrall women became concubines. They worked at the qvern, and wove. Love could raise them to pets. Thralls were obtained in the lands raided, but even after they became Christians the Scandinavians raided and enslaved each other. The Roman law system, as the church employed it, and especially tithes, were means of reducing the masses to servitude.[847] Beggars could be arrested and taken before the Thing, where, if they were not ransomed by their relatives, they were at the mercy of the captor.[848] Magnus Erikson ascended the throne of Sweden, Norway, and Skona in 1333. Two years later he decreed that no one born of Christian parents should thereafter be, or be called, a thrall.[849]

+302. The sale of children.+ In the Germanic states it remained lawful until far down in the Middle Ages for a man to sell his wife or child into servitude, or into adoption in another family in time of famine or distress. The right fell into disuse.[850]

+303. Slavery and the state.+ The reason why there was little slavery in the Middle Ages is that slavery needs a great state to return fugitives or hold slaves to work. The feudal lord was at odds with such a state as existed, and could not get its aid to restore his slaves. Hence the extension of the state made the slaves worse off, e.g. in Russia and parts of Germany.[851] Amongst the Franks "slavery took many forms." The vicissitudes of life produced the strongest contrasts of fortune. Freeman[852] mentions a case in which a boy king reigned, but his mother, formerly a slave woman, reigned as queen in rank and authority, and the power was really exercised by the man who was once her owner. "In the system of a Frankish kingdom a slave-born queen could play, with more of legal sanction, the part often played in Mohammedan courts by the mother of the sultan, son of a slave." The Franks had a peculiar ceremony of manumission. The lord struck a coin from the hand of his slave to the ground, and the slave became free.[853] Philippe le Bel, enfranchising the serfs of Valois, in the interest of the Fiscus, uttered a generality which Louis le Hutin reiterated: "Seeing that every human creature who is formed in the image of our Lord, ought, generally speaking, to be free by natural right,--no one ought to be a serf in France." In the eighth and ninth centuries serfs were sold to Jews who sold them to Mohammedans. Montpelier carried on a slave trade with the Saracens. The clergy joined in this trade in the twelfth century, and it is said to have lasted until the fifteenth century.[854] The Romance of Hervis (of about the beginning of the thirteenth century) turns on the story of a youth who ransomed a girl who had been kidnapped by some soldiers. They proposed to take her to Paris and sell her at the fair there. The Parliament of Bordeaux, in 1571, granted liberty to Ethiopians and other slaves, "since France cannot admit any servitude." Still slavery existed in the southern provinces, including persons of every color and nationality.[855] Biot[856] thinks that the slave trade in the Middle Ages was carried on chiefly by pirates, so that slave markets existed on the coast only, not inland. The Council of Armagh, in 1171, forbade the Irish to hold English slaves and mentions the sale of their children by the English.[857] Thomas Aquinas is led by Aristotle to approve of slavery. Like Aristotle he holds it to be in the order of nature.[858] A society was founded in Spain at the beginning of the thirteenth century to redeem Christian captives from Moorish slavery. The pious made gifts to this society to be used in its work. Christians sold kidnapped persons to the Moors that they might be redeemed again. In 1322 the Council of Valladolid imposed excommunication on the sale of men. In the fourteenth century the Venetians and Genoese were selling young persons from all countries in Egypt.[859] Pope Nicholas V, in 1454, gave Portugal the right to subjugate western Africa, supposed to be lands which belonged to the Saracens, and "to reduce the persons of those lands to perpetual servitude," expressing the hope that the negroes would be thoroughly converted. Margry puts in the year 1444 the first sale of negroes as slaves, under the eyes of Don Enrique of Portugal.[860] As early as 1500 Columbus suggested to the king of Spain to use negroes to work the mines of Hispaniola. The king decreed that only such negroes should be taken to Hispaniola as had been Christianized in Spain. In 1508 the Spaniards took negroes to the mines to work with Indian slaves. The slave trade was authorized by Charles V in 1517.[861] Christian slaves existed in Spain until the seventeenth, perhaps until the eighteenth, century. If blacks and Moors are included, slavery has existed there until the most recent times.[862]

+304. Slavery in Europe. Italy in the Middle Ages.+ Slavery existed in Italy in the thirteenth century, by war, piracy, and religious hatred. The preaching friars, by preaching against all property, helped to break it down, and it began to decline.[863] The religious hatred is illustrated by the act of Clement V ([Symbol: cross] 1314). When he excommunicated the Venetians for seizing Ferrara he ordered that wherever they might be caught they should be treated as slaves.[864] Not until 1288 was a law passed at Florence forbidding the sale of serfs away from the land. Such a law was passed at Bologna in 1256, and renewed in 1283. Such laws seem to have been democratic measures to lessen the power of nobles in the rural districts.[865] A man who made a slave woman a mother must pay damages to her owner. In a contract of 1392 a man in such a case confesses a debt, as for money borrowed. By a statute of Lucca, in 1539, a man so offending must buy the woman at twice her cost and pay to the state a fine of one hundred lire. By a statute of Florence, 1415, it was affirmed that the quality of Christian would not exempt from slavery.[866] In a contract of sale of a woman at Venice, 1450, it is specified that the seller sells purum et merum dominium.[867] The Italian cities continued to protect the slave trade until the middle of the sixteenth century.[868] The Venetians and Genoese carried on the trade actively, except in times of great public or general calamity, when they suspended it to appease the wrath of God.[869] The intimate connection of the great commercial republics with the Orient, and hatred for Greek heretics, are charged with causing them to keep up the trade.[870] Conjugal life at Venice was undermined by the desire for variety in pleasure, and by the easy opportunity to get beautiful slaves in the markets of the Orient. From the most ancient times laws, as fierce as inefficacious, punished with death merchants who traded in men, but the trade did not cease until the end of the sixteenth century. The national archives contain contracts from the twelfth century to the sixteenth about slaves. Priests were the notaries in these contracts, in spite of the state, the popes, and the councils. Slaves were brought from every country in the Levant, including Circassian and Georgian girls of twelve and fourteen. Slaves passed entirely under the will of the buyer.[871] Biot[872] finds evidence of slavery in Italy until the middle of the seventeenth century.

+305. Slavery in France.+ When the Armagnacs captured two men, in 1445, who could not pay ransom, they threatened to sell them to the Spanish Jews.[873] Bodin[874] admits that it is better to hold captives as slaves than to kill them, but his argument is all against slavery. He mentions cases in which it had been decided, apparently on the ground of the dictum of Philippe le Bel, that slaves who set foot in France became free.

+306. Slavery in Islam.+ Islam is more favorable to the emancipation of slaves than Christianity is, as the Visigothic bishops understood it. Mohammed set free his own slaves and ordered that all slaves should have the right to redeem themselves. He taught that it is a good work to emancipate a slave, which will offset many sins.[875] In his last sermon he said: "Know that every Moslem is the brother of every other Moslem. Ye are all a fraternity; all equal."[876] The law recognizes only two ways in which a human being may become a slave,--(1) by birth, (2) by war. A debtor cannot become a slave, and parents in distress cannot sell their children. Slaves cannot be so sold that a mother and her child under seven years of age are separated. Any slave woman may be made a concubine, but may not be married. Children of slave women are legitimate and free. A woman who has borne her master a child becomes free at the master's death, and may not be sold or pawned by him while he lives. Slaves are in many respects inferior to free persons as to rights and powers. They have no right of property against their owners. They are under milder criminal law than their owners. All this is to be understood of slaves who are Moslems.[877] The Koran often inculcates kindness to slaves.[878] Slaves are goods given to the free by the grace of God. Mohammedans would consider the abolition of slavery a triumph of Christianity over Islam.[879] An unbelieving slave has no guarantees at all against the will of his owner. In the eighth century the serfs in the Asturias rose en masse against their Mohammedan lords, and we are told that under the wealth and glory of Grenada the peasants hated the lords with great intensity.[880] In the great days of Abdurrahman III slaves were very numerous. They possessed land and slaves and the sultan charged them with "important military and civil functions, and pursued the policy of all despots in making them his ministers and favorites, in order to humiliate the aristocrats."[881] They were also armed. The late Romans put colons in the army. The Visigoths inherited the usage, although the lords would not give them up. At last the levy arose to one half of the serfs and they became a majority of the army.[882] Schweinfurth[883] says that "wherever Islamism has sway in Africa it appears never to be the fashion for any one to allow himself to be carried." "A strict Mohammedan reckons it an actual sin to employ a man as a vehicle, and such a sentiment is very remarkable in a people who set no limits to their spirit of oppression. It is a known fact that a Mohammedan, though he cannot refuse to recognize a negro, denying the faith, as being a man, has not the faintest idea of his being entitled to any rights of humanity." The jurists early set up the doctrine that the life of a Mohammedan slave was worth as much as that of a Mohammedan freeman, but this doctrine rarely was fulfilled in practice, never inside of the harem. The jurists pronounced against the right of life and death on the part of the slave owner, but it was exercised.[884] It is not law, but custom, to emancipate an adult slave after from seven to nine years' service. In most Moslem families slaves are well treated, as members of the household. Their children are educated as those of their masters are.[885] Pischon says that Moslems cannot live without slavery. No free woman will do the menial housework, and no woman may be seen unveiled by a free man.[886] This is a repetition of the opinion of the ancients that slavery was indispensable (sec. 285). If all the women were free, some of them would do the housework. A modern Turk is a tyrant inside his own dwelling. For his wife he has a proverb that she should have "neither mouth nor tongue." The girls are not educated to be such wives. They find some support at home against their husbands. Hence nearly all Turks entertain feelings of dislike and ill will towards their parents-in-law, and prefer slave concubines, whose relatives they welcome, if the wife is pretty, or wins their affection. Great ladies buy promising girls of seven or eight and train them, and sell them again.[887]

+307. Review of slavery in Islam.+ The injunctions of Mohammedanism sound just and humane; the practice of Mohammedans is cruel and heartless. The slave is not a thing or ware; he is a man entitled to treatment worthy of a man. A man may take his slave as a concubine, but he must not sell her to vice. A free man may marry a slave, if she is not his own. A free woman may marry a slave, with the same restriction. If a slave woman bears a child to her master, the child is free, and the mother cannot be sold or given away. At the death of her owner she becomes free. A slave man and woman may marry, with the consent of the owner, to which they have a claim if they have behaved well. A slave man is limited to two wives. Emancipation is a religious and meritorious act on the part of a slave owner.[888] "In general, it must be acknowledged that neither amongst the people of antiquity, nor amongst Christians, have slaves enjoyed such good treatment as amongst Moslems."[889] The provision about a slave woman who becomes a mother by her master is the one to arouse most Christian shame. Still, the Moslems have so many special pleas and technical interpretations by which to set aside troublesome laws that we can never infer that the mores conform to the laws. It is against the law for a Moslem to reduce a Moslem to slavery, but the Turks rob the Kurds and other tribes of their women, or buy them from the barbarous Tcherkess.[890]

+308. Slavery in England.+ Sir Thomas More[891] provided for some of the troubles of life by slavery. Slaves were to do "all laborsome toil," "drudging," and "base business." They were to be persons guilty of debt and breakers of marriage.[892] Garnier quotes a law of 1547 (I Ed. VI, c. 3), in which a vilein is mentioned as a slave. "Long after this date there are mentioned instances of a slave's emancipation, and such philanthropic writers as Fitzherbert lament the possibility of slavery and its actual existence, as a disgrace both to legislation and religion."[893]

+309+. Slavery in America.+ In the Anglo-American colonies which did not have a plantation system for tobacco or indigo the great reason for slavery was to hold the laborer to the place where the owner wanted him to work. In New England the negro slave lived in close intimacy with his owner and the latter's sons. In Connecticut he was allowed to go to the table with the family, "and into the dish goes the black hoof as freely as the white hand."[894] In that colony the creditor might require the debtor, by a law of 1650, to pay by service, and might sell his due service to any one of the English nation. The law remained in force into the nineteenth century.[895]

+310. Colonial slavery.+ France reopened the slave trade by a law of May 20, 1802. One of the reasons for this law submitted by Buonaparte to the legislature was: "The commercial prosperity of France renders it necessary that a certain quantity of the produce of the country, in wine and cereals, should be sent to the Antilles for consumption by the blacks. Now these negroes, were they free, would prefer manioc to wheat, and the juice of the sugar cane to our wines. It is, therefore, indispensable that they should be slaves."[896]

+311. Slavery preferred by slaves.+ It appears, therefore, that the subjection of one man's muscles and nerves to another man's will has been in the mores of all people from the beginning of human societal organization until now. Now it exists, as an institution, only in barbarism and half-civilization. In English North Borneo slavery is traditional. Any slave may be free for L4, "but in most cases they have been brought up as ordinary members of the family, and have no wish to leave their home. Cases of unkind treatment are very few and far between."[897] In fact, the purely sentimental objections to slavery have reached, in Africa, many people who are on a grade of civilization where slavery is an advantage to the slave (sec. 275). Schweinfurth tells us, of the Sudanese, that numbers of them often "voluntarily attach themselves to the Nubians, and are highly delighted to get a cotton shirt and a gun of their own. They will gladly surrender themselves to slavery, being attracted also by the hope of finding better food in the seribas than their own native wilderness can produce. The mere offer of these simple inducements in any part of the Niam-niam lands would be sufficient to gather a whole host of followers and vassals."[898] He goes on to show how the mode of grinding durra corn used in Africa keeps women in slavery. They pound it on a big stone by means of a little stone. One woman's day's work will grind enough for five or six men. It has been shown above (sec. 275) how badly the abolition of slavery has been received in Algeria and Sahara. Gibson is quoted "that voluntary and hereditary slavery might well be permitted to continue" in West Africa.[899] In that region "a slave man could hold property of his own. If he were a worthy, sensible person, he could inherit." He could take part in discussions and the palaver, and could defend himself against abuse. There are now no slaves bought or sold, but there are "pawns" for debt, who are not free.[900] On the one hand, the slave trade in Africa has required for its successful prosecution that the slaves should first be war captives or raid captives of other negroes. This has led to the wildest and most cruel devastation of the territory. On the other hand, the question arises whether savages must be left to occupy and use a continent as they choose, or whether they may be compelled to come into cooperation with civilized men to use it so as to carry on the work of the world. Many who think the latter view sound are arrested by the fact that no one has ever been found great or good enough to be a slave owner. On the other hand, a humanitarian doctrine which orders that a slave be turned out of doors, in spite of his own wish, is certainly absurd.

+312. Future of slavery.+ In the eighteenth century, in western Europe, there was a moral revolt against slavery. None of the excuses, or palliatives, were thought to be good. The English, by buying the slaves on their West India islands, took the money loss on themselves, but they threw back the islands to economic decay and uncultivation. When the civilized world sees what its ideas and precepts have made of Hayti, it must be forced to doubt its own philosophy. The same view has spread. Slavery is now considered impossible, socially and politically evil, and so not available for economic gain, even if it could win that. It is the only case in the history of the mores where the so-called moral motive has been made controlling. Whether it will remain in control is a question. The Germans, in the administration of their colonies, sneer at humanitarianism and eighteenth-century social philosophy. They incline to the doctrine that all men must do their share in the world and come into the great modern industrial and commercial organization. They look around for laborers for their islands and seem disposed to seek them in the old way. In South Africa and in our own southern states the question of sanitary and police control is arising to present a new difficulty. Are free men free to endanger peace, order, and health? Is a low and abandoned civilization free to imperil a high civilization, and entitled to freedom to do so? The humanitarians of the nineteenth century did not settle anything. The contact of two races and two civilizations cannot be settled by any dogma. Evidence is presented every day that the problems are not settled and cannot be settled by dogmatic and sentimental generalities. Is not a sentiment made ridiculous when it is offered as a rule of action to a man who does not understand it and does not respond to it? In general, in the whole western Sahara district slaves are as much astonished to be told that their relation to their owners is wrong, and that they ought to break it, as boys amongst us would be to be told that their relation to their fathers was wrong and ought to be broken.

+313. Relation of slavery to the mores and to ethics.+ Inasmuch as slavery springs from greed and vanity, it appeals to primary motives and is at once intertwined with selfishness and other fundamental vices. It is not, therefore, a cause which gradually produces and molds the mores, nor is it an ethical product of folkways and mores. It is characteral. It rises into an interest which overrules everything else. This appears most clearly in the history of Roman slavery (see sec. 288). The due succession of folkways, mores, character, and ethics is here broken. The motive of slavery is base and cruel from the beginning. Later, there are many people of high character who accept it as an inheritance, and are not corrupted by it. The due societal relation of interests and mores is broken, however. It is an evil thing that that relation should be broken. All which is moral (pertaining to mores) or ethical is thrown out of sequence and relation. The interests normally control life. It is not right that ethical generalizations should get dogmatic authority and be made the rule of life. Ethical generalizations are vague and easy. They satisfy loose thinkers, and it is a matter of regret when, in any society, they get the currency of fashion and are cherished by great numbers. Interests ought to control, being checked and verified by ethical principles of approved validity. Slavery is an interest which is sure to break over all restraints and correctives. It therefore becomes mistress of folkways and dictates the life policy. It is a kind of pitfall for civilization. It seems to be self-evident and successful, but it contains a number of forms of evil which are sure to unfold. The Moslems have suffered from the curse of it, although in entirely other ways than the Christians. It intertwines with any other great social evil which may be present. There it has combined with polygamy. It is, in any case, an institution which radically affects the mores, but it is to be noticed that its effect on them is not normal and not such as belongs to the prosperous development of civilization.

[625] Maine, Anc. Law, 164.

[626] Galton, Human Faculty, 79.

[627] Gumplowicz, Soziologie, 121.

[628] Durch Afrika, 207.

[629] Gumplowicz (Soziol., 118) quotes a seventeenth-century author who said that high wages could get soldiers and sailors for a galley, but not oarsmen, who would allow themselves to be bound by a chain, bastinadoed, etc. Gumplowicz explains that if the galley was to manoeuver with exactitude, chains, the bastinado, etc., must be used to regulate the service.

[630] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, I, Introd., 83.

[631] Holub, Maschukalumbe, I, 477; JAI, X, 9.

[632] Ratzel, I, 477, 481.

[633] Durch Afrika, 162.

[634] Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan, II, 110.

[635] Ibid., 104.

[636] Ibid., I, 315.

[637] Ratzel, III, 91.

[638] Ibid., 7.

[639] Rohlfs, Petermann's Mittlgn, Erg. heft, XXV, 23.

[640] Cantacuzene, Hist., IV, 20.

[641] JAI, XXI, 380.

[642] Livingstone, Travels in South Africa, I, 204.

[643] Smithson. Rep., 1886, Part I, 207.

[644] Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha, 242.

[645] Ratzel, III, 143.

[646] Austral. Assoc. Adv. Sci. 1892, 634.

[647] JAI, XII, 266.

[648] Ratzel, I, 404; III, 145 ff.

[649] JAI, XXII, 103; Junker, Afrika, II, 462, 477.

[650] Globus, LXXXIII, 314.

[651] Klose, Togo, 383.

[652] Globus, LXXXI, 334.

[653] Ellis, Ewe-speaking Peoples, 221.

[654] Ibid., 218, 220.

[655] Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan, I, 684 ff.

[656] Paulitschke, Ethnog. Nordost-Afr., I, 260; II, 139.

[657] JAI, XXII, 101.

[658] Mit Emin Pascha, 186.

[659] Cen. Afr., 111.

[660] Ratzel, I, 449.

[661] Ibid., 57.

[662] Pinkerton's Voy., XVI, 885.

[663] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, 285.

[664] Ibid., 290.

[665] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, 294.

[666] Pommerol, Une Femme chez les Sahariennes, 194; cf. Junker, Afrika, III, 477.

[667] Ibid., 201.

[668] Ling Roth, Sarawak, II, 215.

[669] Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, 497; West Afr. Stud., 479.

[670] Serpa Pinto, Como Eu Atravassei Afr., I, 116.

[671] In's Land der Maschukalumbe, I, 536.

[672] Ztsft. f. Ethnol., VI, 472.

[673] Fritsch, Eingeb. Sued-Afr., 364.

[674] Smithson. Rep., 1891, 524. Cf. Hostmann, De Beschaving van Negers in Amer., I, Chap. IV.

[675] Smithson. Rep., 1891, 525.

[676] Ibid., 520.

[677] Ibid., 532.

[678] Bur. Ethnol., XIV, 35.

[679] Smithson. Rep., 1891, 528.

[680] Ibid., 1887, Part II, 331.

[681] U. S. Nat. Mus., 1888, 252 ff.

[682] Strong, Wakeenah, 126.

[683] Bur. Ethnol., III, 81.

[684] Nadaillac, Prehist. America, 313.

[685] Bancroft, Native Races, II, 217-223.

[686] Brinton, Nagualism, 28 note.

[687] See Hamilton, _The Panis, an Histor. Outline of Canadian Indian Slavery in the 18th cent., Proc. Canad. Instit._, Toronto, 1897, n.s., I, 19-27.

[688] Koch, Die Guaikuru-Staemme, Globus, LXXXI, 44.

[689] Koch (p. 45) says that they become free and set up prosperous households.

[690] Spix and Martius, Brasil., II, 73; v. Martius, Ethnog. Brasiliens, 71.

[691] Varnhagen, Hist. Geral do Brasil, I, 115, 178, 181, 269, 273.

[692] v. Martius, 72.

[693] Varnhagen, Hist. do Brasil, I, 431; v. Martius, 131.

[694] Caduvei, I, 100.

[695] Voice for South Amer., XIII, 201.

[696] Melanesians, 346.

[697] Voelkerkunde, II, 279.

[698] JAI, XXVI, 400.

[699] Samoafahrten, 170.

[700] Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. India, 85.

[701] Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. India, 86.

[702] Ibid., 91.

[703] Carey and Tuck, The Chin Hills, I, 203 ff.

[704] Schmidt, Ceylon, 273.

[705] Raap in Globus, LXXXIII, 174.

[706] Marsden, Sumatra, 252.

[707] Wilken in Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde, XL, 175.

[708] Bock, Reis in Borneo, 9, 78, 94.

[709] Ibid., 92.

[710] JAI, XIII, 15.

[711] Ling Roth, Sarawak, II, 209.

[712] Ibid., 209.

[713] Ibid., 213.

[714] JAI, XIII, 417.

[715] Schwaner, Borneo, I, 205.

[716] Ibid., II, 149.

[717] Ling Roth, Sarawak, CLXXXV; JAI, XXII, 32.

[718] Perelaer, Dajaks, 153.

[719] Perelaer, Dajaks, 155.

[720] Volkenkunde, 423.

[721] JAI, XVI, 142.

[722] Williams, Middle Kingdom, I, 413.

[723] Ibid., 277.

[724] Medhurst in China Br., RAS, IV, 17

[725] Web of Indian Life, 69.

[726] Hearn, Japan, 256, 258, 353.

[727] Winckler, Gesetze Ham., 21.

[728] Laws 15 and 16.

[729] Kohler und Peiser, Aus d. Babyl. Rechtsleben, IV, 47. Cf. I, 1 and II, 6.

[730] Ibid., I, 1.

[731] Levit. xxv. 39.

[732] Nehem. v. 5.

[733] Exod. xxi. 16.

[734] Exod. xxi.

[735] Exod. xxii. 2.

[736] Levit. xxv. 49; Buhl, Soc. Verhaelt. d. Israel., 35, 106.

[737] Deut. xv. 12-18; Exod. xxi. 2 ff.; Levit. xxv. 39-46.

[738] Od., XVII, 322.

[739] Ibid., XV, 403.

[740] Buchholz, Homer. Realien, II, 63.

[741] Beloch, Griech. Gesch., I, 469.

[742] De Repub., I, 309.

[743] De Legibus, VI, 376.

[744] Polit., I, ii, 7; Nich. Ethics, VIII, 10.

[745] Polit., I, 2.

[746] Drumann, Arbeiter und Communisten, 155.

[747] Bender, Rom, 150, 159.

[748] Livy, XLI, 28, 8.

[749] Plutarch, Ti. Gracchus, 8.

[750] Aufstaende d. Unfreien Arbeiter, 36.

[751] Livy, XXVII, 16; XXVIII, 9; XXXI, 21.

[752] De Agri Cultura, 2, 7; Plutarch, Cato, 5; Schmidt, Societe Civile dans le Monde Romain, 93.

[753] Plutarch, Crassus, 9; Appianus, I, c. 120.

[754] Dion. Halic., V, 51; X, 16; Livy, III, 15.

[755] Livy, IV, 45.

[756] Ibid., XXXII, 36.

[757] Neumann, Gesch. Roms, I, 382.

[758] Buecher, Aufstaende d. Unfreien Arbeiter, 31.

[759] Ibid., 45.

[760] XXXIV, frag. 2, 8-11.

[761] Buecher, 52.

[762] Ibid., 56.

[763] Rossbach, Roem. Ehe, 23; Plutarch, Coriolanus.

[764] Wallon, L'Esclavage, I, 406; II, 262.

[765] Plutarch, Sulla, 9.

[766] Livy, XXII, 57.

[767] Plutarch, Marius, 35.

[768] Grupp, Kulturgesch. der Roem. Kaiserzeit, I, 306.

[769] Ibid., 271.

[770] Dezobry, Rome au Siecle d'Auguste, I, 260.

[771] Wallon, L'Esclavage, III, Chap. X.

[772] Annals, XIII, 26.

[773] Moreau-Christophe, Droit a l'Oisivete, 257.

[774] Seneca, De Ira, III, 40.

[775] Tacitus, Annals, XIV, 42.

[776] Buecher, Aufstaende, 17.

[777] Blair, Slavery amongst the Romans, 164.

[778] Ibid., 32.

[779] Ibid., 48.

[780] Digest, I, 1, 4.

[781] Ibid., L, 17, 32.

[782] Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 117.

[783] Ibid., 251-252.

[784] Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 253.

[785] Grupp, Kulturgesch. der Roem. Kaiserzeit, I, 312-314.

[786] Ibid., 301.

[787] Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 100.

[788] Ibid., 102.

[789] Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 105.

[790] Ibid., 94.

[791] Ibid., 106.

[792] Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 114-116.

[793] Ibid., 112.

[794] Orat., X, 13; XV, 5.

[795] Dill, Nero to M. Aurel., 182.

[796] Ibid., 117.

[797] Digest, III, tit. 4, 1.

[798] Dill, 265.

[799] Ibid., 254, 266, 268.

[800] Ibid., 271.

[801] Dill, 282.

[802] Instit., I, 8; Digest, I, 6, 2.

[803] Wallon, L'Esclavage, III, 51 ff.

[804] Eur. Morals, II, 65.

[805] Muratori (Dissert. XV) thinks that all ecclesiastics were bound not to allow the income of their places to be reduced during their tenancy. This duty set their attitude to slavery.

[806] Roman Society in the Last Century of Rome, 161.

[807] Cod. Theod., IX, 9.

[808] Bodin, Republic, Book I, Chap. V.

[809] Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 64.

[810] Cod. Theod., II, 25.

[811] Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 65.

[812] Sentent., lib. III, cap. 47.

[813] Marquardt, Roem. Staatsverwaltung, II, 233.

[814] Ibid., 234.

[815] Entstehung des Colonats, 11.

[816] L'Esclavage, III, 282.

[817] Ibid., 313.

[818] Ibid., 308.

[819] Suetonius, Vespas., 1.

[820] Jul. Capitol., M. Aurel., 22.

[821] Herodianus, II, 4, sec. 12.

[822] Cod. Just., XI, LVIII.

[823] Vopisc., Aurelian, 48.

[824] Am. Marcel., XXVIII, 5.

[825] Moreau-Christophe, Le Droit a l'Oisivete, 274.

[826] Rodbertus, Hildeb. Ztsft., II, 241.

[827] Colonat, 67.

[828] Ibid., 63.

[829] Hildeb. Ztsft., 206.

[830] Colonat, 143.

[831] Hom. on Matthew, 62; Migne, Patrol. Graec., LVIII, 591.

[832] Cook, Fathers of Jesus, II, 25.

[833] Achelis, Virg. Subintrod., 29-31.

[834] Relig. des Judent., 447.

[835] Cook, Fathers of Jesus, II, 18-28.

[836] Estrup, Skrifter, I, 261.

[837] Weinhold, D. F., I, 104.

[838] Corpus Poet. Bor., I, 235.

[839] Rothe, Nordens Staatsvrfssg., I, 35.

[840] Ibid., 17.

[841] Ibid., 18.

[842] Ibid., II, 266.

[843] Estrup, Skrifter, I, 263.

[844] Heimskringla, II, 77.

[845] Corpus Poet. Bor., I, 340.

[846] Ibid., 361.

[847] Wachsmuth, Bauernkriege, in Raumer, Taschenbuch, V.

[848] Gjessing, Ann. f. Nordiske Oldkyndighed, 1862, 85 ff.

[849] Geijer, Svenska Folkets Hist., I, 206.

[850] Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthuemer, 461.

[851] Vinogradoff, Vileinage, 152.

[852] West. Europe in the Eighth Century, 11.

[853] Grimm, Rechtsalt., 178.

[854] Bourquelot, Foires de Champagne, Acad. d. Belles Lettres et Inscrip., 1865, 307.

[855] D'Avenel, Hist. Econ., I, 186.

[856] Abol. de l'Esclav., 264.

[857] Wilkins, Conc. Mag. Brit., I, 471.

[858] Opusc., XX, ii, 10.

[859] Heyd, Levanthandel, II, 442.

[860] Navig. Francaises, 19.

[861] Mason in Amer. Anthrop., IX, 197.

[862] Biot, Abol. de l'Esclav., 422.

[863] Ibid., 431.

[864] Libri, Sciences Mathematiques en Italie, II, 509.

[865] Ibid., 510.

[866] Ibid., 515.

[867] Ibid., 513.

[868] Ibid., 511.

[869] Cibrario, Econ. Polit., III, 274.Return to passage

[870] Biot, Abol. de l'Esclav., 426.Return to passage

[871] Molmenti, Venezia nella Vita Privata, I, 280.Return to passage

[872] Abol. de l'Esclav., 441.Return to passage

[873] Raumer, Hist. Taschenbuch, 2 ser., III, 111.Return to passage

[874] Repub., Book I, Chap. V.Return to passage

[875] Dozy, Musulm. d'Espagne, II, 43; Koran, IV, 94; V, 91; LVIII, 4.Return to passage

[876] Hauri, Islam, 84.Return to passage

[877] Juynboll, Moham. Wet., 231.Return to passage

[878] Suras II, IV, XXIV.Return to passage

[879] Hauri, Islam, 155.Return to passage

[880] Dozy, II, 25.Return to passage

[881] Ibid., III, 61.Return to passage

[882] Ibid., II, 29.Return to passage

[883] Heart of Africa, I, 374.Return to passage

[884] Von Kremer, Kulturgesch. d. Orients, II, 128.Return to passage

[885] Pischon, Einfluss d. Islam, 25-29.Return to passage

[886] Ibid., 31.Return to passage

[887] Globus, XXX, 127; Vambery, Sittenbilder aus dem Morgenlande, 25.Return to passage

[888] Hauri, Islam, 149.Return to passage

[889] Ibid., 150.Return to passage

[890] Ibid., 153.Return to passage

[891] Utopia, II, 53.Return to passage

[892] Utopia, II, 132, 144, 147.Return to passage

[893] Brit. Peasantry, 71.Return to passage

[894] Mad. Knight's Journey (1704).Return to passage

[895] Hildreth, Hist. U. S., I, 372.Return to passage

[896] Fauriel, Last Days of the Consulate, 31.Return to passage

[897] Cator, Head-hunters, 198.Return to passage

[898] Heart of Africa, II, 421.Return to passage

[899] N. S., Amer. Anthrop., VI, 563.Return to passage

[900] Nassau, Fetishism in West Afr., 14 ff.Return to passage

VII. ABORTION, INFANTICIDE, KILLING THE OLD

The able-bodied and the burdens.--The advantages and disadvantages of the aged. Respect and contempt for them.-- Abortion and infanticide.--Relation of parent and child.-- Population policy.--The burden and benefit of children.-- Individual and group interest in children.--Abortion in ethnography.--Abortion renounced.--Infanticide in ethnography.--Infanticide renounced.--Ethics of abortion and infanticide.--Christian mores as to abortion and infanticide.-- Respect and contempt for the aged.--The aged in ethnography.-- Killing the old.--Killing the old in ethnography.--Special exigencies of the civilized.--How the customs of infanticide and killing the old were changed.

+314. The competent part of society; the burdens.+ The able-bodied and competent part of a society is the adults in the prime of life. These have to bear all the societal burdens, among which are the care of those too young and of those too old to care for themselves. It is certain that at a very early time in the history of human society the burden of bearing and rearing children, and the evils of overpopulation, were perceived as facts, and policies were instinctively adopted to protect the adults. The facts caused pain, and the acts resolved upon to avoid it were very summary, and were adopted with very little reasoning. Abortion and infanticide protected the society, unless its situation with respect to neighbors was such that war and pestilence kept down the numbers and made children valuable for war. The numbers present, therefore, in proportion to the demand for men, constituted one of the life conditions. It is a life condition which is subject to constant variation, and one in regard to which the sanctions of wise action are prompt and severe.

+315. The advantages and disadvantages of the aged. Mores of respect and contempt.+ Those who survive to old age become depositaries of all the wisdom of the group, and they are generally the possessors of power and authority, but they lose physical power, skill, and efficiency in action. In time, they become burdens on the active members of the group. "As a man grows old and weak he loses the only claim to respect which savages understand; but superstitious fear then comes to his protection. He will die soon and then his ghost can take revenge."[901] That is to say that the mores can interfere to inculcate duties of respect to the old which will avert from them the conclusion that they ought to die. In respect to the aged, therefore, we find two different sets of mores: (a) those in which the aged are treated with arbitrary and conventional respect; and (b) those in which the doctrine is that those who become burdens must be removed, by their own act or that of their relatives. In abortion, infanticide, and killing the old there is a large element of judgment as to what societal welfare requires, although they are executed generally from immediate personal selfishness. The custom of the group, by which the three classes of acts are approved as right and proper, must contain a judgment that they are conducive, and often necessary, to welfare.

+316. Abortion and infanticide.+ Abortion and infanticide are two customs which have the same character and purpose. The former prevents child bearing; the latter child rearing. They are folkways which are aggregates of individual acts under individual motives, for an individual might so act without a custom in the group. The acts, however, when practiced by many, and through a long time, change their character. They are no longer individual acts of resistance to pain. They bear witness to uniform experiences, and to uniform reactions against the experiences, in the way of judgments as to what it is expedient to do, and motives of policy. They also suggest to, and teach, the rising generation. They react, in the course of time, on the welfare of the group. They affect its numbers and its quality, as we now believe, although we cannot find that any group has ever been forced by its experience to put these customs under taboo.[902]

+317. Relation of parent and child.+ Children add to the weight of the struggle for existence of their parents. The relation of parent to child is one of sacrifice. The interests of children and parents are antagonistic. The fact that there are, or may be, compensations does not affect the primary relation between the two. It may well be believed that, if procreation had not been put under the dominion of a great passion, it would have been caused to cease by the burdens it entails. Abortion and infanticide are especially interesting because they show how early in the history of civilization the burden of children became so heavy that parents began to shirk it, and also because they show the rise of a population policy, which is one of the most important programmes of practical expediency which any society ever can adopt.

+318. Population policy.+ At the present moment the most civilized states do not know whether to stimulate or restrict population; whether to encourage immigration or not; whether emigration is an evil or a blessing; whether to tax bachelors or married men. These questions are discussed as if absolute answers to them were possible, independently of differences in life conditions. In France the restriction of population has entered into the mores, and has been accomplished by the people, from motives which lie in the standard of living. In New England the same is true, perhaps to a greater extent. There are many protests against these mores, on the ground that they will produce societal weakness and decay, and ethical condemnation is freely expended upon them by various schools of religious and philosophical ethics. What is certain, however, is that in the popular ethics of the people who practice restriction it is regarded as belonging to elementary common sense. The motives are connected with economy and social ambition. The restriction on the number of children, in all modern civilized society, issues in an improvement of the quality of the children, so far as that can be improved by care, education, travel, and the expenditure of capital (sec. 320). Thus the problem of rearing children has pressed upon mankind from the earliest times until to-day. It is a problem of the last degree of simplicity and reality,--a problem of a task and the strength to perform it, of an expenditure and the means to meet it. For the group, also, population has always presented, as it now does, a problem of policy. That group interests are involved in it is unquestionable. It is one of the matters in regard to which it would be most proper to adopt a careful and well-digested programme of policy. A great many of the projects which are now urged upon society are really applications of population philosophy assumed to be wise without adequate knowledge, or they set population free from all restraints on behalf of certain beneficiaries, while a sound population policy, according to the best knowledge we have, would be the real solution of a number of the most serious evils (alcoholism, sex disease, imbecility, insanity, and infant mortality) which now exhaust the vigor of society.

+319. Burden or benefit of children.+ Abortion and infanticide are, as already stated, the earliest efforts of men to ward off the burden of children and the evils of overpopulation by specific devices of an immediate and brutal character. The weight of the burden of children differs greatly with the life conditions of groups, and with the stage of the arts by which men cope with the struggle for existence. If a territory is underpopulated, an increase in numbers increases the output and the dividend per capita. If it is overpopulated, the food quest is difficult and children cause hardship to the parents. On the other hand, the demand for children will be great, if the group has strong neighbors and needs warriors. The demand may be greater for boys than for girls, or contrariwise. Girls may be needed in order that wives may be obtained in exchange for them, but the greater demand for girls is generally due to the mores which have been established. The demand may be so great as to offset the burden of rearing children and make it a group necessity that that burden shall be endured. From the standpoint of the individual father or mother this means that there are compensations for the toil and cost of rearing children. When girls bring a good bride price to the father, it is evident that he at least receives compensation. As to the mothers, if they receive no compensation, that accords with all the rest of their experience. It is a well-known fact that they often show resentment when a daughter is given (sold) in marriage. That fact has never been adequately explained, but it seems to be anything but strange if the husband sells the girl and takes the bride price, although the wife bore and reared the child. Amongst the Marathas of India, on the contrary, "even to the well-to-do, to have many daughters is a curse." The bride's father has to give a big dowry to the groom. If the fathers have rank, but are poor, the girls often have to marry men who are inferior in age or rank.[903]

+320. Individual and group interest.+ It follows that, in all variations of the life conditions, in all forms of industrial organization, and at all stages of the arts, conjunctures arise in which the value of children fluctuates, and also the relative value of boys and girls turns in favor, now of one, now of the other. In the examination of any case of the customs of abortion and infanticide chief attention should be directed to these conjunctures. On the stage of pastoral-nomadic life, or wherever else horde life existed, it appears that numerous offspring were regarded as a blessing and child rearing, in the horde, was not felt as a burden. It was in the life of the narrower family, whatever its form, that children came to be felt as a burden, so that "progress" caused abortion and infanticide. Further progress has made children more and more expensive, down to our own times, when "neomalthusianism," although unavowed, exists in fact as a compromise between egoism and child rearing. All the folkways which go to make up a population policy seem to imply greater knowledge of the philosophy of population than can be ascribed to uncivilized men. The case is one, however, in which the knowledge is simple and the acts proceed from immediate interest, while the generalization is an unapprehended result. The mothers know the strain of child bearing and child rearing. They refuse to undergo it, for purely egoistic reasons. The consequent adjustment of the population to the food supply comes of itself. It was never foreseen or purposed by anybody. The women would not be allowed by the men to shirk motherhood if the group needed warriors, or if the men wanted daughters to sell as wives, so that the egoistic motive of mothers never could alone suffice to make folkways. It would need to be in accord with the interest of the group or the interest of the men. Abortion and infanticide are primary and violent acts of self-defense by the parents against famine, disease, and other calamities of overpopulation, which increase with the number which each man or woman has to provide for. In time, the customs get ghost sanction, but it does not appear that they are in any way directly due to goblinism or to the aleatory element. They become ritual acts and are made sacred whenever they are brought into connection with societal welfare, which implies some reflection. The customs begin in a primary response to pain and the strain of life. Doctrines of right and duty go with the customs and produce a code of conduct in connection with them. Sometimes, if a child lives a specified time, its life must be spared. Sometimes infanticide is practiced only on girls, of whom a smaller number suffices to keep up the tribe. Sometimes it is confined to the imperfect infants, in obedience to a great tribal interest to have able-bodied men, and to spend no strength or capital in rearing others. Sometimes infanticide is executed by exposure, which gives the infant a chance for its life if any one will rescue it. Sometimes the father must express by a ritual act (e.g. taking up the newborn infant from the ground) his decision whether it is to live or not. With these customs must be connected that of selling children into slavery, which, when social hardship is great, is an alternative to infanticide. The Jews abominated infanticide but might sell their children to Jews.[904] Abortion by unmarried women is due to the penalties of husbandless mothers, and is only in form in the same class with abortion by the married. Cases are given below in which abortion is not due to misery, but to the egoistic motive only; also cases in which abortion and infanticide are actually carried to the degree of group suicide. Finally we may mention in this connection superstitious customs or ancient and senseless usages to prevent child bearing, since they bear witness to the dominion of the same ideas and wishes to which abortion and infanticide are due (see sec. 321).

+321. Illustrations from ethnography.+ The Papuans on Geelvink Bay, New Guinea, say that "children are a burden. We become tired of them. They destroy us." The women practice abortion to such an extent that the rate of increase of the population is very small and in some places there is a lack of women.[905] Throughout Dutch New Guinea the women will not rear more than two or three children each.[906] In fact, it is said of the whole island that the people love their children but fear that the food supply will be insufficient, or they seek ease and shirk the trouble of rearing children.[907] In German Melanesia the custom is current. Although many Europeans live with native women, few crossbreeds are to be seen.[908] Codrington[909] gives as reasons: "If a woman did not want the trouble of bringing up a child, desired to appear young, was afraid her husband might think the birth before its time, or wished to spite her husband." Ling Roth[910] quotes Low that the Dyaks never resort to wilful miscarriage, but this statement must be restricted to some of them. Perelaer[911] says that even married women do it and employ harmful means. The Atchinese practice abortion both before marriage and in marriage. It is a matter of course.[912] The women of Central Celebes will not bear children, and use abortion to avoid it, lest the perineum be torn,--"a thing which they consider the greatest shame for a woman."[913] If an unmarried woman of the Djakun, on the peninsula of Malacca, used abortion, she lost all standing in the tribe. Women despised her; no man would marry her, and she might be degraded by a punishment inflicted by her parents. Married women practiced it sometimes to avoid the strain of bearing children, but, if detected, they might be beaten by the husbands, even to death. In the neighboring tribe of the Orang Laut no means of abortion was known. "Such an abomination was not regarded as possible."[914] These tribes on Malacca are very low in grade of civilization. They are aborigines who have been displaced and depressed. The people of Nukuoro are all of good physique, large, and well formed. They have a food supply in excess of their wants and are well nourished. The population has decreased in recent years, by reason of the killing of children before or after birth.[915] On the New Britain islands the women dislike to become mothers soon after marriage. Generally it is from two to four years before a child is born.[916] On the New Hebrides the women employ abortion for egoistic reasons, and miscarriage is often produced by climbing trees and carrying heavy loads.[917] The inhabitants of the New Hebrides are diminishing in number, especially on the coasts, because they flee inland before the whites. Ten years ago there were at Port Sandwich, on Mallicolo, six hundred souls. To-day there are only half so many. In the last years there have been five births and thirty deaths. Abortion is very common. If a malformed child is born, it and the mother are killed. The nations raid each other to get slaves or cannibal food.[918] These citations seem to represent the general usage throughout the Pacific islands.

+322.+ Oviedo said of the women "of the main land" of South America, when first discovered, that they practiced abortion in order not to spoil their bodies by child bearing.[919] The Kadiveo of Paraguay are perishing largely through abortion by the women, who will not bear more than one child each.[920] They are a subdivision of the Guykurus, who were reported sixty or seventy years ago to be decreasing in number from this cause. The women, "until they are thirty, procure abortion, to free themselves from the privations of pregnancy and the trouble of bringing up children."[921] Martius[922] gave as additional reasons, that the tribe lived largely on horseback, and the women did not want to be hindered by greater difficulties in this life, nor did they want to be left behind by their husbands. The Indians of the plains of North America were driven to similar limitations. "It has long been the custom that a woman should not have a second child until her first is ten years old."[923] Infants interfere very seriously with their mode of life.

Neither abortion nor infanticide is customary in the Horn of Africa unless it be in time of famine.[924] In South Africa abortion is a common custom.[925] Abortion and infanticide are so nearly universal in savage life, either as egoistic policy or group policy, that exceptions to the practice of these vices are noteworthy phenomena.

+323. Abortion renounced.+ In ancient India abortion came to be ranked with the murder of a Brahmin as the greatest crimes.[926] Plato's idea of right was that men over fifty-five, and women over forty, ought not to procreate citizens. By either abortion or infanticide all offspring of such persons should be removed.[927] Aristotle also thought that imperfect children should be put to death, and that the numbers should be limited. If parents exceeded the prescribed number, abortion should be employed.[928] These two philosophers evidently constructed their ideals on the mores already established amongst the Greeks, and their ethical doctrines are only expressions of approval of the mores in which they lived. The Jews, on the other hand, regarded abortion and infanticide as heathen abominations. Both are forbidden in the "Two Ways," sec. 2. In the laws of the German nations the mother was treated as entitled to decide whether she would bear a child. Abortion produced on her by another was a crime, but not when she produced it on herself. Only in the law of the West Goths was abortion by the mother made criminal, because it was the view that the state was injured.[929] In modern Hungary, at a marriage, the desire to have no children is expressed by a number of ancient and futile usages to prevent child bearing for years, or altogether. Abortion is practiced throughout Hungary by women of all the nationalities. Women rejoice to be barren, and it is not thought creditable to have an infant within two or three years of marriage.[930] Nevertheless the birth rate is very high (thirty-nine per thousand).

+324. Illustrations of infanticide.+ The Australians practiced infanticide almost universally. A woman could not carry two children. Therefore, if she had one who could not yet march, and bore another, the latter was killed. One or both twins were killed. The native men killed half-white children.[931] Australian life was full of privations on account of limited supplies of food and water. The same conditions made wandering a necessity. If a woman had two infants, she could not accompany her husband.[932] One reporter says that the fate of a child "depended much on the condition the country was in at the time (drought, etc.), and the prospect of the mother's rearing it satisfactorily."[933] Sickly and imperfect children were killed because they would require very great care. The first one was also killed because they thought it immature and not worth preserving.[934] Very generally it was eaten that the mother might recover the strength which she had given to it.[935] If there was an older child, he ate of it, in the belief that he might gain strength. Very rarely were more than four children of one woman allowed to grow up.[936] Curr[937] says that before the whites came women bore, on an average, six children each, and that, as a rule, they reared two boys and a girl, the maximum being ten. All authorities agree that if children were spared at birth they were treated with great affection. On the Andaman Islands infanticide was unknown.[938] It was not common on New Zealand. Boys were wanted as warriors, girls as breeders.[939] A missionary reports a case in New Guinea where the parents of a sickly, peevish child, probably teething, calmly decided to kill it.[940] In British New Guinea there is more or less infanticide, the father strangling the infant at birth to avoid care and trouble. Daughters are preserved by preference because of the bride price which the father will get for them.[941] On Nukuoro the civil ruler decides long before a birth whether the child is to be allowed to live or not. If the decision is adverse, it is smothered at birth.[942] On the Banks Islands girls are preferred, because the people have the mother family, and because of the marriageable value of girls.[943] On the Murray Islands in Torres Straits all children beyond a prescribed number are put to death, "lest the food supply should become insufficient." "If the children were all of one sex, some were destroyed from shame, it being held proper to have an equal number of boys and girls."[944] On some islands of the Solomon group infanticide is not practiced, except in cases of illegitimate births. On others the coast people kill their own children and buy grown-up children from the bush people of the interior, that being an easier way to get them.[945] There is no infanticide on Samoa. The unmarried employ abortion.[946] Throughout Polynesia infanticide was prevalent for social selection, all of mixed blood or caste being put to death. Only two boys in a family were allowed to live, but any number of girls.[947] In Tahiti they killed girls, who were of no use for war, service of the god, fishing, or navigation.[948] The Malagassans on Madagascar kill all children who are born on unlucky days.[949]

+325.+ The women of the Pima (Arizona) practice infanticide, because, if their husbands die, they will be poor and will have to provide by their own exertions for such children as they have.[950] All Hyperboreans practice infanticide on account of the difficulty of the food supply.[951]

+326.+ The Bondei of West Africa strangle an infant at birth if any of the numerous portents and omens for which they watch are unfavorable. An infant is also killed if its upper teeth come first.[952] Until very recently it was customary in parts of Ahanta for the tenth child born of the same mother to be buried alive.[953] In Kabre (Togo) there is a large population and little food. The people often sell their own children, or kidnap others, which they sell in order to provide for their own.[954] The Vadshagga put to death illegitimate children and those whose upper incisors come first. The latter, if allowed to live, would be parricides.[955] On the Zanzibar coast weak and deformed children are exposed. The Catholic mission saved many, but the natives then exposed more to get rid of them.[956] The Hottentots expose female twins.[957] The Kabyls put to death all children who are illegitimate, incestuous, or adulterine. If the mother should spare the infant she would insure her own death.[958] There is said to be no infanticide in Cambodia.[959] "Widows among the Moghiahs [a criminal tribe of central India] are allowed to remarry. The murder of female infants has, therefore, never prevailed amongst them."[960] The Chinese on Formosa practice female infanticide, "in cases of a succession of girls in a family." "The aborigines, both civilized and savage, looked with horror upon the Chinese for their inhumanity in this respect." They brought the custom from China, where in the overpopulated southeastern provinces it is current custom.[961] The Khonds of India are a poor, isolated hill tribe, who put female infants to death because they regard marriage in the same tribe as incest.[962] All tribes in their status who refuse to practice endogamy have a peculiar problem to deal with. Wilkins[963] says that six sevenths of the population of India have for ages practiced female infanticide. Buddhism is declared to be inhuman and antisocial. It palliates everything which is done to limit population--polygamy and infanticide in China, concubinage in Japan, and prostitution in both. It started and developed in countries which had for generations suffered from overpopulation, with its regular consequences of famine, pestilence, and war.[964]

+327. Revolt against infanticide.+ The ancient Egyptians revolted, in their mores, against infanticide and put an end to it.[965] Strabo[966] thought it a peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child must be reared. The Greeks regarded infanticide as the necessary and simply proper way to deal with a problem which could not be avoided. Dissent was not wanting. At Thebes infanticide was forbidden.[967] Sutherland[968] points out the effect of infanticide to bring the Greek and Latin races to an end. They neglected their own females and begot offspring with foreign and slave women, thus breeding out their own race blood. The Romans do not appear to have had any population policy until the time of the empire, when the social corruption and egoism so restricted reproduction that the policy was directed to the encouragement of marriage and parenthood. Therefore infanticide was disapproved by the jurists and moralists. Ovid, Seneca, Plutarch, Favorinus, and Juvenal speak of abortion as general and notorious, but as criminal.[969] Tacitus praised the Germans because, as he erroneously asserted,[970] they did not allow infanticide, and he knew that the Jews prohibited it.[971] In the cases of Greece and Rome we have clear instances to prove the opposite tendencies of the mores, with their attendant philosophies and ethical principles, on the conjuncture of the conditions and interests. At Rome children were exposed either on account of poverty, which was the ancient cause, or on account of luxury, egoism, and vice. "Pagan and Christian authorities are united in speaking of infanticide as a crying vice of the empire."[972] These protests show that the custom was not fully protected by the mores. Pliny thought it necessary.[973] Seneca refers to the killing of defective children as a wise and unquestioned custom which he can use for illustration.[974] For the masses, until the late days of the empire, infanticide was, at the worst, a venial crime. "What was demanded on this subject was not any clearer moral teaching, but rather a stronger enforcement of the condemnation long since passed upon infanticide, and an increased protection for exposed infants.... The church labored to deepen the sense of the enormity of the crime."[975] Evidently infanticide was a tradition with serious approval from one state of things to another in which it was harmful and not needed in any view. In 331 A.D. Constantine gave title to those who rescued exposed children against the parents of the children.[976] This was in favor of the children, since it increased the chances that they would be rescued, if we must assume that it was their interest that their lives should be spared, even if they were reared by men who speculated on their future value as slaves or prostitutes. As a corollary of the legislation against infanticide, institutions to care for foundlings came into existence. Such institutions rank as charitable and humanitarian. Their history is such as to make infanticide seem kind. In 374 infanticide was made a crime punishable by death. Justinian provided that foundlings should be free.[977] Infanticide continued to be customary. The church worked against it by the introduction of the mystic religious element. The infants died unbaptized. As the religion took a more and more ritualistic character this fact affected the minds of the masses more than the suffering or death of the infants ever had. In a cold estimate of facts it was also questionable whether the infants suffered any great harm, and the popular estimate of the crime of extinguishing a life before any interests had clustered around it was very lenient. "The criminality of abortion was immeasurably aggravated when it was believed to involve not only the extinction of a transient life, but also the damnation of an immortal soul."[978] The religious interest was thus brought to reenforce the love of children in the struggle against the old custom. The canon law also construed it as murder. Through the Middle Ages the sale of children was not common, but the custom of exposure continued.[979] The primitive usages of the Teutons included exposure of infants. The father by taking the child up from the ground ordained that it should live. It was then bathed and named. Rulers exposed infants lest dependent persons should be multiplied. Evil dreams also caused exposure. When the Icelanders accepted Christianity a minority stipulated that they should still be allowed to eat horseflesh and to practice exposure of infants.[980] In old German law infanticide was treated as the murder of a relative. The guilty mother was buried alive in a sack, the law prescribing, with the ingenious fiendishness of the age, that a dog, a cat, a rooster, and a viper should also be placed in the sack.[981] In ancient Arabia the father might kill newborn daughters by burying them alive. The motive of the old custom was anxiety about provision for the child and shame at the disgrace of having become the father of a daughter.[982] In the Koran it is forbidden to kill children for fear of starvation. In modern countries infanticide has been common or rare according to the penalties, in law or the mores, upon husbandless mothers. In the sixteenth century, in Spain, illegitimate births were very common. Infanticide was very uncommon, but abandonment (foundlings) took its place. The foundlings became vagabonds and rogues.[983]

+328. Ethics of abortion and infanticide.+ Abortion and infanticide are at war with the attachment of parents to children, which is a sentiment common, but not universal, amongst animals while the offspring are dependent. It might seem that these customs have been abolished by speculative ethics. In fact, they have not been abolished. They have been modified and have been superseded by milder methods of accomplishing the same purpose. It is evidently a question at what point parental affection begins to attach to the child. We think that we have gained much over savage people in our notion of murder, but it appears that primitive men did not dare to take anything out of nature without giving an equivalent for it, and that they did not dare to kill anything without first sacrificing it to a god, or afterwards conciliating the spirit of the animal or of its species. If it is murder to prevent a life from coming into existence, it would be a question of casuistry at what point such a crime would ensue. It might be murder to remain unmarried.

+329. Christian mores as to abortion and infanticide.+ The tradition against abortion and infanticide came down into our mores from the Jews. It never got strength in the mores of Christianity until each of those acts was regarded as a high religious crime because the child died unbaptized. The soul was held to belong to it from the moment of conception. In reality nothing has put an end to infanticide but the advance in the arts (increased economic power), by virtue of which parents can provide for children. Neomalthusianism is still practiced and holds the check by which the population is adjusted to the economic power. There is shame in it. No one dare avow it or openly defend it. A "two-child system" is currently referred to in French and German literature as an established family policy, and restriction is certainly a fact in the mores of all civilized people. It is certain that the masses of those people think it right and not wrong. They do not accept guidance from any speculative ethics, but from expediency. Their devotion to their children is greater than a similar virtue ever has been at any previous time, and they prove their willingness to make the utmost sacrifices for them. In fact, very many of them are unwilling to have more children because it would limit what they can do for those they have. In short, the customs and their motives have changed very little since the days of savagery.

+330. Mores of respect or contempt for the aged.+ In the introductory paragraph to this chapter it was observed that there are two sets of mores as to the aged: (a) in one set of mores the teaching and usages inculcate conventional respect for the aged, who are therefore arbitrarily preserved for their wisdom and counsel, perhaps also sometimes out of affection and sympathy; (b) in the other set of mores the aged are regarded as societal burdens, which waste the strength of the society, already inadequate for its tasks. Therefore they are forced to die, either by their own hands or those of their relatives. It is very far from being true that the first of these policies is practiced by people higher up in civilization than those who practice the second. The people in lower civilization profit more by the wisdom and counsel of the aged than those in higher civilization, and are educated by this experience to respect and value the aged. "The introduction of the father-right won more respect for the aged man."[984] In some cases we can see the two codes in strife. Amongst the ancient Teutons the father could expose or sell his children under age, and the adult son could kill his aged parents.[985] There was no fixed duty of child to parent or of parent to child.

+331. Ethnographical illustrations of respect to the aged.+ "The people of Madagascar pay high honor to age and to parents. The respect to age is even exaggerated." The Hovas always pay formal respect to greater age. If two slaves are carrying a load together, the younger of them will try to carry it all.[986] In West Africa, "all the younger members of society are early trained to show the utmost deference to age. They must never come into the presence of aged persons or pass by their dwellings without taking off their hats and assuming a crouching gait. When seated in their presence it must always be at a 'respectful distance,'--a distance proportioned to the difference in their ages and position in society. If they come near enough to hand an aged man a lighted pipe or a glass of water, the bearer must always fall upon one knee."[987] "Great among the Oromo is the veneration for the old. Failure in respect to age is considered an injury to the customs of the country. The aged always sit in the post of honor, have a voice in public councils, in discussions, and controversies which arise amongst citizens. The young and the women are taught to serve them on all occasions."[988] The Hereros respect the old. Property belongs to an old man even after his son assumes the care of it. Milk pails and joints of meat are brought to him to be blessed.[989] The old are well treated in Australia. Certain foods are reserved for them.[990] Amongst the Lhoosai, on the Chittagong hills of southeastern India, "parents are reverenced and old age honored. When past work the father and mother are cared for by the children."[991] The Nicobarese treat the old kindly and let them live as long as they can.[992] The Andamanese also show great respect to the old and treat them with care and consideration.[993] The tribes in central Australia have no such custom "as doing away with aged or infirm people; on the contrary, such are treated with especial kindness, receiving a share of the food which they are unable to procure for themselves."[994] The Jekris, in the Niger Protectorate, "have great respect for their fathers, chiefs, and old age generally. Public opinion is very strong on these points."[995] The Indians on the northwest coast of North America "have great respect for the aged, whose advice in most matters has great weight."[996] "Great is the respect for the aged" amongst the Chavantes, a Ges tribe of Brazil.[997] Cranz[998] says that the Greenland Eskimo take care of their old parents. "The Ossetines [of the Caucasus] have the greatest love and respect for their parents, for old age in general, and for their ancestors. The authority of the head of the family, the grandfather, father, stepfather, uncle, or older brother is unconditionally recognized. The younger men will never sit down in the presence of elders, will not speak loudly, and will never contradict them."[999] "A young Kalmuck never dares show himself before his father or mother when he is not sober. He does not sit down in the presence of old people, drawing his legs under him, which would be a gross familiarity, but he squats on his knees, supporting himself with his heels in the ground. He never shows himself before old people without his girdle. To be without a girdle is extreme neglige."[1000] Maine[1001] says: "A New Zealand chief, when asked as to the welfare of a fellow-tribesman, replied, 'He gave us so much good advice that we put him mercifully to death.'" This gives a good idea of the two views which barbarous men take of the aged. At first they are considered useless and burdensome, and fare accordingly; later a sense of their wisdom raises them to a place of high honor. It is evident that the statement here made, of the relation in time of the two ways of treating the old, is not correct. The cases above cited are nearly all those of savages and barbarians. The people of higher civilization will be found amongst those of the other mores to be cited below (see sec. 335).

+332.+ "The position of the Roman father assured him respect and obedience as long as he lived. His unlimited power of making a will kept his fate in his own hands."[1002] The power in his family which the law gave him was very great, but his sons never paid him affectionate respect. "It is remarkable that we do not hear so often of barbarous treatment of old women as of old men. Could love for mothers have been an effective sentiment? Under mother right the relation of child to parent was far stronger, and the relation to the maternal uncle was secondary and derivative with respect to that to the mother."[1003]

+333. Killing the old.+ The custom of killing the old, especially one's parents, is very antipathetic to us. The cases will show that, for nomadic people, the custom is necessary. The old drop out by the way and die from exhaustion. To kill them is only equivalent, and perhaps kinder. If an enemy is pursuing, the necessity is more acute.[1004] All this enters into the life conditions so primarily that the custom is a part of the life policy; it is so understood and acquiesced in. The old sometimes request it from life weariness, or from devotion to the welfare of the group.

+334. Killing the old in ethnography.+ The "Gallinomero sometimes have two or three cords of wood neatly stacked in ricks about the wigwam. Even then, with the heartless cruelty of the race, they will dispatch an old man to the distant forest with an ax, whence he returns with his white head painfully bowed under a back-load of knaggy limbs, and his bare bronzed bowlegs moving on with that catlike softness and evenness of the Indian, but so slowly that he scarcely seems to get on at all."[1005] An old squaw, who had been abandoned by her children because she was blind, was found wandering in the mountains of California.[1006] "Filial piety cannot be said to be a distinguishing quality of the Wailakki, or any Indians. No matter how high may be their station, the aged and decrepit are counted a burden. The old man, hero of a hundred battles, when his skill with the bow and arrow is gone, is ignominiously compelled to accompany his sons into the forest, and bear home on his shoulders the game they have killed."[1007] Catlin describes his leave-taking of an old Ponca chief who was being deserted by the tribe with a little food and water, a trifling fire, and a few sticks. The tribe were driven on by hunger. The old chief said: "My children, our nation is poor, and it is necessary that you should all go to the country where you can get meat. My eyes are dimmed and my strength is no more.... I am a burden to my children. I cannot go. Keep your hearts stout and think not of me. I am no longer good for anything."[1008] This is the fullest statement we can quote, attributed to one of the abandoned old men, of the view of the proceeding which could make him acquiesce in it. The victims do not always take this view of the matter. This custom was common to all the tribes which roamed the prairies. Every one who lived to decrepitude knew that he must expect it. A more recent authority says that Poncas and Omahas never left the aged and infirm on the prairie. They were left at home, with adequate supplies, until the hunting party returned.[1009] That shows that they had a settled home and their cornfields are mentioned in the context. The old watched the cornfields, so that they were of some use. By the law of the Incas the old, who were unfit for other work, drove birds from the fields, and they were kept at public cost, like the disabled.[1010] The Hudson's Bay Eskimo strangle the old who are dependent on others for their food, or leave them to perish when the camp is moved. They move in order to get rid of burdensome old people without executing them.[1011] The central Eskimo kill the old because all who die by violence go to the happy land; others have not such a happy future.[1012] Nansen[1013] says that "when people get so old that they cannot take care of themselves, especially women, they are often treated with little consideration" by the Eskimo. Many tribes in Brazil killed the old because they were a burden and because they could no longer enjoy war, hunting, and feasting. The Tupis sometimes killed a sick man and ate the corpse, if the shaman said that he could not get well.[1014] The Tobas, a Guykuru tribe in Paraguay, bury the old alive. The old, from pain and decrepitude, often beg for death. Women execute the homicide.[1015] An old woman of the Murray River people, Australia, broke her hip. She was left to die, "as the tribe did not want to be bothered with her." The helpless and infirm are customarily so treated.[1016] In West Victoria the old are strangled by a relative deputed for the purpose and the body is burned. One reason given is that, in cases of attack by an enemy, the old would be captured and tortured to death. The victims often beg for delay, but always in vain.[1017] The Melanesians buried alive the sick and old. "It is certain that, when this was done, there was generally a kindness intended." Even when the younger hastened the end, for selfish reasons, the sick and aged acquiesced. They often begged to be put out of their misery.[1018] On the Easter Islands the aged were treated with little respect. The sick were not kindly treated, unless they were near relatives.[1019] The Solomon Islanders are described as "a community where no respect whatever is shown by youth to age."[1020] Holub[1021] mentions a great cliff from which some South African tribes cast the old when tired of caring for them. Hottentots used to put decrepit old people on pack oxen and take them out into the desert, where they were left in a little hut prepared for the purpose with a little food. They now show great heartlessness towards helpless old people.[1022] Bushmen abandon the aged with a little food and water.[1023] In the Niger Protectorate the old and useless are killed. The bodies are smoked and pulverized and the powder is made into little balls with water and corn. The balls are dried and kept to be used as food.[1024] The Somali exploit the old in work to the last point, and then cast them out to die of hunger.[1025] The people of the Arctic regions generally put the aged to death on account of the hard life conditions. The aged of the Chuckches demand, as a right, to be put to death.[1026] Life is so hard and food so scarce that they are indifferent to death, and the acquiescence of the victim is described as complete and willing.[1027] A case is also described[1028] of an old man of that tribe who was put to death at his own request by relatives, who thought that they performed a sacred obligation. The Yakuts formerly had a similar custom, the old man begging his children to dispatch him. They thrust him into a hole in the forest, where they left him with vessels, tools, and a little food. Sometimes a man and his wife were buried together. There was no such thing as respect for the aged or for aged relatives amongst the Yakuts. Younger men plundered, scolded, and abused the elder.[1029]

+335.+ "The custom of putting a violent end to the aged and infirm survived from the primeval period into historic times not infrequently amongst the Indo-European peoples. It can be authenticated in Vedic antiquity, amongst the Iranians (Bactrians and Caspian peoples), and amongst the ancient Germans, Slavs, and Prussians."[1030] The Bactrians cast the old and sick to the dogs.[1031] The Massagetae made a sacrifice of cattle and of an old man, and ate the whole. This was a happy end. Those who died of disease were buried and were thought less fortunate.[1032] "As far as I know no mention is made among the Aryans of the putting to death of old people in general (we first meet with it in the migratory period), nor of the putting to death of parents by their children; but their casting out is mentioned."[1033] The Greeks treated the old with neglect and disrespect.[1034] Gomme[1035] quotes a fifteenth-century MS. of a Parsifal episode in which the hero congratulates himself that he is not like the men of Wales, "where sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed." He also cites mention of the "holy mawle which (they fancy) hung behind the church door, which, when the father was seventy, the son might fetch to knock his father on the head as effete and of no more use."[1036] Once in Iceland, in time of famine, it was decided by solemn resolution that all the old and unproductive should be killed. That determination was part of a system of legislation by which, in that country, the society was protected against superfluous and dependent members.[1037]

+336. Special exigencies of the civilized.+ Civilized men in certain cases find themselves face to face with the primitive circumstances, and experience the primeval necessity, which overrides the sentiments of civilization, whatever may be the strength of the latter. Colonel Fremont, in 1849, in a letter to his wife, tells how in crossing the plains he and his comrades left the weak and dying members of their party, one by one, to die in the snow, after lighting a little fire for him.[1038] Many other such cases are known from oral narratives. The question is not one of more or less humanity. It is a question of the struggle for existence when at the limit of one of its conditions. Our civilization ordinarily veils from us the fact that we are rivals and enemies to each other in the competition of life. It is in such cases as the one just mentioned, or in shipwrecks, that this fact becomes the commanding one. The only alternative to the abandonment of one is the loss of all. Abortion, infanticide, and the killing of the old began at times when the competition of life was so direct and pitiless that it left no room for kindly sentiment. The latter is a product of civilization. It could be cultivated only by men for whom the struggle for existence was so easy, and the competition of life so moderate, that the severity was all taken out of them. Then there was a surplus and the conditions of life were easy. The alternative was not murder or suicide. Such a state of ease was reached by migration or by advance in the arts,--in short, by greater command of man over nature. The fundamental elements in the case were altered.

+337. How the mores were changed.+ Abortion, infanticide, and killing the old are primary folkways which respond to hard facts of life in the most direct and primitive manner. They are not blamed when they become ruling customs which everybody observes. They rise into mores more easily than other primitive usages because the superficial reasons for believing that they are conducive to welfare appear so simple and obvious. When a settled life took the place of a wandering life some immediate reasons for these customs were removed. When peace took the place of war with neighboring tribes other causes were set aside. The cases would then become less frequent, especially the cases of infanticide and killing the old. Then, if cases which seemed to call for reemployment of old customs arose, they could be satisfied only against some repugnance. Men who were not hard pressed by the burden of life might then refrain from infanticide or killing the old. They yielded to the repugnance rather than to the dislike of hardship. Later, when greater power in the struggle for existence was won the infants and the old were spared, and the old customs were forgotten. Then they came to be regarded with horror, and the mores protected the infants and the old. The stories of the French peasantry which come to us nowadays show that the son is often fully ready in mind and will to kill his old father if the mores and the law did not restrain him.

[901] Lippert, Kulturgesch., I, 229.

[902] Ancient India may be an exception.

[903] Ethnog. of India, I, 95.

[904] Exod. xxi. 7.

[905] Rosenberg, Geelvinkbaai, 91.

[906] Krieger, Neu-Guinea, 390.

[907] Ibid., 165.

[908] Pfeil, Aus der Suedsee, 31.

[909] Melanesians, 229.

[910] Sarawak, I, 101.

[911] Dajaks, 37.

[912] Snouck-Hurgronje, De Atjehers, I, 73.

[913] Bijdragen tot T. L. en V.-kunde, XXXV, 79.

[914] Ztsft. f. Ethnol., XXVIII, 186.

[915] Kubary, Nukuoro, 9, 12, 14.

[916] JAI, XVIII, 291.

[917] Austral. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1892, 704.

[918] Globus, LXXXVIII, 164, after Joly.

[919] Three First English Books about America, 237.

[920] Globus, LXXXI, 4.

[921] Spix and Martius, Travels in Brazil, II, 77.

[922] Ethnog. Brasil., 231.

[923] Grinnell, Cheyenne Woman Customs, 15; _N.S. Amer. Anthrop._; IV, 13.

[924] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N. O. Afr., I, 172.

[925] Fritsch, Eingeb. Sued-Afr., 96.

[926] Zimmer, Altind. Leben, 333.

[927] Republic, V, 9.

[928] Politics, VII, 16.

[929] Rudeck, Oeffentl. Sittlichkeit in Deutschland, 181.

[930] Temesvary, _Volksbraeuche und Aberglauben in der Gebuertshilfe in Ungarn_, 12-14.

[931] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 59.

[932] Eyre, Cent. Aust., II, 324; Spencer and Gillen, Cent. Aust., 51, 264.

[933] JAI, XIII, 137.

[934] Smyth, Victoria, I, 52.

[935] Novara-Reise, I, 32.

[936] Dawson, West Victoria, 39.

[937] Austr. Race, I, 70.

[938] JAI, XII, 329.

[939] Ibid., XIX, 99.

[940] Abel, New Guinea, 43.

[941] Krieger, Neu-Guinea, 292.

[942] Kubary, Nukuoro, 35.

[943] Codrington, Melanesians, 229.

[944] JAI, XXVIII, 11.

[945] JAI, XVII, 93.

[946] Austr. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1892, 621.

[947] Waitz, Anthrop., V, 139.

[948] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 126.

[949] Waitz, Anthrop., II, 441.

[950] Smithson. Rep., 1871, 407; quoted, Bur. Eth., I, 99.

[951] Ratzel, II, 769; Bur. Eth., XVIII, 289.

[952] PSM, L, 100.

[953] Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, 234.

[954] Globus, LXXXIII, 314.

[955] Volkens, Kilimandscharo, 252.

[956] Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha, 38.

[957] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, I, 104.

[958] Hanoteau et Letourneux, La Kabylie, III, 220.

[959] PSM, XLIV, 779.

[960] JASB, I, 283.

[961] Pickering, Formosa, 61.

[962] Hopkins, Relig. of India, 531.

[963] Mod. Hinduism, 431.

[964] Humbert, Japan, 311.

[965] Lippert, I, 205.

[966] Geog., VIII, 24.

[967] Aelian, Var. Hist., II, 7.

[968] Moral Instinct, I, 134, 136.

[969] Cf. Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 20.

[970] Weinhold, D. F., I, 91.

[971] Germania, 19; Hist., V, 5.

[972] Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 27.

[973] Nat. Hist., IV, 29.

[974] De Ira, I, 15.

[975] Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 29.

[976] Cod. Theod., V, 7.

[977] Blair, Slavery amongst the Romans, 44.

[978] Lecky, Eur. Morals, II, 23.

[979] Polyptique de Irminon, I, 287.

[980] Weinhold, D. F., I, 93, 96; II, 93.

[981] Rudeck, Oeffentl. Sittlichkeit, 182.

[982] Wellhausen, Ehe bei den Arabern, 458.

[983] Chandler, Romances of Roguery in Spain, 30.

[984] Lippert, Kulturgesch., I, 240.

[985] Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalt. 461, 487.

[986] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 511.

[987] Nassau, Fetishism in West Afr., 159.

[988] Vannutelli e Citerni, L'Omo, 448.

[989] Ratzel, Hist. of Mankind, II, 468.

[990] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 22.

[991] Lewin, Wild Races of S. E. India, 256.

[992] JAI, XVIII, 384.

[993] Ibid., XII, 93.

[994] Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes, Cent. Austr., 51.

[995] JAI, XXVIII, 109.

[996] U.S. Nat. Mus., 1888, 240.

[997] Martius, Ethnog. Brasil., 274.

[998] Hist. von Groenland, 197.

[999] von Haxthausen, Transkaukasia, II, 35.

[1000] Russian Ethnog. (Russ.), II, 445.

[1001] Early Law and Custom, 23.

[1002] Lippert, Kulturgesch., I, 241.

[1003] Lippert, Kulturgesch., I, 325.

[1004] Powers, Calif. Indians, 319.

[1005] Ibid., 176; Bancroft, Native Races, I, 390.

[1006] Ibid., 112.

[1007] Ibid., 118.

[1008] Smithson. Rep., 1885, Part II, 429.

[1009] Bur. Eth., III, 274.

[1010] Martius, Ethnog. Brasil., 126, n.

[1011] Bur. Eth., XI, 178, 186.

[1012] Ibid., VI, 615.

[1013] Eskimo, 178.

[1014] Martius, Ethnog. Bras., 126.

[1015] Globus, LXXXI, 108.

[1016] Eyre, Cent. Australia, I, 321.

[1017] Dawson, West Victoria, 62.

[1018] Codrington, Melanesians, 347.

[1019] Geiseler, Oster-inseln, 31.

[1020] Woodford, Head-hunters, 25.

[1021] Sieben Jahre in S. Afr., I, 409.

[1022] Kolben, Hist. Good Hope, I, 324; Fritsch, _Eingeb. S. Afr._, 334.

[1023] Globus, XVIII, 122.

[1024] Kingsley, West Afr. Studies, 566.

[1025] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N.O. Afr., I, 205.

[1026] N.S. Amer. Anthrop., III, 106.

[1027] De Windt in N.Y. Times, May 10, 1897.

[1028] Russ. Ethnog. (russ.), II, 578.

[1029] Sieroshevski, Yakuty (russ.), 511, 621.

[1030] Schrader, Prehist. Antiq. of the Aryans, 379; Zimmer, Altind. Leben, 327.

[1031] Strabo, XI, 517; Spiegel, Eran. Alterthumskunde, III, 682.

[1032] Herodotus, I, 216.

[1033] Ihering, Evol. of the Aryan, 33.

[1034] Mahaffy, Soc. Life in Greece, 229.

[1035] Ethnol. in Folklore, 136.

[1036] In the national museum at Stockholm is a large collection of flat clubs from all the churches in Sweden, the use of which is described with discretion. That the clubs were kept in the churches denotes that the act was put under religious sanction.

[1037] Weinhold, D.F., II, 92.

[1038] Thayer, Marvels of the New West, 231.

VIII. CANNIBALISM

Cannibalism.--Origin in food supply.--Cannibalism not abominable.--In-group cannibalism.--Population policy.-- Judicial cannibalism.--Judicial cannibalism in ethnography.-- Out-group cannibalism.--Cannibalism to cure disease.-- Reversions to cannibalism.--Cannibalism in famine.--Cannibalism and ghost fear.--Cannibalism in sorcery and human sacrifice.-- Cult and cannibalism.--Superstitions about cannibalism.--Food taboos in ethnography.--Expiation for taking life.--Philosophy of cannibalism.

+338. Cannibalism.+ Cannibalism is one of the primordial mores. It dates from the earliest known existence of man on earth. It may reasonably be believed to be a custom which all peoples have practiced.[1039] Only on the pastoral stage has it ceased, where the flesh of beasts was common and abundant.[1040] It is indeed noticeable that the pygmies of Africa and the Kubus of Sumatra, two of the lowest outcast races, do not practice cannibalism,[1041] although their superior neighbors do. Our intense abomination for cannibalism is a food taboo (secs. 353-354), and is perhaps the strongest taboo which we have inherited.

+339. Origin in food supply.+ It is the best opinion that cannibalism originated in the defects of the food supply, more specifically in the lack of meat food. The often repeated objection that New Zealanders and others have practiced cannibalism when they had an abundant supply of meat food is not to the point. The passion for meat food, especially among people who have to live on heavy starch food, is very strong. Hence they eat worms, insects, and offal. It is also asserted that the appetite for human flesh, when eating it has become habitual, becomes a passion. When salt is not to be had the passion for meat reaches its highest intensity. "When tribes [of Australians] assembled to eat the fruit of the bunya-bunya they were not permitted to kill any game [in the district where the trees grow], and at length the craving for flesh was so intense that they were impelled to kill one of their number, in order that their appetites might be satisfied."[1042] It follows that when this custom has become traditional the present food supply may have little effect on it. There are cases at the present time in which the practice of using human flesh for food is customary on a large and systematic scale. On the island of New Britain human flesh is sold in shops as butcher's meat is sold amongst us.[1043] In at least some of the Solomon Islands human victims (preferably women) are fattened for a feast, like pigs.[1044] Lloyd[1045] describes the cannibalism of the Bangwa as an everyday affair, although they eat chiefly enemies, and rarely a woman. The women share the feast, sitting by themselves. He says that it is, no doubt, "a depraved appetite." They are not at all ashamed of it. Physically the men are very fine. "The cannibalism of the Monbutto is unsurpassed by any nation in the world."[1046] Amongst them human flesh is sold as if it were a staple article of food. They are "a noble race." They have national pride, intellectual power, and good judgment. They are orderly, friendly, and have a stable national life.[1047] Ward[1048] describes the cannibalism on the great bend of the Congo as due to a relish for the kind of food. "Originating, apparently, from stress of adverse circumstances, it has become an acquired taste, the indulgence of which has created a peculiar form of mental disorder, with lack of feeling, love of fighting, cruelty, and general human degeneracy, as prominent attributes." An organized traffic in human beings for food exists on the upper waters of the Congo. It is thought that the pygmy tribe of the Wambutti are not cannibals because they are too "low," and because they do not file the lower incisors. The latter custom goes with cannibalism in the Congo region, and is also characteristic of the more gifted, beautiful, and alert tribes.[1049] None of the coast tribes of West Africa eat human flesh, but the interior tribes eat any corpse regardless of the cause of death. Families hesitate to eat their own dead, but they sell or exchange them for the dead of other families.[1050] In the whole Congo region the custom exists, especially amongst the warlike tribes, who eat not only war captives but slaves.[1051]

It is noteworthy that a fork[1052] was invented in Polynesia for this kind of food, long before the fork was used for any other.

+340. Cannibalism not abominable.+ Spix and Martius[1053] asked a chief of the Miranhas why his people practiced cannibalism. The chief showed that it was entirely a new fact to him that some people thought it an abominable custom. "You whites," said he, "will not eat crocodiles or apes, although they taste well. If you did not have so many pigs and crabs you would eat crocodiles and apes, for hunger hurts. It is all a matter of habit. When I have killed an enemy it is better to eat him than to let him go to waste. Big game is rare because it does not lay eggs like turtles. The bad thing is not being eaten, but death, if I am slain, whether our tribal enemy eats me or not. I know of no game which tastes better than men. You whites are really too dainty."

+341. In-group cannibalism.+ Cannibalism was so primordial in the mores that it has two forms, one for the in-group, the other for the out-group. It had a theory of affection in the former case and of enmity in the latter. In the in-group it was so far from being an act of hostility, or veiled impropriety, that it was applied to the closest kin. Mothers ate their babies, if the latter died, in order to get back the strength which they had lost in bearing them. Herodotus says that the Massagetae sacrificed the old of their tribe, boiling the flesh of the men with that of cattle and eating the whole. Those who died of disease before attaining old age were buried, but that they thought a less happy fate. He says that the Padeans, men in the far east of India, put a sick man of their tribe to death and ate him, lest his flesh should be wasted by disease. The women did the same by a sick woman. If any reach old age without falling victims to this custom, they too are then killed and eaten. He mentions also the Issidones, in southeastern Russia, who cut up their dead fathers, mingle the flesh with that of sacrificed animals, and make a feast of the whole. The skull is cleaned, gilded, and kept as an emblem, to which they make annual sacrifices. They are accounted a righteous people. Amongst them women are esteemed equal with men.[1054] Strabo[1055] says that the Irish thought it praiseworthy to eat their deceased parents. The Birhors of Hazaribag, Hindostan, formerly ate their parents, but "they repudiate the suggestion that they ate any but their own relations" [i.e. each one ate his own relatives and no others?][1056]. Reclus[1057] says that in that tribe "the parents beg that their corpses may find a refuge in the stomachs of their children rather than be left on the road or in the forest." The Tibetans, in ancient times, ate their parents, "out of piety, in order to give them no other sepulcher than their own bowels." This custom ceased before 1250 A.D., but the cups made of the skulls of relatives were used as memorials. Tartars and some "bad Christians" killed their fathers when old, burned the corpses, and mingled the ashes with their daily food.[1058] In the gulf country of Australia only near relatives partake of the dead, unless the corpse is that of an enemy. A very small bit only is eaten by each. In the case of an enemy the purpose is to win his strength. In the case of a relative the motive is that the survivors may not, by lamentations, become a nuisance in the camp.[1059] The Dieyerie have the father family. The father may not eat his own child, but the mother and female relatives must do so, in order to have the dead in their liver, the seat of feeling.[1060] The Tuare of Brazil (2 S. 67 W.) burn their dead. They preserve the ashes in reeds and mix them with their daily meals.[1061] The Jumanas, on the head waters of the Amazon, regard the bones as the seat of the soul. They burn the bones of their dead, grind them to powder, mix the powder with intoxicating liquor, and drink it, "that the dead may live again in them."[1062] All branches of the Tupis are cannibals. They brought the custom from the interior.[1063] The Kobena drink in their cachiri the powdered bones of their dead relatives.[1064] The Chavantes, on the Uruguay, eat their dead children to get back the souls. Especially young mothers do this, as they are thought to have given a part of their own souls to their children too soon.[1065] In West Victoria "the bodies of relatives who have lost their lives by violence are alone partaken of." Each eats only a bit, and it is eaten "with no desire to gratify or appease the appetite, but only as a symbol of respect and regret for the dead."[1066] In Australian cannibalism the eating of relatives has behind it the idea of saving the strength which would be lost, or of acquiring the dexterity or wisdom, etc., of the dead. Enemies are eaten to win their strength, dexterity, etc. Only a bit is eaten. There are no great feasts. The fat and soft parts are eaten because they are the residence of the soul. In eating enemies there appears to be ritual significance.[1067] It may be the ritual purpose to get rid of the soul of the slain man for fear that it might seek revenge for his death.

+342.+ Some inhabitants of West Australia explained cannibalism (they ate every tenth child born) as "necessary to keep the tribe from increasing beyond the carrying capacity of the territory."[1068] Infanticide is a part of population policy. Cannibalism may be added to it either for food supply or goblinism. When children were sacrificed in Mexico their hearts were cooked and eaten, for sorcery.[1069]

+343. Judicial cannibalism.+ Another use of cannibalism in the in-group is to annihilate one who has broken an important taboo. The notion is frequently met with, amongst nature peoples, that a ghost can be got rid of by utterly annihilating the corpse, e.g. by fire. Judicial cannibalism destroys it, and the members of the group by this act participate in a ritual, or sacramental ceremony, by which a criminal is completely annihilated. Perhaps there may also be the idea of collective responsibility for his annihilation. To take the life of a tribe comrade was for a long time an act which needed high motive and authority and required expiation. The ritual of execution was like the ritual of sacrifice. In the Hebrew law some culprits were to be stoned by the whole congregation. Every one must take a share in the great act. The blood guilt, if there was any, must be incurred by all.[1070] Primitive taboos are put on acts which offend the ghosts and may, therefore, bring woe on the whole group. Any one who breaks a taboo commits a sin and a crime, and excites the wrath of the superior powers. Therefore he draws on himself the fear and horror of his comrades. They must extrude him by banishment or death. They want to dissociate themselves from him. They sacrifice him to the powers which he has offended. When his comrades eat his corpse they perform a duty. They annihilate him and his soul completely.

+344. Judicial cannibalism in ethnography.+ "A man found in the harem of Muato-jamvos was cut in pieces and given, raw and warm, to the people to be eaten."[1071] The Bataks employ judicial cannibalism as a regulated system. They have no other cannibalism. Adulterers, persons guilty of incest, men who have had sex intercourse with the widow of a younger brother, traitors, spies, and war captives taken with arms in their hands are killed and eaten. The last-mentioned are cut in pieces alive and eaten bit by bit in order to annihilate them in the most shameful manner.[1072] The Tibetans and Chinese formerly ate all who were executed by civil authority. An Arab traveler of the ninth century mentions a Chinese governor who rebelled, and who was killed and eaten. Modern cases of cannibalism are reported from China. Pith balls stained with the blood of decapitated criminals are used as medicine for consumption. Cases are also mentioned of Tartar rulers who ordered the flesh of traitors to be mixed with the rulers' own food and that of their barons. Tartar women begged for the possession of a culprit, boiled him alive, cut the corpse into mince-meat, and distributed it to the whole army to be eaten.[1073]

+345. Out-group cannibalism.+ Against members of an out-group, e.g. amongst the Maori, cannibalism "was due to a desire for revenge; cooking and eating being the greatest of insults."[1074] On Tanna (New Hebrides) to eat an enemy was the greatest indignity to him, worse than giving up his corpse to dogs or swine, or mutilating it. It was believed that strength was obtained by eating a corpse.[1075] A negro chief in Yabunda, French Congo, told Brunache[1076] that "it was a very fine thing to enjoy the flesh of a man whom one hates and whom one has killed in a battle or a duel." Martius attributes the cannibalism of the Miranhas to the enjoyment of a "rare, dainty meal, which will satisfy their rude vanity, in some cases also, blood revenge and superstition."[1077] Cannibalism is one in the chain of causes which keeps this people more savage than their neighbors, most of whom have now abandoned it. "It is one of the most beastly of all the beastlike traits in the moral physiognomy of man." It is asserted that cannibalism has been recently introduced in some places, e.g. Florida (Solomon Islands). It is also said that on those islands the coast people give it up [they have fish], but those inland retain it. The notion probably prevails amongst all that population that, by this kind of food, mana is obtained, mana being the name for all power, talent, and capacity by which success is won.[1078] The Melanesians took advantage of a crime, or alleged crime, to offer the culprit to a spirit, and so get fighting mana for the warriors.[1079] The Chames of Cochin China think that the gall of slain enemies, mixed with brandy, is an excellent means to produce war courage and skill.[1080] The Chinese believe that the liver is the seat of life and courage. The gall is the manifestation of the soul. Soldiers drink the gall of slain enemies to increase their own vigor and courage.[1081] The mountain tribes of Natal make a paste from powder formed from parts of the body, which the priests administer to the youth.[1082] Some South African tribes make a broth of the same kind of powder, which must be swallowed only in the prescribed manner. It "must be lapped up with the hand and thrown into the mouth ... to give the soldiers courage, perseverance, fortitude, strategy, patience, and wisdom."[1083]

+346. Cannibalism to cure disease.+ Notions that the parts of the human body will cure different diseases are only variants of the notion of getting courage and skill by eating the same. Cases are recorded in which a man gave parts of his body to be eaten by the sick out of love and devotion.[1084]

+347. Reversions to cannibalism.+ When savage and brutal emotions are stirred, in higher civilization, by war and quarrels, the cannibalistic disposition is developed again. Achilles told Hector that he wished he could eat him. Hekuba expressed a wish that she could devour the liver of Achilles.[1085] In 1564 the Turks executed Vishnevitzky, a brave Polish soldier who had made them much trouble. They ate his heart.[1086] Dozy[1087] mentions a case at Elvira, in 890, in which women cast themselves on the corpse of a chief who had caused the death of their relatives, cut it in pieces, and ate it. The same author relates[1088] that Hind, the mother of Moavia, made for herself a necklace and bracelets of the noses and ears of Moslems killed at Ohod, and also that she cut open the corpse of an uncle of Mohammed, tore out the liver, and ate a piece of it. It is related of an Irish chief, of the twelfth century, that when his soldiers brought to him the head of a man whom he hated "he tore the nostrils and lips with his teeth, in a most savage and inhuman manner."[1089]

+348. In famine.+ Reversion to cannibalism under a total lack of other food ought not to be noted. We have some historical cases, however, in which during famine people became so familiarized with cannibalism that their horror of it was overcome. Abdallatif[1090] mentions a great famine in Egypt in the year 1200, due to a failure of the inundation of the Nile. Resort was had to cannibalism to escape death. At first the civil authorities burned alive those who were detected, being moved by astonishment and horror. Later, those sentiments were not aroused. "Men were seen to make ordinary meals of human flesh, to use it as a dainty, and to lay up provision of it.... The usage, having been introduced, spread to all the provinces. Then it ceased to cause surprise.... People talked of it as an ordinary and indifferent thing. This indifference was due to habit and familiarity." This case shows that the horror of cannibalism is due to tradition in the mores. Diodorus says that the ancient Egyptians, during a famine, ate each other rather than any animal which they considered sacred.[1091]

+349. Cannibalism and ghost fear.+ Human sacrifice and cannibalism are not necessarily conjoined. Often it seems as if they once were so, but have been separated.[1092] Whatever men want ghosts want. If the former are cannibals, the latter will be the same. Often the notion is that the gods eat the souls. In this view, the men eat the flesh of sacrificed beasts and sacrifice the blood, in which is the life or soul, to the gods. This the Jews did. They also burned the kidneys, the fat of the kidneys, and the liver, which they thought to be the seat of life. These they might not eat.[1093] When men change, the gods do not. Hence the rites of human sacrifice and cannibalism continue in religion long after they disappear from the mores, in spite of loathing. Loathing is a part of the sacrifice.[1094] The self-control and self-subjugation enter into the sacrament. All who participate, in religion, in an act which gravely affects the imagination as horrible and revolting enter into a communion with each other. Every one who desires to participate in the good to be obtained must share in the act. As we have seen above, all must participate that none may be in a position to reproach the rest. Under this view, the cannibal food is reduced to a crumb, or to a drop of blood, which may be mixed with other food. Still later, the cannibal food is only represented, e.g. by cakes in the human form, etc. In the Middle Ages the popular imagination saw a human body in the host, and conjured up operations on the host which were attributed to sorcerers and Jews, which would only be applicable to a human body. Then the New Testament language about the body and blood of Christ took on a realistic sense which was cannibalistic.

+350. Cannibalism, sorcery, and human sacrifice.+ Among the West African tribes sacrificial and ceremonial cannibalism in fetich affairs is almost universal.[1095] Serpa Pinto[1096] mentions a frequent feast of the chiefs of the Bihe, for which a man and four women of specified occupations are required. The corpses are both washed and boiled with the flesh of an ox. Everything at the feast must be marked with human blood. Cannibalism, in connection with religious festivals and human sacrifice, was extravagantly developed in Mexico, Central America, and British Columbia. The rites show that the human sacrifice was sacramental and vicarious. In one case the prayer of the person who owned the sacrifice is given. It is a prayer for success and prosperity. Flesh was also bitten from the arm of a living person and eaten. A religious idea was cultivated into a mania and the taste for human flesh was developed.[1097] Here also we find the usage that shamans ate the flesh of corpses, in connection with fasting and solitude, as means of professional stimulation.[1098] Preuss emphasizes the large element of sorcery in the eating of parts of a human sacrifice, as practiced in Mexico.[1099] The combination of sorcery, religious ritual, and cannibalism deserves very careful attention. The rites of the festival were cases of dramatic sorcery. At the annual festival of the god of war an image of the god was made of grain, seeds, and vegetables, kneaded with the blood of boys sacrificed for the purpose. This image was broken into crumbs and eaten by males only, "after the manner of our communion."[1100] The Peruvians ate sacrificial cakes kneaded with the blood of human victims, "as a mark of alliance with the Inca."[1101] In Guatemala organs of a slain war captive were given to an old prophetess to be eaten. She was then asked to pray to the idol which she served to give them many captives.[1102] Human sacrifices and sacramental cannibalism exist amongst the Bella-coola Indians in northwestern British America. Children of the poor are bought from their parents to be made sacrifices. The blood is drunk and the flesh is eaten raw. The souls of the sacrificed go to live in the sun and become birds. When the English government tried to stop these sacrifices the priests dug up corpses and ate them. Several were thus poisoned.[1103]

+351. Cult and cannibalism.+ The cases which have been cited show how cult kept up cannibalism, if no beast was substituted. Also, a great number of uses of blood and superstitions about blood appear to be survivals of cannibalism or deductions from it. The same may be said of holiday cakes of special shapes, made by peasants, which have long lost all known sense. In one part of France the last of the harvest which is brought in is made into a loaf in human shape, supposed to represent the spirit of corn or of fertility. It is broken up and distributed amongst all the villagers, who eat it.[1104]

A Mongolian lama reported of a tribe, the Lhopa of Sikkim or Bhutan, that they kill and eat the bride's mother at a wedding, if they can catch no wild man.[1105]

+352.+ A burglar in West Prussia, in 1865, killed a maid-servant and cut flesh from her body out of which to make a candle for use in later acts of theft. He was caught while committing another burglary. He confessed that he ate a part of the corpse of his first-mentioned victim "in order to appease his conscience."[1106]

+353. Food taboos.+ It is most probable that dislike to eat the human body was a product of custom, and grew in the mores after other foods became available in abundance. Unusual foods now cost us an effort. Frogs' legs, for instance, repel most people at first. We eat what we learned from our parents to eat, and other foods are adopted by "acquired taste." Light is thrown on the degree to which all food preferences and taboos are a part of the mores by a comparison of some cases of food taboos. Porphyrius, a Christian of Tyre, who lived in the second half of the second century of the Christian era, says that a Phoenician or an Egyptian would sooner eat man's flesh than cow's flesh.[1107] A Jew would not eat swine's flesh. A Zoroastrian could not conceive it possible that any one could eat dog's flesh. We do not eat dog's flesh, probably for the same reason that we do not eat cat's or horse's, because the flesh is tough or insipid and we can get better, but some North American Indians thought dog's flesh the very best food. The Banziris, in the French Congo, reserved dog's flesh for men, and they surround meals of it with a solemn ritual. A man must not touch his wife with his finger for a day after such a feast.[1108] The inhabitants of Ponape will eat no eels, which "they hold in the greatest horror." The word used by them for eel means "the dreadful one."[1109] Dyaks eat snakes, but reject eels.[1110] Some Melanesians will not eat eels because they think that there are ghosts in them.[1111] South African Bantus abominate fish.[1112] Some Canary Islanders ate no fish.[1113] Tasmanians would rather starve than eat fish.[1114] The Somali will eat no fish, considering it disgraceful to do so.[1115] They also reject game and birds.[1116] These people who reject eels and fish renounce a food supply which is abundant in their habitat.

+354. Food taboos in ethnography.+ Some Micronesians eat no fowl.[1117] Wild Veddahs reject fowl.[1118] Tuaregs eat no fish, birds, or eggs.[1119] In eastern Africa many tribes loathe eggs and fowl as food. They are as much disgusted to see a white man eat eggs as a white man is to see savages eat offal.[1120] Some Australians will not eat pork.[1121] Nagas and their neighbors think roast dog a great delicacy. They will eat anything, even an elephant which has been three days buried, but they abominate milk, and find the smell of tinned lobster too strong.[1122] Negroes in the French Congo "have a perfect horror of the idea of drinking milk."[1123]

+355. Expiation for taking life.+ The most primitive notion we can find as to taking life is that it is wrong to kill any living thing except as a sacrifice to some superior power. This dread of destroying life, as if it was the assumption of a divine prerogative to do so, gives a background for all the usages with regard to sacrifice and food. "In old Israel all slaughter was sacrifice, and a man could never eat beef or mutton except as a religious act." Amongst the Arabs, "even in modern times, when a sheep or camel is slain in honor of a guest, the good old custom is that the host keeps open house for all his neighbors."[1124] In modern Hindostan food which is ordinarily tabooed may be eaten if it has been killed in offering to a god. Therefore an image of the god is set up in the butcher's shop. All the animals are slaughtered nominally as an offering to it. This raises the taboo, and the meat is bought and eaten without scruple.[1125] Thus it is that the taboo on cannibalism may be raised by religion, or that cannibalism may be made a duty by religion. Amongst the ancient Semites some animals were under a food taboo for a reason which has two aspects at the same time: they were both offensive (ritually unclean) and sacred. What is holy and what is loathsome are in like manner set aside. The Jews said that the Holy Scriptures rendered him who handled them unclean. Holy and unclean have a common element opposed to profane. In the case of both there is devotion or consecration to a higher power. If it is a good power, the thing is holy; if a bad power, it is unclean. He who touches either falls under a taboo, and needs purification.[1126] The tabooed things could only be eaten sacrificially and sacramentally, i.e. as disgusting and unusual they had greater sacrificial force.[1127] This idea is to be traced in all ascetic usages, and in many mediaeval developments of religious usages which introduced repulsive elements, to heighten the self-discipline of conformity. In the Caroline Islands turtles are sacred to the gods and are eaten only in illness or as sacrifices.[1128]

+356. Philosophy of cannibalism.+ If cannibalism began in the interest of the food supply, especially of meat, the wide ramifications of its relations are easily understood. While men were unable to cope with the great beasts cannibalism was a leading feature of social life, around which a great cluster of interests centered. Ideas were cultivated by it, and it became regulative and directive as to what ought to be done. The sentiments of kinship made it seem right and true that the nearest relatives should be eaten. Further deductions followed, of which the cases given are illustrations. As to enemies, the contrary sentiments found place in connection with it. It combined directly with ghost fear. The sacramental notion seems born of it. When the chase was sufficiently developed to give better food the taboo on human flesh seemed no more irrational than the other food taboos above mentioned. Swans and peacocks were regarded as great dainties in the Middle Ages. We no longer eat them. Snakes are said to be good eating, but most of us would find it hard to eat them. Yet why should they be more loathsome than frogs or eels? Shipwrecked people, or besieged and famine-stricken people, have overcome the loathing for human flesh rather than die. Others have died because they could not overcome it, and have thus rendered the strongest testimony to the power of the mores. In general, the cases show that if men are hungry enough, or angry enough, they may return to cannibalism now. Our horror of cannibalism is due to a long and broad tradition, broken only by hearsay of some far-distant and extremely savage people who now practice it. Probably the popular opinion about it is that it is wicked. It is not forbidden by the rules of any religion, because it had been thrown out of the mores before any "religion" was founded.

[1039] See Andree, Anthropophagie; Steinmetz, Endokannibalism, Mitt. Anthrop. Ges. in Wien, XXVI; Schaffhausen in Archiv fuer Anthrop., IV, 245. Steinmetz gives in tabular form known cases of cannibalism with the motives for it, p. 25.

[1040] Lippert, Kulturgesch., II, 275.

[1041] Globus, XXVI, 45; Stuhlmann, Mit Emin Pascha, 457; JAI, XXVIII, 39.

[1042] Smyth, Victoria, I, xxxviii.

[1043] Aust. Ass. Adv. Sci., 1892, 618.

[1044] JAI, XVII, 99.

[1045] Dwarf-land, 345.

[1046] Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, II, 94.

[1047] Keane, Ethnology, 265.

[1048] JAI, XXIV, 298.

[1049] Globus, LXXXV, 229.

[1050] Nassau, Fetishism in West Africa, 11.

[1051] Globus, LXXII, 120; LXXXVII, 237.

[1052] Specimen in the Dresden Museum.

[1053] Brasilien, 1249.

[1054] Herod., I, 216; III, 99; IV, 26.

[1055] IV, 5, 298.

[1056] JASB, II, 571.

[1057] Prim. Folk, 249.

[1058] Rubruck, Eastern Parts, 81, 151.

[1059] JAI, XXIV, 171.

[1060] JAI, XVII, 186.

[1061] Globus, LXXXIII, 137.

[1062] Martius, Ethnog. Bras., 485.

[1063] Southey, Brazil, I, 233.

[1064] Ztsft. f. Ethnol., XXXVI, 293.

[1065] Andree, Anthropophagie, 50.

[1066] Dawson, West Victoria, 67.

[1067] Smyth, Victoria, I, 245.

[1068] Whitmarsh, The World's Rough Hand, 178.

[1069] Globus, LXXXVI, 112.

[1070] W. R. Smith, Religion of the Semites, 284.

[1071] Oliveira Martins, Racas Humanas, II, 67.

[1072] Wilken, Volkenkunde, 23, 27.

[1073] Marco Polo, I, 266 and Yule's note, 275.

[1074] JAI, XIX, 108.

[1075] Austral. Ass. Adv. Sci., 1892, 649-663.

[1076] Cent. Afr., 108.

[1077] Ethnog. Bras., 538.

[1078] JAI, X, 305.

[1079] Codrington, Melanesians, 134.

[1080] Bijdragen tot. T. L. en V.-kunde, 1895, 342.

[1081] Globus, LXXXI, 96.

[1082] JAI, XX, 116.

[1083] JAI, XXII, 111; cf. Isaiah lxv. 4.

[1084] Intern. Arch. f. Ethnol., IX, Supplem. 37.

[1085] Iliad, XXII, 346; XXIV, 212.

[1086] Evarnitzky, Zaporoge Kossacks (russ.), I, 209.

[1087] Mussulm. d'Espagne, II, 226.

[1088] Ibid., I, 47.

[1089] Gomme, Ethnol. in Folklore, 149.

[1090] Relation de l'Egypte, 360.

[1091] Diodorus, I, 84.

[1092] Ratzel, Voelkerkunde, II, 124; Martius, Ethnog. Bras., 129; Globus, LXXV, 260.

[1093] W. R. Smith, Relig. of the Semites, 379.

[1094] Lippert, Kulturgesch., II, 292.

[1095] Kingsley, Travels in W. Afr., 287.

[1096] Como Eu Atravassei Afr., I, 148.

[1097] Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific Coast, I, 170 (III, 150); II, 176, 395, 689, 708; III, 413.

[1098] Ibid., III, 152.

[1099] Globus, LXXXVI, 109, 112.

[1100] Bur. Ethnol., IX, 523.

[1101] Ibid., 527.

[1102] Brinton, Nagualism, 34.

[1103] Mitt. Berl. Mus., 1885, 184.

[1104] PSM, XLVIII, 411.

[1105] Rockhill, Mongolia and Thibet, 144.

[1106] PSM, LIV, 217.

[1107] De Abstinentia, II, 11.

[1108] Brunache, Cent. Afr., 69.

[1109] Christian, Caroline Isl., 73.

[1110] Perelaer, Dyaks, 27.

[1111] Codrington, Melanesians, 177.

[1112] Fritsch, Eingeb. Suedafr., 107.

[1113] N. S. Amer. Anthrop., II, 454.

[1114] Ling Roth, Tasmanians, 101.

[1115] Paulitschke, Ethnog. N.O. Afr., I, 155.

[1116] Ibid., II, 27.

[1117] Finsch, Ethnol. Erfahr., III, 53.

[1118] N. S. Ethnol. Soc., II, 304.

[1119] Duveyrier, Touaregs du Nord, 401.

[1120] Volkens, Kilimandscharo, 244.

[1121] Smyth, Victoria, I, 237.

[1122] JAI, XI, 63; XXII, 245.

[1123] Kingsley, West Afr. Studies, 451.

[1124] W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, 142, 283.

[1125] Wilkins, Mod. Hinduism, 168.

[1126] Bousset, Relig. des Judenthums, 124.

[1127] W. R. Smith, Relig. of Semites, 290; Isaiah lxv. 4; lxvi. 3, 17; swine, dog, and mouse.

[1128] Kubary, Karolinen Archipel, 168.