XLVI. CANNIBALISM…

XLVI. CANNIBALISM

BEFORE we take leave of the dead we have still to consider the practice of eating them.

Habitual cannibalism, permitted or in some cases enjoined by custom, has been met with in a large number of savage tribes and, as a religious or magical rite, among several peoples of culture. It is, or has been, particularly prevalent in the South Sea Islands, Australia, Central Africa, and South and Central America. But it has also been found among various North American Indians, in certain tribes of the Malay Archipelago, and among a few peoples on the Asiatic continent. And it is proved to have occurred in many parts of Europe.[1]

[Footnote 1: For the prevalence and extenson of cannibalism**, see Andree, Die Anthropophagie, p. 1 sqq.; Bergemann, Die Verbreitung der Anthropophagie, p. 5 sqq.; Steinmetz, Endokannibalismus, p. 2 sqq.; Schneider, Die Naturvölker, i. 121 sqq.; Letourneau, L'évolution de la morale, p. 82 sqq.; Ritson, Abstinence from Animal Food, p. 125 sqq.; Hartland, Legend of Perseus, ii. 279 sqq.; Schaafhausen, 'Die Menschenfresserei und das Menschenopfer,' in Archiv f. Anthropologie, iv. 248 sqq.; Henkenius, 'Verbreitung der Anthropophagie,' in Deutsche Rundschau f. Geographie u. Statistik, xv. 348 sqq.; de Nadaillac, 'L'Anthropophagie et les sacrifices humains,' in Revue des Deux Mondes, lxvi. 406 sqq.; Idem, in Bulletins de la Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris, 1888, p. 27 sqq.; Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 145 sqq. (American aborigines); Koch, 'Die Anthropophagie der südamerikanischen Indianer,' in Internationales Archiv f. Ethnographie, xii. 84 sqq.; Preuss, Die Begräbnisarten der Amerikaner und Nordostasiaten, p. 217 sqq.; Vos, 'Die Verbreitung der Anthropophagie auf dem asiatischen Festlande,' in Intern. Archiv f. Ethnogr. iii. 69 sqq.; de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol. iv. book) ii. 363 sqq.; Hübbe-Schleiden, Ethiopien, p. 209 sqq.; Matiegka, 'Anthropophagie in der prähistorischen Ansiedlung bei Knovize und in der prähistorischen Zeit überhaupt,' in Mittheil. d. Anthrop. Gesellsch. in Wien, xxvi. 129 sqq.; Wood-Martin, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, ii. 286 sqq.]

{554} Sometimes the whole body is eaten, with the exception of the bones, sometimes only a part of it, as the liver or the heart. Frequently the victim is an enemy or a member of a foreign tribe, but he may also be a relative or fellow tribesman. Among various savages exo- and endo-anthropophagy prevail simultaneously; but many cannibals restrict themselves to eating strangers, slain enemies, or captives taken in war, whereas others eat their own people in preference to strangers, or are exclusively endo-anthropophagous. Thus the Birhors of the Central Provinces of India are said to eat their aged relatives, but to abhor any other form of cannibalism;[2] and in certain Australian tribes it is not the dead bodies of slain enemies that are eaten, but the bodies of friends, the former being left where they fell.[3] Sometimes people feed on the corpses of such kinsmen as have happened to die, sometimes they kill and eat their old folks, sometimes parents eat their children, sometimes criminals are eaten by the other members of their own community. The Australian Dieyerie have a fixed order in which they partake of their dead relatives:--"The mother eats of her children. The children eat of their mother. Brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law eat of each other. Uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, grandchildren, grandfathers, and grandmothers eat of each other. But the father does not eat of his offspring, or the offspring of the sire."[4] Among some peoples cannibalism is an exclusively masculine custom, the women being forbidden to eat human flesh, except perhaps in quite exceptional circumstances.[5]

[Footnote 2: Dalton, Ethnology of Bengal, p. 220 sq.]

[Footnote 3: Palmer, 'Some Australian Tribes,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xiii. 283; Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 56; Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 753 (Queensland aborigines). Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 67 (tribes of Western Victoria).]

[Footnote 4: Gason, 'Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 274.]

[Footnote 5: Coquilhat, Sur le Haut-Congo, p. 274 (Bangala). Torday and Joyce, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Mbala,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 403 sq. Iidem, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Huana,' ibid. xxxvi. 279. Reade, Savage Africa, p. 158 (West Equatorial Africans). Thomson, Story of New Zealand, i. 145; Best, 'Art of War, as conducted by the Maori,' in Jour. Polynesian Soc. xi. 71 (some of the Maoris). von Langsdorf, op. cit. i. 134 (Nukahivans). Erskine, Cruise among the Islands of Western Pacific, p. 260 (Fijians). Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 548. With reference to the natives of Australia Mr. Curr says (The Australian Race, i. 77) that "human flesh seems to have been entirely forbidden to females"; but this certainly does not hold true of all the Australian tribes.]

{555} The practice of cannibalism may be traced to many different sources. **It often springs from scarcity or lack of animal food.[6] In the South Sea Islands, according to Ellis, "the cravings of nature, and the pangs of famine, often led to this unnatural crime."[7] The Nukahivans, who were in the habit of eating their enemies slain in battle, also killed and ate their wives and children in times of scarcity, but not unless forced to it by the utmost necessity.[8] Hunger has been represented as the motive for cannibalism in some North and West Australian tribes, parents sometimes consuming even their own children when food is scarce.[9] The Indians north of Lake Superior often resorted to the eating of human flesh when hard pressed by their enemies or during a famine.[10] Among the Hudson Bay Eskimo "instances are reported where, in times of great scarcity, families have been driven to cannibalism after eating their dogs and the clothing and other articles made of skins."[11]

[Footnote 6: Bergemann, op. cit. p. 48. de Nadaillac, in _Bull. Soc. d'Anthr._ 1888, p. 27 sqq. Idem, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, lxvi. 428 sq. Steinmetz, Endokannibalismus, p. 25 sqq. Lippert, Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, ii. 281 sqq. Henkenius, loc. cit. p. 348 sq. Letourneau, _L'évolution de la Morale_, p. 97. Matiegka, loc. cit. p. 136. Hübbe-Schleiden, Ethiopien, p. 216 sq. Rochas, La Nouvelle Calédonie, p. 304 sq.]

[Footnote 7: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 359.]

[Footnote 8: von Langsdorf, op. cit. i. 144.]

[Footnote 9: Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, p. 134. Nisbet, _A Colonial Tramp_, ii. 143. Oldfield, 'Aborigines of Australia,' in Trans. Ethn. Soc. N.S. iii. 285. In hard summers the new-born babies were all eaten by the Kaura tribe in the neighbourhood of Adelaide (Howitt, op. cit. p. 749).]

[Footnote 10: Warren, in Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes of the United States_, ii. 146.]

[Footnote 11: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 187.]

But whilst among some peoples starvation is the only inducement to cannibalism, there are others who can plead no such motive for their anthropophagous habits. The Fijians, until lately some of the greatest man-eaters on earth, inhabit a country where food of every kind abounds.[12] The Brazilian cannibals generally have a great {556} plenty of game or fish.[13] In Africa cannibalism prevails in many countries which are well supplied with food.[14] Thus the Bangala of the Upper Congo have been known to make frequent warlike expeditions against adjoining tribes seemingly for the sole object of obtaining human flesh to eat, although their land is well provided with a variety of vegetable food and domestic animals, to say nothing of the incredible abundance of fish in its lakes and rivers.[15] Of the cave-cannibals in the Trans-Gariep Country, in South Africa, a traveller remarks with some surprise:--"They were inhabiting a fine agricultural tract of country, which also abounded in game. Notwithstanding this, they were not contented with hunting and feeding upon their enemies, but preyed much upon each other also, for many of their captures were made from amongst the people of their own tribe."[16] Far from being an article of food resorted to in emergency only, human flesh is not seldom sought for as a delicacy.[17] The highest praise which the Fijians could bestow on a dainty was to say that it was "tender as a dead man."[18] In various other islands of the South Seas human flesh is spoken of as a delicious food, far superior to pork.[19] The {557} Australian Kurnai said that it tasted better than beef.[20] In some tribes in Australia a plump child is considered "a sweet mouthful, and, in the absence of the mother, clubs in the hands of a few wilful men will soon lay it low."[21] Of certain natives of Northern Queensland we are told that the greatest incentive to taking life is their appetite for human flesh, as they know no greater luxury than the flesh of a black man.[22]

[Footnote 12: Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 182. Erskine. op. cit. p. 262.]

[Footnote 13: von Martius, Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika's, i. 538. Koch, loc. cit. p. 87. de Nadaillac, in Bull. Soc. d'Anthr. 1888, p. 30 sq.]

[Footnote 14: Johnston, 'Ethics of Cannibalism,' in Fortnightly Review, N.S. xlv. 20 sqq. Hübbe-Schleiden, Ethiopien, p. 212. de Nadaillac, in Bull. Soc. d'Anthr. 1888, p. 32 sq.]

[Footnote 15: Coquilhat, op. cit. pp. 271, 273. Johnston, in Fortnightly Review, N.S. xlv. 20.]

[Footnote 16: Layland, quoted by Burton, _Two Trips to Gorilla Land_, i. 216.]

[Footnote 17: Bergemann, op. cit. p. 49 sq. von Langsdorf, op. cit. i. 141. Hübbe-Schleiden, Ethiopien, p. 218. Johnston, in Fortnightly Review, N.S. xlv. 20 sqq. (various African peoples). Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, p. 330 (Fans). Reade, op. cit. p. 158 (West Equatorial Africans). Coquilhat, op. cit. p. 271 (Bangala). Torday and Joyce, 'Ba-Mbala,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 404. Iidem, 'Ba-Huana,' ibid. xxxvi. 279.]

[Footnote 18: Wilkes, U. S. Exploring Expedition, iii. 101. Cf. Williams and Calvert, op. cit. pp. 175, 178, 195.]

[Footnote 19: Romilly, Western Pacific, p. 59 (New Irelanders). Idem, From my Verandah in New Guinea, p. 65. Brenchley, Cruise of H.M.S. Curaçoa, p. 209; Turner, Samoa, p. 313 (natives of Tana, in the New Hebrides). Cf. ibid. p. 344 (New Caledonians); Hale, U. S. Exploring Expedition. Vol. VI. Ethnography and Philology, p. 39 (Polynesians). The Bataks of Sumatra likewise consider human flesh even better than pork (Junghuhn, Die Battaländer auf Sumatra, ii. 160 sq.). For the high appreciation of its taste see also Marco Polo, Book concerning the Kingdoms and Marvels of the East, ii. 179 (hill people in Fokien), 209 (Islanders in the Seas of China); Schaafhausen, loc. cit. p. 247 sq.; Matiegka, loc. cit. p. 136, n. 3.]

[Footnote 20: Howitt, op. cit. p. 752.]

[Footnote 21: Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, pp. 3, 57.]

[Footnote 22: Lumholtz, op. cit. pp. 101, 271.]

However, bodily appetites, whether hunger or gourmandise, are by no means the sole motives for cannibalism. Very frequently it is described as an act of revenge.[23] The Typees of the Marquesas Islands, according to Melville, are cannibals only when they seek to gratify the passion of revenge upon their foes.[24] The cannibalism of the Solomon Islanders seems mainly to have been an expression of the deepest humiliation to which they could make a person subject.[25] The Samoans affirmed that, when in some of their wars a body was occasionally cooked, "it was always some one of the enemy who had been notorious for provocation or cruelty, and that eating a part of his body was considered the climax of hatred and revenge, and was not occasioned by the mere relish for human flesh." To speak of roasting {558} him is the very worst language that can be addressed to a Samoan, and if applied to a chief of importance, he may raise war to avenge the insult.[26] Among the Maoris human flesh was frequently eaten from motives of revenge and hatred, to cast disgrace on the person eaten, and to strike terror. "It was such a disgrace for a New Zealander to have his body eaten, that if crews of Englishmen and New Zealanders, all friends, were dying of starvation in separate ships, the English might resort to cannibalism, but the New Zealanders never would."[27] Even in Fiji, where cannibalism was largely indulged in for the mere pleasure of eating human flesh as food, revenge is said to have been the chief motive for it.[28] Thus, "in any transaction where the national honour had to be avenged, it was incumbent upon the king and principal chiefs--in fact, a duty they owed to their exalted station--to avenge the insult offered to the country by eating the perpetrators of it."[29]

[Footnote 23: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 310 (Tahitians). von Langsdorf, op. cit. i. 149 (Nukahivans). Forster, _Voyage round the World_, ii. 315 (natives of Tana and generally). Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 248 (natives of New Britain and New Ireland). Howitt, _Natives of South-East Australia_, pp. 247, 751. Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 391; Buning, in Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 74 sq.; Junghuhn. op. cit. ii. 156, 160 (Bataks). de Groot, op. cit. (vol. iv. book) ii. 369 sqq. (ancient Chinese). Schneider, _Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker_, p. 208 sq. (Negroes). Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 216 (natives of Bonny and New Calabar). Müller, _Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen_, p. 145 sq. Carver, _Travels through the Interior Parts of North America_, p. 303 sq. (Naudowessies). Keating, Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River, i. 104 (Potawatomis). Koch, loc. cit. pp. 87, 89 sqq. (South American tribes). von Humboldt, _Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent_, v. 421 (Indians of Guyana). Wied-Neuwied, Reise nach Brasilien, ii. 50 (Botocudos and some other Brazilian tribes). Lomonaco, 'Sulle razze indigene del Brasile,' in Archivio per l'antropologia e la etnologia, xix. 58 (Tupis). Andree, op. cit. p. 102 sq. and passim.]

[Footnote 24: Melville, Typee, p. 181.]

[Footnote 25: Parkinson, _Zur Ethnographie der nordwestlichen Salomo Inseln_, p. 14.]

[Footnote 26: Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 194. Cf. Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences, p. 125 sq.]

[Footnote 27: Thomson, Story of New Zealand, i. 141 sqq. Yate, Account of New Zealand, p. 129. Dieffenbach, _Travels in New Zealand_, ii. 128. Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, p. 353. Best, in Jour. Polynesian Soc. xi. 71 sq.]

[Footnote 28: Wilkes, op. cit. iii. 101. Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 178.]

[Footnote 29: Seemann, Viti, p. 181.]

The practice of eating criminals, which is quite a common form of cannibalism, seems to be largely due to revenge or indignation.[30] In Lepers' Island, in the New Hebrides, the victims of it were not generally enemies who had been killed in fighting, but "it was a murderer or particularly detested enemy who was eaten, in anger and to treat him ill."[31] Among the Bataks of Sumatra offenders condemned for certain capital crimes, such as atrocious murder, treason, and adultery, were usually eaten by the injured persons and their friends with all the signs of angry passion.[32] But this form of cannibalism may also have another foundation.[33] If for any reason there is a desire to eat human flesh, an unsympathetic being like a criminal is apt to be chosen as a victim. {559} It is said that some of the Line Islanders in the South Seas began their cannibalism by eating thieves and slaves.[34] In Melanesia, where human sacrifices were combined with the eating of bits of the victim, "advantage was taken of a crime, or imputed crime, to take a life and offer the man to some tindalo."[35]

[Footnote 30: Cf. Matiegka, loc. cit. p. 137.]

[Footnote 31: Codrington, Melanesians, p. 344.]

[Footnote 32: Marsden, op. cit. p. 391. Junghuhn, op. cit. ii. 156 sq.]

[Footnote 33: See Steinmetz, op. cit. p. 55 sq.]

[Footnote 34: Tutuila, 'Line Islanders,' in _Jour. Polynesian Soc._ i. 270.]

[Footnote 35: Codrington, op. cit. p. 135.]

It has been questioned whether cannibalism can be a direct expression of hatred;[36] but for no good reason. To eat a person is, according to primitive ideas, to annihilate him as an individual,[37] and we can readily imagine the triumphant feelings of a savage who has his enemy between his jaws. The Fijian eats in revenge even the vermin which bite him, and when a thorn pricks him he picks it out of his flesh and eats it.[38] The Cochin-Chinese express their deepest hatred of a person by saying, "I wish I could eat his liver or his flesh."[39] Other people want to "drink the blood" of their enemies.

[Footnote 36: Steinmetz, op. cit. p. 33.]

[Footnote 37: Dieffenbach, op. cit. ii. 118 (Maoris). Johnston, in Fortnightly Review, N. S. xlv. 27 (Negroes of the Niger Delta). Koch, loc. cit. pp. 87, 109. Lippert, Der Seelencult, p. 69. Idem, Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, ii. 282 sq.]

[Footnote 38: Pritchard, op. cit. p. 371.]

[Footnote 39: von Langsdorf, op. cit. i. 148.]

The idea that a person is annihilated or loses his individuality by being eaten has led to cannibalism not only in revenge but as an act of protection, as a method of making a dangerous individual harmless after death.[40] Among the Botocudos warriors devoured the bodies of their fallen enemies in the belief that they would thus be safe from the revengeful hatred of the dead.[41] In Ashantee "several of the hearts of the enemy are cut out by the fetish men who follow the army, and the blood and small pieces being mixed (with much ceremony and incantation) with various consecrated herbs, all those who have never killed an enemy before eat a portion, for it is believed that if they did not, their vigour and courage would be secretly wasted by the haunting spirit of the {560} deceased."[42] In Greenland "a slain man is said to have the power to avenge himself upon the murderer by rushing into him, which can only be prevented by eating a piece of his liver."[43] Many cannibals are in the habit of consuming that part of a slain enemy which is supposed to contain his soul or courage or strength, and one reason for this practice may be the wish to render him incapable of doing further harm. Queensland natives eat the kidneys of the persons whom they have killed, believing that "the kidneys are the centre of life."[44] Among the Maoris a chief was often satisfied with the left eye of his enemy, which they considered to be the seat of the soul; or they drank the blood from a corresponding belief;[45] or in the case of a blood feud the heart of the enemy, representing the vital essence of him, was eaten "to fix or make firm the victory and the courage of the victor."[46] Other peoples likewise eat the hearts or suck the brains of their foes.

[Footnote 40: Cf. Lippert, Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, ii. 282; Koch, loc. cit. pp. 87, 109.]

[Footnote 41: Featherman, Social History of Mankind, 'Chiapo- and Guarano-Maranonians,' p. 355.]

[Footnote 42: Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, p. 300.]

[Footnote 43: Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 45.]

[Footnote 44: Lumholtz, op. cit. p. 272.]

[Footnote 45: Dieffenbach, op. cit. ii. 128 sq.]

[Footnote 46: Best, in Jour. Polynesian Soc. xii. 83, 147.]

Moreover, by eating the supposed seat of a certain quality in his enemy the cannibal thinks not only that he deprives his victim of that quality, but also that he incorporates it with his own system.[47] In many cases this is the chief or the only reason for the practice of cannibalism. The Shoshone Indians supposed that they became animated by the heroic spirit of a fallen foe if they partook of his flesh.[48] Among the Hurons, if an enemy had shown courage, his heart, roasted and cut into small pieces, {561} was given to the young men and boys to eat.[49] The E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast used to eat the hearts of foes remarkable for sagacity, holding that the heart is the seat of the intellect as well as of courage.[50] Among the Kimbunda of South-Western Africa, when a new king succeeds to the throne, a brave prisoner of war is killed in order that the king and nobles may eat his flesh, and so acquire his strength and courage.[51] The idea of transference very largely underlies Australian cannibalism.[52] In some tribes enemies are consumed with a view to acquiring some part of their qualities and courage.[53] The Dieyerie devour the fatty portions of their foes because they think it will impart strength to them.[54] And similar motives are often given for the practice of eating relatives or friends. When a man is killed in one of the ceremonial fights in the tribes about Maryborough, in Queensland, his friends skin and eat him in the hope that his virtues as a warrior may go into those who partake of him.[55] Among the natives of the River Darling, in New South Wales, a piece of flesh is cut from the dead body and taken to the camp, and after being sun-dried is cut up into small pieces, which are distributed among the relatives and friends of the deceased. Some of them use the piece in making a charm, or throw it into the river to bring a flood and fish, but others suck it to get strength and courage.[56] In certain Central Australian tribes, when a party starts on an avenging expedition, every man of it drinks some blood and also has some spurted over his body, so as to make him lithe and active; the elder men {562} indicate from whom the blood is to be drawn, and the persons thus selected must not decline.[57] In certain South Australian tribes cannibalism is only practised by old men and women, who eat a baby in order to get the youngster's strength.[58] Among other natives of the same continent, as we have noticed above, a mother used to kill and eat her first child, as this was believed to strengthen her for later births.[59] And in various Australian tribes it is, or has been, the custom when a child is weak or sickly to kill its infant brother or sister and feed it with the flesh to make it strong.[60] Many of the Brazilian Indians are in the habit of burning the bones of their departed relatives, and mix the ashes with a drink of which they partake for the purpose of absorbing their spirits or virtues.[61] Dr. Couto de Magalhães was informed that the savage Chavantes "eat their children who die, in the hope of gathering again to their body the soul of the child."[62]

[Footnote 47: Blumentritt, 'Der Ahnencultus der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels,' in _Mittheil. d. kais. u. könig. Geograph. Gesellsch. in Wien_, xxv. 154 (Italones). Lewin, _Wild Races of South-Eastern India_, p. 269 (Kukis). de Groot, _op. cit._ (vol. iv. book) ii. 373 sqq. (ancient Chinese). Schneider, Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, p. 209 sq. (Negroes). Dorman, op. cit. p. 145 sq. (North American Indians). Keating, op. cit. i. 104 (Potawatomis). Koch, _loc. cit._ pp. 87, 89 sqq., 109 (South American Indians). Andree, op. cit. p. 101 sq. and passim. Lippert, Der Seelencult, p. 70 sqq. Idem, Kulturgeschichte, ii. 282. Trumbull, Blood Covenant, p. 128 sqq. Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 357 sqq. Gomme, Ethnology in Folklore, p. 151 sqq. Crawley, Mystic Rose, p. 101 sqq.]

[Footnote 48: Featherman, op. cit. 'Aoneo-Maranonians,' p. 206.]

[Footnote 49: Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. xxxix.]

[Footnote 50: Ellis, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, p. 100.]

[Footnote 51: Magyar, Reisen in Süd-Afrika, p. 273.]

[Footnote 52: Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, pp. 56, 81. Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. p. xxxviii. Howitt, 'Australian Medicine Men,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xvi. 30. Langloh Parker, Euahlayi Tribe, p. 38. Gason, 'Dieyerie Tribe,' in Curr, op. cit. ii. 52.]

[Footnote 53: Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 752.]

[Footnote 54: Gason, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv. 172.]

[Footnote 55: Howitt, op. cit. p. 753. McDonald,'Mode of Preparing the Dead among the Natives of the Upper Mary River, Queensland,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. ii. 179.]

[Footnote 56: Bonney, 'Aborigines of the River Darling,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xiii. 135.]

[Footnote 57: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 461.]

[Footnote 58: Crauford, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv. 182.]

[Footnote 59: Supra, i. 458.]

[Footnote 60: Howitt, Native Tribes of South-East Australia, p. 749 sq. (all the tribes of the Wotjo nation, and the Tatathi and other tribes on the Murray River frontage). Stanbridge, 'Tribes in the Central Part of Victoria,' in _Trans. Ethn. Soc. London_, N.S. i. 289. Spencer and Gillen, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, pp. 52, 475 (Luritcha tribe).]

[Footnote 61: Wallace, Travels on the Amazon, p. 498 (Tariánas, Tucános, and some other tribes of the Uaupés). Coudreau, La France équinoxiale, ii. 173 (Cobbéos, of the Uaupés). Monteiro, quoted by von Spix and von Martius, Reise in Brasilien, iii. 1207, n. * (Jumánas). Koch, loc. cit. p. 83 sq. Dorman, op. cit. p. 151.]

[Footnote 62: Couto de Magalhães, Trabalho preparatorio para aproveitamento do selvagem e do solo por elle occupado no Brazil--O selvagem, p. 132. Cf. de Castelnau, Expédition dans les parties centrales de l'Amérique du Sud, iv. 382 (Camacas).]

The belief in the principle of transference has also led to cannibalism in connection with human sacrifice and to the eating of man-gods. At Florida, in the Solomon Islands, human flesh was eaten in sacrifice only.[63] In Hawaii, "après le sacrifice, le peuple, qui d'ailleurs ne fut jamais anthropophage, pratiquait une sorte de communion en mangeant certaines parties de la victime."[64] In West Equatorial Africa, according to Mr. Winwood Reade, there are two kinds of cannibalism--the one is simply an {563} act of gourmandise, the other is sacrificial and is performed by the priests, whose office it is to eat a portion of the victims, whether men, goats, or fowls.[65] And this sacrificial cannibalism is not restricted to the priests. In British Nigeria "no great human sacrifice offered for the purpose of appeasing the gods and averting sickness or misfortune is considered to be complete unless either the priests or the people eat the bodies of the victims";[66] and among the Aro people in Southern Nigeria the human victims offered to the god were eaten by all the people, the flesh being distributed throughout their country.[67] The inhabitants of the province of Caranque, in ancient Peru, likewise consumed the flesh of those whom they sacrificed to their gods.[68] The Aztecs ate parts of the human bodies whose blood had been poured out on the altar of sacrifice,[69] and so did the Mayas.[70] In Nicaragua the high-priests received the heart, the king the feet and hands, he who captured the victim took the thighs, the entrails were given to the trumpeters, and the rest was divided among the people.[71] In ancient India it was a prevalent opinion that he who offered a human victim in sacrifice should partake of its flesh; though, in opposition to this view, it was also said that a man cannot be allowed, much less required, to eat human flesh.[72] The sacrificial form of cannibalism obviously springs from the idea that a victim offered to a supernatural being participates in his sanctity[73] and from the wish of the worshipper to transfer to himself something of its benign virtue. So also the divine qualities of a man-god are supposed to be assimilated by the person {564} who eats his flesh or drinks his blood.[74] This was the idea of the early Christians concerning the Eucharist. In the holy food they assumed a real bestowal of heavenly gifts, a bodily self-communication of Christ, a miraculous implanting of divine life. The partaking of the consecrated elements had no special relation to the forgiveness of sins; but it strengthened faith and knowledge, and, especially, it was the guarantee of eternal life, because the body of Christ was eternal. The holy food was described as the "medicine of immortality."[75]

[Footnote 63: Codrington, op. cit. p. 343. See also Geiseler, Die Oster-Insel, p. 30 sq. (Easter Islanders).]

[Footnote 64: Remy, Ka Mooolelo Hawaii, p. xl.]

[Footnote 65: Reade, op. cit. p. 158. See also Schneider, Die Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, p. 209 sq.]

[Footnote 66: Mockler-Ferryman, British Nigeria, p. 261.]

[Footnote 67: Partridge, Cross River Natives, p. 59.]

[Footnote 68: Ranking, Researches on the Conquest of Peru, p. 89.]

[Footnote 69: Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, p. 41. Réville, Hibbert Lectures on the Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 89. Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 176; iii. 443 sq.]

[Footnote 70: Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 725.]

[Footnote 71: Ibid. ii. 725.]

[Footnote 72: Weber, 'Ueber Menschenopfer bei den Indern der vedischen Zeit,' in Indische Streifen, i. 72 sq.]

[Footnote 73: See supra, i. 445 sq.]

[Footnote 74: See Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 352, 353. 366.]

[Footnote 75: Harnack, History of Dogma, i. 211; ii. 144 sqq.; iv. 286, 291, 294, 296, 297, 299 sq.]

In various other instances human flesh or blood is supposed to have a supernatural or medicinal effect upon him who partakes of it. The Banks Islanders in Melanesia believe that a man or woman may obtain a power like that of Vampires by stealing and eating a morsel of a corpse; the ghost of the dead man would then "join in a close friendship with the person who had eaten, and would gratify him by afflicting any one against whom his ghostly power might be directed."[76] Australian sorcerers are said to acquire their magic influence by eating human flesh.[77] The Egyptian natives who accompanied Baker on one of his expeditions imagined that the rite of consuming an enemy's liver would give a fatal direction to a random bullet.[78] Among the aborigines of Tasmania a man's blood was often administered as a healing draught.[79] In China the heart, the liver, the gall, and the blood of executed criminals are used for life-strengthening purposes;[80] thus at Peking, when a person has been executed by the sword, certain large pith balls are steeped in the blood and, under the name of "blood-bread," sold as a medicine for consumption.[81] Tertullian speaks of those "who at the gladiatorial shows, for the cure of epilepsy, {565} quaff with greedy thirst the blood of criminals slain in the arena, as it flows fresh from the wound."[82] So also in Christian Europe the blood of criminals has been drunk as a remedy against epilepsy, fever, and other diseases.[83] In these cases the ascription of a healing effect to the blood of the dead may perhaps have been derived from a belief in the transference of some quality which they possessed in their lifetime; the blood or life of a sound and strong individual might impart health to the sickly. But the mystery of death would also give to the corpse a miraculous power of its own, especially when combined with the horror or awe inspired by an executed felon.

[Footnote 76: Codrington, op. cit. p. 221 sq.]

[Footnote 77: Eyre, _Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia_, ii. 255.]

[Footnote 78: Baker, Ismailïa, p. 393.]

[Footnote 79: Bonwick, Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians, p. 89.]

[Footnote 80: de Groot, op. cit. (vol. iv. book) ii. 377.]

[Footnote 81: Rennie, quoted by Yule, in his translation of Marco Polo, i. 275, n. 7.]

[Footnote 82: Tertullian, Apologeticus, 9 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, i. 321 sq.).]

[Footnote 83: Strack, Der Blutaberglaube in der Menschheit, p. 27 sqq. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, § 189 sqq., p. 137 sq. Jahn, 'Ueber den Zauber mit Menschenblut,' in Verhandl. d. Berliner Gesellsch. f. Anthrop. 1888, p. 134 sqq. Havelock Ellis, The Criminal, p. 284. Peacock, 'Executed Criminals and Folk-Medicine,' in Folk-Lore, vii. 270 sq.]

In other instances, again, the belief in the wonderful effects of cannibal practices may have originated in the notion that, if a person or the essential part of him is eaten, he ceases to exist even as a spirit, or at all events loses his power of doing mischief. Among the Indians of British Guiana, when a man is pointed out as the secret murderer of a relative who has died, the avenger will shoot him through the back; and if he happens to fall dead to the ground, his corpse is dragged aside and buried in a shallow grave. The third night the avenger goes to the grave and presses a pointed stick through the corpse; and if on withdrawing the stick he finds blood on the end of it, he tastes the blood in order to ward off any evil effects that might follow from the murder, returning home appeased and apparently at ease. But if it happens that the wounded individual is able to escape, he charges his relatives to bury him after his death in some place where he cannot be found. This is to punish the murderer for his deed, "inasmuch as the belief prevails that if he taste not the blood he must perish by madness."[84] In Prussia it was a popular superstition that {566} if a murderer cut off, roasted, and ate a piece of his victim's body, he would never after think of his deed.[85] But by eating a part of the corpse a homicide may also protect himself against the vengeance of the survivors, presumably because he has now absorbed their relative into his own system.[86] The natives of New Britain eat their enemies and fix the leg and arm bones of the victims at the butt end of their spears, believing that this not only gives them the strength of the man whose bones they carry but also makes them invulnerable by his relatives.[87] The Botocudos thought that by devouring their fallen enemies they both protected themselves from the hatred of the dead and at the same time prevented the arrows of the hostile tribe from hitting them.[88] In Greenland the relatives of a murdered person, when highly enraged, will cut to pieces the body of the murderer and devour part of the heart or liver, "thinking thereby to disarm his relatives of all courage to attack them."[89] In the South of Italy there is a popular belief that a murderer will not be able to escape unless he taste or bedaub himself with his victim's blood.[90] Sometimes, we are told, cannibalism is even supposed to have a positively injurious effect upon the victim's relatives, in accordance, as it seems, with the principle of sympathetic magic. Among the Chukchi, in the case of revenge for blood, the slayers eat a little bit of the enemy's heart or liver, supposing that they in this way cause the hearts of his kinsfolk to sicken.[91]

[Footnote 84: Bernau, Missionary Labours in British Guiana, p. 57 sq.]

[Footnote 85: von Tettau and Temme, _Die Volkssagen Ostpreussens_, p. 267.]

[Footnote 86: Cf. Hartland, op. cit. ii. 245 sq.]

[Footnote 87: Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 92.]

[Footnote 88: Castelnau, Expédition dans les parties centrales de l'Amérique du Sud, iv. 382.]

[Footnote 89: Cranz, History of Greenland, i. 178.]

[Footnote 90: Pasquarelli, quoted by Hartland, op. cit. ii. 246.]

[Footnote 91: Ratzel, History of Mankind, ii. 212.]

Human flesh or blood is not only believed to impart certain qualities or beneficial magic energy to him who partakes of it, but also serves as a means of transferring conditional curses from one person to another. This I take to be the explanation of cannibalism as a covenant rite; in a previous chapter I have tried to show that the {567} main principle underlying the blood-covenant is the idea that the transference of blood conveys to the person who drinks it, or is inoculated with it, a conditional curse which will injure or destroy him should he break his promise.[92] The drinking of human blood, or of wine mixed with such blood, has been a form of covenant among various ancient and mediæval peoples, as well as among certain savages.[93] In some South Slavonic districts compacts between different clans are even now made by their representatives sucking blood from each other's right hands and swearing fidelity till the grave.[94] In certain parts of Africa, again, the partaking of human flesh, generally prepared in a kind of paste mixed with condiments and kept in a quaintly-carved wooden box and eaten with round spoons of human bone, constitutes a bond of union between strangers who are suspicious of one another or between former enemies, or accompanies the making of a solemn declaration or the taking of an oath.[95] Among the Bambala, a Bantu tribe in the Kasai, south of the River Congo, cannibalism accompanies the ceremony by which a kind of alliance is established between chiefs of the same region. The most powerful chief will invite the other chiefs of the neighbourhood to a meeting held on his territory, in order to make a compact against bloodshed. "A slave is fattened for the occasion and killed by the host, and the invited chiefs and their followers partake of the flesh. Participation in this banquet is taken as a pledge to prevent murder. Supposing that a chief, after attending an assembly of this kind, kills a slave, every village which took part in the bond has the right to claim compensation, and the murderer is sure to be completely ruined."[96]

[Footnote 92: Supra, ii. 208.]

[Footnote 93: Strack, op. cit. p. 9 sqq. Rühs, Handbuch der Geschichte des Mittelalters, p. 323. Supra, ii. 207 sqq.]

[Footnote 94: Krauss, 'Sühnung der Blutrache im Herzögischen,' in Am Ur-Quell, N.F. i. 196.]

[Footnote 95: Johnston, in Fortnightly Review, N.S. xlv. 28.]

[Footnote 96: Torday and Joyce, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 404, 409.]

For the practice of eating relatives or friends, finally, some special reasons are given besides those already mentioned.{568} It is represented as a mark of affection or respect for the dead,[97] as an act which benefits not only the person who eats but also him who is eaten. The reason which the Australian Dieyerie assign for their endo-anthropophagy is, that should they not eat their relatives they would be perpetually crying and become a nuisance to the camp.[98] The natives of the Boulia district, Queensland, among whom children that die suddenly are partly eaten by the parents and their blood brothers and sisters, say that "putting them along hole" would make them think too much about their beloved little ones.[99] In the Turrbal tribe in Southern Queensland a man who happened to be killed in one of the ceremonial combats which followed the initiation rites was eaten by those members of the tribe who were present; and the motive stated is that they ate him because "they knew him and were fond of him, and they now knew where he was, and his flesh would not stink."[100] The Bataks of Sumatra declared that they frequently ate their own relatives when aged and infirm, "not so much to gratify their appetite, as to perform a pious ceremony."[101] Among the Samoyedes old and decrepit persons who were no longer able to work let their children kill and eat them in the hope that they thereby might fare better after death.[102] The Indian of Hayti "would think he was wanting to the memory of a relation, if he had not thrown into his drink a small portion of the body of the deceased, after having dried it . . . and reduced it to powder."[103] Among the Botocudos old men who were unable to keep up in the march were at their own request eaten up by their sons so that their {569} enemies should be prevented from digging up and injuring their bodies;[104] whilst mothers not infrequently consumed their dead children out of love.[105] The Mayorunas considered it more desirable for the departed to be eaten by relatives than by worms;[106] and the Cocomas, a tribe of the Marañon and Lower Huallaga, said it was better to be inside a friend than to be swallowed up by the cold earth.[107] It is impossible to decide how far these statements represent original motives for the custom of eating dead relatives. They may be later interpretations of a habit which in the first place sprang from selfishness rather than love.

[Footnote 97: Dawson, op. cit. p. 67 (tribes of Western Victoria). McDonald, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. ii. 179 (natives of the Upper Mary River, Queensland). Featherman, op. cit. 'Oceano-Melanesians,' p. 243 (Hawaiians). Southey, History of Brazil, i. 379 (Tapuyas). Marcgravius de Liebstad, Historia rerum naturalium Brasiliæ, viii. 12, p. 282 (ancient Tupis).]

[Footnote 98: Gason, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv. 172. Idem, in Woods, op. cit. p. 274.]

[Footnote 99: Roth, North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 166.]

[Footnote 100: Howitt, op. cit. p. 753.]

[Footnote 101: Leyden, 'Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese Nations,' in Asiatick Researches, x. 202.]

[Footnote 102: Preuss, op. cit. p. 218.]

[Footnote 103: Bembo, quoted by von Humboldt, op. cit. v. 248.]

[Footnote 104: Voss, in Verhandl. Berliner Geellsch. Anthr. 1891, p. 26.]

[Footnote 105: Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, iii. 446.]

[Footnote 106: von Schütz-Holzhausen, Der Amazonas, p. 209.]

[Footnote 107: Markham, 'List of the Tribes in the Valley of the Amazon,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv. 253.]

The cannibalism of modern savages has often been represented as the survival of an ancient practice which was once universal in the human race.[108] The advocates of this theory, however, have not generally made any serious attempts to prove it. I have in another place put the question how ethnographical facts can give us information regarding the early history of mankind, and my answer was:--We have first to find out the causes of the social phenomena; we may then from the prevalence of the causes infer the prevalence of the phenomena themselves, if the former must be assumed to have operated without being checked by other causes.[109] This seems a very obvious method; but, so far as I know, Dr. Steinmetz is the only one who has strictly applied it to the question of cannibalism. He has arrived at the conclusion that primitive man most probably was in the habit of eating the bodies of his dead kinsmen as also of slain enemies. His argument is briefly as follows:--{570} The chief impulse of primitive man was his desire for food. He fed not only on fruits and vegetables, but on flesh. His taste for animal food was not limited by any sufficient esthetic horror of human corpses. Nor was he kept back from eating them by fear of exposing himself to the revenge of the disembodied soul of his victim, nor by any fantastic sympathy for the dead body. Consequently, he was an habitual cannibal.[110] If I cannot accept Dr. Steinmetz's conclusion it is certainly not because I find fault with his method, but because I consider his chief premise exceedingly doubtful.

[Footnote 108: Andree, op. cit. p. 98 sq. Lippert, Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, ii. 279. Schurtz, Speiseverbote, p. 25. Réville, Hibbert Lectures on the Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 87. Johnston, in Fortnightly Review, N.S. xlv. 28. M. Letourneau (L'évolution de la morale, p. 76) calls cannibalism "le péché originel de toutes les races humaines."]

[Footnote 109: Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 3 sq.]

[Footnote 110: Steinmetz, Endokannibalismus, p. 34 sqq.]

It is quite likely that early man preferred cannibalism to death from starvation, and that he occasionally practised it from the same motive as has induced many shipwrecked men even among civilised peoples to have recourse to the bodies of their comrades in order to save their lives. But we are here concerned with habitual cannibalism only. Although I consider it highly probable that man was originally in the main frugivorous, there can be no doubt that he has from very early times fed largely on animal food. We may further take for granted that he has habitually eaten the flesh of whatever animals he could get for which he had a taste and from the eating of which no superstitious or sentimental motive held him back. But that he at first had no aversion to human flesh seems to me a very precarious assumption.

A large number of savage tribes have never been known to be addicted to cannibalism, but are, on the contrary, said to feel the greatest dislike of it. In times of scarcity the Eskimo will eat their clothing sooner than touch human flesh. The Fuegians have been reported to devour their old women in cases of extreme distress;[111] but Mr. Bridges, who has spent most part of his life among them, emphatically affirms that cannibalism is unknown amongst the natives of Cape Horn and that {571} they abhor it.[112] Concerning the natives of South Andaman Mr. Man observes:--"Not a trace could be discovered of the existence of such a practice in their midst, even in far-off times. . . . They express the greatest horror of the custom, and indignantly deny that it ever held a place among their institutions."[113] We meet with similar statements with reference to many African tribes. The editor of Livingstone's 'Last Journals' says that it was common on the River Shiré to hear Manganja and Ajawa people speak of tribes far away to the north who eat human bodies, and that on every occasion the fact was related with the utmost abhorrence and disgust.[114] Amongst the Dinka the accounts of the cannibalism of the Niam-Niam excites as much horror as amongst ourselves.[115] The Bakongo "shudder with repugnance at the mere mention of eating human flesh."[116] Among the Bayaka, in the Congo Free State, "cannibalism is never found, and is regarded as something quite abhorrent."[117] No intermarriage takes place between the Fans and their non-cannibal neighbours, as "their peculiar practices are held in too great abhorrence."[118] According to Burton, cannibalism "is execrated by the Efiks of Old Calabar, who punish any attempts of the kind with extreme severity."[119] Even amongst the South Sea Islanders there are tribes which have been known to view cannibalism with great repugnance.[120]

[Footnote 111: Darwin, Journal of Researches, p. 214. King and Fitzroy, Voyages of the "Adventure" and "Beagle," ii. 183, 189.]

[Footnote 112: Bridges, 'Manners and Customs of the Firelanders,' in A Voice for South America, xiii. 207. Idem, quoted by Hyades and Deniker, Mission scientifique du Cap Horn, vii. 259.]

[Footnote 113: Man, 'Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 113.]

[Footnote 114: Livingstone, Last Journals, ii. 39.]

[Footnote 115: Schweinfurth, Heart of Africa, i. 158.]

[Footnote 116: Ward, Five Years with the Congo Cannibals, p. 37.]

[Footnote 117: Torday and Joyce, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Yaka,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxvi. 42.]

[Footnote 118: Du Chaillu, Explorations in Equatorial Africa, p. 97.]

[Footnote 119: Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 216 sq.]

[Footnote 120: Nisbet, op. cit. ii. 136. Turner, Samoa, p. 305 (Savage Islanders). Angas, Polynesia, p. 385 (natives of Bornabi, in the Caroline Islands). Powell, _Wanderings in a Wild Country_, p. 247 (some of the tribes in New Guinea). Calder, 'Native Tribes of Tasmania,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. iii. 23; Ling Roth, Aborigines of Tasmania, p. 111.]

It is true that the information which a traveller visiting a savage tribe receives as regards its attitude towards {572} cannibalism is often apt to be misleading. There is nothing as to which many savages are so reticent or the practice of which they will deny so readily as cannibalism, though at the same time they are much inclined to accuse other peoples of it.[121] The reason why they are so anxious to conceal its prevalence among themselves is of course their knowledge of the detestation in which it is held by the visiting stranger; but not infrequently they really seem to feel that it is something to be ashamed of. It has been said of some Australian natives that, "unlike many other offences with which they are justly charged, . . . this one in general they knew to be wrong," their behaviour when they were questioned on the subject showing that "they erred knowingly and wilfully."[122] At all events the reproaches of the whites have been taken to heart with remarkable readiness. Even among peoples who have been extremely addicted to it, cannibalism has disappeared with a rapidity to which, I think, there is hardly any parallel in the history of morals. Erskine wrote in the middle of the last century:--"Our experience in New Zealand has proved that this unnatural propensity can be eradicated from the habits of a whole savage nation, in the course of a single generation. I have heard it asserted that there did not exist in 1845 many New Zealand males of twenty years of age who had not, in their childhood, tasted of human flesh; yet it is perfectly well known that at the present time the occurrence of a single case of cannibalism, in any part of those islands, would attract as much notice as in any country of Europe; and that, when a native can be induced to talk on the subject, his information is given reluctantly, and with an unmistakable consciousness of degradation, and a feeling of shame that he and his {573} countrymen should ever have been liable to such a reproach."[123] Of the Bataks it was said some time ago that the rising generation began to refrain from cannibalism, and that those of them who had submitted to European rule thought with horror of the wild times when they or their ancestors were addicted to it.[124] Cieza de Leon remarks with some astonishment that, as soon as the Peruvian Incas began to put a stop to this practice among all the peoples with whom they came in contact, it was in a short time forgotten throughout their empire even by those who had previously held it in high estimation.[125] Moreover, the extinction of cannibalism has not always been due to the intervention of superior races.[126]

[Footnote 121: Curr, The Australian Race, i. 77; Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, i. p. xxxvii. sq.; Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 56. Romilly, Western Pacific, p. 59 sqq. Idem, From my Verandah in New Guinea, p. 68. Powell, op. cit. pp. 52, 59 (natives of the Duke of York Group). Erskine, op. cit. p. 190 sq. (Fijians). Melville, op. cit. p. 341 (Polynesians). Reade, op. cit. p. 159; Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, p. 330 (Fans). At the same time there are many cannibals who make no attempts to conceal the practice.]

[Footnote 122: Brough Smyth, op. cit. i. p. xxxviii.]

[Footnote 123: Erskine, op. cit. p. 275 sq.]

[Footnote 124: Buning, in Glimpses of the Eastern Archipelago, p. 74.]

[Footnote 125: Cieza de Leon, _Segunda parte de la Crónica del Perú_, ch. 25, p. 100.]

[Footnote 126: Waitz-Gerland, Anthropologie der Naturvölker, vi. 158 sqq. (Polynesians). Casalis, Basutos, p. 303. Ribot, Psychology of the Emotions, p. 295 sq. Schurtz, Speiseverbote, p. 26. Cf. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 324.]

Even among peoples very notorious for cannibalism there are individuals who abhor the practice. Dr. Schweinfurth asserts that some of the Niam-Niam "turn with such aversion from any consumption of human flesh that they would peremptorily refuse to eat out of the same dish with any one who was a cannibal."[127] With reference to Fijian cannibalism Dr. Seemann observes:--"It would be a mistake to suppose that all Fijians, not converted to Christianity, are cannibals. There were whole towns, as for instance Nakelo, on the Rewa river, which made a bold stand against this practice, declaring that it was tabu forbidden to them by their gods, to indulge in it. The common people throughout the group, as well as women of all classes, were by custom debarred from it. Cannibalism was thus restricted to the chiefs and gentry, and again amongst them there is a number . . . who never eat human flesh, nor go near the biers when any dead bodies have been brought in, and who abominate the practice as much as any white man does."[128] {574} It should also be remembered that many cannibals eat human flesh not as ordinary food, but only in special circumstances, and that their cannibalism is often restricted to the devouring of some small part of the victim's body.

[Footnote 127: Schweinfurth, op. cit. ii. 18 sq.]

[Footnote 128: Seemann, Viti, p. 179 sq. Cf. Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 179.]

The dislike of cannibalism may be a complex feeling. In many instances sympathy for the dead is undoubtedly one of its ingredients. It is true that endo-anthropophagy is frequently described as a mark of affection, but on the other hand there are many cannibals who never eat their dead friends though they eat strangers or foes. Some cannibals exchange their own dead for those of another tribe so as to avoid feeding on their kinsmen;[129] the natives of Tana, in the New Hebrides, are said to do so "when they happen to have a particular regard for the deceased."[130] But neither affection nor regard can be the reason why savages abstain from eating their enemies. I think that aversion to cannibalism is most likely, in the first instance, an instinctive feeling akin to those feelings which regulate the diet of the various animal species. Although our knowledge of their habits in this respect is defective, there can be little doubt that carnivorous animals as a rule refuse to eat members of their own species; and this reluctance is easy to understand considering its race-preserving tendency.

[Footnote 129: Arbousset and Daumas, Exploratory Tour to the Cape of Good Hope, p. 123. Steinmetz, Endokannibalismus, pp. 22, 47.]

[Footnote 130: Brenchley, op. cit. p. 209.]

Moreover, the eating of human flesh is regarded with some degree of superstitious dread. This is not seldom the case even among peoples who are themselves cannibals. In Lepers' Island, in the New Hebrides, where cannibalism still prevails, the natives say that "to eat human flesh is a dreadful thing," and that a man-eater is a person who is afraid of nothing; hence "men will buy flesh when some one has been killed, that they may get the name of valiant men by eating it."[131] In those parts of Fiji where cannibalism was a national institution, only the select few, the taboo-class, the priests, chiefs, and higher orders, were deemed fit to indulge in it; and {575} whilst every other kind of food was eaten with the fingers, human flesh was eaten with forks, which were handed down as heirlooms from generation to generation, and with which the natives would not part even for a handsome equivalent.[132] The Fijians of Nakelo, again, who did not practise cannibalism, attributed to it those fearful skin diseases with which children are so often visited in Fiji.[133] The New Caledonians, who are exo-anthropophagous, believe that if a man eats a tribes-fellow he will break out into sores and die.[134] Among the Maoris no men but sacred chiefs could partake of human flesh without becoming tapu, in which state they could not return to their usual occupations without having the tapu removed from their bodies.[135] So also among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia a man who has eaten human flesh as a ceremonial rite is for a long time afterwards subject to a variety of restrictions, being considered unclean. For sixteen days he must not eat any warm food. For four months he is not allowed to blow hot food in order to cool it. For the same period he uses a spoon, dish, and kettle of his own, which are thrown away after the lapse of the prescribed time. He must stay alone in his bedroom, and is not allowed to go out of the house door but must use the secret door in the rear of the house. And for a whole year he must not touch his wife, nor is he allowed to gamble or to work.[136] Among the West African Fans, before a cannibal meal, the corpse is carried to a hut built on the outskirts of the settlement. There "it is eaten secretly by the warriors, women and children not being allowed to be present, or even to look upon man's flesh; and the cooking pots used for the banquet must all be broken. A joint of 'black brother' is never seen in the villages."[137] So also {576} among the Bambala, south of the River Congo, vessels in which human flesh has been cooked are broken and the pieces thrown away.[138] In Eastern Central Africa the person who eats a human being is believed to run a great risk; Mr. Macdonald knew a headman whose success in war was attributed to the fact that he had eaten the whole body of a strong young man, but it was supposed that if he had not been protected by powerful charms, such cannibalism might have been dangerous to him.[139]

[Footnote 131: Codrington, op. cit. p. 344.]

[Footnote 132: Seemann, Viti, pp. 179, 181 sq.]

[Footnote 133: Ibid. p. 179 sq.]

[Footnote 134: Atkinson, 'Natives of New Caledonia,' in Folk-Lore, xiv. 253.]

[Footnote 135: Thomson, op. cit. i. 147 sq.]

[Footnote 136: Boas, 'Social Organization of the Kwakiutl Indians,' in Report of the U.S. National Museum, 1895, p. 537 sq. Cf. Woldt, _Kaptein Jacobsens Reiser til Nordamerikas Nordvestkyst_, p. 44 sqq.; Mayne, _Four Years in British Columbia_, p. 256 sq.]

[Footnote 137: Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 212.]

[Footnote 138: Torday and Joyce, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxv. 404.]

[Footnote 139: Macdonald, Africana, i. 170.]

One reason for this superstitious dread of cannibalism is undoubtedly fear of the dead man's spirit, which is then supposed not to be annihilated by the act, but to become a danger to him who partakes of the corpse. The Fijian cannibals avowed "that they were always frightened at night lest the spirit of the man they had eaten should haunt them."[140] In the Luritcha tribe in Central Australia care is invariably taken to destroy the bones of those enemies who have been eaten, "as the natives believe that unless this is done the victims will arise from the coming together of the bones, and will follow and harm those who have killed and eaten them."[141] And among the Kwakiutl Indians the taboos imposed upon a cannibal are more obligatory when he has devoured a corpse than when he has contented himself with taking bites out of a living man.[142] But it may also be that the superstitious fear of cannibalism is to some extent an outcome of the natural reluctance to partake of human flesh, just as the aversion to eating certain animals may give rise to the idea that their meat is unwholesome food,[143] and as the supernatural dangers attributed to incest spring from the instinctive horror of it.[144]

[Footnote 140: Pritchard, op. cit. p. 372.]

[Footnote 141: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 475.]

[Footnote 142: Boas, loc. cit. p. 537 sq. Cf. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 342.]

[Footnote 143: Supra, ii. 332.]

[Footnote 144: Supra, ii. 375 sq.]

The fact that so many peoples partake or are known to have partaken of human flesh without repugnance, or even with the greatest eagerness, by no means proves {577} that there was no original aversion to it in the human race. It is easy to imagine that the feeling of reluctance may have been overcome by other motives, such as hunger, revenge, the desire to acquire another person's courage or strength, the hope of making an enemy harmless, or of gaining supernatural benefits. And everybody knows that men and even many animals, when once induced to taste a certain food which they have previously avoided, often conceive a great liking for it. There is evidence that this also applies to cannibalism. In 1200 Egypt was afflicted with a terrible famine, in consequence of which the poor fed even upon human corpses and fell to devouring children. An eyewitness, the Arabian physician [(]Abd-Allatif, writes that, when the poor began to eat human flesh, the wonder and horror excited were such, that these crimes were in every mouth, and people were never weary of the extraordinary topic. But by degrees custom operated, and produced even a taste for such detestable repasts. Many men made children their ordinary food, eating them from pure gluttony and laying up stores of their flesh. Various modes of cooking and seasoning this kind of food were invented; and the practice soon spread through the provinces, so that there was not a single district in which cannibalism became not common. By this time it caused no longer either surprise or horror, and the matter was discussed with indifference. Diverse rich people, who could have procured other food, seemed to become infatuated, and practised cannibalism as a luxury, using murderers as their purveyors and inviting their friends to dinner, without taking too much trouble to conceal the truth.[145] There is a similar story from Polynesia. Cannibalism, we are told, was introduced into Futuna by king Veliteki in consequence of a great tempest which brought on a disastrous famine; but in time it became a dreadful scourge, which threatened to depopulate the island. The desire to eat human flesh arrived at such a point that wars no longer sufficed to {578} furnish victims in sufficient numbers, hence the people took to hunting down members of their own tribes.[146] It has been suggested that in other islands of the South Seas cannibalism likewise arose in times of great famine, and that the inhabitants, becoming used to it, acquired a taste for human flesh.[147] In Western Equatorial Africa, again, gastronomic cannibalism has been supposed to be a practical extension of the sacrificial ceremony, neither the women nor the young men being allowed to touch the dainty.[148] That such a practice may easily grow up when the beginning has been made, is well illustrated by the words of a cannibal chief who declared that he who has once indulged in a repast of human flesh will find it very difficult to abstain from it in the future.[149]

[Footnote 145: [(]Abd-Allatif, Relation de l'Égypte, p. 360 sqq.]

[Footnote 146: Percy Smith, 'Futuna,' in Jour. Polynesian Soc. i. 37.]

[Footnote 147: Macdonald, Oceania, p. 196 sq. Powell, Wanderings in a Wild Country, p. 248.]

[Footnote 148: Reade, op. cit. p. 158.]

[Footnote 149: Powell, op. cit. p. 248.]

The question whether early man was in the habit of eating human flesh may thus, I think, be resolved into the question whether his natural shrinking from it may be assumed to have been subdued by any of those factors which in certain circumstances have induced men to become habitual cannibals. For such an assumption I find no sufficient grounds. On the contrary, I maintain that it is made highly improbable by the fact that cannibalism is much less prevalent among the lowest savages than among races somewhat more advanced in culture.[150] In America, instead of being confined to savage peoples, it was practised "to a greater extent and with more horrible rites among the most civilised. Its religious inception," Mr. Dorman adds, "was the cause of this."[151] Humboldt observed long ago:--"The nations who hold it a point of honour to devour their prisoners are not always the rudest and most ferocious . . . . The Cabres, the Guipunavis, and the Caribees, have {579} always been more powerful and more civilised than the other hordes of the Oroonoko; and yet the former are as much addicted to anthropophagy, as the last are repugnant to it."[152] In Brazil, Martius found the cannibalism of the Central Tupis to form a strange contrast to their relatively high state of culture.[153] Cannibals like the Fijians and Maoris were on the verge of semi-civilisation, and the Bataks of Sumatra were already in early times so advanced as to frame an alphabet of their own, though after the Indian model. Among the African Niam-Niam and Monbuttu a great predilection for human flesh coexists with a remarkable degree of culture; whereas in the dwarf tribes of Central Africa, which are of a very low type, Mr. Burrows never heard of a single case of cannibalism.[154]

[Footnote 150: See Peschel, Races of Man, p. 162 sq.; Schneider, Die Naturvölker, i. 186; Bergemann, op. cit. p. 53; Ratzel, op. cit. ii. 352; Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct, i. 372.]

[Footnote 151: Dorman, op. cit. p. 152.]

[Footnote 152: von Humboldt, op. cit. v. 424 sq.]

[Footnote 153: von Martius, op. cit. i. 199 sq.]

[Footnote 154: Burrows, Land of the Pigmies, p. 149.]

It would be very instructive to follow the history of cannibalism among those peoples who are, or have lately been, addicted to it, if we were able to do so; but the subject is mostly obscure. The most common change which we have had an opportunity to notice is the decline and final disappearance of the practice under European influence; but we must not assume that every change has been in the direction towards extinction. Among the East African Wadoe and Wabembe cannibalism is, according to their own account, of modern origin.[155] Mr. Torday informs me that among some of the Congo natives it is spreading in the present day. In the Solomon Islands it has recently extended itself; it is asserted by the elder natives of Florida that man's flesh was formerly never eaten except in sacrifice, and that human sacrifice is an innovation introduced from further west.[156] Erskine maintains that in Fiji cannibalism, though a very ancient custom, did not prevail in earlier times to the same extent as it did more recently;[157] and Mr. Fornander has arrived {580} at the conclusion that among the Polynesians this practice was not an original heirloom brought with them from their primitive homes in the Far West, but was adopted subsequently by a few of the tribes under conditions and circumstances now unknown.[158] For various reasons, then, it is an illegitimate supposition to regard the cannibalism of modern savages as a survival from the first infancy of mankind, or, more generally, from a stage through which the whole human race has passed.

[Footnote 155: Burton, Two Trips to Gorilla Land, i. 214.]

[Footnote 156: Codrington, op. cit. p. 343.]

[Footnote 157: Erskine, op. cit. p. 272.]

[Footnote 158: Fornander, Account of the Polynesian Race, i. 132.]

As for the moral opinions about cannibalism, we may assume that peoples who abstain from it also generally disapprove of it, or would do so if they were aware of its being practised. Aversion, as we have often noticed, leads to moral indignation, especially where the moral judgment is little influenced by reflection. Another source of the condemnation of cannibalism may be sympathetic resentment resulting from the idea that the dead is annihilated or otherwise injured by the act, or from the feeling that it is an insult to him to use his body as an article of food; but this could certainly not be the origin of savages disapproval of eating their foes. Among civilised races, as well as among non-anthropophagous savages, horror or disgust is undoubtedly the chief reason why cannibalism is condemned as wrong. This emotion is often so intense that the same people whose moral feelings are little affected by a conquest, with all its horrors, made for the purpose of gain, shudder at the stories of wars waged by famished savages for the purpose of procuring human flesh for food. On the other hand, where the natural aversion to such food is for some reason or other overcome, the disapproval of cannibalism is in consequence no longer felt. But an attitude of moral indifference towards this practice has also been advocated on a totally different ground, by persons whose moral emotions are too much tempered by thought to allow them to pronounce an act as wrong simply because it creates in them {581} disgust. Thus, Montaigne argued that it is more barbarous to torture a man to death under colour of piety and religion than to roast and eat him after he is dead.[159] And he quotes with apparent agreement the opinion of some Stoic philosophers that there is no harm in feeding upon human carcases to avoid starvation.[160]

[Footnote 159: Montaigne, Essais, i. 30.]

[Footnote 160: Diogenes Laertius, Vitæ philosophorum, vii. 1. 64 (121); vii. 7. 12 (188). Zeller, Stoics, p. 307.]

XLVII. THE BELIEF IN SUPERNATURAL BEINGS

WE now come to the last of those six groups of moral ideas into which we have divided our subject--ideas concerning conduct towards beings, real or imaginary, that are regarded as supernatural. But before we enter upon a discussion of human behaviour in relation to such beings, it is necessary to say some words about man's belief in their existence and the general qualities attributed to them.

Men distinguish between two classes of phenomena--"natural" and "supernatural,"[1] between phenomena which they are familiar with and, in consequence, ascribe to "natural causes," and other phenomena which seem to them unfamiliar, mysterious, and are therefore supposed to spring from causes of a "supernatural" character. We meet with this distinction at the lowest stages of culture known to us, as well as at higher stages. It may be that in the mind of a savage the natural and supernatural are often confused, and that no definite limit can be drawn between the phenomena which he refers to the one class and those which he refers to the other; but he certainly sees a difference between events of everyday occurrence or ordinary objects of nature and other events or objects which fill him with mysterious awe. The germ of such a {583} distinction is found even in the lower animal world. The horse fears the whip but it does not make him shy; on the other hand, he may shy when he sees an umbrella opened before him or a paper moving on the ground. The whip is well known to the horse, whereas the moving paper or umbrella is strange and uncanny. Dogs and cats are alarmed by an unusual noise or appearance, and remain uneasy till they have by examination satisfied themselves of the nature of its cause.[2] Professor Romanes frightened a dog by attaching a fine thread to a bone and surreptitiously drawing it from the animal, giving to the bone the appearance of self-movement; and the same dog was frightened by soap-bubbles.[3] Even a lion is scared by an unexpected noise or the sight of an unfamiliar object; a horse, the lion's favourite prey, has been known to wander for days in the vicinity of a troop of these animals and be left unmolested simply because it was blanketed and knee-haltered.[4] And we are told of a tiger which stood trembling and roaring in an ecstasy of fear when a mouse tied by a string to a stick had been inserted into its cage.[5] Little children are apt to be terrified by the strange and irregular behaviour of a feather as it glides along the floor or lifts itself into the air.[6]

[Footnote 1: I do not share the objections raised by various writers to the term "supernatural." It has the sanction of common usage; and I consider it preferable to the word "superhuman," when applied to inanimate things or animals which are objects of worship.]

[Footnote 2: Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 339.]

[Footnote 3: Romanes, Animal Intelligence, 455 sq.]

[Footnote 4: Gillmore, quoted by King, The Supernatural, p. 80.]

[Footnote 5: Basil Hall, quoted ibid. p. 81. See also ibid. p. 78 sqq.; Vignioli, Myth and Science, p. 58 sqq.]

[Footnote 6: Sully, Studies of Childhood, p. 205 sq.]

But the primitive mind not only distinguishes between the natural and the supernatural, it makes, practically, yet a further distinction. The supernatural, like the natural, may be looked upon in the light of mechanical energy, which discharges itself without the aid of any volitional activity. This is, for instance, the case with the supernatural force inherent in a tabooed object; mere contact with such an object communicates the taboo infection. So also the baneful energy in a curse is originally conceived as a kind of supernatural miasma, which injures or destroys anybody to whom it cleaves; in fact, to {584} taboo a certain thing commonly consists in charging it with a curse. On the other hand, supernatural qualities may also be attributed to the mental constitution of animate beings, especially to their will. Such an attribution makes them supernatural beings, as distinct from any ordinary individuals who, without being endowed with special miraculous gifts, may make use of supernatural mechanical energy in magical practices. This distinction is in many cases vague; a wizard may be looked upon as a god and a god as a wizard. But it is nevertheless essential, and is at the bottom of the difference between religion and magic. Religion may be defined as a belief in and a regardful[7] attitude towards a supernatural being on whom man feels himself dependent and to whose will he makes an appeal in his worship. Supernatural mechanical power, on the other hand, is applied in magic. He who performs a purely magical act utilises such power without making any appeal at all to the will of a supernatural being.[8]

[Footnote 7: Though somewhat indefinite, the epithet "regardful" seems a necessary attribute of a religious act. We do not call it religion when a savage flogs his fetish to make it submissive.]

[Footnote 8: See infra, Additional Notes.]

This, I think, is what we generally understand by religion and magic. But in the Latin word religio there seems to be no indication of such a distinction. Religio is probably related to religare, which means "to tie." It is commonly assumed that the relationship between these words implies that in religion man was supposed to be tied by his god. But I venture to believe that the connection between them allows of another and more natural interpretation--that it was not the man who was tied by the god, but the god who was tied by the man. This interpretation was suggested to me by certain ideas and practices prevalent in Morocco. The Moors are in the habit of tying rags to objects belonging to a síyid, that is, a place where a saint has, or is supposed to have, his grave, or where such a person is said to have sat or camped. In very many cases, at least, this tying of rags is [(]âr upon the {585} saint, and l-[(]âr implies the transference of a conditional curse.[9] Thus, in the Great Atlas Mountains I found a large number of rags tied to a pole which was stuck in a cairn dedicated to the great saint Mûlai [(]Abd-[)u]l-[k.]âder, and when I asked for an explanation the answer was that petitioners generally fasten a strip of their clothes to the pole muttering some words like these:--"O saint, behold! I promised thee an offering, and I will not release (literally 'open') thee until thou attendest to my business." If the petitioner's wish is fulfilled he goes back to the place, offers the sacrifice which he promised, and unties the knot which he made. A Berber servant of mine from Aglu in Sûs told me that once when in prison he invoked Lälla R[)a][h.]ma Yusf, a great female saint whose tomb is in a neighbouring district, and tied his turban, saying, "I am tying thee, Lälla R[)a][h.]ma Yusf, and I am not going to open the knot till thou hast helped me." Or a person in distress will go to her grave and knot the leaves of some palmetto growing in its vicinity, with the words, "I tied thee here, O saint, and I shall not release thee unless thou releasest me from the toils in which I am at present." All this is what we should call magic, but the Romans would probably have called it religio. They were much more addicted to magic than to true religion; they wanted to compel the gods rather than to be compelled by them. Their religio was probably nearly akin to the Greek [Greek: kata/desmos], which meant not only an ordinary tie, but also a magic tie or knot or a bewitching thereby.[10] Plato speaks of persons who with magical arts and incantations bound the gods, as they said, to execute their will.[11] That religio, however, from having originally a magical significance, {586} has come to be used in the sense which we attribute to the term "religion," is not difficult to explain. Men make use of magic not only in relation to their fellow men, but in relation to their gods. Magical and religious elements are often almost inseparably intermingled in one and the same act; and, as we shall soon see, the magical means of constraining a god are often externally very similar to the chief forms of religious worship, prayer and sacrifice.

[Footnote 9: See Westermarck, 'L-[(]âr, or the Transference of Conditional Curses in Morocco,' in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 361 sqq.]

[Footnote 10: I am indebted to my friend Mr. R. R. Marett for drawing my attention to this meaning of the word [Greek: kata/desmos]. So also the verb [Greek: katade/ô] means not only "to tie" but "to bind by magic knots" (Athenaeus, Deipnosophistæ, xv. 9, p. 670; Dio Cassius, Historia Romana, l. 5), and [Greek: kata/desis] is used to denote "a binding by magic knots" (Plato, Leges, xi. 933). See Liddell-Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, p. 754; Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 138 sqq.]

[Footnote 11: Plato, Respublica, ii. 364.]

That mystery is the essential characteristic of supernatural beings is proved by innumerable facts. It is testified by language. The most prominent belief in the religion of the North American Indians was their theory of manitou, that is, of "a spiritual and mysterious power thought to reside in some material form." The word is Algonkin, but all the tribes had some equivalent for it.[12] Thus the Dacotahs express the essential attribute of their deities by the term wakan, which signifies anything which they cannot comprehend, "whatever is wonderful, mysterious, superhuman, or supernatural."[13] The Navaho word d[)i]g[)i]'n likewise means "sacred, divine, mysterious, or holy";[14] and so does the Hidatsa term mahopa.[15] In Fiji "the native word expressive of divinity is kalou, which, while used to denote the people's highest notion of a god, is also constantly heard as a qualification of anything great or marvellous."[16] The Maoris of New Zealand applied the word atua, which is generally translated as "god," not only to spirits of every description, but to various phenomena not understood, such as menstruation and foreign marvels, a compass for instance, or a barometer.[17] The natives of Madagascar, {587} says Ellis, designate by the term ndriamanitra, or god, everything that exceeds the capacity of their understanding. "Whatever is new and useful and extraordinary, is called god. . . . Rice, money, thunder and lightning, and earthquakes, are all called god. . . . Taratasy, or book, they call god, from its wonderful capacity of speaking by merely looking at it."[18] The Monbuttu use the word kilima for anything they do not understand--the thunder, a shadow, the reflection in water, as well as the supreme being in which they vaguely believe.[19] The Masai conception of the deity (ng[)a]i), says Dr. Thomson, "seems to be marvellously vague. I was Ng[)a]i. My language was Ng[)a]i. Ng[)a]i was in the steaming holes. . . . In fact, whatever struck them as strange or incomprehensible, that they at once assumed had some connection with Ng[)a]i."[20] Mr. and Mrs. Hinde use "the Unknown" as their equivalent of the word ng[)a]i.[21]

[Footnote 12: Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 226. Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. lxxix. Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 102. Hoffman, 'Menomini Indians,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xiv. 39, n. 1.]

[Footnote 13: Schoolcraft, Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge, iv. 642. Dorsey, 'Siouan Cults,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 366. McGee, 'Siouan Indians,' ibid. xv. 182 sq.]

[Footnote 14: Matthews, Navaho Legends, p. 37.]

[Footnote 15: Idem, Hidatsa Indians, p. 47 sq.]

[Footnote 16: Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 183.]

[Footnote 17: Best, 'Lore of the Whare-Kohanga,' in Jour. Polynesian Soc. xiv. 210. Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 116, 118. The word tupua (or tipua) is used in a very similar way (Tregear, Maori-Polynesian Comparative Dictionary, p. 557).]

[Footnote 18: Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 390 sqq.]

[Footnote 19: Burrows, Land of the Pigmies, p. 100.]

[Footnote 20: Thomson, Through Masai Land, p. 260.]

[Footnote 21: Hinde, Last of the Masai, p. 99.]

The testimony of language is corroborated by kindred facts referring to the nature of those objects which are most commonly worshipped.[22] Among all the American tribes, says Mr. Dorman, "any remarkable features in natural scenery or dangerous places became objects of superstitious dread and veneration, because they were supposed to be abodes of gods."[23] A great cataract, a difficult and dangerous ford in a river, a spring bubbling up from the ground, a volcano, a high mountain, an isolated rock, a curious or unusually large tree, the bones of the mastodon or of some other immense animal--all were looked upon by the Indians with superstitious respect {588} or were propitiated by offerings.[24] In Fiji "every object that is specially fearful, or vicious, or injurious, or novel," is eligible for admission to the native Pantheon.[25] It is said that when the Aëtas of the Philippines saw the first locomotive passing through their country "they all fell upon their knees in abject terror, worshipping the strange monster as some new and powerful deity."[26] Of the shamanistic peoples in Siberia Georgi writes, "All the celestial bodies, and all terrestrial objects of a considerable magnitude, all the phenomena of nature that can do good or harm, every appearance capable of conveying terror into a weak and superstitious mind, are so many gods to whom they direct a particular adoration."[27] Among the Samoyedes "a curiously twisted tree, a stone with an uncommon shape would receive, and in some quarters still receives, not only veneration but actual ceremonial worship."[28] Castrén states that the Ostyaks worshipped no other objects of nature but such as were very unusual and peculiar either in shape or quality.[29] The Lapps made offerings not only to large and strange-looking objects, but to places which were difficult to pass, or where some accident had occurred, or where they had been either exceptionally unlucky or exceptionally lucky in fishing or the chase.[30] The Ainu of Japan deify all objects and phenomena which seem to them extraordinary or dreadful.[31] In China "a steep mountain, or any mountain at all remarkable, is supposed to have a special local spirit, who acts as guardian."[32] The average middle-class Hindu, according to Sir Alfred Lyall, worships stocks or stones which are unusual or grotesque in size, shape, or position; or inanimate things which are gifted with mysterious {589} motion; or animals which he fears; or visible things, animate or inanimate, which are directly or indirectly useful and profitable or which possess any incomprehensible function or property.[33] From all parts of Africa we hear of similar cults.[34] The Negroes of Sierra Leone dedicate to their spirits places which "inspire the spectator with awe, or are remarkable for their appearance, as immensely large trees rendered venerable by age, rocks appearing in the midst of rivers, and having something peculiar in their form, in short, whatever appears to them strange or uncommon."[35] When Tshi-speaking natives of the Gold Coast take up their abode near any remarkable natural feature or object, they worship and seek to propitiate its indwelling spirit; whereas they do not worship any of the heavenly bodies, the regularity of whose appearance makes little impression upon their minds.[36] Throughout East Africa the people seem to attach religious sanctity to anything of extraordinary size; in the island of Zanzibar, where the hills are low, they reverence the baobab tree, which is the largest growing there, and in all parts of the country where hills are not found they worship some great stone or tall tree.[37] In Morocco places of striking appearance are generally supposed to be haunted by jnûn (jinn) or are associated with some dead saint.[38] As I have elsewhere tried to show, the Arabic jinn were probably "beings invented to explain what seems to fall outside the ordinary pale of nature, the wonderful and unexpected, the superstitious imaginations of men who fear";[39] and the saint was in many cases only the successor of the jinn. Indeed, the superstitious dread of unusual objects is not altogether dead even among ourselves.{590} It survives in England to this day in the habit of ascribing grotesque and striking landmarks or puzzling antiquities to the Devil, who became the residuary legatee of obsolete pagan superstitions in Christian countries.[40]

[Footnote 22: See, besides the instances referred to below, Karsten, Origin of Worship, p. 14 sqq.; von Brenner, Besuch bei den Kannibalen Sumatras, p. 220 (Bataks); Mitteil. d. Geograph. Gesellsch. zu Jena, iii. 14 (Bannavs, between Siam and Annam). In Lord Kames's Essays on the Principles of Morality and Religion there is (p. 309 sqq.) an interesting discussion on the dread of unknown objects.]

[Footnote 23: Dorman, op. cit. p. 300. See also Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, i. 52; Harmon, Voyages and Travels in the Interior of North America, p. 363 sq.; Smith, 'Myths of the Iroquois,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ii. 51.]

[Footnote 24: Dorman, op. cit. pp. 279, 290, 291, 302, 303, 308, 313-315, 319. Chamberlain, in Jour. American Folk-Lore, i. 157 (Mississagua Indians). Georgi, Russia, iii. 237 sq. (Aleuts.)]

[Footnote 25: Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 183.]

[Footnote 26: Lala, Philippine Islands, p. 96.]

[Footnote 27: Georgi, op. cit. iii. 256.]

[Footnote 28: Jackson, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxiv. 398. Cf. Castrén, Nordiska resor och forskningar, iii. 230.]

[Footnote 29: Castrén, op. cit. iii. 227.]

[Footnote 30: Ibid. iii. 210. Högström, Beskrifning öfver de til Sveriges Krona lydande Lapmarker, p. 182. Leem, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper, p. 442 sq. Friis, Lappish Mythologi, p. 133 sq.]

[Footnote 31: Sugamata, quoted in L'Anthropologie, x. 98.]

[Footnote 32: Edkins, Religion in China, p. 221.]

[Footnote 33: Lyall, Asiatic Studies, p. 7.]

[Footnote 34: Wilson, Western Africa, p. 388 (Mpongwe). Mockler-Ferryman, British Nigeria, p. 255. Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's, p. 340 (Hottentots).]

[Footnote 35: Winterbottom, Native Africans of Sierra Leone, i. 223.]

[Footnote 36: Ellis, _Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, p. 282. Idem, _Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast_, p. 21.]

[Footnote 37: Chanler, Through Jungle and Desert, p. 188.]

[Footnote 38: See Westermarck, _The Moorish Conception of Holiness (Baraka)_, passim.]

[Footnote 39: Idem, 'Nature of the Arab [vG]inn,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxix. 268.]

[Footnote 40: Lyall, op. cit. p. 9.]

The common prevalence of animal worship is no doubt due to the mysteriousness of the animal world; the most uncanny of all creatures, the serpent, is also the one most generally worshipped. Throughout India we meet with the veneration of animals which by their appearance or habits startle human beings.[41] In the Indian tribes of North America animals of an unusual size were objects of some kind of adoration.[42] In certain parts of Africa a cock crowing in the evening or a crane alighting on a house-top is regarded as supernatural.[43] White men have often been taken for spirits by red, yellow, or black savages, when seen by them for the first time.[44] Religious veneration is among various races bestowed on persons suffering from some abnormality, such as deformity, albinoism, or madness.[45] Some South American Indians "regard as divinities all phenomenal children, principally such as are born with a larger number of fingers or toes than is natural."[46] The Hindus venerate persons remarkable for any extraordinary qualities great valour, virtue, or even vice.[47] By performing miracles men directly prove that they are supernatural beings. The Muhammedan saints, like the Christian in olden days, are believed to perform all kinds of wonders, such as flying in the air, passing unhurt {591} through fire, walking upon water, transporting themselves in a moment of time to immense distances, or supporting themselves and others with food in desert places.[48] When Muhammed first claimed to be the Prophet of Allah, he was urged to give proof of his calling by working some miracle; and though he uniformly denied that he possessed such power, it was nevertheless ascribed to him even by his contemporaries.[49]

[Footnote 41: Ibid. p. 13.]

[Footnote 42: Dorman, op. cit. p. 258. Harmon, op. cit. p. 364.]

[Footnote 43: Macdonald, Religion and Myth, p. 39.]

[Footnote 44: Avebury, Origin of Civilisation, pp. 272, 273, 375. Goblet d'Alviella, _Hibbert Lectures on the Origin and Growth of the Conception of God_, p. 67. Schultze, Fetischismus, p. 224. In Australia and elsewhere white people were taken for ghosts by the natives (Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 248; Brough Smyth, _Aborigines of Victoria_, ii. 269 sq.; Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 5 sq.; Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 170 sq.).]

[Footnote 45: Schultze, op. cit. p. 222. Supra, i. 270 sq. "Among many savage or barbarous peoples of the world albinos have been reserved for the priestly office" (Bourke, 'Medicine-Men of the Apache,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 460).]

[Footnote 46: Guinnard, _Three Years' Slavery among the Patagonians_, p. 144.]

[Footnote 47: Monier-Williams, Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism, p. 350. For criminal-worship in Sicily, see Peacock, 'Executed Criminals and Folk-Medicine,' in Folk-Lore, vii. 275.]

[Footnote 48: Lane, Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, p. 49. Westermarck, 'Sul culto del santi nel Marocco,' in _Actes du XII. Congrès International des Orientalistes_, iii. 153 sqq. Idem, The Moorish Conception of Holiness, p. 77 sqq.]

[Footnote 49: Muir, Life of Mahomet, i. p. lxv. sq. Bosworth Smith, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, p. 19. Sell, _Faith of Islám_, p. 218.]

The dead are objects of worship much more commonly than are the living. Whilst the human individual consisting of body and soul is as a rule well-known, the disembodied soul, seen only in dreams or visions, is a mysterious being which inspires the survivors with awe. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Grant Allen even regard the worship of the dead as "the root of every religion."[50] But this is to carry the ghost theory to an extreme for which there is no justification in facts. The spirits of the dead are worshipped because they are held capable of influencing, in a mysterious manner, the welfare of the living; but there is no reason to assume that they were originally conceived as the only supernatural agents existing. We have noticed that even the lower animals show signs of the same feeling as underlies the belief in supernatural beings; and we can hardly suppose that they are believers in ghosts.

[Footnote 50: Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 411. Grant Allen, The Evolution of the Idea of God, pp. 91, 433, 438, &c.]

On account of their wonderful effects medicines, intoxicants, and stimulants, are frequently objects of veneration. Most of the plants for which the American Indians had superstitious feelings were such as have medical qualities;[51] tobacco was generally held sacred by them,[52] and so was cocoa in Peru.[53] The Vedic deification {592} of the drink soma was due to its exhilarating and invigorating effects.[54]

[Footnote 51: Dorman, op. cit. p. 298 sq. Dorsey, 'Siouan Cults,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 428.]

[Footnote 52: Mooney, 'Myths of the Cherokee,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xix. 439. Dorman, op. cit. p. 295.]

[Footnote 53: Dorman, op. cit. p. 295.]

[Footnote 54: Whitney, 'Vedic Researches in Germany,' in Jour. American Oriental Soc. iii. 299. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 108.]

Among all the phenomena of nature none is more wonderful, impressive, awe-inspiring than thunder, and none seems more generally to have given rise to religious veneration. But with growing reflection man finds a mystery even in events of daily occurrence. The Vedic poet, when he sees the sun moving freely through the heavens, asks how it comes that it does not fall downward, although "unpropped beneath, not fastened firm, and downward turned";[55] and it seems to him a miracle that the sparkling waters of all rivers flow into one ocean without ever filling it.[56] "Verily," says the Koran, "in the creation of the heavens and the earth, and in the succession of night and day, are signs to those possessed of minds."[57]

[Footnote 55: Rig-Veda, iv. 13. 5.]

[Footnote 56: Ibid. v. 85. 6.]

[Footnote 57: Koran, iii. 87.]

The attribution of miraculous power to a certain object or being may be due to direct experience of some effect produced by it, as in the case of a medical plant, or a poisonous snake, or a miracle-working spring, or a Christian or Muhammedan saint. Or it may be based on the inference that objects with a strange and mysterious appearance also possess strange and mysterious powers. This inference, too, is in a way supported by facts. The unusual appearance of the object makes an impression on the person who sees it, and predisposes him to the belief that the object is endowed with secret powers. If then anything unusual actually happens in its neighbourhood or shortly after it has been seen, the strange event is attributed to the influence of the strange object. Thus a Siberian tribe came to regard the camel as the small-pox demon because, just when the animal had appeared among them for the first time with a passing caravan, the small-pox broke out.[58] Of the British Guiana Indian we are {593} told by Sir E. F. Im Thurn that if his eye falls upon a rock in any way abnormal or curious, and if shortly after any evil happens to him, he regards rock and evil as cause and effect, and perceives a spirit in the rock.[59] With the lapse of time the data of experience readily increase. If a certain object has gained the reputation of being supernatural, it is looked upon as the cause of all kinds of unusual events which may possibly be associated with it. When I visited the large cave Imi-nta[k.][k.]ándut in the Great Atlas Mountains, the interior of which is said to contain a whole spirit city, my horse happened to stumble on my way back to my camp, and fell upon one of my servants who was carrying a gun. The gun was broken and the man became lame for some days. I was told that the accident was caused by the cave spirits, because they were displeased at my visit. When the following day I again passed the cave with my little caravan, heavy rain began to fall; and now the rain was attributed to the ill-temper of the spirits.

[Footnote 58: Tiele, Elements of the Science of Religion, i. 70.]

[Footnote 59: Im Thurn, Indians of Guiana, p. 354.]

Startling events are ascribed to the activity not only of visible, but of invisible supernatural agents. Thus sudden or strange diseases are, at the lower stages of civilisation, commonly supposed to be occasioned by a supernatural being, which has taken up its abode in the sick person's body, or otherwise sent the disease.[60] Among the Maoris, for instance, "each disease was supposed to be occasioned by a different god, who resided in the part affected."[61] The Australian Kurnai maintain that phthisis, pneumonia, bowel complaints, and insanity are produced by an evil spirit, "who is like the wind."[62] According to Moorish beliefs convulsions, epileptic or paralytic fits, rheumatic or neuralgic pains, and certain rare and violent epidemics, like the cholera, are caused by spirits, which either strike their victim, or enter his body, or sometimes, in the case of an epidemic, shoot at the {594} people with poisonous arrows. Indeed, unexpected events of every kind are readily ascribed to supernatural influence, in Morocco and elsewhere. Among the North American Indians "the storms and tempests were generally thought to be produced by aërial spirits from hostile lands."[63] Among the Hudson Bay Indians "everything not understood is attributed to the working of one of the numerous spirits."[64] "Dans toute l'Afrique," says M. Duveyrier in his description of the Touareg, "il n'y a pas un individu, éclairé ou ignare, instruit ou illettré, qui n'attribue aux génies tout ce qui arrive d'extraordinaire sur la terre."[65] Of the South African natives Livingstone writes, "Everything not to be accounted for by common causes, whether of good or evil, is ascribed to the Deity."[66] With the progress of science the chain of natural causes is extended, and, as Livy puts it, it is left to superstition alone to see the interference of the deity in trifling matters. Among ourselves the ordinary truths of science are so generally recognised that in this domain God is seldom supposed to interfere. On the other hand, with regard to social events, the causes of which are often hidden, the idea of Providence is still constantly needed to fill up the gap of human ignorance.

[Footnote 60: Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 146 sqq. Schneider, Die Naturvölker, i. 217. Bartels, _Die Medicin der Naturvölker_, p. 27 sqq. Höfler, 'Krankheits-Dämonen,' in Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, ii. 86 sqq. Karsten, _op. cit._ p. 27 sqq.]

[Footnote 61: Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, p. 137.]

[Footnote 62: Fison and Howitt, op. cit. p. 250.]

[Footnote 63: Dorman, op. cit. p. 350.]

[Footnote 64: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 272.]

[Footnote 65: Duveyrier, Exploration du Sahara, p. 418. See also Schneider, Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, p. 103.]

[Footnote 66: Livingstone, Expedition to the Zambesi, p. 521 sq.]

Man's belief in supernatural agents, then, is an attempt to explain strange and mysterious phenomena which suggest a volitional cause.[67] The assumed cause is the will of a supernatural being. Such beings are thus, in the first place, conceived as volitional. But a being which has a will must have a mind, with emotions, desires, and a certain amount of intelligence. Neither the savage nor ourselves can imagine a volitional being {595} which has nothing but a will. If an object of nature, therefore, is looked upon as a supernatural agent, mentality and life are at the same time attributed to it as a matter of course. This I take to be the real origin of animism. It is not correct to say that "as the objects of the visible world are conceived as animated, volitional, and emotional, they may be deemed the originators of those misfortunes of which the true cause is unknown."[68] This is to reverse the actual order of ideas. Inanimate things are conceived as volitional, emotional, and animate, because they are deemed the originators of startling events. The savage does not speculate upon the nature of things unless he has an interest in doing so. He is not generally inquisitive as to causes.[69] The natives of West Australia, says Eyre, "are not naturally a reasoning people, and by no means given to the investigation of causes or their effects."[70] In matters not concerning the common wants of life the mind of the Brazilian Indian is a blank.[71] When Mungo Park asked some negroes, what became of the sun during the night? they considered his question a very childish one; "they had never indulged a conjecture, nor formed any hypothesis, about the matter."[72] I often found the Beduins of Morocco extremely curious, but their curiosity consisted in the question, What? rather than in the question, Why?

[Footnote 67: Already Hobbes (Leviathan, i. 12, p. 79) traced, in part, the origin of religion to the fact that when man cannot assure himself of the true causes of things, he supposes causes of them. See also Meiners, Geschichte der Religionen, i. 16.]

[Footnote 68: Peschel, Races of Man, p. 245.]

[Footnote 69: Cf. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 86 sq.; Karsten, op. cit. p. 43 sq.]

[Footnote 70: Eyre, _Expeditions of Discovery into Central Australia_, ii. 355.]

[Footnote 71: Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 163.]

[Footnote 72: Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior of Africa, i. 413.]

Whilst belief in supernatural agents endowed with a will made the savage an animist, the idea that a mind presupposes a body, when thought out, led to anthropomorphism. Impossible as it is to imagine a will without a mind, it is hardly less impossible to imagine a mind without a body. The immaterial soul is an abstraction to which has been attributed a metaphysical reality, but of which no clear conception can be formed. As Hobbes observed, the opinion that spirits are incorporeal or immaterial, "could {596} never enter into the mind of any man by nature; because, though men may put together words . . . . as Spirit and Incorporeall; yet they can never have the imagination of anything answering to them."[73] Descartes himself frankly confessed, "What the soul itself was I either did not stay to consider, or, if I did, I imagined that it was something extremely rare and subtile, like wind, or flame, or ether, spread through my grosser parts."[74] The supernatural agents were consequently of necessity considered to possess a more or less material constitution. The disembodied human soul which the savage saw in dreams or visions, in the shadow or the reflection, was only the least material being which he could imagine; and when raised to the dignity of an ancestor-god, it by no means lost its materiality, but, on the contrary, tended to acquire a more substantial body.

[Footnote 73: Hobbes, op. cit. i. 12, p. 80.]

[Footnote 74: Descartes, Meditationes, 2, p. 10.]

Of a grosser substantiality and very unlike the human shape are the inanimate objects of nature which receive divine veneration. It has been said of savages that they do not worship the thing itself, only the spirit dwelling in it. But such a distinction cannot be primitive. The natural object is worshipped because it is believed to possess supernatural power, but it is nevertheless the object itself that is worshipped.[75] Castrén, who combined great personal experience with unusual acuteness of judgment, states that the Samoyedes do not know of any spirits attached to objects of nature, but worship the objects as such; "in other words, they do not separate the spirit from the matter, but adore the thing in its totality as a divine being."[76] Of the deification of the Nerbudda river Sir W. H. Sleeman likewise observes, "As in the case of the Ganges, it is the river itself to whom they address themselves, and not to any deity residing in it, or presiding over it--the stream itself is the deity which fills their imaginations, and receives their {597} homage."[77] The animist who endows an inanimate object with a soul regards the visible thing itself as its body.[78] How a being with such a body, like a tree or a stone, can hear the words of men, can see their doings, and can partake of the food they offer, might be difficult to explain--if it had to be explained. But, as I have said, the inquisitiveness of savage curiosity does not go to the roots of things, and religion is in its essence mystery.

[Footnote 75: Cf. Tiele, Max Müller und Fritz Schultze über ein Problem der Religionswissenschaft, p. 35; Parkman, op. cit. p. lxvii. (North American Indians).]

[Footnote 76: Castrén, op. cit. iii. 192. Cf. ibid. iii. 161, 200 sq.]

[Footnote 77: Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official, i. 20.]

[Footnote 78: Castrén, op. cit. iii. 164 sq.]

However, in proportion as a supernatural being comes more and more to occupy the thoughts of its worshippers and to stir their imagination, a more distinct personality is attributed to it; and at length neither the ethereal or vaporous materiality of a departed human soul, nor the crude substantiality of an inanimate object is considered a satisfactory body for such a being. It is humanised also with regard to its essential shape. The Koriaks of Siberia believe "that objects and phenomena of nature conceal an anthropomorphic substance underneath their outer forms"; but they also show the first signs of a belief in spiritual owners or masters ruling over certain classes of things or over large objects.[79] The supernatural being which is originally embodied in a natural phenomenon is gradually placed behind it. In the Vedic hymns we may study this anthropomorphism as a process in growth. The true gods of the Veda are almost without exception the deified representatives of the phenomena or forces of nature,[80] which are personified, though in varying degrees. When the name of the god is the same as that of his natural basis, the personification has not yet advanced beyond the rudimentary stage; names like Dyaus ("heaven"), P[r.]thiv[=i] ("earth"), S[=u]rya ("sun"), U[s.]as ("dawn"), represent the double character of natural phenomena and of the personalities presiding over them. Speaking of the nature of the gods, the ancient Vedic interpreter Y[=a]ska remarks that "what is seen of the gods is certainly not {598} anthropomorphic, for example the sun, the earth, and so forth."[81] Again, when the name of the god is different from that of the physical substance he is supposed to inhabit, the anthropomorphism is more developed, though never very distinct. The Vedic people always recognised behind its gods the natural forces of which they were the expression, and their physical appearance often only represents aspects of their natural bases figuratively described to illustrate their activities. The sun is spoken of as the eye with which Varuna observes mankind;[82] or it is said that the all-seeing sun, rising from his abode, goes to the dwellings of Mitra and Varuna to report the deeds of men.[83] Even to this day the Hindu, to whatever sect he may belong, does homage to the rising sun every morning of his life by repeating a text of the Veda.[84] The god does not very readily change his old solid body for another which, though more respectable, has the disadvantage of being invisible. The simple unreflecting mind finds it easier to worship a material thing which may be seen, than a hidden god, however perfect in shape. To the common Japanese the sun is still the god to whom he prays morning and evening.[85] Whilst Chinese scholars declare that the sacrifice offered to Heaven "is assuredly not addressed to the material and sensible heaven, which our eyes see, but to the Master of heaven, earth, and all things,"[86] the people are less metaphysical; and the Russian peasant to this day makes an appeal to the Svarog of the old religion when crying, "Dost thou hear, O Sky? dost thou see, O Sky?"[87] That the worship of animals survives at comparatively late stages of civilisation is probably due to the double advantage of their bodies being both visible and animate.

[Footnote 79: Jochelson, 'Koryak Religion and Myth,' in _Jesup North Pacific Expedition_, vi. 115, 118.]

[Footnote 80: Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 591 sqq.]

[Footnote 81: Nirukta, vii. 4, quoted by Hopkins, Religions of India, p. 209.]

[Footnote 82: Rig-Veda, i. 50. 6. Hopkins, op. cit. p. 67. Cf. Rig-Veda, i. 25. 10 sq.; i. 136. 2.]

[Footnote 83: Rig-Veda, vii. 60. 1 sq. See Macdonell, op. cit. pp. 2, 15, 17, 23; Muir, Original Sanskrit Texts, v. 6; Barth, Religions of India, p. 178; Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 591 sqq.]

[Footnote 84: Monier-Williams, Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism, p. 342.]

[Footnote 85: Griffis, Religions of Japan, p. 87.]

[Footnote 86: Legge, Notions of the Chinese concerning God and Spirits, p. 38.]

[Footnote 87: Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 362.]

{599} But though man created his gods in his own image and likeness, endowing them with a mind and a body modelled after his own, he never lost sight of the difference between him and them. He always ascribed to them a superior power of action; otherwise they would have been no gods at all. In many cases, at least, he also attributed to them a superior knowledge. The Bechuanas maintain that their gods are much wiser than they are themselves.[88] In the admonitions of an Aztek mother to her daughter reference is made to a god who "sees every secret fault."[89] The gods of the Greeks and Romans were possessed of superhuman wisdom,[90] and so was Yahveh. It is true that the anthropomorphic god acquires knowledge of the affairs of men through his senses. When hearing the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah, Yahveh said, "I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know."[91] But the senses of a god are generally superior to those of a man. "A god," says Orestes, "can hear even from a distance."[92] Varuna has an all-seeing eye, and the Zoroastrian Mithra has a thousand ears and ten thousand eyes.[93] In other respects, also, the bodies of gods excel the bodies of men. Sometimes they are more beautiful, sometimes they have a gigantic shape. When Ares is felled to the ground by the stone flung by Athene, his body covers seven roods of land. [94] When Here takes a solemn oath, she grasps the earth with one hand and the sea with the other.[95] In three steps Poseidon goes an immense distance;[96] in three paces Vishnu traverses earth, air, and sky.[97]

[Footnote 88: Arbousset and Daumas, Exploratory Tour to the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, p. 341.]

[Footnote 89: Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, vi. 19, vol. ii. 131.]

[Footnote 90: Cf. Westcott, Essays in the History of Religious Thought, p. 101.]

[Footnote 91: Genesis, xviii. 20 sq.]

[Footnote 92: Aeschylus, Eumenides, 297.]

[Footnote 93: Yasts, x. 7.]

[Footnote 94: Iliad, xxi. 407.]

[Footnote 95: Ibid. xiv. 272 sq.]

[Footnote 96: Ibid. xiii. 20.]

[Footnote 97: Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, i. 325.]

However, the tendency to make gods more and more {600} perfect--of which I shall say more in a following chapter--gradually led to the notion that materiality is a quality which is not becoming to a god; hence men endeavoured, to the best of their ability, to grasp the idea of a purely spiritual being, endowed with a will and even with human emotions, but without a material body. Like Xenophanes in Greece, the Inca Yupangui in Peru protested against the prevailing anthropomorphism, declaring that purely spiritual service was befitting the almighty creator, not tributes or sacrifices.[98] In the Bible we notice a successive transformation of the nature of the deity, from crude sensuousness to pure spirituality. According to the oldest traditions, Yahveh works and rests, he plants the garden of Eden, he walks in it in the cool of the day, and Adam and Eve hear his voice. In a great part of the Old Testament he is expressly bound by conditions of time and space. He is attached in an especial manner to the Jerusalem temple or some other shrine, and his favour is gained by definite modes of sacrifice. At the time of the Prophets the cruder anthropomorphisms of the earlier religion have been overcome; Yahveh is no longer seen in person, and by a prophet like Isaiah his residence in Zion is almost wholly dematerialised. Yet, as Professor Robertson Smith observes, not even Isaiah has risen to the full height of the New Testament conception that God, who is spirit and who is to be worshipped spiritually, makes no distinction of spot with regard to worship, and is equally near to receive men's prayers in every place.[99] Moslem theologians take pains to point out that God neither is begotten nor begets, and that he is without figure, form, colour, and parts. He hears all sounds, whether low or loud; but he hears without an ear. He sees all things, even the steps of a black ant on a black stone in a dark night; {601} but he has no eyes, as men have. He speaks; but not with a tongue, as men do.[100] He is endowed with knowledge, feelings, and a will.[101] Thus the dematerialised god still retains a mental constitution modelled upon the human soul, with all its bodily desires and imperfections removed, with its higher qualities indefinitely increased, and, above all, endowed with a supernatural power of action.

[Footnote 98: Brinton, American Hero-Myths, p. 236.]

[Footnote 99: Goblet d'Alviella, op. cit. p. 216. Toy, Judaism and Christianity, p. 87. Montefiore, op. cit. p. 424. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 117.]

[Footnote 100: Risálah-i-Berkevi, quoted by Sell, op. cit. p. 166 sq.]

[Footnote 101: Sell, op. cit. p. 185.]

In following chapters we shall see how the moral ideas of men have been influenced by the attributes they ascribe to supernatural beings.

XLVIII. DUTIES TO GODS

MEN not only believe in the existence of supernatural beings, but enter into frequent relations with them. In every religion we may distinguish between two elements: a belief, and a regardful attitude towards the object of this belief. At the same time the assumption that supernatural beings exist is not necessarily connected with religious veneration of them. Relations may be established with some of them to the exclusion of others. If the relations between man and a certain supernatural being are of a more or less permanent character, the latter is generally called his god.

As man attributes to his gods a variety of human qualities, his conduct towards them is in many respects determined by considerations similar to those which regulate his conduct towards his fellow men. He endows them with rights quite after human fashion, and imposes on himself corresponding duties.

Gods have the rights to life and bodily integrity. They are not necessarily either invulnerable or immortal.[1] According to ancient Egyptian beliefs, the life of a god is indeed longer than that of a man, but death puts an end to the one as well as to the other.[2] The Vedic gods were mortal at first; immortality was only bestowed upon them by Savitr or by Agni, or they obtained it by drinking {603} soma, or by practising continence and austerity, or by the performance of certain ceremonies.[3] Nor were the Greek gods eternal by nature; they secured immortality by feasting on nectar and ambrosia.[4] The Scandinavian gods had in Idun's apples a means of preserving perpetual freshness and youth; but for all that they were subject to the encroachments of age, and their death is spoken of without disguise.[5]

[Footnote 1: See Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 1 sqq.]

[Footnote 2: Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 173. Cf. Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 111; Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 265.]

[Footnote 3: Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 17. Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 176.]

[Footnote 4: Iliad, v. 339 sqq. Odyssey, v. 199. Cf. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, i. 317 sq.]

[Footnote 5: Grimm, op. cit. i. 318 sqq.]

Though liable to death, the invisible anthropomorphic gods generally run little risk of being killed by men. But the case is different with such supernatural beings as live on earth in a visible and destructible shape. They may be, and occasionally are, slain by human hands, although in this case killing hardly means absolute destruction, the soul surviving the death of the body. But to kill such a being is in ordinary circumstances looked upon as a dangerous act. We have noticed above that people are often reluctant to slay animals of certain species for fear lest either the disembodied spirit of the slain animal or others of its kind should avenge the injury;[6] and the danger is naturally increased when the victim and its whole species are regarded as divine. Savages as a rule avoid killing animals of their own totem, and various statements imply that the act is disapproved of.[7]

[Footnote 6: Supra, ii. 491.]

[Footnote 7: Frazer, Totemism, p. 7 sqq.; Idem, Totemism and Exogamy, iv. 6 sq.]

It has been suggested that this regard for the life of a totemic animal is due to the notion that a man is akin to his totem.[8] But the various taboos imposed upon him with reference to it, and the nature of the penalties incurred by the taboo-breaker,[9] indicate that the relation between a human individual and the animal members of his totem are after all somewhat different from that between cousins. It seems that the totemic animal is in {604} the first place looked upon as a supernatural being, and that a person's attitude towards it depends on the degree of dread or veneration which he feels for it. Such sacred animals as are not conceived to be of one stock with their devotees are equally tabooed; in ancient Egypt, we are told, offences against holy animals were punished even with death.[10] On the other hand, so little respect is not seldom felt for the totem that it is treated in a way to which there is no parallel in the treatment of human relatives. Speaking of the native tribes of Central Australia, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen observe, "That the totemic animal or plant is not regarded exactly as a close relative, whom it would be wrong to kill, or to assist any one else to kill, is very evident; on the contrary, the members of one totem not only, as it were, give their permission to those who are not of the totem to kill and eat the totemic animal or plant, but . . . they will actually help in the destruction of their totems."[11] The South Australian Narrinyeri kill their totemic animals if they are good for food.[12] A Bechuana will kill his totem if it be a hurtful animal, for instance a lion; the slayer then only makes an apology to the beast and goes through a form of purification for the sacrilege.[13] Among the Menomini Indians a man belonging to the Bear clan may kill a bear, although he must first address himself to his victim and apologise for depriving it of life.[14] The Indian tribes in the South-Eastern States had no respect for their totems and would kill them when they got the chance.[15] Among the Thlinkets a Wolf man will hunt wolves without hesitation, although he calls them his relatives when praying them not to hurt him.[16]

[Footnote 8: Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 285. Cf. Frazer, Totemism, p. 7.]

[Footnote 9: See Frazer, Totemism, p. 11 sqq.; Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, pp. 322, 324 sq.]

[Footnote 10: Wiedemann, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 279.]

[Footnote 11: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 207.]

[Footnote 12: Taplin, 'Narrinyeri,' in Woods, _Native Tribes of South Australia_, p. 63.]

[Footnote 13: Casalis, Basutos, p. 211.]

[Footnote 14: Hoffman, 'Menomini Indians,' in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xiv. 44.]

[Footnote 15: Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 16.]

[Footnote 16: Boas, in Fifth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, p. 23. For some other instances see Frazer, Totemism, p. 19.]

In certain cases divine animals are killed as a religious {605} or magical ceremony. Several instances of this have been pointed out by Sir J. G. Frazer.[17] Sometimes, when the revered animal is habitually spared, it is nevertheless killed on rare and solemn occasions. In other cases, when the revered animal is habitually killed, there is a special annual atonement, at which a select individual of the species is slain with extraordinary marks of respect and devotion. Frazer has offered ingenious explanations of both customs. As regards the former one he argues that the savage apparently thinks that a species left to itself will grow old and die like an individual, and that the only means he can think of to avert the catastrophe is to kill a member of the species in whose veins the tide of life is still running strong and has not yet stagnated among the fens of old age; "the life thus diverted from one channel will flow, he fancies, more freshly and freely in a new one."[18] The latter custom, again, is explained by Frazer as a kind of atonement; by showing marked deference to a few chosen individuals of a species the savage thinks himself entitled to exterminate with impunity all the remainder upon which he can lay hands.[19] These explanations, as Frazer himself is the first to admit, are only hypothetical, but, so far as I know, they are the only ones yet offered. However, it is worth noticing that certain acts accompanying the slaughter of divine animals sometimes clearly indicate a desire in the worshippers to transfer to themselves supernatural benefits--as when they eat the flesh of the animal, or sprinkle themselves with its blood, or by other means place themselves in contact with it; and it may be that in such cases the animal is killed for the express purpose of communicating to the people the sanctity, or beneficial magic energy, with which it is endowed. The Madi or Moru tribe of Central Africa furnish an instructive example. Once a year, as it seems, a very choice lamb is killed by a man belonging to a kind of priestly order, who {606} sprinkles some of the blood four times over the assembled people and then smears each individual with the same fluid. But this ceremony is also observed on a small scale at other times--if a family is in any great trouble, through illness or bereavement, their friends and neighbours come together and a lamb is killed with a view to averting further evil.[20] Among the Arunta and some other tribes in Central Australia, as we have noticed above, at the time of Intichiuma, totemic animals are killed with the object of being eaten. But here the sacramental meal is a magical ceremony intended to multiply the species, so as to increase the food supply for other totemic groups; the fundamental idea being that the members of each totemic group are responsible for providing other individuals with a supply of their totem.[21]

[Footnote 17: Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 366 sqq.]

[Footnote 18: Ibid. ii. 368.]

[Footnote 19: Ibid. ii. 435.]

[Footnote 20: Felkin, 'Madi or Moru Tribe of Central Africa,' in Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xii. 336 sq.]

[Footnote 21: Supra, ii. 210 sq. Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, ch. vi. Iidem, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, ch. ix. sq.]

Frazer has also called attention to various instances in which a man-god or divine king is put to death by his worshippers, and has suggested the following explanation of this custom:--Primitive people sometimes believe that their own safety and even that of the world is bound up with the life of one of these god-men or human incarnations of the divinity. They therefore take the utmost care of his life, out of a regard for their own. But no amount of care and precaution will prevent the divine king from growing old and feeble and at last dying. And in order to avert the catastrophes which may be expected from the enfeeblement of his powers and their final extinction in death, they kill him as soon as he shows symptoms of weakness, and his soul is transferred to a vigorous successor before it has been seriously impaired by the threatened decay. But some peoples appear to have thought it unsafe to wait for even the slightest symptom of decay and have preferred to kill the divine king while he is still in the full vigour of life. Accordingly, they have fixed a term beyond which he {607} may not reign, and at the close of which he must die, the term fixed upon being short enough to exclude the probability of his degenerating physically in the interval. Thus it appears that in some places the people could not trust the king to remain in full bodily and mental vigour for more than a year; whilst in Ngoio, a province of the ancient kingdom of Congo, the rule obtains that the chief who assumes the cap of sovereignty one day shall be put to death on the next.[22]

[Footnote 22: Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 5 sqq.]

Every reader of The Golden Bough must admire the ingenuity, skill, and learning with which its author has worked out his theory, even though he may fail to find the argument in every point convincing. It is obvious that the supernatural power of divine kings is frequently supposed to be influenced by the condition of their bodies. In some cases it is also obvious that they are killed on account of some illness, corporal defect, or symptom of old age, and that the ultimate reason for this lies in the supposed connection between physical deterioration and waning divinity. But, as Frazer himself observes, in the chain of his evidence a link is wanting: he can produce no direct proof of the idea that the soul of the slain man-god is transmitted to his royal successor.[23] In the absence of such evidence I venture to suggest a some what different explanation, which seems to me more in accordance with known facts--to wit, that the new king is supposed to inherit, not the predecessor's soul, but his divinity or holiness, which is looked upon in the light of a mysterious entity, temporarily seated in the ruling sovereign, but separable from him and transferable to another individual.

[Footnote 23: Ibid. ii. 56.]

This modification of Frazer's theory is suggested by certain beliefs prevalent among the Moors. The Sultan of Morocco, who is regarded by the people as "the vicegerent of God," appoints before his death some member of his family--by preference one of his sons--as his successor, and this implies that his baraka, or holiness, will {608} be transferred to the new sovereign. But his holiness may also be appropriated by a pretender during his lifetime, which proves that it is regarded as something quite distinct from his soul. Thus the people told me that the pretender Bu[h.]amâra had come into possession of the Sultan's baraka, and that he would subsequently hand it over to one of the Sultan's brothers, who was then denied his liberty. Like the sultans of Morocco, the divine Kafir kings of Sofala, who were put to death if afflicted with some disease, nominated their successors.[24] In ancient Bengal, again, whoever killed the king and succeeded in placing himself on the royal throne, was immediately acknowledged as king; the people said, "We are faithful to the throne, whoever fills the throne we are obedient and true to it."[25] In the kingdom of Passier, on the northern coast of Sumatra, whose sacred monarch was not allowed by his subjects to live long, "the man who struck the fatal blow was of the royal lineage, and as soon as he had done the deed of blood and seated himself on the throne he was regarded as the legitimate king, provided that he contrived to maintain his seat peaceably for a single day."[26] In these cases, it seems, the sanctity was considered to be inherent in the throne and to be partly communicated to persons who came into close contact with it.[27]

[Footnote 24: Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 10.]

[Footnote 25: Ibid. ii. 16.]

[Footnote 26: Ibid. ii. 16.]

[Footnote 27: Since the above was written, Sir J. G. Frazer himself has kindly drawn my attention to some statements in his Lectures on the Early History of the Kingship (p. 121 sqq.) from which it appears that in some parts of the Malay region the regalia are regarded as wonder-working talismans or fetishes, the possession of which carries with it the right to the throne. Among the Yorubas of West Africa, a miraculous virtue seems to be attributed to the royal crown, and the king sometimes sacrifices sheep to it (ibid. p. 124, n. 1). See infra, Additional Notes.]

Now, as we have noticed before, holiness is generally held to be exceedingly susceptible to any polluting influence,[28] and this would naturally suggest the idea that, in order to remain unimpaired, it has to be removed from a body which is defiled by disease or blemish. Such an idea may be supposed to underlie those cases in which {609} even the slightest bodily defect is a sufficient motive for putting the divine king to death. It is of the greatest importance for the community that the holiness on which its welfare depends should not be attached to an individual whose organism is no longer a fit receptacle for it, and who is consequently unable to fulfil the duties incumbent upon a divine monarch; and it may be thought that the only way of removing the holiness from him is to kill him. The same explanation would seem to apply to the killing of kings or magicians who have actually proved incapable of bringing about the benefits expected from them, such as rain or good crops,[29] although in these instances the murderous act may also be a precaution against the revenge they might otherwise take for being deposed, or it may be a punishment for their failure,[30] or have the character of a sacrifice to a god.[31] Moreover, the disease, weakness, or physical deterioration of the king might cause his death; and, owing to the extremely polluting effect ascribed to natural death, this would be the greatest catastrophe which could happen to the holiness seated in him. The people of Congo believed that if their pontiff, the Chitomé, were to die a natural death, the world would perish, and the earth, which he alone sustained by his power and merit, would immediately be annihilated; hence, when he fell ill and seemed likely to die, the man who was destined to be his successor entered the pontiff's house with a rope or a club and strangled or clubbed him to death.[32] Similar motives may also have induced people to kill their divine king after a certain period, as everybody is sooner or later liable to fall ill or grow weak and die. But I can also imagine another possible reason for this custom. Supernatural {610} energy is sometimes considered so sensitive to external influences that it appears to wear away almost by itself in the course of time. I have heard from Arabs in Morocco that a pretender's holiness usually lasts only for half a year. And it may be that some of the divine kings mentioned by Frazer were exposed to a similar fatality and therefore had to be slain in time.

[Footnote 28: See especially supra, ii. 294-296, 352, 353, 415 sqq.]

[Footnote 29: Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 158 sq. Landtman, Origin of Priesthood, p. 144 sqq.]

[Footnote 30: Landtman, op. cit. p. 144. Divine animals are sometimes treated in a similar way. In ancient Egypt, if the sacred beasts could not, or would not, help in emergency, they were beaten; and if this measure failed to prove efficacious, then the creatures were punished with death (Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 178; Idem, Herodots zweites Buch, p. 428 sq.).]

[Footnote 31: Supra, i. 443.]

[Footnote 32: Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 8.]

As the right to life, generally granted to gods, is thus in certain circumstances abrogated for the benefit of their worshippers, so their right to bodily integrity may be suspended if their behaviour does not answer the expectations of their devotees. Men punish their gods as they punish their fellow men. Among the Amazulu, when it thunders or, as they say, "the heaven is coming badly," the doctors go out and scold it; "they take a stick and say they are going to beat the lightning of heaven."[33] The negro cudgels his fetish unmercifully to make it submissive.[34] The Samoyede flogs his idol or throws it away if he does not succeed in his doings.[35] The idols of the Typees, in the Marquesas Islands, "received more hard knocks than supplications."[36] When his guardian spirit proves stubborn, the Hudson Bay Eskimo deprives it of food, or strips it of its garments.[37]

[Footnote 33: Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 404.]

[Footnote 34: Bastian, Afrikanische Reisen, p. 61.]

[Footnote 35: von Struve, in Ausland, 1880 p. 795.]

[Footnote 36: Melville, Typee, p. 261.]

[Footnote 37: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 194.]

* * * * *

In normal circumstances men regard it as a duty, not only to refrain from killing or injuring their gods, but positively to promote their existence and comfort. According to early beliefs, supernatural beings are subject to human needs. The gods of the heathen Siberians laboured for their subsistence, engaged in hunting and fishing, and laid up provisions of roots against times of dearth.[38] When the heavens appear checkered with white clouds on a blue surface, the Maoris of New Zealand say that the god is planting his potatoes and {611} other divine edibles.[39] The Fijian gods are described as enormous eaters.[40] The Vedic gods wore clothes, were great drunkards, and suffered from constant hunger;[41] I need only refer to the numerous passages in the Rig-Veda where mention is made of the appetite or thirst of Indra and the pleasure he has in filling his belly.[42] An Egyptian god cannot be conceived without his house in which he lives, in which his festivals are solemnised, and which he never leaves except on professional days. His dwelling has to be cleaned, and he is assisted at his toilet by his attendants; the priest has to dress and serve his god, and places every day on his table offerings of food and drink.[43] So also the Chaldean gods had to be nourished, clothed, and amused; and the stone or wooden statues erected to them in the sanctuaries furnished them with bodies which they animated with their breath.[44]

[Footnote 38: Georgi, Russia, iii. 259.]

[Footnote 39: Polack, _Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders_, i. 244.]

[Footnote 40: Williams and Calvert, Fiji, pp. 184, 195.]

[Footnote 41: Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, pp. 304, 366 sqq. Barth, Religions of India, p. 36, n. 2.]

[Footnote 42: Rig-Veda, ii. 11. 11; viii. 4. 10; viii. 17. 4; viii. 78. 7; x. 86. 13 sqq.]

[Footnote 43: Erman, op. cit. pp. 273, 275, 279. Maspero, op. cit. p. 110.]

[Footnote 44: Ball, 'Glimpses of Babylonian Religion,' in Proceed. Soc. Biblical Archæology, xiv. 153 sqq. Maspero, op. cit. p. 679.]

The idea that supernatural beings have human appetites and human wants leads to the practice of sacrifice. Whatever means they may have of earning their livelihood, they are certainly not indifferent to gifts offered by men. If such offerings fail them they may even suffer want and become feeble and powerless. The Egyptian gods, says M. Maspero, "were dependent upon the gifts of mortals, and the resources of each individual deity, and consequently his power, depended on the wealth and number of his worshippers."[45] We meet with the same idea at every step in the Vedic hymns.[46] Should sacrifices cease for an instant to be offered, the gods would cease to send rain, {612} to bring back at the appointed hour Aurora and the sun, to raise and ripen harvests--not only because they would be unwilling, but because they would be unable to do so.[47] It was by sacrifice that the gods delivered the world from chaos, and it is by sacrifice that man prevents it from lapsing back into the same state;[48] in the 'Laws of Manu' it is said that sacrifices support "both the movable and the immovable creation."[49] The Zoroastrian books likewise represent the sacrifice as an act of assistance to the gods, by which they become victorious in their combats with the demons.[50] When not strengthened by offerings they fly helpless before their foes. Overcome by the demon Apaosha, the bright and glorious Tistrya cries out in distress:--"Woe is me, O Ahura Mazda! . . . Men do not worship me with a sacrifice in which I am invoked by my own name. . . . If men had worshipped me with a sacrifice in which I had been invoked by my own name, as they worship the other Yazatas with sacrifices in which they are invoked by their own names, I should have taken to me the strength of ten horses, the strength of ten camels, the strength of ten bulls, the strength of ten mountains, the strength of ten rivers."[51]

[Footnote 45: Maspero, op. cit. p. 302. Cf. Wiedemann, Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul, p. 19.]

[Footnote 46: Rig-Veda, ii. 15. 2; x. 52. 5 sq.; x. 121. 7. Cf. Atharva-Veda, xi. 7. 14 sq.; Hopkins, _Religions of India_, p. 149; Kaegi, Rigveda, p. 31; Darmesteter, _Ormazd et Ahriman_, p. 329.]

[Footnote 47: Barth, op. cit. p. 36.]

[Footnote 48: Rig-Veda, x. 130. Barth, op. cit. p. 37.]

[Footnote 49: Laws of Manu, iii. 75 sqq.]

[Footnote 50: See Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 327; Idem, in Sacred Books of the East (1st edit.), iv. p. lxviii.]

[Footnote 51: Yasts, viii. 23 sq.]

Men are induced by various motives to offer sacrificial gifts to supernatural beings. In early religion the most common motive is undoubtedly a desire to avert evils; and we have reason to believe that such a desire was the first source of religious worship. In spite of recent assertions to the contrary, the old saying holds true that religion was born of fear. Those who maintain that the savage is little susceptible to this emotion,[52] and that he for the most part takes his gods joyously,[53] show ignorance {613} of facts. One of his characteristics is great nervous susceptibility,[54] and he lives in constant apprehension of danger from supernatural powers. We are told of the Samoyedes that a sudden blow on the outside of a tent will sometimes throw the occupants into spasms. "The Indian," says Parkman, "lived in perpetual fear. The turning of a leaf, the crawling of an insect, the cry of a bird, the creaking of a bough, might be to him the mystic signal of weal or woe."[55] From all quarters of the uncivilised world we hear that terror or fear is the predominant element in the religious sentiment, that savages are more inclined to ascribe evil than good to the influence of supernatural agents, that their sacrifices and other acts of worship more frequently have in view to avert misfortunes than to procure positive benefits, or that, even though benevolent deities are believed in, much more attention is paid to malignant ones.[56] And even among peoples who have passed beyond the stage of {614} savagery fear still remains a prominent factor in their religion. The great bulk of Homeric cult-operations lay in propitiatory rites in avoidance of evil.[57] "No one," says Sir Monier-Williams, "who has ever been brought into close contact with the Hind[=u]s in their own country can doubt the fact that the worship of at least ninety per cent. of the people of India in the present day is a worship of fear."[58] In one of the Pahlavi texts we read that "he is not to be considered as faithful who has no fear of the sacred beings."[59] The Egyptian Amon Râ, who is praised as "the beautiful and beloved god, who giveth life by all manner of warmth, by all manner of fair cattle," is at the same time styled "Lord of fear, great one of terror."[60] The Psalmist says that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,"[61] and, as Nöldeke points out, "the fear of God" was used in its literal sense.[62] Although the Koran has much to tell about the loving kindness of God, the god of Islam evokes much more fear than love. Faith is said by Muhammedan theologians to "stand midway between hope and fear."[63]

[Footnote 52: Gruppe, Die griechischen Culte und Mythen, p. 244 sq.]

[Footnote 53: Grant Allen, Evolution of the Idea of God, p. 347.]

[Footnote 54: See Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 14.]

[Footnote 55: Parkman, Jesuits in North America, p. lxxxiv.]

[Footnote 56: Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 391 (American Indians generally). Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, pp. 84, 171, 214, 260. von Spix and von Martius, Travels in Brazil, ii. 243 (Coroados). Brett, Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 361 sq.; Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 367 sq. Dunbar, 'Pawnee Indians,' in Magazine of American History, viii. 736. McGee, 'Siouan Indians,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xv. 184. Murdoch, 'Ethn. Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,' ibid. ix. 432 (Point Barrow Eskimo). Ross, 'Eastern Tinneh,' in Smithsonian Report, 1866, p. 306. Radloff, Schamanenthum, p. 15 (Turkish tribes of the Altai). Fawcett, Saoras, p. 57. Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, p. 163 sq. Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, i. 181 sq. (Santals). Mouhot, Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China, ii. 29 (Bannavs of Cambodia). Man, 'Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 157. Wilken, Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel, p. 207 sq. St. John, Life in the Forests of the Far East, i. 69, 70, 178; Low, Sarawak, p. 253; Selenka, Sonnige Welten, p. in (Dyaks). von Brenner, Besuch bei den Kannibalen Sumatras, p. 216. Kubary, 'Die Palau-Inseln,' in Jour. des Museum Godeffroy, iv. 44 (Pelew Islanders). Williams and Calvert, Fiji, p. 189. Percy Smith, 'Uea,' in Jour. Polynesian Soc. i. 114. Turner, Samoa, p. 21. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 336 (Tahitians). Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, pp. 104, 148; Yate, Account of New Zealand, p. 141; Polack, op. cit. i. 244 (Maoris). Fritsch, Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's, pp. 338, 339, 341 (Hottentots). Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa, p. 153 (Matabele). Livingstone, Missionary Travels, p. 435 (peoples inhabiting the country north of the Zambesi). Monrad, Skildring af Guinea-Kysten, p. 2 (Negroes of Accra). See also Karsten, Origin of Worship, p. 44 sqq.; infra, p. 665 sqq.]

[Footnote 57: Cf. Keller, Homeric Society, p. 115 sq.]

[Footnote 58: Monier-Williams, Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism, p. 230.]

[Footnote 59: Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad, xxxix. 33.]

[Footnote 60: Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 111 sq.]

[Footnote 61: Psalms, cxi. 10.]

[Footnote 62: Nöldeke, in Archiv für Religionswissenschaft, i. 362.]

[Footnote 63: Sell, Faith of Islám, p. 165.]

Hope, indeed, forms an element in every religion, even the lowest. The assumed authors of painful or alarming events became objects of worship because they were conceived, not as mechanical causes, but as personal agencies which might be influenced by the regardful attitude of the worshipper. The savage is not so irrational as to make offerings to beings from whom he expects no benefits in return. And in proportion as the deities grew more benignant and their sphere of action was extended, their worshippers became more confident, expecting from them not only mercy but positive assistance.

We may suppose that already at an early stage of {615} culture man, occasionally, was struck by some unexpected fortunate event and ascribed it to the influence of a friendly spirit with which he was anxious to keep on amicable terms. Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast worship is the result not only of fear, but also of the hope of obtaining some direct advantage or protection.[64] The pagans of Siberia accompanied their sacrifices with words like these:--"Behold what I bring you to eat; bring me then in return children, cattle, and a long life."[65] The Point Barrow Eskimo, when he arrives at a river, throws into the air a small piece of tobacco, crying out, "Spirits, spirits, I give you tobacco, give me plenty of fish!"[66] Of the Sia Indians (Pueblos) Mrs. Stevenson writes that their religion is not mainly one of propitiation, but rather of supplication for favours and payment for the same--they "do the will of and thereby please the beings to whom they pray."[67] We even hear of savages making thank-offerings to their gods. In Fiji, after successful fishing for turtle, or remarkable deliverance from danger in war or at sea, or recovery from sickness, a kind of thank-offering was sometimes presented to the deities.[68] When certain natives of Eastern Central Africa, after they have prayed for a successful hunting expedition, return home laden with venison or ivory, they know that they are indebted to "their old relative" for their good fortune, and give him a thank-offering.[69] We are told that in Northern Guinea, when a person has been repeatedly fortunate through the agency of a fetish, "he contracts a feeling of attachment and gratitude to it."[70] Yet we have reason to suspect that the gratitude of the sacrificer is commonly {616} of the kind which La Rochefoucauld defined as "a secret desire to receive greater benefits in the future."[71] Sometimes the thank-offering, if it may be called so, is expressly preceded by a vow. Among the Kansas the warrior, when going to war says, facing the East, "I wish to pass along the road to the foe! O Wakanda! I promise you a blanket if I succeed"; and turning to the West, "O Wakanda! I promise you a feast if I succeed."[72] Even in religions of a higher type the offering of sacrificial gifts is mainly a sort of bargain with the god to whom they are offered. In the Vedic hymns the gods are addressed by phrases like these, "If you give me this, I shall give you that," or, "As you have given me this, I shall give you that."[73] The singer naïvely confesses, "I looked forth in spirit, seeking good, O Indra and Agni, to relations and kinsmen; but I have no other helper than you; therefore I have made you a powerful song."[74] The Greeks expressed the idea connected with their sacrifices in the proverbial saying, [Greek: dô=ra theou\s pei/thei].[75] The ancient Hebrew view on the subject is illustrated by the vow of Jacob:--"If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee."[76]

[Footnote 64: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 17. Cf. Idem, Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 277.]

[Footnote 65: Georgi, Russia, iii. 284.]

[Footnote 66: Murdoch, in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 433.]

[Footnote 67: Stevenson, 'Sia,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 67.]

[Footnote 68: Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 195.]

[Footnote 69: Macdonald, Africana, i. 61. For other instances of thank-offerings see Shooter, Kafirs of Natal, p. 165; Smith, 'Myths of the Iroquois,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ii. 51. Jochelson, 'Koryak Religion and Myth,' in _Jesup North Pacific Expedition_, vi. 25, 92. Leem, _Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper_, p. 431 (Lapps).]

[Footnote 70: Wilson, Western Africa, p. 212.]

[Footnote 71: La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 298.]

[Footnote 72: Dorsey, 'Mourning and War Customs of the Kansas,' in American Naturalist, xix. 678.]

[Footnote 73: Müller, Physical Religion, p. 100. Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, pp. 302-326, 430 sqq.]

[Footnote 74: Rig-Veda, i. 109. 1. Cf. ibid. i. 71. 7.]

[Footnote 75: Plato, Respublica, iii. 390.]

[Footnote 76: Genesis, xxviii. 20 sqq.]

In many cases the sacrificial victims are intended to serve as substitutes for other individuals, whose lives are in danger. We have previously noticed that the practice of human sacrifice is mainly based on the idea of substitution.[77] We have also seen that a growing reluctance to this practice often led to the offering of animals instead of {617} men.[78] But we have no right to assume that the sacrifice of an animal for the purpose of saving the life of a man is in every case a later modification of a previous human sacrifice. The idea that spirits which threaten the lives of men are appeased by other than human blood may in some instances be primary though in others it is derivative. The Moors invariably sacrifice an animal at the foundation of a new building; and though this is said to be [(]âr upon the spirit owners of the place some idea of substitution seems also to be connected with the act, as they maintain that if no animal were killed the inmates of the house would die or remain childless. A similar practice prevails in Syria, where the people believe that "every house must have its death, either man, woman, child, or animal."[79] Among the Jews it is or has been the custom for the master of each house to kill a cock on the eve of the fast of atonement. Before doing so he strikes his head with the cock three times, saying at each stroke, "Let this cock be a commutation for me, let him be substituted for me"; and when he strangles his victim by compressing the neck with his hand, he at the same time reflects that he himself deserves to be strangled.[80] These customs can certainly not be regarded as survivals of an earlier practice of killing a human being. Moreover an animal is sometimes sacrificed for the purpose of saving the lives of other animals. Thus in a place in Scotland, in 1767, a young heifer was offered in the holy fire during a cattle-plague.[81] And in Great Benin, in West Africa, on the anniversary of the death of Adolo, king Overami's father, not only twelve men, but twelve cows, twelve goats, twelve sheep, and twelve fowls were offered, and Overami, addressing his father, asked him to look after the "cows, goats, and fowls, and everything in the farms," as well as the people.[82] Sacrifices which are {618} substitutional in character may or may not be intended to satisfy the material needs of supernatural beings. In some cases, as we have seen, their object is to appease a resentful god by the mere death of the victim.[83]

[Footnote 77: Supra, ch. xix.]

[Footnote 78: Supra, i. 469 sq.]

[Footnote 79: Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day, p. 224 sq.]

[Footnote 80: Allen, Modern Judaism, p. 406.]

[Footnote 81: Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, ii. 608.]

[Footnote 82: Moor and Roupell, quoted by Read and Dalton, Antiquities from the City of Benin, p. 6, and by Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 70 sq.]

[Footnote 83: Supra, i. 438 sqq.]

We have further noticed that, in the case of human sacrifice, the victim is occasionally regarded as a messenger between the worshippers and their god even though the primary object of the rite be a different one.[84] The same is sometimes true of other offerings as well.[85] The Iroquois sacrifice of the white dog[86] was, according to Mr. Morgan, intended "to send up the spirit of the dog as a messenger to the Great Spirit, to announce their continued fidelity to his service, and, also, to convey to him their united thanks for the blessings of the year"; and in their thanksgiving addresses they were in the habit of throwing leaves of tobacco into the fire from time to time that their words might ascend to the dwelling of the Great Spirit in the smoke of their offerings.[87] The Huichols of Mexico often use the arrows which they sacrifice to their gods as carriers of special prayers.[88]

[Footnote 84: Supra, i. 465 sq.]

[Footnote 85: Cf. Hubert and Mauss, 'Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice,' in L'année sociologique, ii. 106, n. **1.]

[Footnote 86: See supra, i. 53, 64.]

[Footnote 87: Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 216 sqq.]

[Footnote 88: Lumholtz, Unknown Mexico, ii. 205.]

Not only are sacrifices used as bearers of prayers, but they are also frequently offered for the purpose of transferring curses. In Morocco every síyid[89] of any importance is constantly visited by persons who desire to invoke the saint to whom it is dedicated with a view to being cured of some illness, or being blessed with children, or getting a suitable husband or wife, or receiving help against an enemy, or deriving some other benefit from the saint. To secure his assistance the visitor makes [(]âr upon him; and the Moorish [(]âr, of which I have spoken above,[90] implies the transference of a conditional curse, whether it be made upon an ordinary man or a saint, living or dead. The [(]âr put upon a saint may consist in throwing stones upon a cairn connected with his sanctuary, or making a pile of {619} stones to him, or tying a piece of cloth at the síyid, or knotting the leaves of some palmetto or the stalks of white broom growing in its vicinity, or offering an animal sacrifice to the saint.[91] This making of [(]âr is accompanied by a promise to reward the saint if he grants the request; but the sacrifice offered in fulfilment of such a promise (l-wâ[(]da) is totally distinct from that offered as [(]âr. It is a genuine gift, whereas the [(]âr-sacrifice is a means of constraining the saint. When an animal is killed as [(]âr the usual phrase bismillâh, "In the name of God," is not used, and the animal may not be eaten, except by poor people.[92] On the other hand, the animal which is sacrificed as wâ[(]da is always killed "in the name of God," and is offered for the very purpose of being eaten by the saint's earthly representatives. Nothing can better show than the Moorish distinction between l-[(]âr and l-wâ[(]da how futile it would be to try to explain every kind of sacrifice by one and the same principle. The distinction between them is fundamental: the former is a threat, the latter is a promised reward.[93] But at the same time it is not improbable that the idea of transferring curses to a supernatural being by means of a sacrifice was originally suggested by the previous existence of sacrifice as a religious act, combined with the ascription of mysterious propensities to blood, and especially to sacrificial blood, which, according to primitive ideas, made it a most efficient conductor of curses.

[Footnote 89: For the meaning of this word see supra, ii. 584.]

[Footnote 90: Supra, i. 586 sq.; ii. 584 sq.]

[Footnote 91: Westermarck, 'L-[(]âr, or the Transference of Conditional Curses in Morocco,' in Anthropological Essays presented to E. B. Tylor, p. 368 sqq. Idem, The Moorish Conception of Holiness (Baraka), p. 90 sqq.]

[Footnote 92: However, if the síyid has a m[K.]áddem, or regular attendant, the petitioner often hands the animal over to him alive, so that he may himself kill it "in the name of God," and thus make it eatable. Then the descendants of the saint, if he has any, and the m[K.]áddem himself, have no hesitation in eating the animal, bismillâh being a holy word which removes the curse or evil energy inherent in l-[(]âr.]

[Footnote 93: When I have asked how it is that a saint, although invoked with l-[(]âr, does not always grant the request made to him, the answer has been that he can, but that he is not all-powerful and the failure is due to the fact that God does not listen to his prayer. But it also occurs that a person who has in vain made [(]âr upon a saint goes to another síyid to complain of him. There is a general belief that saints do not help unless [(]âr is made on them--an idea which is not very flattering to their character.]

{620} There are obvious indications that the [(]âr-sacrifice of the Moors is not unique of its kind, but has its counterpart among certain other peoples. In ancient religions sacrifice is often supposed to exercise a constraining influence on the god to whom it is offered. We meet with this idea in Zoroastrianism,[94] in many of the Vedic hymns,[95] and especially in Brahmanism. "Here," says Barth, "the rites of religion are the real deities, or at any rate they constitute together a sort of independent and superior power, before which the divine personalities disappear, and which almost holds the place allotted to destiny in other systems. The ancient belief, which is already prominent in the Hymns, that sacrifice conditionates the regular course of things, is met with here in the rank of a commonplace, and is at times accompanied with incredible details."[96] Now, there can be little doubt that this ascription of a magic power to the sacrifice, by means of which it could control the actions of the gods, was due to the idea that it served as a conductor of imprecations; for it was invariably accompanied by a formula which was considered to possess irresistible force. In the invocation lies the hidden energy which gives the efficacy to the sacrifice; without Brahma[n.]aspati, the lord of prayer, sacrifice does not succeed.[97] The Greeks actually offered anathemata, or curses, to their gods.[98] The ancient Arabs, again, after killing the sacrificial animal, threw its hair on a holy tree as a curse.[99] But so little has the true import of such sacrifices been understood even by eminent scholars, that they have been represented as votive offerings or gifts to the deity.[100]

[Footnote 94: Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 330.]

[Footnote 95: Rig-Veda, iii. 45. 1; iv. 15. 5; vi. 51. 8; viii. 2. 6. Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 311 sq.]

[Footnote 96: Barth, Religions of India, p. 47 sq.]

[Footnote 97: Rig-Veda, i. 18. 7.]

[Footnote 98: Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings, p. 337 sqq.]

[Footnote 99: Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 124.]

[Footnote 100: Rouse, op. cit. p. 337. Wellhausen, op. cit. p. 124.]

Considering that the idea of sacrifice being a conductor of imprecations has hitherto almost entirely escaped the notice of students of early religion, it is impossible to say {621} how widely it prevails and whether it also occurs in the savage world. We know that the practice of cursing a god not only was familiar to the ancient nations of culture, including the Egyptians,[101] Hebrews, and other Semites,[102] but is common among peoples like the South African Bechuanas[103] and the Nagas of India.[104] And that the shedding of blood is frequently applied as a means of transferring curses is suggested by various cases in which, however, the object of the imprecation is not a god but a man. We have previously noticed the reception sacrifices offered to visiting strangers, presumably for the purpose of transmitting to them conditional curses;[105] and a very similar idea seems to underlie certain cases of oath-taking. Sometimes the oath is taken in connection with a sacrifice made to a god, and then the sanctity of the sacrificial animal naturally increases the efficacy of the self-imprecation. In other instances the oath is taken on the blood of an animal which is killed for the purpose, apparently without being sacrificed to a god. But in either case, I believe, the blood of the animal is thought not only to add supernatural energy to the oath, but to transfer, as it were, the self-imprecation to the very person who pronounces it. The Mrús, a Chittagong hill tribe, "will swear by one of their gods, to whom, at the same time, a sacrifice must be offered."[106] Among the ancient Norsemen both the accused and the accuser grasped the holy ring kept for that purpose on the altar, stained with the blood of a sacrificial bull, and made oath by invoking Freyr, Niordr, and the almighty among the Asas.[107] At Athens a person who charged another with murder made an oath with imprecations upon himself and his family and his house, standing upon the entrails of a boar, a ram, and a bull, {622} which had been sacrificed by special persons on the appointed days.[108] Tyndareus "sacrificed a horse and swore the suitors of Helen, making them stand on the pieces of the horse," the oath being to defend Helen and him who might be chosen to marry her if ever they should be wronged.[109] One of the three binding forms of oath prevalent among the Sânsiya in India is to "kill a cock and pouring its blood on the ground swear over it."[110] When the Annamese swear by heaven and earth, they often kill a buffalo or he-goat and drink its blood.[111] Among the ancient Arabs comrades in arms swore fidelity to each other by dipping their hands in the blood of a camel killed for the purpose.[112]

[Footnote 101: Book of the Dead, ch. 125.]

[Footnote 102: Exodus, xxii. 28. 1 Samuel, xvii. 43. Isaiah, viii. 21.]

[Footnote 103: Chapman, _Travels in the Interior of South Africa_, i. 45 sq.]

[Footnote 104: Woodthorpe, 'Wild Tribes inhabiting the so-called Naga Hills,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xi. 70.]

[Footnote 105: Supra, i. 590 sq.]

[Footnote 106: Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 233. Cf. ibid. p. 244 (Pankhos and Bunjogees).]

[Footnote 107: Landnámabók, iv. 7 (Islendínga Sögur, i. 258). Lea, Superstition and Force, p. 27. Keyser, _Efterladte Skrifter_, ii. pt. i. 388. Gummere, Germanic Origins, p. 301.]

[Footnote 108: Demosthenes, _Oratio (xxiii.) contra Aristocratem_, 67 sq., p. 642.]

[Footnote 109: Pausanias, iii. 20. 9. For Homeric oath sacrifices see Iliad, iii. 260 sqq.; xix. 250 sqq.; Keller, Homeric Society, p. 176 sqq.]

[Footnote 110: Crooke, Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces, iv. 281.]

[Footnote 111: Kohler, Rechtsvergleichende Studien, p. 208.]

[Footnote 112: Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 128.]

The last mentioned case, which implies shedding of blood as a means of sealing a compact, leads us to a special class of sacrifices offered to gods, namely, the covenant sacrifice, known to us from Semitic antiquity. The Hebrews, as Professor Robertson Smith observes,[113] thought of the national religion as constituted by a formal covenant sacrifice at Mount Sinai, where half of the blood of the sacrificed oxen was sprinkled on the altar and the other half on the people,[114] or even by a still earlier covenant rite in which the parties were Yahve and Abraham;[115] and the idea of sacrifice establishing a covenant between God and man is also apparent in the Psalms.[116] In various cases recorded in the Old Testament sacrifice is accompanied by a sacrificial meal;[117] "the god and his worshippers are wont to eat and drink together, and by this token their fellowship is declared {623} and sealed."[118] Robertson Smith and his followers have represented this as an act of communion, as a sacrament in which the whole kin--the god with his clansmen--unite, and in partaking of which each member renews his union with the god and with the rest of the clan. At first, we are told, the god--that is, the totem god--himself was eaten, whilst at a later stage the practice of eating the god was superseded by the practice of eating with the god. Communion still remains the core of sacrifice; and it is said that only subsequently the practice of offering gifts to the deity develops out of the sacrificial union between the worshippers and their god.[119] But I venture to think that the whole of this theory is based upon a misunderstanding of the Semitic evidence, and that existing beliefs in Morocco throw new light upon the covenant sacrifice.

[Footnote 113: Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 318 sq.]

[Footnote 114: Exodus, xxiv. 4 sqq.]

[Footnote 115: Genesis, xv. 8 sqq.]

[Footnote 116: Psalms, l. 5.]

[Footnote 117: Genesis, xxxi. 54. Exodus, xxiv. 11. 1 Samuel, xi. 15. Wellhausen says (Prolegomena to the History of Israel, p. 71) that, according to the practice of the older period, a meal was nearly always connected with a sacrifice.]

[Footnote 118: Robertson Smith, op. cit. p. 271.]

[Footnote 119: Ibid. lec. ix. sqq. Hartland, _Legend of Perseus_, ii. 236. Jevons, _Introduction to the History of Religion_, p. 225.]

The Moorish covenant (l-[(]ahd) is closely connected with the Moorish [(]âr. Whilst l-[(]âr is one-sided, l-[(]ahd is mutual, both parties transferring conditional curses to one another. And here again the transference requires a material conductor. Among the Arabs of the plains and the Berbers of Central Morocco chiefs, in times of rebellion, exchange their cloaks or turbans, and it is believed that if any of them should break the covenant he would be punished with some grave misfortune. Among the Ulád Bu [(]Azîz, in the province of Dukkâla, it is a common custom for persons who wish to be reconciled after a quarrel to go to a holy man and in his presence join their right hands so that the fingers of the one go between the fingers of the other, after which the saint throws his cloak over the united hands, saying, "This is [(]ahd between you." Or they may in a similar manner join their hands at a saint's tomb over the head of the box under which the saint is buried, or they may perform the same ceremony simply in the presence of some friends. In either case the joining of hands is usually {624} accompanied by a common meal, and frequently the hands are joined over the dish after eating. If a person who has thus made a compact with another is afterwards guilty of a breach of faith, it is said that "God and the food will repay him"; in other words, the conditional curse embodied in the food which he ate will be realised. All over Morocco the usual method of sealing a compact of friendship is by eating together, especially at the tomb of some saint. As we have noticed above,[120] the sacredness of the place adds to the efficacy of the imprecation, but its vehicle, the real punisher, is the eaten food, because it contains a conditional curse.

[Footnote 120: Supra, i. 587.]

The [(]ahd of the Moors helps us to understand the covenant sacrifice of the ancient Semites. The only difference between them is that the former is a method of establishing a compact between men and men, whilst the latter established a compact between men and their god. The idea of a mutual transference of conditional curses undoubtedly underlies both. It should be noticed that in the Old Testament also, as among the Moors, we meet with human covenants made by the parties eating together.[121] Thus the Israelites entered into alliance with the Gibeonites by taking of their victuals, without consulting Yahve, and the meal was expressly followed by an oath.[122] In other instances, again, the common dish consisted of sacrificial food, either because the sacredness of such food was supposed to make the conditional curse embodied in it more efficacious, or because the deity was included as a third party to the covenant.

[Footnote 121: Genesis, xxvi. 30; xxxi. 46. 2 Samuel, iii. 20 sq. Robertson Smith, op. cit. p. 271. Nowack, Lehrbuch der hebräischen Archäologie, i. 359.]

[Footnote 122: Joshua, ix. 14 sq.]

Whilst in some cases the object of a sacrifice is to transfer conditional curses either to the god to whom it is made, or to both the god and the worshipper, the victim or article offered may in other instances be used as a vehicle for transferring benign virtue to him who offered it or to other persons. As we have noticed {625} above, a sacrifice is very frequently believed to be endowed with beneficial magic energy in consequence of its contact or communion with the supernatural being to which it is offered, and this energy is then supposed to have a salutary effect upon the person who comes in touch with it. I have said before that in Morocco magic virtue is ascribed to various parts of the sheep which is sacrificed at the "Great Feast," and that every offering to a holy person, especially a dead saint, is considered to participate to some extent in his sanctity.[123] The Vedic people regarded sacrificial food as a kind of medicine.[124] The Siberian Kachinzes blessed their huts with sacrificial milk.[125] The Lapps strewed the ashes of their burnt-offerings upon their heads.[125] It is quite possible that in some instances a desire to receive the benefit of the supernatural energy with which the sacrifice is endowed is by itself a sufficient motive for offering it to a god.

[Footnote 123: Supra, i. 445 sq. See also Westermarck, 'The Popular Ritual of the Great Feast in Morocco,' in Folk-Lore, xxii. 145 sqq.; Hubert and Mauss, loc. cit. p. 133.]

[Footnote 124: Oldenberg, Die Religion des Veda, p. 328 sqq.]

[Footnote 125: Georgi, op. cit. iii. 275.]

[Footnote 126: von Düben, Lappland och Lapparne, p. 258.]

As is the case with other rites, sacrifices also have a strong tendency to survive the ideas from which they sprang. Thus when the materialistic conception of the nature of gods faded away, offerings continued to be made to them, though their meaning was changed. As Sir E. B. Tylor observes, "the idea of practical acceptableness of the food or valuables presented to the deity, begins early to shade into the sentiment of divine gratification or propitiation by a reverent offering, though in itself of not much account to so mighty a divine personage,"[127] Sacrifice then becomes mainly, or exclusively, a symbol of humility and reverence. Even in the Rig-Veda, in spite of its crude materialism, we meet with indications of the idea that the value of a sacrifice lies in the feelings of the worshipper; if unable to offer an ox or cow, the singer hopes that a small gift from the heart, a fagot, a libation, a bundle of grass, offered with reverence, {626} will be more acceptable to the god than butter or honey.[128] In Greece, though the sacrificial ritual remained unchanged till the end of paganism, we frequently come upon the advanced reflection that righteousness is the best sacrifice, that the poor man's slight offering avails more with the deity than hecatombs of oxen.[129] According to Porphyry, the gods have no need of banquets and magnificent sacrifices, but we should with the greatest alacrity make a moderate oblation to them of our own property, as "the honours which we pay to the gods should be accompanied by the same promptitude as that with which we give the first seat to worthy men."[130] It is said in the Talmud that "he who offers humility unto God and man, shall be rewarded with a reward as if he had offered all the sacrifices in the world."[131]

[Footnote 127: Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 394.]

[Footnote 128: Rig-Veda, viii. 19. 5. Kaegi, op. cit. p. 30.]

[Footnote 129: Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, i. 101. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 43. Westcott, Essays in the History of Religious Thought, p. 116.]

[Footnote 130: Porphyry, De abstinentia ab esu animalium, ii. 60.]

[Footnote 131: Deutsch, Literary Remains, p. 55.]

I have here spoken of the practice of sacrifice and the ideas on which it is based. But sacrifice has also a moral value attached to it. Though no doubt in many cases optional, it is under various circumstances regarded as a stringent duty. This is particularly the case with the offerings regularly made by the community at large on special occasions fixed by custom.

* * * * *

As supernatural beings have material needs like men, they also possess property like men, and this must not be interfered with. The Fjort of West Africa believe that the spirits of the rivers kill those who drink their waters and sometimes punish those who fish in them for greediness, by making them deaf and dumb.[132] When their chief god "played" by thundering, the Amazulu said to him who was frightened, "Why do you start, because the lord plays? What have you taken which belongs to him?"[133] The Fijians speak of a deluge {627} the cause of which was the killing of a favourite bird belonging to the god Ndengei by two mischievous lads, his grandsons.[134] In Efate, of the New Hebrides, to steal cocoanuts which are consecrated to the worship of the gods at some forthcoming festival "would be regarded as a much greater offence than common stealing."[135] So, too, the pillaging of a temple has commonly been looked upon as the worst kind of robbery.[136] Among the Hebrews any trespass upon ground which was hallowed by the localised presence of Yahveh was visited with extreme punishment.[137] In Arabia people were forbidden to cut fodder, fell trees, or hunt game within the precincts of a sacred place.[138] The Moors believe that a person would incur a very great risk indeed by cutting the branch of a tree or shooting a bird in the [h.]orm of a síyid, or dead saint. The [h.]orm is the homestead and domain of the saint, and he is the owner of everything within its borders. But the offence is not exclusively one against property, and it may be doubted whether originally any clear idea of ownership at all was connected with it. In a holy place all objects are endowed with supernatural energy, and may therefore themselves, as it were, avenge injuries committed against them. This is true of the [h.]orm of a saint, as well as of any other sanctuary, all his belongings being considered to partake of his sanctity. But, as a matter of fact, the so-called tomb of a saint is frequently a place which was at first regarded as holy by itself, on account of its natural appearance, and was only afterwards traditionally associated with a holy person, when the need was felt of giving an anthropomorphous interpretation of its holiness.[139] According to early ideas a {628} sacred object cannot with impunity be appropriated for ordinary purposes;[140] but, on the other hand, visitors are allowed to take a handful of earth from the tomb of the saint or in certain cases to cut a small piece of wood from some tree growing in his [h.]orm, to be used as a charm.[141] It also deserves notice that the saint protects not only his own property, but any goods left in his care; hence the country Arabs of Morocco often have their granaries in the [h.]ór[)u]mat of saints.

[Footnote 132: Dennett, Folklore of the Fjort, p. 5 sq.]

[Footnote 133: Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 57.]

[Footnote 134: Williams and Calvert, _op. cit._p. 212.]

[Footnote 135: Macdonald, Oceania, p. 208.]

[Footnote 136: Schmidt, Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 19 sq. Cicero, De legibus, ii. 9, 16; Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 458. Wilda, Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 950; Dahn, Bausteine, ii. 106 (Teutons). Du Boys, Histoire du droit criminel des peuples modernes, ii. 605 sq. Filangieri, La scienza della legislazione, iv. 205 (laws of Christian countries).]

[Footnote 137: Montefiore, Hibbert Lectures on the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews, p. 38.]

[Footnote 138: Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 106.]

[Footnote 139: Westermarck, 'Sul culto dei santi nel Marocco,' in Actes du XII. Congrès International des Orientalistes, iii. 175. Cf. Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, ii. 344 sqq.]

[Footnote 140: See Robertson Smith, op. cit. lec. iv. and Additional Note B.]

[Footnote 141: Westermarck, in Actes du XII. Congrès des Orientalistes, iii. 167 sq.]

Moreover, anybody who takes refuge at a síyid is for the moment safe. The right of sanctuary is regarded as very sacred in Morocco, especially in those parts of the country where the Sultan's government has no power. To violate it is an outrage which the saint is sure to punish. I saw a madman whose insanity was attributed to the fact that he once had forcibly removed a fugitive from a saint's tomb; and of a late Grand-Vizier it is said that he was killed by two powerful saints of Dukkâla, on whose refugees he had laid violent hands. Even the descendants of the saint or his manager (m[k.]áddem) can only by persuasion and by promising to mediate between the suppliant and his pursuer induce the former to leave the place.[142] As is well known, this is not a custom restricted to Morocco. Among many peoples, at different stages of civilisation, sacred places give shelter to refugees.[143]

[Footnote 142: See Westermarck, _The Moorish Conception of Holiness_, p. 116 sqq.]

[Footnote 143: See Andree, 'Die Asyle,' in Globus, xxxviii. 301 sq.; Frazer, 'Origin of Totemism,' in Fortnightly Review, N. S. lxv. 650 sqq.; Hellwig, Das Asylrecht, passim; Bulmerincq, Das Asylrecht, passim. Fuld, 'Das Asylrecht im Alterthum und Mittelalter,' in Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss. vii. p. 103 sqq.]

Among the Central Australian Arunta there is in each local totem centre a spot called ertnatulunga, in the immediate neighbourhood of which everything is sacred and must on no account be hurt. The plants growing there are never interfered with in any way; animals which come there are safe {629} from the spear of the hunter; and a man who was being pursued by others would not be touched so long as he remained at this spot.[144] In Upolu, one of the Samoan Islands, a certain god, Vave, had his residence in an old tree, which served as an asylum for murderers and other great offenders; if that tree was reached by the criminal he was safe, and the avenger could pursue no farther, but had to wait for investigation and trial.[145] In the island of Hawaii there were two puhonuas, or cities of refuge, which afforded an inviolable sanctuary even to the vilest criminal who entered their precincts, and during war offered safe retreat to all the non-combatants of the neighbouring districts who flocked into them, as well as to the vanquished. As soon as the fugitive had entered, he repaired to the presence of the idol and made a short ejaculatory address, expressive of his obligations to him in reaching the place with security. The priests and their adherents would immediately put to death anyone who should have the temerity to follow or molest those who were once within the pale of the pahu tabu, and, as they put it, under the shade or protection of the spirit of Keave, the tutelary deity of the place. After a short period, probably not more than two or three days, the refugee was permitted to return unmolested to his home, the divine protection being supposed still to abide with him.[146] In Tahiti the morais, or holy places, likewise gave shelter to criminals of every kind.[147] At Maiva, in the South-Eastern part of New Guinea, "should a man be pursued by an enemy and take refuge in the dubu [or temple], he is perfectly safe inside. Any one smiting another inside the dubu would have his arms and legs shrivelled up, and he could do nothing but wish to die."[148]

[Footnote 144: Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 133 sqq.]

[Footnote 145: Turner, Samoa, p. 64 sq.]

[Footnote 146: Ellis, Tour through Hawaii, p. 155 sqq. Jarves, History of the Hawaiian Islands, p. 28 sq.]

[Footnote 147: Turnbull, Voyage round the World, p. 366. Wilson, Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean, p. 351.]

[Footnote 148: Chalmers and Gill, _Work and Adventure in New Guinea_, p. 186.]

In many North American tribes certain sacred places or whole villages served as asylums, in which those who were pursued by the tribe or even an enemy were safe as soon as they had obtained admission.[149] Among the Acagchemem Indians, in the valley and neighbourhood of San Juan Capistrano in California, a criminal who had fled to a vanquech, or place of worship, was secure not only as long as he remained there, but {630} also after he had left the sanctuary. It was not even lawful to mention his crime, but all that the avenger could do to him was to point at him and deride him, saying, "Lo, a coward, who has been forced to flee to Chinigchinich!" This flight, however, turned the punishment from the head of the criminal upon that of some of his relatives.[150]

[Footnote 149: Adair, History of the American Indians, pp. 158, 159, 416. Bradbury, Travels in the Interior of America, p. 165 sq. (Aricaras of the Missouri). Bourke, 'Medicine-Men of the Apache,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 453. Kohl, Kitchi-Gami, p. 271 (Chippewas).]

[Footnote 150: Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, iii. 167. Boscana, in [Robinson,] Life in California, p. 262 sq.]

The South-Central African Barotse have a city of refuge. "Anyone incurring the king's wrath, or committing a crime, may find safety by fleeing to this town. The man in charge of it is expected to plead for him before the chief, and he can then return to his house in peace."[151] Among the same people the tombs of chiefs are sanctuaries or places of refuge,[152] and this is also the case among the Kafirs.[153] So, too, in the monarchical states of the Gallas homicides enjoy a legal right of asylum if they have succeeded in taking refuge in a hut near the burial-place of the king.[154] Among the Ovambo in South-Western Africa the village of a great chief is abandoned at his death, except by the members of a certain family, who remain there to prevent it from falling into utter decay. Condemned criminals who contrive to escape to one of these deserted villages are safe, at least for a time; for not even the chief himself may pursue a fugitive into the sacred place.[155] In Congo Français there are several sanctuaries:--"The great one in the Calabar district is at Omon. Thither mothers of twins, widows, thieves, and slaves fly, and if they reach it are safe."[156] In Ashantee a slave who flies to a temple and dashes himself against the fetish cannot easily be brought back to his master.[157] Among the Negroes of Accra criminals used to "seat themselves upon the fetish," that is, place themselves under its protection; but murderers who sought refuge with the fetish were always liable to be delivered up to their pursuers.[158] A traveller in the seventeenth century tells us that in Fetu, on the Gold Coast, a criminal who deserved death was pardoned by taking refuge in the hut of the high-priest.[159] Among the Krumen of the Grain Coast the house of the high-priest (bodio) "is a sanctum to which culprits {631} may betake themselves without the danger of being removed by anyone except by the bodio himself."[160] In Usambara a murderer cannot be arrested at any of the four places where the great wizards of the country reside.[161]

[Footnote 151: Arnot, Garenganze, p. 77.]

[Footnote 152: Decle, Three Years in Savage Africa, p. 75.]

[Footnote 153: Rehme, 'Das Recht der Amaxosa,' in Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss. x. 51.]

[Footnote 154: Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, Die geistige Cultur der Danâkil, &c. p. 157.]

[Footnote 155: Schinz, Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika, p. 312.]

[Footnote 156: Kingsley, Travels in West Africa, p. 466.]

[Footnote 157: Bowdich, Mission to Ashantee, p. 265. Cf. Monrad, op. cit. p. 42.]

[Footnote 158: Monrad, op. cit. p. 89.]

[Footnote 159: Müller, Die Africanische Landschafft Fetu, p. 75.]

[Footnote 160: Wilson, Western Africa, p. 129.]

[Footnote 161: Krapf, Reisen in Ost-Afrika, ii. 132.]

In other Muhammedan countries besides Morocco the tombs of saints, as also the mosques, are or have been places of refuge.[162] In Persia the great number of such asylums proved so injurious to public safety, that about the middle of the nineteenth century only three mosques were left which were recognised by the government as affording protection to criminals of every description.[163] Among the Hebrews the right of asylum originally belonged to all altars,[164] but on the abolition of the local altars it was limited to certain cities of refuge.[165] According to the Old Testament manslayers could find shelter there only in the case of involuntary homicide; but this was undoubtedly a narrowing of the ancient custom. Many heathen sanctuaries of the Ph[oe]nicians and Syrians retained even in Roman times what seems to have been an unlimited right of asylum;[166] and at certain Arabian shrines the god likewise gave shelter to all fugitives without distinction, and even stray or stolen cattle that reached the holy ground could not be reclaimed by their owners.[167]

[Footnote 162: Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, i. 237 sq. Quatremère, 'Mémoire sur les asiles chez les Arabes,' in Mémoires de l'Institut de France, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, xv. pt. ii. 313 sq.]

[Footnote 163: Polak, Persien, ii. 83 sqq. Brugsch, Im Lande der Sonne, p. 246.]

[Footnote 164: Exodus, xxi. 13 sq. Cf. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 148, n. 1.]

[Footnote 165: Numbers, xxxv. 11 sqq. Deuteronomy, iv. 41 sqq.; xix. 2 sqq.]

[Footnote 166: Robertson Smith, op. cit. p. 148.]

[Footnote 167: Ibid. p. 148 sq.]

On the Coast of Malabar a certain temple situated to the south-east of Calicut affords protection to thieves and adulterous women belonging to the Brahmin caste, but this privilege is reckoned among the sixty-four anatcharams, or "abuses," which were introduced by Brahmanism.[168] Among the Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush there are several "cities of refuge," the largest being the village of Mergrom, which is almost entirely peopled by chiles, or descendants of persons who have slain some fellow tribesman.[169] In the Caucasus holy groves offer refuge to criminals, as also to animals, which cannot be shot there.[170]

[Footnote 168: Graul, Reise nach Ostindien, iii. 332, 335.]

[Footnote 169: Scott Robertson, Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, p. 441.]

[Footnote 170: Hahn, Kaukasische Reisen, p. 122.]

In Greece many sanctuaries possessed the right of asylum down to the end of paganism, and any violation of this right {632} was supposed to be severely punished by the deity.[171] According to an old tradition, Romulus established a sanctuary, dedicated to some unknown god or spirit, on the slope of the Capitoline Hill, proclaiming that all who resorted to it, whether bond or free, should be safe.[172] This tradition, and also some other statements made by Latin writers,[173] seem to indicate that from ancient times certain sacred places in Rome gave shelter to refugees; but it was only in a comparatively late period of Roman history that the right of sanctuary, under Greek influence, became a recognised institution of some importance.[174] This right was expressly conferred upon the temple which in the year 42 B.C. was built in honour of Cæsar;[175] and other imperial temples, as also the statues of emperors, laid claim to the same privilege.[176] When Christianity became the religion of the State a similar claim was made by the churches; but a legal right of asylum was only granted to them by Honorius in the West and Theodosius in the East.[177] Subsequently it was restricted by Justinian, who decreed that all manslayers, adulterers, and kidnappers of women who fled to a church should be taken out of it.[178]

[Footnote 171: Tacitus, Annales, iii. 60 sqq. Farnell, op. cit. i. 73. Westcott, op. cit. p. 115. Schmidt, Die Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 285. Bulmerincq, op. cit. p. 35 sqq. Fuld, loc. cit. p. 118 sqq.]

[Footnote 172: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanæ, ii. 15. Livy, i. 8. 5 sq. Plutarch, Romulus, ix. 5. Strabo, v. 3. 2, p. 230.]

[Footnote 173: Valerius Maximus, Facta dictaque memorabilia, viii. 9. 1. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanæ, vi. 45. Cicero, De lege agraria oratio secunda, 14 (36). See also Hartung, Die Religion der Römer, ii. 58 sq.]

[Footnote 174: See Tacitus, Annales, iii. 36; Plautus, Rudens, 723; Dio Cassius, Historia Romana, xlvii. 19; Bulmerincq, op. cit. p. 58 sqq.; Mommsen, _Römisches Strafrecht_, p. 458 sq.]

[Footnote 175: Dio Cassius, xlvii. 19.]

[Footnote 176: Tacitus, Annales, iv. 67. Suetonius, Tiberius, 53. Mommsen, op. cit. p. 460.]

[Footnote 177: Mommsen, op. cit. p. 461 sq.]

[Footnote 178: Novellæ, xvii. 7.]

The right of sanctuary existed among the pagan Slavs, or some of them,[179] and probably also among the ancient Teutons.[180] After their conversion to Christianity the privilege of asylum within the church was recognised in most of their codes. In the Middle Ages and later, persons who fled to a church or to certain boundaries surrounding it were, for a time at least, safe from all persecution, it being considered treason against God, an offence beyond compensation, to force even the most flagrant criminal from His altar. The ordinary of the sacred place, or {633} his official, was the only one who could try to induce him to leave it, but if he failed, the utmost that could be done was to deny the refugee victuals so that he might go forth voluntarily.[181] In the 'Lex Baiuwariorum' it is asserted in the strongest terms that there is no crime which may not be pardoned from the fear of God and reverence for the saints.[182] But the right of sanctuary was gradually subjected to various restrictions both by secular legislation and by the Church.[183] Innocentius III. enjoined that refuge should not be given to a highway robber or to anybody who devastated cultivated fields at night;[184] and according to Beaumanoir's 'Coutumes du Beauvoisis,' dating from the thirteenth century, it was also denied to persons guilty of sacrilege or arson.[185] The Parliament of Scotland enacted that whoever took the protection of the Church for homicide should be required to come out and undergo an assize, that it might be found whether it was committed of "forethought felony" or in "chaudemelle"; and only in the latter case was he to be restored to the sanctuary, the sheriff being directed to give him security to that effect before requiring him to leave it.[186] In England, in the reign of Henry VIII., there were certain places which were allowed to be "places of tuition and privilege," in addition to churches and their precincts. They were in fact cities of permanent refuge for persons who should, according to ancient usage, have abjured the realm, after they had fled in the ordinary way to a church. There was a governor in each of these privileged places, charged with the duty of mustering every day his men, who were not to exceed twenty in each town and who had to wear a badge whenever they appeared out of doors. But when these regulations were made, the protection of sanctuary was taken away from persons guilty of murder, rape, burglary, highway robbery, or arson. The law of sanctuary was then left unchanged till the reign of James I., when, in theory, the privilege in question was altogether denied to criminals.[187] Yet {634} as a matter of fact, asylums continued to exist in England so late as the reign of George I., when that of St. Peter's at Westminster was demolished.[188] In the legislation of Sweden the last reference to the privilege of sanctuary is found in an enactment of 1528.[189] In France it was abolished by an ordonnance of 1539.[190] In Spain it existed even in the nineteenth century.[191] Not long ago the most important churches in Abyssinia,[192] the monastery of Affaf Woira in the same country,[193] and the quarter in Gondar where the head of the Abyssinian clergy has his residence,[194] were reported to be asylums for criminals. And the same is the case with the old Christian churches among the Suanetians of the Caucasus.[195]

[Footnote 179: Helmold, Chronik der Slaven, i. 83, p. 170.]

[Footnote 180: Wilda, Das Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 248 sq. Stemann, Den danske Retshistorie indtil Christian V.'s Lov, p. 578. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 610. Fuld, _loc. cit._ p. 138 sq. Frauenstädt, _Blutrache und Todtschlagsühne im Deutschen Mittelalter_, p. 51.]

[Footnote 181: Milman, History of Latin Christianity, ii. 59. Bulmerincq, op. cit. p. 73 sqq. Fuld, loc. cit. p. 136 sqq. Bracton, De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliæ, fol. 136 b, vol. ii. 392 sq. Réville, 'L'abjuratio regni,' in Revue historique, l. 14 sqq. Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. ii. 590 sq. Innes, Scotland in the Middle Ages, p. 195 sq.]

[Footnote 182: Lex Baiuwariorum, i. 7.]

[Footnote 183: Brunner, op. cit. ii. 611 sq. Bulmerincq, op. cit. p. 91 sqq. Fuld, loc. cit. p. 140 sq.]

[Footnote 184: Gregory IX. Decretales, iii. 49. 6.]

[Footnote 185: Beaumanoir, Coutumes du Beauvoisis, xi. 15 sqq., vol. i. 164 sq.]

[Footnote 186: Innes, op. cit. p. 198.]

[Footnote 187: Pike, History of Crime in England, ii. 253. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, iv. 347, n. a.]

[Footnote 188: Jusserand, _English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages_, p. 166.]

[Footnote 189: Nordström, Bidrag till den svenska samhälls-författningens historia, ii. 405.]

[Footnote 190: Du Boys, Histoire du droit criminel des peuples modernes, ii. 246.]

[Footnote 191: Idem, Histoire du droit criminel de l'Espagne, p. 227 sq.]

[Footnote 192: Hellwig, op. cit. p. 52.]

[Footnote 193: Harris, Highlands of Æthiopia, ii. 93.]

[Footnote 194: Rüppell, Reise in Abyssinien, ii. 74, 81. von Heuglin, Reise nach Abessinien, p. 213.]

[Footnote 195: von Haxthausen, Transcaucasia, p. 160, n. *]

The right of sanctuary has been ascribed to various causes. Obviously erroneous is the suggestion that places of refuge were established with a view to protecting unintentional offenders from punishment or revenge.[196] The restriction of the privilege of sanctuary to cases of accidental injuries is not at all general, and where it occurs it is undoubtedly an innovation due to moral or social considerations. Very frequently this privilege has been attributed to a desire to give time for the first heat of resentment to pass over before the injured party could seek redress.[197] But although I admit that such a desire may have helped to preserve the right of asylum where it has once come into existence, I do not believe that it could account for the origin of this right. We should remember that the privilege of sanctuary not only affords {635} temporary protection to the refugee, but in many cases altogether exempts him from punishment or retaliation, and that shelter is given even to animals which have fled to a sacred place. And, if the theory referred to were correct, how could we explain the fact that the right of asylum is particularly attached to sanctuaries?

[Footnote 196: Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, § 117, p. 108. Powell, 'Outlines of Sociology,' in _Saturday Lectures_, p. 82.]

[Footnote 197: Meiners, Geschichte der Menschheit, p. 189. Nordström, op. cit. ii. 401. Pardessus, Loi Salique, p. 656. Bulmerincq, op. cit. pp. 34, 47. Fuld, loc. cit. pp. 102, 118, 119, 294 sqq. Kohler, Shakespeare vor dem Forum der Jurisprudenz, p. 185. Quatremère, loc. cit. p. 314. Mr. Mallery (Israelite and Indian, p. 33 sq.), also, thinks that the original object of the right of sanctuary was to restrict vengeance and maintain peace, and that this right only subsequently appeared as a prerogative of religion.]

It has been said that the right of sanctuary bears testimony to the power of certain places to transmit their virtues to those who entered them.[198] But we have no evidence that the fugitive is supposed to partake of the sanctity of the place which shelters him. In Morocco persons who are permanently attached to mosques or the shrines of saints are generally regarded as more or less holy, but this is never the case with casual visitors or suppliants; hence it is hardly for fear of the refugee that his pursuer refrains from laying hands on him. Professor Robertson Smith has stated part of the truth in saying that "the assertion of a man's undoubted rights as against a fugitive at the sanctuary is regarded as an encroachment on its holiness."[199] There is an almost instinctive fear not only of shedding blood,[200] but of disturbing the peace in a holy place; and if it is improper to commit any act of violence in the house of another man,[201] it is naturally considered equally offensive, and also infinitely more dangerous, to do so in the homestead of a supernatural being. In the Tonga Islands, for instance, "it is forbidden {636} to quarrel or fight upon consecrated ground."[202] But this is only one aspect of the matter; another, equally important, still calls for an explanation. Why should the gods or saints themselves be so anxious to protect criminals who have sought refuge in their sanctuaries? Why do they not deliver them up to justice through their earthly representatives?

[Footnote 198: Granger, Worship of the Romans, p. 223 sq.]

[Footnote 199: Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 148.]

[Footnote 200: Supra, i. 380.]

[Footnote 201: Among the Barea and Kunáma in Eastern Africa a murderer who finds time to flee into another person's house cannot be seized, and it is considered a point of honour for the community to help him to escape abroad (Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 503). In the Pelew Islands "no enemy may be killed in a house, especially in the presence of the host" (Kubary, 'Die Palau-Inseln in der Südsee,' in Jour. d. Museum Godeffroy, iv. 25). In Europe the privilege of asylum went hand in hand with the sanctity of the homestead (Wilda, op. cit. pp. 242, 243, 538, 543; Nordström, op. cit. ii. 435; Fuld, loc. cit. p. 152; Frauenstädt, op. cit. p. 63 sqq.); and the breach of a man's peace was proportionate to his rank. Whilst every man was entitled to peace in his own house, the great man's peace was of more importance than the common man's, the king's peace of more importance than the baron's, and in the spiritual order the peace of the Church commanded yet greater reverence (Pollock, 'The King's Peace,' in Law Quarterly Review, i. 40 sq.).]

[Footnote 202: Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, ii. 232. Cf. ibid. i. 227.]

The answer lies in certain ideas which refer to human as well as divine protectors of refugees. The god or saint is in exactly the same position as a man to whose house a person has fled for shelter. Among various peoples the domicile of the chief or king is an asylum for criminals;[203] nobody dares to attack a man who is sheltered by so mighty a personage, and from what has been said above, in connection with the rules of hospitality, it is also evident why the chief or king feels himself compelled to protect him. By being in close contact with his host, the suppliant is able to transfer to him a dangerous curse. Sometimes a criminal can in a similar way be a danger to the king even from a distance, or by meeting him, and must in consequence be pardoned. In Madagascar an offender escaped punishment if he could obtain sight of the sovereign, whether before or after conviction; hence criminals at work on the highroad were ordered to withdraw when the sovereign was known to be coming by.[204] Among the Bambaras "une fois la sentence prononcée, si le condamné parvient à cracher sur un {637} prince, non-seulement sa personne est sacrée, mais elle est nourrie, logée, etc., par le grand seigneur qui a eu l'imprudence de se tenir à portée de cet étrange projectile."[205] In Usambara even a murderer is safe as soon as he has touched the person of the king.[206] Among the Marutse and neighbouring tribes a person who is accused of any crime receives pardon if he lays a cupa--the fossilised base of a conical shell, which is the most highly valued of all their instruments--at the feet of his chief; and a miscreant likewise escapes punishment if he reaches and throws himself on the king's drums.[207] On the Slave Coast "criminals who are doomed to death are always gagged, because if a man should speak to the king he must be pardoned."[208] In Ashantee, if an offender should succeed in swearing on the king's life, he must be pardoned, because such an oath is believed to involve danger to the king; hence knives are driven through the cheeks from opposite sides, over the tongue, to prevent him from speaking.[209] So also among the Romans, according to an old Jewish writer, a person condemned to death was gagged to prevent him from cursing the king.[210] Fear of the curses pronounced by a dissatisfied refugee likewise, in all probability, underlay certain other customs which prevailed in Rome. A servant or slave who came and fell down at the feet of Jupiter's high-priest, taking hold of his knees, was for that day freed from the whip; and if a prisoner with irons and bolts at his feet succeeded in approaching the high-priest in his house, he was let loose and his fetters were thrown into the road, not through the door, but from the roof.[211] Moreover, if a criminal who had been sentenced to death accidentally met a Vestal virgin on his way to the place of execution, his {638} life was saved.[212] So sensitive to imprecations were both Jupiter's high-priest and the priestesses of Vesta, that the Praetor was never allowed to compel them to take an oath.[213] Now, as a refugee may by his curse force a king or a priest or any other man with whom he establishes some kind of contact to protect him, so he may in a similar manner constrain a god or saint as soon as he has entered his sanctuary. According to the Moorish expression he is then in the [(]âr of the saint, and the saint is bound to protect him, just as a host is bound to protect his guest. It is not only men that have to fear the curses of dissatisfied refugees. Let us once more remember the words which Aeschylus puts into the mouth of Apollo, when he declares his intention to assist his suppliant, Orestes:--"Terrible both among men and gods is the wrath of a refugee, when one abandons him with intent."[214]

[Footnote 203: Harmon, _Voyages and Travels in the Interior of North America_, p. 297 (Tacullies). Lewin, _Hill Tracts of Chittagong_, p. 100 (Kukis). Junghuhn, _Die Battaländer auf Sumatra_, (Macassars and Bugis of Celebes). Tromp, 'Uit de Salasila van Koetei,' in _Bijdragen tot de taal- land- en volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië_, xxxvii. 84 (natives of Koetei, a district of Borneo). Jung, quoted by Kohler, 'Recht der Marschallinsulaner,' in Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss. xiv. 447 (natives of Nauru in the Marshall Group). Turner, _Nineteen Years in Polynesia_, p. 334 (Samoans). Rautanen, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 342 (Ondonga). Schinz, op. cit. p. 312 (Ovambo). Rehme, 'Das Recht der Amaxosa,' in _Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss._ x. 50. Merker, quoted by Kohler, 'Banturecht in Ostafrika,' ibid. xv. 55 (Wadshagga). Merker, Die Masai, p. 206. Among the Barotse the residences of the Queen and the Prime Minister are places of refuge (Decle, op. cit. p. 75).]

[Footnote 204: Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 376.]

[Footnote 205: Raffenel, Nouveau voyage dans le pays des nègres, i. 385.]

[Footnote 206: Krapf, Reisen in Ost-Afrika, ii. 132, n. * See also Schinz, op. cit. p. 312 (Ovambo).]

[Footnote 207: Gibbons, Exploration in Central Africa, p. 129. I am indebted to Mr. N. W. Thomas for drawing my attention to this statement.]

[Footnote 208: Ellis, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, p. 224.]

[Footnote 209: Ibid. p. 224.]

[Footnote 210: Quoted by Levias, 'Cursing,' in _Jewish Encyclopedia_, iv. 390.]

[Footnote 211: Plutarch, Questiones Romanæ, 111. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticæ, x. 15. 8, 10.]

[Footnote 212: Plutarch, Numa, x. 5.]

[Footnote 213: Aulus Gellius, op. cit. x. 15. 31.]

[Footnote 214: Aeschylus, Eumenides, 232 sqq.]