XIX. HUMAN SACRIFICE…

XIX. HUMAN SACRIFICE

IT still remains for us to consider some particular cases in which destruction of human life is sanctioned by custom or law.

Men are killed with a view to gratifying the desires of superhuman beings. We meet with human sacrifice in the past history of every so-called Aryan race.[1] It occurred, at least occasionally, in ancient India, and several of the modern Hindu sects practised it even in the last century.[2] There are numerous indications that it was known among the early Greeks.[3] At certain times it prevailed in the Hellenic cult of Zeus;[4] indeed, in the second century after Christ men seem still to have been sacrificed to Zeus Lycæus in Arcadia.[5] To the historic age likewise belongs the sacrifice of the three Persian prisoners of war whom Themistocles was compelled to slay before the battle of Salamis.[6] In Rome, also, human sacrifices, though {435} exceptional, were not unknown in historic times.[7] Pliny records that in the year 97 B.C. a decree forbidding such sacrifices was passed by the Roman Senate,[8] and afterwards the Emperor Hadrian found it necessary to renew this prohibition.[9] Porphyry asks, "Who does not know that to this day, in the great city of Rome, at the festival of Jupiter Latiaris, they cut the throat of a man?"[10] And Tertullian states that in North Africa, even to the proconsulship of Tiberius, infants were publicly sacrificed to Saturn.[11] Human sacrifices were offered by Celts,[12] Teutons,[13] and Slavs;[14] by the ancient Semites[15] and Egyptians;[16] by the Japanese in early days;[17] and, in the New World, by the Mayas[18] and, to a frightful extent, by the Aztecs. "Scarcely any author," says Prescott in his 'History of the Conquest of Mexico,' "pretends to estimate the yearly sacrifices throughout the empire at less than twenty thousand, and some carry the number as high as fifty thousand."[19] The same practice is imputed by Spanish writers to the Incas of Peru, and probably not without good reason.[20] Before their rule, at all events, it {436} was of frequent occurrence among the Peruvian Indians.[21] It also prevailed, or still prevails, among the Caribs[22] and some North American tribes;[23] in various South Sea islands, especially Tahiti and Fiji;[24] among certain tribes in the Malay Archipelago;[25] among several of the aboriginal tribes of India;[26] and very commonly in Africa.[27]

[Footnote 1: See Hehn, Wanderings of Plants and Animals from their First Home, p. 414 sqq.]

[Footnote 2: Weber, Indische Streifen, i. 54 sqq. Wilson, 'Human Sacrifices in the Ancient Religion of India,' in Works, ii. 247 sqq. Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 363 sqq. Barth, Religions of India, p. 57 sqq. Monier Williams, Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]ism, p. 24. Hopkins, Religions of India, pp. 198, 363. Rájendralála Mitra, Indo-Aryans, ii. 69 sqq. Crooke, Popular Religion and Folk-Lore of Northern India, ii. 167 sqq. Chevers, Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for India, p. 396 sqq.]

[Footnote 3: See Geusius, Victimæ Humanæ, passim; von Lasaulx, Sühnofper der Griechen und Römer, passim; Farnell, Cults, of the Greek States, i. 41 sq.; Stengel, Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer, p. 114 sqq.]

[Footnote 4: Cf. Farnell, op. cit. i. 93; Stengel, op. cit. p. 116.]

[Footnote 5: Pausanias, viii. 38. 7.]

[Footnote 6: Plutarch, Themistocles, 13.]

[Footnote 7: Idem, Questiones Romanæ, 83. See Landau, in Am Ur-Quell, iii. 1892, p. 283 sqq.]

[Footnote 8: Pliny, Historia naturalis, xxx. 3.]

[Footnote 9: Porphyry, De abstinentia ab esu animalium, ii. 56.]

[Footnote 10: Ibid. ii. 56.]

[Footnote 11: Tertullian, Apologeticus, 9 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, i. 314).]

[Footnote 12: Cæsar, De bello gallico, vi. 16. Tacitus, Annales, xiv. 30. Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca, v. 31, p. 354. Pliny, Historia naturalis, xxx. 4. Strabo, iv. 5, p. 198. Joyce, Social History of Ancient Ireland, i. 281 sqq.]

[Footnote 13: Tacitus, Germania, 9. Adam of Bremen, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiæ pontificum, iv. 27 (Migne, op. cit. cxlvi. 644). Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, i. 44 sqq. Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, i. 409 sq. Freytag, 'Riesen und Menschenopfer in unsern Sagen und Märchen,' in Am Ur-Quell, i. 1890, pp. 179-183, 197 sqq.]

[Footnote 14: Mone, Geschichte des nordischen Heidenthums, i. 119, quoted by Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 52. Krauss, in Am Ur-Quell, vi. 1896, p. 137 sqq. (Servians).]

[Footnote 15: Ghillany, Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebräer, passim. Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 362 sqq. Wellhausen, Reste arabischen Heidentums, p. 115 sq. von Kremer, Studien zur vergleichenden Culturgeschichte, i. 42 sqq. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, ii. 147 sqq.]

[Footnote 16: Amélineau, L'évolution des idées morales dans l'Égypte Ancienne, p. 12.]

[Footnote 17: Griffis, Religions of Japan, p. 75. Lippert, Seelencult, p. 79.]

[Footnote 18: Bancroft, Native Races of the Pacific States, ii. 704, 725.]

[Footnote 19: Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, p. 38. Cf. Clavigero, History of Mexico, i. 281; Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, ii. 346.]

[Footnote 20: Acosta, op. cit. ii. 344. de Molina, 'Fables and Rites of the Yncas,' in Narratives of the Rites and Laws of the Yncas, pp. 55, 56, 59. According to Cieza de Leon (Segunda parte de la Crónica del Perú, p. 100), the practice of human sacrifice has been much exaggerated by Spanish writers, but he does not deny its existence among the Incas; nay, he gives an account of such sacrifices (ibid. p. 109 sqq.). Sir Clements Markham seems to attach undue importance to the statement of Garcilasso de la Vega that human victims were never sacrificed by the Incas (First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, i. 130, 131, 139 sqq. n. [dagger]). Cf. Prescott, History of the Conquest of Peru, p. 50 sq. n. 3.]

[Footnote 21: Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 50, 130.]

[Footnote 22: Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 212 sq.]

[Footnote 23: Ibid. p. 142. sqq. Réville, Religions des peuples non-civilisés, i. 249 sq. Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 208 sqq.]

[Footnote 24: Schneider, Naturvölker, i. 191 sq. Fornander, Account of the Polynesian Race, i. 129. Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 106, 346-348, 357 (Society Islanders). Williams, Missionary Enterprises in the South Sea Islands, p. 548 sq. (especially the Hervey Islanders and Tahitians). von Kotzebue, Voyage of Discovery, iii. 248 (Sandwich Islanders). Lisiansky, Voyage round the World, pp. 81 sq. (Nukahivans), 120 (Sandwich Islanders). Gill, Myths and Songs from the South Pacific, p. 289 sqq. (Mangaians). Williams and Calvert, Fiji, pp. 188, 195; Wilkes, Narrative of the U.S. Exploring Expedition, iii. 97; Hale, U.S. Exploring Expedition, Vol. VI. Ethnography and Philology, p. 57 (Fijians). Codrington, Melanesians, p. 134 sqq.]

[Footnote 25: Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak and British North Borneo, ii. 215 sqq. Bock, Head-Hunters of Borneo, p. 218 sq. (Dyaks).]

[Footnote 26: Woodthorpe, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxvi. 24 (Shans, &c.). Colquhoun, Amongst the Shans, p. 152 (Steins inhabiting the south-east of Indo-China). Lewin, Wild Races of South-Eastern India, p. 244 (Pankhos and Bunjogees). Godwin-Austen, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. ii. 394 (Garo hill tribes). Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, pp. 147 (Bhúiyas), 176 (Bhúmij), 281 (Gonds), 285 sqq. (Kandhs). Hislop, Aboriginal Tribes of the Central Provinces, p. 15 sq. (Gonds). Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 113 sq. Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, passim (Kandhs).]

[Footnote 27: Schneider, Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, p. 118. Reade, Savage Africa, p. 52 (Dahomans, &c.). Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 63 sqq. Ellis, E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 117 sqq. Idem, Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 296. Idem, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 169 sqq. Cruickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast, ii. 173. Schoen and Crowther, Expedition up the Niger, p. 48 sq. (Ibos). Arnot Garenganze, p. 75 (Barotse). Arbousset and Daumas, Exploratory Tour to the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, p. 97 (Marimos, a Bechuana tribe). Macdonald, Africana, i. 96 sq. (Eastern Central Africans). Ellis, History of Madagascar, i. 422; Sibree, The Great African Island, p. 303 (Malagasy).]

From this enumeration it appears that the practice of human sacrifice cannot be regarded as a characteristic of savage races. On the contrary, it is found much more {437} frequently among barbarians and semi-civilised peoples than among genuine savages, and at the lowest stages of culture known to us it is hardly heard of. Among some peoples the practice has been noticed to become increasingly prevalent in the course of time. In the Society Islands "human sacrifices, we are informed by the natives, are comparatively of modern institution: they were not admitted until a few generations antecedent to the discovery of the islands**";[28] and in ancient legends there seems to be certain indications that they were once prohibited in Polynesia.[29] In India human sacrifices were apparently much rarer among the Vedic people than among the Brahmanists of a later age.[30] We are told that such sacrifices were adopted by the Aztecs only in the beginning of the fourteenth century, about two hundred years before the conquest, and that, "rare at first, they became more frequent with the wider extent of their empire; till, at length, almost every festival was closed with this cruel abomination."[31] Of the Africans Mr. Winwood Reade remarks, "The more powerful the nation the grander the sacrifice."[32]

[Footnote 28: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 106.]

[Footnote 29: Fornander, op. cit. i. 129.]

[Footnote 30: Wilson, Works, ii. 268 sq.]

[Footnote 31: Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, p. 36.]

[Footnote 32: Reade, Savage Africa, p. 52.]

Men offer up human victims to their gods because they think that the gods are gratified by such offerings. In many cases the gods are supposed to have an appetite for human flesh or blood.[33] The Fijian gods are described as "delighting in human flesh."[34] Among the Ooryahs of India the priest, when offering a human sacrifice to the war-god Manicksoro, said to the god, "The sacrifice we now offer you must eat."[35] Among the Iroquois, when an enemy was tortured at the stake, the savage executioners leaped around him crying, "To thee, Arieskoi, great spirit, we slay this victim, that thou mayest eat his flesh and be moved thereby to give us henceforth luck and {438} victory over our foes."[36] Among the ancient nations of Central America the blood and heart of the human victims offered in sacrifice were counted the peculiar portion of the gods.[37] Thus, in Mexico, the high-priest, after cutting open the victim's breast, tore forth the yet palpitating heart, offered it first to the sun, threw it then at the feet of the idol, and finally burned it; sometimes the heart was placed in the mouth of the idol with a golden spoon, and its lips were anointed with the victim's blood.[38]

[Footnote 33: See Lippert, Seelencult, p. 77 sqq.; Schneider, Naturvölker, i. 190.]

[Footnote 34: Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 195.]

[Footnote 35: Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, p. 211. Cf. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 120 (Kandhs).]

[Footnote 36: Müller, Geschichte der Amerikanischen Urreligionen, p. 142.]

[Footnote 37: Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 307, 310, 311, 707 sqq.]

[Footnote 38: Clavigero, op. cit. i. 279.]

But the human victim is not always, as has been erroneously supposed,[39] intended to serve the god as a food-offering. The Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, as Major Ellis observes, maintain that their gods require not only food, but attendants; "the ghosts of the human victims sacrificed to them are believed to pass at once into a condition of ghostly servitude to them, just as those sacrificed at the funerals of chiefs are believed to pass into a ghostly attendance."[40] Cieza de Leon mentions the prevalence of a similar belief among the ancient Peruvians. At the hill of Guanacaure, "on certain days they sacrificed men and women, to whom, before they were put to death, the priest addressed a discourse, explaining to them that they were going to serve that god who was being worshipped."[41]

[Footnote 39: Réville, Hibbert Lectures on the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 75 sq. Idem, Prolegomena of the History of Religions, p. 132. Trumbull, Blood Covenant, p. 189. Steinmetz, Endokannibalismus, p. 60, n. 1. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde, p. 603.]

[Footnote 40: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 169.]

[Footnote 41: Cieza de Leon, Segunda parte de Crónica del Perú, p. 109.]

Moreover, an angry god may be appeased simply by the death of him or those who aroused his anger, or of some representative of the offending community, or of somebody belonging to the kin of the offender. Among the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, "in the case of human victims the gods are not believed to devour the {439} souls; and as these souls are, by the majority of the natives, believed to proceed to Dead-land like all others, the object of human sacrifice seems to be to gratify or satiate the malignancy of the gods at the expense of chosen individuals, instead of leaving it to chance--the victims are in fact slain for the benefit of the community at large."[42] One reason why the human victims are so frequently criminals, is no doubt the intention of appeasing the god by offering up to him an individual who is hateful to him. The Sandwich Islanders "sacrifice culprits to their gods, as we sacrifice them in Europe to justice."[43] Among the Teutons the execution of a criminal was, in many cases at least, a sacrifice to the god whose peculiar cult had been offended by the crime.[44] Thus the Frisian law describes as an immolation to the god the punishment of one who violates his temple.[45] In ancient Rome the corn thief, if he was an adult, was hanged as an offering to Ceres;[46] and Ovid tells us that a priestess of Vesta who had been false to her vows of chastity was sacrificed by being buried alive in the earth, Vesta and Tellus being the same deity.[47] In consequence of the sacrilege of Menalippus and Comætho, who had polluted a temple of Artemis by their amours, the Pythian priestess ordained that the guilty pair should be sacrificed to the goddess, and that, besides, the people should every year sacrifice to her a youth and a maiden, the fairest of their sex.[48] The Hebrew cherem, or ban, was originally applied to malefactors and other enemies of Yahveh, and sometimes also to their possessions. "Cherem," says Professor Kuenen, "is properly dedication to Yahveh, which in reality amounted to destruction or annihilation. The persons who were {440} 'dedicated,' generally by a solemn vow, to Yahveh, were put to death, frequently by fire, whereby the resemblance to an ordinary burnt-offering was rendered still more apparent; their dwellings and property were also consumed by fire; their lands were left uncultivated for ever. Such punishments were very common in the ancient world. But in Israel, as elsewhere, they were at the same time religious acts."[49] The sacrifice of offenders has, in fact, survived in the Christian world, since every execution performed for the purpose of appeasing an offended and angry god may be justly called a sacrifice.[50]

[Footnote 42: Ellis, E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 119.]

[Footnote 43: von Kotzebue, op. cit. iii. 248. Cf. Lisiansky, op. cit. 120.]

[Footnote 44: von Amira, in Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, ii. pt. ii. 177. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 587, 684 sq. Vigtusson and Powell, op. cit. i. 410. Gummere, Germanic Origins, p. 463.]

[Footnote 45: Lex Frisionum, Additio sapientium, 12.]

[Footnote 46: Granger, Worship of the Romans, p. 260.]

[Footnote 47: Ovid, Fasti, vi. 457 sq. Cf. Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 902.]

[Footnote 48: Pausanias, vii. 19. 4.]

[Footnote 49: Kuenen, Religion of Israel, i. 290 sq.]

[Footnote 50: See supra, p. 197 sq. For various instances of expiatory human sacrifice, involving vicarious atonement, see supra, p. 66 sq.]

It is impossible to discover in every special case in what respect the worshippers believe the offering of a fellow-creature to be gratifying to the deity. Probably they have not always definite views on the subject themselves. They know, or believe, that on some certain occasion, they are in danger of losing their lives; they attribute this to the designs of a supernatural being; and, by sacrificing a man, they hope to gratify that being's craving for human life, and thereby avert the danger from themselves. That this principle mainly underlies the practice of human sacrifice appears from the circumstances in which such sacrifices generally occur.

Human victims are often offered in war, before a battle, or during a siege.

Cæsar wrote of the Gauls, "They who are engaged in battles and dangers, either sacrifice men as victims, or vow that they will sacrifice them . . . ; because they think that unless the life of a man be offered for the life of a man, the mind of the immortal gods cannot be rendered propitious."[51] The Lusitanians sacrificed a man and a horse at the commencement of a military enterprise.[52] Before going to war, or before the beginning of a battle, or during a siege, the Greeks offered a human victim to ensure victory.[53] When hard-pressed in battle, {441} the King of Moab sacrificed his eldest son as a burnt offering on the wall.[54] In times of great calamities, such as war, the Phenicians sacrificed some of their dearest friends, who were selected by votes for this purpose.[55] During a battle with king Gelo of Syracuse, the general Hamilcar sacrificed innumerable human victims, from dawn to sunset;[56] and when Carthage was reduced to the last extremities, the noble families were compelled to give up two hundred of their sons to be offered to Baal.[57] In Hindu scriptures and traditions success in war is promised to him who offers a man in sacrifice.[58] In Jeypore "the blood-red god of battle" is propitiated by human victims. "Thus, on the eve of a battle, or when a new fort, or even an important village is to be built, or when danger of any kind is to be averted, this sanguinary being must be propitiated with human blood."[59] In Great Benin human blood was shed in a case of common danger when an enemy was at the gate of the city.[60] The Yorubas sacrifice men in times of national need.[61] Among the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, such sacrifices "are ordinarily only made in time of war, pestilence, or great calamity."[62] The Tahitians offered human sacrifices in seasons of war, or when war was in agitation.[63]

[Footnote 51: Cæsar, De bello gallico, vi. 16.]

[Footnote 52: Livy, Epitome, 49.]

[Footnote 53: Pausanias, iv. 9. 4 sqq.; ix. 17. 1. Plutarch, Themistocles, 13. Idem, Aristides, 9. Idem, Pelopidas, 21 sq. Lycurgus, Oratio in Leocratem, (ch. 24) 99. Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, iii. 15. 4. Porphyry, De abstinentia ab esu animalium, ii. 56. Geusius, op. cit. i. ch. 16 sq. Stengel, op. cit. p. 115 sq.]

[Footnote 54: 2 Kings, iii. 27.]

[Footnote 55: Porphyry, op. cit. ii. 56.]

[Footnote 56: Herodotus, vii. 167.]

[Footnote 57: Diodorus Siculus, xx. 14.]

[Footnote 58: Chevers, op. cit. p. 399.]

[Footnote 59: Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, p. 52.]

[Footnote 60: Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 72.]

[Footnote 61: Ellis, Yoruba-speaking People of the Slave Coast, p. 296.]

[Footnote 62: Idem, E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, p. 117.]

[Footnote 63: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 276 sqq., 346.]

After a victory, captured enemies are sacrificed to the god to whose assistance the success is ascribed. This sacrifice has been represented as a thank-offering;[64] but, in many cases at least, it seems to be offered either to fulfil a vow previously made, or to induce the god to continue his favours for the future.[65] Among the Kayans of Borneo it is the custom that, when captives are brought to an enemy's country, "one should suffer death, to bring prosperity and abolish the curse of the enemy in their lands."[66]

[Footnote 64: Diodorus Siculus, xx. 65 (Carthaginians). de Molina, loc. cit. p. 59 (Incas); &c.]

[Footnote 65: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 170. Cruickshank, op. cit. ii. 173. Dubois, Character, Manners, and Customs of the People of India, p. 488. Jordanes, De origine actibusque Getarum, 5 (41). Cf. Jephthah's vow (Judges, xi. 30 sqq.).]

[Footnote 66: Brook, Ten Years in Saráwak, ii. 304 sq.]

Human sacrifices are offered for the purpose of stopping or preventing epidemics.

{442} The Phenicians sacrificed "some of their dearest friends," not only in war, but in times of pestilence.[67] In similar circumstances the ancient Greeks had recourse to human sacrifices.[68] In seasons of great peril, as when a pestilence was raging, the ancient Italians made a vow that they would sacrifice every living being that should be born in the following spring.[69] In West Gothland, in Sweden, the people decreed a human sacrifice to stay the digerdöd, or Plague, hence two beggar children, having just then come in, were buried alive.[70] In Fur, in Denmark, there is a tradition that, for the same purpose, a child was interred alive in the burial ground.[71] Among the Chukchi, in 1814, when a sudden and violent disease had broken out and carried off both men and reindeer, the Shamans, after having had recourse in vain to their usual conjurations, determined that one of the most respected chiefs must be sacrificed to appease the irritated spirits.[72] In Great Benin, "when the doctors declared a man had died owing to Ogiwo, if they think an epidemic imminent, they can tell Overami [the king] that Ogiwo vex. Then he can take a man and a woman, all the town can fire guns and beat drums. The man and woman are brought out, and the head Jujuman can make this prayer: 'Oh, Ogiwo, you are very big man; don't let any sickness come for Ado. Make all farm good, and every woman born man son.'"[73] In the same country twelve men, besides various animals, were offered yearly on the anniversary of the death of Adolo, king Overami's father. King Overami, calling his father loudly by name, spoke as follows: "Oh, Adolo, our father, look after all Ado [that is, Great Benin], don't let any sickness come to us, look after me and my people, our slaves, cows, goats, and fowls, and everything in the farms."[74]

[Footnote 67: Porphyry, op. cit. ii. 56.]

[Footnote 68: Geusius, op. cit. i. ch. 13. Stengel, op. cit. p. 116. Frazer, Golden Bough, iii. 125 sq.]

[Footnote 69: Festus, De verborum significatione, 'Ver sacrum,' Müller's edition, p. 379. Nonius Marcellus, De proprietate sermonis, 'Versacrum,' p. 522. Servius, In Virgilii Æneidos, vii. 796.]

[Footnote 70: Afzelius, Swenska Folkets Sago-Häfder, iv. 181.]

[Footnote 71: Nyrop, Romanske Mosaiker, p. 69, n. 1.]

[Footnote 72: von Wrangell, Expedition to the Polar Sea, p. 122 sq.]

[Footnote 73: Moor and Roupell, quoted by Read and Dalton, Antiquities from the City of Benin, p. 7; also by Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 71 sq.]

[Footnote 74: Moor and Roupell, quoted by Ling Roth, op. cit. p. 70 sq.; also by Read and Dalton, op. cit. p. 6.]

The sacrifice of human victims is resorted to as a method of putting an end to a devastating famine.

{443} Instances of this practice are reported to have occurred among the ancient Greeks[75] and Phenicians.[76] In a grievous famine, after other great sacrifices, of oxen and of men, had proved unavailing, the Swedes offered up their own king Dómaldi.[77] Chinese annals tell us that there was a great drought and famine for seven years after the accession of T'ang, the noble and pious man who had overthrown the dynasty of Shang. It was then suggested at last by some one that a human victim should be offered in sacrifice to Heaven, and prayer be made for rain, to which T'ang replied, "If a man must be the victim I will be he."[78] Up to quite recent times, the priests of Lower Bengal have, in seasons of scarcity, offered up children to Siva; in the years 1865 and 1866, for instance, recourse was had to such sacrifices in order to avert famine.[79]

[Footnote 75: Pausanias, vii. 19. 3 sq. Diodorus Siculus, iv. 61. 1 sqq. Geusius, op. cit. i. ch. 14.]

[Footnote 76: Porphyry, op. cit. ii. 56.]

[Footnote 77: Snorri Sturluson, 'Ynglingasaga,' 15, in Heimskringla, i. 30.]

[Footnote 78: Legge, Religions of China, p. 54.]

[Footnote 79: Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, i. 128.]

For people subsisting on agriculture a failure of crops means starvation and death,[80] and is, consequently, attributed to the murderous designs of a superhuman being, such as the earth spirit, the morning star, the sun, or the rain-god. By sacrificing to that being a man, they hope to appease its thirst for human blood; and whilst some resort to such a sacrifice only in case of actual famine, others try to prevent famine by making the offering in advance. This I take to be the true explanation of the custom of securing good crops by means of human sacrifice, of which many instances have been produced by Dr. Frazer.[81] There are obvious links between this custom and that of the actual famine-sacrifice. Thus the ancient Peruvians sacrificed children after harvest, when they prepared to make ready the land for the next year, not every year, however, but "only when the weather was not good, and seasonable."[82] In Great Benin, "if there is too much {444} rain, then all the people would come from farm and beg Overami [the king] to make juju, and sacrifice to stop the rain. Accordingly a woman was taken, a prayer made over her, and a message saluting the rain god put in her mouth, then she was clubbed to death and put up in the execution tree so that the rain might see. . . . In the same way if there is too much sun so that there is a danger of the crops spoiling, Overami can sacrifice to the Sun God."[83] The principle of substitution admits of a considerable latitude in regard to the stage of danger at which the offering is made; the danger may be more imminent, or it may be more remote. This holds good of various kinds of human sacrifice, not only of such sacrifices as are intended to influence the crops. I am unable to subscribe to the hypothesis cautiously set forth by Dr. Frazer, that the human victim who is killed for the purpose of ensuring good crops is regarded as a representative of the corn-spirit and is slain as such. So far as I can see, Dr. Frazer has adduced no satisfactory evidence in support of his supposition; whereas a detailed examination of various cases mentioned by him in connection with it indicates that they are closely related to human sacrifices offered on other occasions, and explicable from the same principle, that of substitution.

[Footnote 80: Cf. Sleeman, Rambles and Recollections, i. 204 sqq.:--"In India, unfavourable seasons produce much more disastrous consequences than in Europe. . . . More than three-fourths of the whole population are engaged in the cultivation of the land, and depend upon its annual returns for subsistence. . . . Tens of thousands die here of starvation, under calamities of season, which in Europe would involve little of suffering to any class."]

[Footnote 81: Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 238 sqq.]

[Footnote 82: Herrera, op. cit. ii. 111.]

[Footnote 83: Moor and Roupell, quoted by Read and Dalton, op. cit. p. 7; also by Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 71.]

"The best known case of human sacrifices, systematically offered to ensure good crops," says Dr. Frazer, "is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs." The victims, or Meriahs, are represented by our authorities[84] as being offered to propitiate the Earth goddess, Tari Pennu or Bera Pennu, but from their treatment both before and after death it appears to Dr. Frazer that the custom cannot be explained as merely a propitiatory sacrifice. The flesh and the ashes of the Meriah, he observes, were believed to possess a magic power of fertilising the land, quite independent of the indirect efficacy which they might have as an offering to secure the goodwill of the deity. For, though a part of the flesh was offered to the Earth Goddess, the rest of it {445} was buried by each householder in his fields, and the ashes of the other parts of the body were scattered over the fields, laid as paste on the granaries, or mixed with the new corn. The same intrinsic power was ascribed to the blood and tears of the Meriah, his blood causing the redness of the turmeric and his tears producing rain; and magic power as an attribute of the victim appears, also in the sovereign virtue believed to reside in anything that came from his person, as his hair or spittle. Considering further that, according to our authorities, the Meriah was regarded as "something more than mortal," or that "a species of reverence, which it is not easy to distinguish from adoration, is paid to him," Dr. Frazer concludes that he may originally have represented the Earth deity or perhaps a deity of vegetation, and that he only in later times came to be regarded rather as a victim offered to a deity than as himself an incarnate deity.[85]

[Footnote 84: Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India.]

[Footnote 85: Frazer, op. cit. ii. 245 sq.]

The premise on which Dr. Frazer bases his argument appears to me quite untenable. It is an arbitrary supposition that the ascription of a magical power to the Meriah "indicates that he was much more than a mere man sacrificed to propitiate a deity."[86] A sacrifice is very commonly believed to be endowed with such a power, not as an original quality, but in consequence of its contact or communion with the supernatural being to which it is offered. Just as the Meriah of the Kandhs is taken round the village, from door to door, and some pluck hair from his head, while others beg for a drop of his spittle, so, among the nomadic Arabs of Morocco, at the Muhammedan "Great Feast," a man dressed in the bloody skin of the sheep which has been sacrificed on that occasion, goes from tent to tent, and beats each tent with his stick so as to confer blessings on its inhabitants. For he is now endowed with l-baraka del-[(]id, "the benign virtue of the feast"; and the same power is ascribed to various parts of the sacrificed sheep, which are consequently used for magical purposes. If Dr. Frazer's way of arguing were correct we should have to conclude that the victim was originally the god himself, or a representative of the god, to whom it is now offered in sacrifice. But the absurdity of any such inference becomes apparent at once when we consider that, in Morocco, every offering to a holy person, for instance to a deceased saint, is considered to participate in its sanctity. When the saint has his feast, and animals and other presents are brought to his tomb, it is customary for his descendants--who have a right to the offerings--to distribute {446} some flesh of the slaughtered animals among their friends, thereby conferring l-baraka of the saint upon those who eat it; and even candles which have been offered to the saint are given away for the same purpose, being instinct with his baraka. Of course, what holds good of the Arabs in Morocco does not necessarily hold good of the Kandhs of Bengal; but it should be remembered that Dr. Frazer's argument is founded on the notion that the ascription of a magic power to a victim which is offered in sacrifice to a god indicates that the victim was once regarded as a divine being or as the god himself; and the facts I have recorded certainly prove the arbitrariness of this supposition.

[Footnote 86: Ibid. ii. 246.]

This is by no means the only objection which may be raised against Dr. Frazer's hypothesis. In his description of the rite in question he has emphasised its connection with agriculture to a degree which is far from being justified by the accounts given by our authorities. Mr. Macpherson states that the human sacrifice to Tari Pennu was celebrated as a public oblation by tribes, branches of tribes, or villages, both at social festivals held periodically, and when special occasions demanded exceptional propitiations. It was celebrated "upon the occurrence of an extraordinary number of deaths by disease; or should very many die in childbirth; or should the flocks or herds suffer largely from disease, or from wild beasts; or should the greater crops threaten to fail"; while the occurrence of any marked calamity to the families of the chiefs, whose fortunes were regarded as the principal indication of the disposition of Tari towards their tribes, was held to be a token of wrath which could not be too speedily averted.[87] Moreover, besides these social offerings, the rite was performed by individuals to avert the wrath of Tari from themselves and their families, for instance, if a child, when watching his father's flock, was carried off by a tiger.[88] So, also, Mr. Campbell observes that the human blood was offered to the Earth goddess, "in the hope of thus obtaining abundant crops, averting calamity, and insuring general prosperity";[89] or that it was supposed "that good crops, and safety from all disease and accidents, were ensured by this slaughter."[90] According to another authority, Mr. Russell, the assembled multitude, when dancing round the victim, addressed the earth in the following words, "O God, we offer this sacrifice to you; give us good crops, seasons, and health."[91] Nor was the magic {447} virtue of the Meriah utilised solely for the benefit of the crops. According to one account, part of the flesh was buried near the village idol as an offering to the earth, and part on the boundaries of the village;[92] whilst in the invocation made by the priest, the goddess was represented as saying, "Let each man place a shred of the flesh in his fields, in his grain-store, and in his yard."[93] The ashes, again, were scattered over the fields, or "laid as paste over the houses and granaries."[94] It is also worth noticing that, among the Kandhs of Maji Deso, the offering was not at all made for the special purpose of obtaining cereal produce, "but for general prosperity, and blessings for themselves and families";[95] and that in the neighbouring principality, Chinna Kimedy, inhabited for the most part by Ooryahs, the sacrifice was not offered to the earth alone, "but to a number of deities, whose power is essential to life and happiness," especially to the god of war, the great god, and the sun god.[96] Now, whilst all these facts are in perfect agreement with the theory of substitution, they certainly do not justify the supposition that the Meriah was the representative of a deity of vegetation.

[Footnote 87: Macpherson, op. cit. p. 113 sq. See, also, ibid. pp. 120, 128 sqq.]

[Footnote 88: Ibid. p. 113 sq.]

[Footnote 89: Campbell, op. cit. p. 51.]

[Footnote 90: Ibid. p. 56. Cf. ibid. p. 73.]

[Footnote 91: Russell, quoted ibid. p. 54.]

[Footnote 92: Russell, quoted ibid. p. 55.]

[Footnote 93: Macpherson, op. cit. p. 122 sq.]

[Footnote 94: Ibid. p. 128.]

[Footnote 95: Campbell, op. cit. p. 181.]

[Footnote 96: Ibid. p. 120. Cf. ibid. p. 197:--Among the Ooryahs human sacrifice is "performed on important occasions, such as going to battle, building a fort in an important village, and to avert any threatened danger."]

The same may be said about other cases mentioned by Dr. Frazer, when more closely examined. "The Indians of Guayaquil, in Ecuador," he says, "used to sacrifice human blood and the hearts of men when they sowed their fields."[97] But our authority, Cieza de Leon, adds that those Indians also offered human victims when their chiefs were sick "to appease the wrath of their gods."[98] "The Pawnees," Dr. Frazer writes, "annually sacrificed a human victim in spring when they sowed their fields. The sacrifice was believed to have been enjoined on them by the Morning Star, or by a certain bird which the Morning Star had sent to them as its messenger . . . . They thought that an omission of this sacrifice would be followed by the total failure of the crops of maize, beans, and pumpkins.[99] James, to whom Dr. Frazer refers, and other authorities say that the human sacrifice was a propitiatory offering made to that star,[100] a planet which especially with the Skidi--the only section {448} of the Pawnees who offered human sacrifices--was an object of superstitious veneration.[101] Sickness, misfortune, and personal mishaps of various kinds were often spoken of as attributable to the incurred ill-will of the heavenly bodies;[102] and the object of the sacrifice to the morning star is expressly said to have been "to avert the evil influences exerted by that planet."[103] According to Mr. Dunbar, whose important[104] article dealing with the subject has escaped Dr. Frazer's notice, "the design of the bloody ordeal was to conciliate that being and secure a good crop. Hence," he continues, "it has been supposed that the morning star was regarded by them as presiding over agriculture, but this was a mistake. They sacrificed to that star because they feared it, imagining that it exerted malign influence if not well disposed. It has also been stated that the sacrifice was made annually. This, too, was an error. It was made only when special occurrences were interpreted as calling for it."[105] At the present day the Indians speak of the sacrifice as having been made to Ti-ra'-wa, the Supreme Being or the deity "who is in and of everything."[106] In the detailed account of the rite, which was given to Mr. Grinnell by an old chief who had himself witnessed it several times, it is said:--"While the smoke of the blood and the buffalo meat, and of the burning body, ascended to the sky, all the people prayed to Ti-ra'-wa, and walked by the fire and grasped handfuls of the smoke, and passed it over their bodies and over those of their children, and prayed Ti-ra'-wa to take pity on them, and to give them health, and success in war, and plenteous crops . . . . This sacrifice always seemed acceptable to Ti-ra'-wa, and when the Skidi made it they always seemed to have good fortune in war, and good crops, and they were always well."[107] According to this description, then, the human sacrifice of the Pawnees, like that of the Kandhs, was not an exclusively agricultural rite, but was performed for the purpose of averting dangers of various kinds. And this is also suggested by Mr. Dunbar's relation of the last instance of this sacrifice, which occurred in April, 1838. In the previous winter the Skidi, soon after starting on their hunt, had a successful fight with a band of Oglala Dacotahs, and fearing that the Dacotahs would retaliate by coming upon them in overwhelming force, {449} they returned for safety to their village before taking a sufficient number of buffaloes. "With little to eat, they lived miserably, lost many of their ponies from scarcity of forage, and, worst of all, one of the captives proved to have the small-pox, which rapidly spread through the band, and in the spring was communicated to the rest of the tribe. All these accumulated misfortunes the Ski'-di attributed to the anger of the morning star; and accordingly they resolved to propitiate its favour by a repetition of the sacrifice, though in direct violation of a stipulation made two years before that the sacrifice should not occur again."[108]

[Footnote 97: Frazer, op. cit. ii. 238.]

[Footnote 98: Cieza de Leon, La Crónica del Perú [parte primera], ch. 55 (Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxvi. 409).]

[Footnote 99: Frazer, op. cit. ii. 238.]

[Footnote 100: James, Expedition from Pittsburg to the Rocky Mountains, i. 357. Grinnell, Pawnee Hero Stories and Folk-Tales, p. 357. Dunbar, 'Pawnee Indians,' in Magazine of American History, viii. 738.]

[Footnote 101: Dunbar, loc. cit. p. 738.]

[Footnote 102: Ibid. p. 736.]

[Footnote 103: Grinnell, op. cit. p. 357.]

[Footnote 104: Mr. Dunbar is "born and reared among the Pawnees, familiar with them until early manhood, a frequent visitor to the tribe in later years" (Grinnell, op. cit. p. 213).]

[Footnote 105: Dunbar, loc. cit. p. 738 sq.]

[Footnote 106: Grinnell, op. cit. pp. 357, 358, xvii.]

[Footnote 107: Ibid. p. 367.]

[Footnote 108: Dunbar, loc. cit. p. 740.]

Nor is there any reason whatever to suppose that the Brahman boys whom the Gonds of India used to kidnap and keep as victims to be sacrificed on various occasions,[109] were regarded as representatives of a spirit or god. They were offered up to Bhímsen, the chief object of worship among the Gonds, represented by a piece of iron fixed in a stone or in a tree,[110] now "to sanctify a marriage, now to be wedded to the soil, and again to be given away to the evil spirit of the epidemic raging," or "on the eve of a struggle."[111]

[Footnote 109: Frazer, op. cit. ii. 241.]

[Footnote 110: Panjab Notes and Queries, § 550, vol. ii. 90.]

[Footnote 111: Ibid. § 721, vol. ii. 127 sq.]

Dr. Frazer writes:--"At Lagos In Guinea it was the custom annually to impale a young girl alive soon after the spring equinox in order to secure good crops . . . . A similar sacrifice used to be annually offered at Benin."[112] But Dr. Frazer omits an important fact mentioned or alluded to by the two authorities he quotes which gives us the key to the custom, without suggesting that it has anything to do with the corn-spirit. Adams states that the young woman was impaled "to propitiate the favour of the goddess presiding over the rainy season, that she may fill the horn of plenty."[113] And M. Bouche observes, "Au Bénin, on a conservé jusqu'à présent un usage qui régnait jadis à Lagos et ailleurs: celui d'empaler une jeune fille, au commencement de la saison des pluies, afin de rendre les orichas propices aux récoltes."[114] From these statements it appears that the sacrifice was intended to influence the rain, on which the crops essentially depend. That its immediate object was to produce rain is expressly affirmed by Sir R. Burton. At Benin he saw "a young woman lashed to a scaffolding upon the summit of a tall blasted tree and being devoured by the turkey-buzzards. The people declared it to be a 'fetish,' or {450} charm for bringing rain."[115] We have previously noticed that the people of Benin also have recourse to a human sacrifice if there is too much rain, or too much sun, so that the crops are in danger of being spoiled.[116] The theory of substitution accounts for all these cases.

[Footnote 112: Frazer, op. cit. ii. 239.]

[Footnote 113: Adams, Sketches taken during Ten Voyages to Africa, p. 25.]

[Footnote 114: Bouche, Sept ans en Afrique occidentale, p. 132.]

[Footnote 115: Burton, Abeokuta, i. 19 n.*]

[Footnote 116: Supra, p. 443 sq.]

The practice of offering human victims for the purpose of preventing drought and famine by producing rain is apparently not restricted to West Africa. In the beginning of their year, the ancient Mexicans sacrificed many prisoners of war and children who had been purchased for that purpose, to the gods of water, so as to induce them to give the rain necessary for the crops.[117] The Pipiles of Guatemala celebrated every year two festivals which were accompanied by human sacrifices, the one in the beginning of the rainy season, the other in the beginning of the dry season.[118] In India, among the aboriginal tribes to the south-west of Beerbhoom, Sir W. W. Hunter "heard vague reports of human sacrifices in the forests, with a view to procuring the early arrival of the rains."[119] Without venturing to express any definite opinion on a very obscure subject which has already led to so many guesses,[120] I may perhaps be justified in here calling attention to the fact that Zeus Lycæus, in whose cult human sacrifices played a prominent part, was conceived of as a god who sent the rain.[121] It appears from ancient traditions or legends that the idea of procuring rainfall by means of such sacrifices was not unfamiliar to the Greeks. A certain Molpis offered himself to Zeus Ombrios, the rain-god, in time of drought.[122] Pausanias tells us that once, when a drought had for some time afflicted Greece, messengers were sent to Delphi to inquire the cause, and to beg for a riddance of the evil. The Pythian priestess told them to propitiate Zeus, and that Aeacus should be the intercessor; and then Aeacus, by sacrifices and prayers to Panhellenian Zeus, procured rain for Greece.[123] But Diodorus adds that the drought and famine, whilst ceasing in all other parts of the country, still continued in Attica, so that the {451} Athenians once more resorted to the Oracle. The answer was now given them that they had to expiate the murder of Androgeus, and that this should be done in any way his father, Minos, required. The satisfaction demanded by the latter was, that they every nine years should send seven boys and as many girls to be devoured by the Minotaur, and that this should be done as long as the monster lived. So the **Athenians did, and the calamity ceased.[124]

[Footnote 117: Sahagun, Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, i. 50. Torquemada, Monarchia Indiana, ii. 251. Clavigero, op. cit. i. 297.]

[Footnote 118: Stoll, Ethnologie der Indianerstämme von Guatemala, p. 46.]

[Footnote 119: Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, i. 128.]

[Footnote 120: See Immerwahr, Die Kulte und Mythen Arkadiens, i. 16 sqq. Professor Robertson Smith suggests ('Sacrifice,' in Encyclopædia Britannica, xxi. 136) that the human sacrifices offered to Zeus Lycæus were originally cannibal feasts of a wolf tribe.]

[Footnote 121: Pausanias, viii. 38. 4. Farnell, op. cit. i. 41.]

[Footnote 122: Farnell, op. cit. i. 42.]

[Footnote 123: Pausanias, ii. 29. 7 sq.]

[Footnote 124: Diodorus Siculus, op. cit. iv. 61. 1 sqq.]

As an instance of the close relationship which exists between human sacrifices offered for agricultural purposes and other human sacrifices, the following case may also be mentioned. According to Strachey, the Indians in some part of Virginia had a yearly sacrifice of children. These sacrifices they held so necessary that if they should omit them, they supposed their gods "would let them no deare, turkies, corne, nor fish," and, besides, "would make a great slaughter amongst them."[125]

[Footnote 125: Strachey, History of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, p. 95 sq.]

Men require for their subsistence not only food, but drink. Hence when the earth fails to supply them with water, they are liable to regard it as an attempt against their lives, which can be averted only by the sacrifice of a human substitute.

In India, in former times, human victims were offered to several minor gods "whenever a newly excavated tank failed to produce sufficient water."[126] In Kâthiâwâr, for instance, if a pond had been dug and would not hold water, a man was sacrificed; and the Vadala lake in Bombay "refused to hold water till the local spirit was appeased by the sacrifice of the daughter of the village headman."[127] There is a legend that, when the bed of the Saugor lake remained dry, the builder "was told, in a dream, or by a priest, that it would continue so till he should consent to sacrifice his own daughter, then a girl, and the young lad to whom she had been affianced, to the tutelary god of the place. He accordingly built a little shrine in the centre of the valley, which was to become the bed of the lake, put the two children in, and built up the doorway. He had no sooner done so than the whole of the valley became filled with water."[128] When Colonel Campbell was rescuing Meriahs among the {452} Kandhs, it was believed by some that he was collecting victims for the purpose of sacrificing them on the plains to the water deity, because the water had disappeared from a large tank which he had constructed.[129] According to a story related by Pausanias, the district of Haliartus was originally parched and waterless, hence one of the rulers went to Delphi and inquired how the people should find water in the land. "The Pythian priestess commanded him to slay the first person he should meet on his return to Haliartus. On his arrival he was met by his son Lophis, and, without hesitation, he struck the young man with his sword. The youth had life enough left to run about, and where the blood flowed water gushed from the ground. Therefore the river is called Lophis."[130]

[Footnote 126: Rájendralála Mitra, op. cit. ii. 111.]

[Footnote 127: Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, ii. 174.]

[Footnote 128: Sleeman, Rambles, i. 129 sq.]

[Footnote 129: Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, p. 129.]

[Footnote 130: Pausanias, ix. 33. 4.]

Human sacrifices are offered with a view to averting perils arising from the sea or from rivers.

When the Greeks were afflicted by stress of weather at Aulis, they were bidden to sacrifice Iphigenia, in order to lull the winds.[131] Menelaus was persecuted by the Egyptians for sacrificing two children when he was desirous of sailing away and contrary winds detained him.[132] According to an Athenian writer, the colonists who first went to Lesbos were directed by an oracle to throw a virgin into the sea, as an offering to Poseidon.[133] Sextus Pompeius cast men into the sea as an offering to Neptune.[134] Hamilcar, also, following a custom of his country, threw a company of priests into the sea, as a sacrifice to the sea god.[135] The Saxons, when they were about to leave the coast of Gaul and sail home, sacrificed the tenth part of their captives.[136] The Vikings of Scandinavia, when launching a new ship, seemed to have bound a victim to the rollers on which the vessel slipped into the sea, thus reddening the keel with sacrificial blood.[137] In 1784, at the launching of one of the Bey of Tripoli's cruisers, a black slave was led forward and fastened at the prow of the vessel.[138] The Fijians launched their canoes over the living bodies of slaves as rollers,[139] or, according to {453} another account, when a large canoe was launched, they laid hold of the first person, man or woman, whom they encountered, and carried the victim home for a feast.[140] On the deck of a new boat belonging to the most powerful chief in the group, ten or more men were slaughtered, in order that it might be washed with human blood.[141]

[Footnote 131: Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 215 sq.]

[Footnote 132: Herodotus, ii. 119.]

[Footnote 133: Athenæus, Deipnosophistæ, xi. 15.]

[Footnote 134: Dio Cassius, Historia Romana, xlviii. 48.]

[Footnote 135: Diodorus Siculus, xiii. 86.]

[Footnote 136: Sidonius Apollinaris, Epistulæ, viii. 6. 15.]

[Footnote 137: Vigfusson and Powell, op. cit. i. 410; ii. 349.]

[Footnote 138: Simpson, quoted by Grant Allen, Evolution of the Idea of God, p. 263.]

[Footnote 139: Erskine, Cruise among the Islands of the Western Pacific, p. 249.]

[Footnote 140: Wilkes, U.S. Exploring Expedition, iii. 97. Cf. Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 175.]

[Footnote 141: Wilkes, op. cit. iii. 97.]

The Zuñi Indians have a tradition that the waters of their valley once rose in a flood and compelled the inhabitants to flee to a table-land several hundred feet high for safety; and when the waters still rose, threatening to submerge the table-land itself, the priest determined to sacrifice a youth and a maiden to propitiate them.[142] When Seleucus Nicator founded Antioch on the Orontes, the high priest sacrificed a virgin at a place between the town and the river,[143] presumably in order to prevent the town from being flooded by the river. When the converted Franks marched to Italy under their king, Theodebert, to fight against the Goths under Vitigis, and were on the point of crossing the Po, they sacrificed what children and wives of Goths they found, and threw their corpses into the river, according to Procopius, "as the first fruits of the war."[144] At Rome, every year on the Ides of May, the Vestal Virgins threw from the Sublician bridge into the Tiber thirty human effigies formed of rushes; the Romans themselves were of opinion that at an earlier period living men had been hurled into the river, and that it was Hercules who first substituted images of straw.[145] In West Africa human sacrifices are often offered to rivers. Major Ellis states that at each town or considerable village upon the banks of the river Prah sacrifice is held on a day about the middle of October, to Prah. "As loss of life frequently occurs in this river, from persons attempting to cross it when flooded, from a sudden rise, or from those hundred minor accidents which must always occur in the neighbourhood of a deep and strong stream, the gods of the Prah are considered very malignant. The sacrifice is, in consequence, proportionate. The usual sacrifice in former times was two human adults, one male and one female. They. . . . were decapitated on the bank of the river, and the stool and image of the god washed with their {454} blood. The bodies were then cut into a number of pieces, which were distributed amongst the mangroves, or the sedge bordering the river, for the crocodiles to eat; crocodiles being sacred in Prah."[146] According to M. le Comte de Cardi, all the river-side tribes of the Niger Delta used to propitiate the river deity by the sacrifice of a copper-coloured girl, procured from a tribe of Ibos inhabiting a country away in the hinterland of New Calabar, or in some places an Albino; and it seems that this custom is still practised in the British Protectorate.[147] The Ibos themselves were in the habit of throwing human beings into the river to be eaten by alligators or fishes, or to fasten them to trees or branches, close to the river, where they were left to perish by hunger.[148] In Eastern Central Africa, also, human sacrifices are offered to rivers.[149] And in the East Indies there are various traditions of such sacrifices being made to the divine crocodiles of the sea.[150]

[Footnote 142: Stevenson, 'A Chapter of Zuñi Mythology,' in Memoirs of the International Congress of Anthropology, Chicago, p. 316.]

[Footnote 143: Malala, Chronographia, viii. 255 (200).]

[Footnote 144: Procopius, Bellum Gothicum, ii. 25.]

[Footnote 145: Ovid, Fasti, 621 sq. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Antiquitates Romanæ, i. 38. Hartland, Legend of Perseus, iii. 78.]

[Footnote 146: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 64 sq. Cf. Idem, Land of Fetish, p. 122.]

[Footnote 147: Comte de Cardi, 'Ju-ju Laws and Customs in the Niger Delta,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxix. 54. Cf. Mockler-Ferryman, British Nigeria, p. 235.]

[Footnote 148: Schoen and Crowther, op. cit. p. 49.]

[Footnote 149: Macdonald, Africana, i. 96.]

[Footnote 150: Tylor, 'Anniversary Address,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxi. 408. Hartland, op. cit. iii. 70 sq.]

In the cases which we have hitherto considered the offering of human sacrifices is mostly a matter of public concern, a method of ensuring the lives of many by the death of one or a few. But human life is also sacrificed, by way of substitution, for the purpose of preventing the death of some particular individual, especially a chief or a king, from sickness, old age, or other circumstances.

In Guatemala, in the case of a dangerous illness, human sacrifice was resorted to when all other attempts to cure the patient failed. Of the Indians of Guayaquil, Cieza de Leon states:--"When the chiefs were sick, to appease the wrath of their gods, and pray for health, they made . . . . sacrifices of a superstitious nature, killing men (as I was told), and believing that human blood was a grateful offering."[151] Acosta writes:--"They vsed in Peru to sacrifice yong children of foure or six yeares old vnto tenne; and the greatest parte of these sacrifices were for the affaires that did import the Ynca, as in sickness for his health, and when he went to the {455} warres for victory, or when they gave the wreathe to their new Ynca, which is the marke of a King, as heere the Scepter and the Crowne be. In this solemnitie they sacrificed the number of two hundred children, from foure to ten yeares of age . . . . If any Indian qualified or of the common sorte were sicke, and that the Divine told him confidently that he should die, they did then sacrifice his owne sonne to the Sunne or to Virachoca, desiring them to be satisfied with him, and that they would not deprive the father of life."[152] According to Molina, "the Lord Ynca offered sacrifices [of children] when he began to reign, that the huacas [or idols] might give him health, and preserve his dominions in peace."[153] Herrera tells us that the ancient Peruvians, when any person of note was sick, and the priest predicted his death, sacrificed the patient's son, "desiring the idol to be satisfie'd with him, and not to take away his father's life."[154] Garcilasso de la Vega, again, denies the existence of any such custom in the kingdom of the Incas,[155] but asserts that, before their reign, the Indians of Peru offered up their own children on certain occasions.[156] According to Jerez, some of the Peruvian Indians sacrificed their own children each month, and anointed with the blood the faces of their idols and the doors of their temples.[157] The Tonga Islanders had a ceremony called nawgia, or the ceremony of strangling children as sacrifices to the gods, for the recovery of a sick relative. Our informant says:--"All the bystanders behold the innocent victim with feelings of the greatest pity; but it is proper, they think, to sacrifice a child who is at present of no use to society, and perhaps may not otherwise live to be, with the hope of recovering a sick chief, whom all esteem and whom all think it a most important duty to respect, defend, and preserve, that his life may be of advantage to the country."[158] The Tahitians offered human sacrifices during the illnesses of their rulers.[159] In the Philippines, if a prince was dangerously ill or dying, slaves were slaughtered in order to satisfy the malignant ancestral soul who was supposed to have caused the disease.[160] Among the Dyaks, when a raja "falls sick, or goes on a journey, it is {456} common for him to vow a head to his tribe in case of recovery or of safe return. Should he die, one or two heads are usually offered by the tribe as a kind of sacrifice."[161] Among the Banjârîlu of Southern India, who are great travelling traders, it was formerly the custom "before starting out on a journey to procure a little child, and bury it in the ground up to its shoulders, and then drive their loaded bullocks over the unfortunate victim, and in proportion to the bullocks thoroughly trampling the child to death, so their belief in a successful journey increased."[162] In India human sacrifices were also offered to the goddess Chandiká to save the life of a king.[163] It is probable that the idea of substitution likewise accounts for the sacrifice of a young girl which a certain raja is reported to have offered in 1861, at the shrine of the goddess Durga, in the town of Jaipúr, when he installed himself at his father's decease,[164] and for the sacrifice of a Brahmin which a raja of Ratanpúr had offered up to Deví every year.[165] In Great Benin, once a year, at the end of the rainy season, all the king's beads were brought out by the boys in whose care they were kept. They were put in a heap, and a slave was compelled to kneel down over them. The king cut or struck the head of the slave with a spear so that the blood ran over the beads, and said to them, "Oh, beads, when I put you on, give me wisdom and don't let any juju or bad thing come near me." Then the slave was told, "So you shall tell the head juju when you see him." The slave was led out and beheaded, but his head was brought in again, and the beads were touched with it.[166] Among the ancient Gauls persons who were troubled with unusually severe diseases either sacrificed men or promised that they would make such sacrifices.[167] In the Ynglingasaga we are told that King Aun sacrificed nine sons, one after the other, to Odin for the purpose of obtaining a prolongation of his life.[168] According to Macrobius, the ancient Romans immolated children to the goddess Mania, the mother of the Lares, "to promote the health of the families."[169] Suetonius states that Nero, frightened by the sight of a comet, sacrificed a number of Roman noblemen {457} in order to avert the disaster from himself.[170] Antinous, according to one account, sacrificed himself to prolong the life of Hadrian.[171] The notion that the death of one person may serve as a substitute for the death of another still prevails in the Vatican. When, during Leo XIII.'s last illness, one of the Cardinals died, it was said that his death had saved the life of the Pope, Heaven being satisfied with one victim. In Morocco, if a son or a daughter dies, it is customary to say to the afflicted parents, "Why are you sorry? Your child took away your misfortune (bas)." A similar custom prevails in Syria and Palestine.[172]

[Footnote 151: Cieza de Leon, La Crónica del Perú [parte primera], ch. 55 (Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxvi. 409).]

[Footnote 152: Acosta, op. cit. ii. 344.]

[Footnote 153: de Molina, loc. cit. p. 55.]

[Footnote 154: Herrera, General History of the West Indies, iv. 347.]

[Footnote 155: Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 131.]

[Footnote 156: Ibid. i. 50.]

[Footnote 157: Jerez, 'Conquista del Perú,' in Biblioteca de autores españoles, xxvi. 327.]

[Footnote 158: Mariner, Natives of the Tonga Islands, ii. 220.]

[Footnote 159: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 346.]

[Footnote 160: Blumentritt, quoted by Wilken, 'Ueber das Haaropfer,' in Revue coloniale internationale, 1887, i. 364 sq.]

[Footnote 161: Pfeiffer, A Lady's Second Journey round the World, i. 86.]

[Footnote 162: Cain, 'Bhadrachellam and Rekapalli Taluqas,' in Indian Antiquary, viii. 219.]

[Footnote 163: Crooke, Popular Religion in Northern India, ii. 168.]

[Footnote 164: North Indian Notes and Queries, § 310, vol. i. 40.]

[Footnote 165: Panjab Notes and Queries, § 869, vol. ii. 162.]

[Footnote 166: Moor and Roupell, quoted by Read and Dalton, op. cit. p. 7; also by Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 71.]

[Footnote 167: Cæsar, De bello gallico, vi. 16.]

[Footnote 168: Snorri Sturluson, 'Ynglingasaga,' 25, in Heimskringla, i. 45 sqq.]

[Footnote 169: Macrobius, Saturnalia, i. 7.]

[Footnote 170: Suetonius, Nero, 36.]

[Footnote 171: Spartian, Vita Hadriani, 14. Aurelius Victor, De Cæsaribus, 14. Dio Cassius, Historia Romana, lxix. 11.]

[Footnote 172: Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day, p. 208.]

Men are sacrificed not only to preserve the lives of other men, but to help other men into existence. Barrenness is attributed to some god keeping back the children which would otherwise be born in the due course of nature. And in order to remove this obstacle a human being, generally a child, is sacrificed to serve, as it were, as a substitute. This I take to be the explanation of the practice of offering a human sacrifice with a view to promoting fecundity, a practice which has been particularly common in India.

In the history of ancient Mexico we read of Nezahualcoyotl, prince of the Tezcucans, who had been married some years without being blest with issue. "The priests represented that it was owing to his neglect of the gods of his country, and that his only remedy was to propitiate them by human sacrifice."[173] In Hindu traditions and books a numerous offspring is promised to him who offers a man in sacrifice.[174] In Jainteapore, east of Sylhet, human sacrifices were made to the goddess Kali, in hopes of procuring progeny.[175] Speaking of the Mahadeo sandstone hills which, in the Sathpore range, overlook the Nerbudda to the south, Sir W. H. Sleeman states:--"When a woman is without children she makes votive offerings to all the gods who can, she thinks, assist her; and promises of still greater in case they should grant what she wants. Smaller promises being found of no avail, she at last promises her first-born, if a {458} male, to the god of destruction, Mahadeo. If she gets a son she conceals from him her vows till he has attained the age of puberty; she then communicates it to him, and enjoins him to fulfil it." From that moment he regards himself as devoted to the god, and, at the annual fair on the Mahadeo hills, throws himself from a perpendicular height of four or five hundred feet, and is dashed to pieces upon the rocks below.[176] In one of the tales of Somadeva an ascetic tells a woman that, if she killed her young son and offered him to the divinity, another son would certainly be born to her.[177] We meet with a similar idea in the story of king Somaka. For some time he did not succeed in getting a single son from any of his one hundred wives. Finally he got a single son; but he wanted more, and asked the family priest whether there was not a ceremony which could help him to a hundred sons. The family priest answered:--"O king! let me set on foot a sacrifice, and thou must sacrifice thy son, Jantu, in it. Then on no distant date, a century of handsome sons will be born to thee. When Jantu's fat will be put into the fire as an offering to the gods, the mothers will take a smell of that smoke, and bring forth a number of sons, valorous and strong. And Jantu also will once more be born as a self-begotten son of thine, in that very mother; and on his back there will appear a mark of gold." The son was sacrificed; the wives smelt the smell of the burnt-offering; all of them became with child; and when ten months had passed one hundred sons were born to Somaka, of whom Jantu was the eldest, being born of his former mother. But the family priest departed this life, and was grilled for a certain period in a terrible hell as a punishment for what he had done.[178]

[Footnote 173: Prescott, History of the Conquest of Mexico, p. 91.]

[Footnote 174: Chevers, op. cit. p. 399.]

[Footnote 175: Macnaghten, quoted ibid. p. 397.]

[Footnote 176: Sleeman, op. cit. i. 132 sq.]

[Footnote 177: Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, ii. 173.]

[Footnote 178: Mahabharata, Vana Parva, 127 sq. (pt. vi. p. 188 sq.).]

Among certain peoples it is a regular custom to kill the firstborn child, or the firstborn son.

Among some natives of Australia a mother used to kill and eat her first child, as this was believed to strengthen her for later births.[179] In New South Wales the firstborn of every lubra used to be eaten by the tribe "as part of a religious ceremony."[180] In the realm of Khai-muh, in China, according to {459} a native account, it was customary to kill and devour the eldest son alive.[181] Among certain tribes in British Columbia the first child is often sacrificed to the sun.[182] The Indians of Florida, according to Le Moyne de Morgues, sacrificed the firstborn son to the chief.[183] We are told that, among the people of Senjero in Eastern Africa, many families "must offer up their firstborn sons as sacrifices, because once upon a time, when summer and winter were jumbled together in a bad season, and the fruits of the field would not ripen, the sooth-sayers enjoined it."[184] The heathen Russians often sacrificed their firstborn to the god Perun.[185] The rule laid down in Exodus[186] and Numbers,[187] that all the firstborn of men and of beasts belonged to the Lord, but that the former were to be redeemed, seems to indicate the existence of an earlier custom among the Hebrews of offering up as a sacrifice, not only the firstling of an animal, but the firstborn child. As traces of such a custom may probably be regarded the story of Abraham's surrender of his firstborn son to God and the tradition of the origin of the Passover.[188] Among the Hindus, until the beginning of the last century, many parents sacrificed their firstborn to the river Ganges.[189]

[Footnote 179: Brinton, Religions of Primitive Peoples, p. 17 n.* Cf. von Scherzer, Reise der Oesterreichischen Fregatte Novara um die Erde, iii. 32.]

[Footnote 180: Brough Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, ii. 311.]

[Footnote 181: de Groot, Religious System of China (vol. ii. book) i. 679.]

[Footnote 182: Boas, in Fifth Report on the North-Western Tribes of Canada, pp. 46, 52.]

[Footnote 183: Bry, Narrative of Le Moyne, Descriptions of the Illustrations, 34, p. 13. Cf. Lafitau, M[oe]urs des sauvages ameriquains, i. 181; Strachey, op. cit. p. 84.]

[Footnote 184: Krapf, Travels, p. 69 sq.]

[Footnote 185: Mone, quoted by Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 52.]

[Footnote 186: Exodus, xiii. 2, 15.]

[Footnote 187: Numbers, xviii. 15.]

[Footnote 188: See Ghillany, op. cit. p. 494 sqq.; Kuenen, Religion of Israel, ii. 92; Frazer, op. cit. ii. 47 sqq.]

[Footnote 189: Rájendralála Mitra, op. cit. ii. 70, 76.]

In some instances the firstborn seems to be killed, not in sacrifice to a god, but for the purpose of being eaten as a kind of medicine.[190] In other cases the act is a sacrifice in the true sense of the word and, apparently, substitutional in character. Considering that children are occasionally sacrificed to save the lives of their parents, or for the health of the families, or to promote fecundity, it seems probable that the regular sacrifice of the firstborn has similar objects in view. This supposition, indeed, is strongly supported by some statements in which the motive of the act is expressly mentioned.[191] Among the {460} Coast Salish of British Columbia the first child is sacrificed to the sun "to secure health and happiness to the whole family."[192] The same is reported of a neighbouring people, the Kutonaqa. The mother prays to the sun:--"I am with child. When it is born I shall offer it to you. Have pity upon us."[193] Among some tribes of South-Eastern Africa it is a rule that, when a woman's husband has been killed in battle and she marries again, the first child to which she gives birth after her second marriage must be put to death, whether she has it by her first or her second husband. Such a child is called "the child of the assegai," and if it were not killed, death or accident would be sure to befall the second spouse, and the woman herself would be barren.[194] Among some peoples, including the ancient Hindus, we find the belief that the son is in some sense identical with his father, that he is a new birth, a new manifestation of the same person.[195] The new birth might be supposed to endanger the life of the father, just as, according to a notion prevalent among the ancient Teutons[196] and in some parts of Italy,[197] a person would soon die if his name were given to his son or grandson whilst he was still alive. Among the Brazilian Tupis the father was accustomed to take a new name after the birth of each new son;[198] whilst, on killing an enemy, a person used to take the enemy's name so as to annihilate not only his body but also his soul.[199] Among the Kafirs, "if a mother gives birth to twins, one is frequently killed by the father, for the natives think that unless the father places a lump of earth in the mouth of one of the babies he will lose his strength."[200] In some {461} cases the practice of killing the firstborn son might possibly be traced back to a similar belief. But I can quote no fact directly supporting this suggestion.

[Footnote 190: Cf. supra, p. 401.]

[Footnote 191: Cf. Micah, vi. 7: "Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?"]

[Footnote 192: Boas, op. cit. p. 46.]

[Footnote 193: Ibid. p. 52.]

[Footnote 194: Macdonald, Light in Africa, p. 156. Frazer, op. cit. ii. 51 sq.]

[Footnote 195: Hartland, op. cit. i. 217 sq. von den Steinen, Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, p. 336 sq. Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 98 sqq. Idem, Alt-arisches Jus Civile, i. 189 sqq. Laws of Manu, ix. 8: "The husband, after conception by his wife, becomes an embryo and is born again of her."]

[Footnote 196: Storm, quoted by Noreen, Spridda Studier, Anara Samlingen, p. 4.]

[Footnote 197: Placucci, Usi e pregiudizj dei contadini della Romagna, p. 23.]

[Footnote 198: von den Steinen, op. cit. p. 337.]

[Footnote 199: Staden, quoted by Andree, Anthropophagie, p. 103.]

[Footnote 200: Kidd, The Essential Kafir, p. 202. I am indebted to Mr. N. W. Thomas for drawing my attention to this statement.]

Human sacrifices are offered in connection with the foundation of buildings. This is a wide-spread custom, which not only occurs among various uncivilised and semi-civilised peoples of the present day, but which is proved to have existed among the so-called Aryan races.[201] In India we find traces of it in traditions and popular beliefs.[202] The Hindu rajas, we are told, used to lay the foundation of public buildings in human blood.[203] When Mr. Grierson wanted to photograph a Bih[=a]r peasant house, the grandmother of the family refused to allow any of the children to appear in the picture, her reason being that the Government was building the bridge across the Gandak and wanted children to bury under the foundations.[204] Among the ancient Romans the old custom survived in the practice of placing statues or images under the foundations of their buildings.[205] In the island of Zacynthus the peasants to this day believe that in order to secure the durability of important buildings, such as bridges and fortresses, it is desirable to kill a man, especially a Muhammedan or a Jew, and bury him on the spot.[206] South Slavonian folk-tales speak of the immuration of a woman or a child as a foundation sacrifice.[207] In Servia no city was thought to be secure unless a human being, or at least the shadow of one, was built into its walls;[208] and the Bulgarians, when {462} going to build, are still said to take a thread and measure the shadow of some casual passer-by, and then bury the measure under the foundation-stone, expecting that the man whose shadow has been thus treated will soon die.[209] A similar custom prevails in Roumania.[210] According to Nennius, when Dinas Emris in Wales was founded by Gortigern, all the materials collected for the fortress were carried away in one night; and materials were thus gathered thrice, and were thrice carried away. When he then asked of his Druids, "Whence this evil?" the Druids told him that it was necessary to find a child whose father was unknown, put him to death, and sprinkle with his blood the ground on which the citadel was to be built.[211] A Scotch legend tells that, when St. Columba first attempted to build a cathedral on Iona, the walls fell down as they were erected; he then received supernatural information that they would never stand unless a human victim was buried alive, and, in consequence, his companion, Oran, was interred at the foundation of the structure.[212] It is reported that, when not long ago the Bridge Gate of Bremen city walls was demolished, the skeleton of a child was found embedded in the groundwork;[213] and when the new bridge at Halle, finished in 1843, was building, "the common people fancied a child was wanted to be walled into the foundations."[214]

[Footnote 201: Sartori, 'Ueber das Bauopfer,' in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, xxx. 5 sqq. Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 104 sqq. Baring-Gould, Strange Survivals, p. 4 sqq. Trumbull, Threshold Covenant, p. 46 sqq. Grant Allen, Evolution of the Idea of God, p. 249 sqq. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 284 sqq. Andree, Ethnographische Parallelen, p. 18 sqq. Nyrop, Romanske Mosaiker, p. 63 sqq. Krause, 'Das Bauopfer bei den Südslaven,' in Mittheilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, xvii. 18 sqq. Wuttke, Der deutsche Volksaberglaube der Gegenwart, § 440, p. 300 sq.]

[Footnote 202: Winternitz, 'Bemerkungen über das Bauopfer bei den Indern,' in Mittheil. Anthr. Gesellsch. in Wien, xvii. [37] sqq.]

[Footnote 203: Wheeler, History of India, iv. 278.]

[Footnote 204: Grierson, Bih[=a]r Peasant Life, p. 4.]

[Footnote 205: Coote, 'A Building Superstition,' in Folk-Lore Journal, i. 23.]

[Footnote 206: Schmidt, Volksleben der Neu-Griechen, p. 197.]

[Footnote 207: Krauss, loc. cit. p. 19 sqq.]

[Footnote 208: Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 127.]

[Footnote 209: Ibid. p. 127. Krauss, loc. cit. p. 21.]

[Footnote 210: Folk-Lore Record, iii. 283.]

[Footnote 211: Nennius, Historia Britonum, Irish Version, ch. 18, p. 93.]

[Footnote 212: Gomme, 'Some Traditions and Superstitions connected with Buildings,' in The Antiquary, iii. 11. Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, ii. 316.]

[Footnote 213: Baring-Gould, Strange Survivals, p. 5.]

[Footnote 214: Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, iii. 1142.]

It seems highly probable that the building-sacrifice, like other kinds of human sacrifice, is based on the idea of substitution. A new house or dwelling-place is commonly regarded as dangerous, a wall or a tower is liable to fall down and cause destruction of life, a bridge may break, or the person who crosses it may tumble into the water and be drowned. In the Babar Islands, before entering a new house, offerings are thrown inside, that the spirit, Orloo, may not make the {463} inmates ill.[215] Before the Sandwich Islanders could occupy their houses "offerings were made to the gods, and presents to the priest, who entered the house, uttered prayers, went through other ceremonies, and slept in it before the owner took possession, in order to prevent evil spirits from resorting to it, and to secure its inmates from the effects of incantation."[216] Among the Kayans of Borneo, on the occasion of the king or principal chief taking possession of a newly-built house, a human victim was killed, and the blood was sprinkled on the pillars and under the house.[217] The Russian peasant believes that the building of a new house "is apt to be followed by the death of the head of the family for which the new dwelling is constructed, or that the member of the family who is the first to enter it will soon die"; and, in accordance with a custom of great antiquity, the oldest member of a migrating household enters the new house first.[218] In German folk-tales "the first to cross the bridge, the first to enter the new building or the country, pays with his life."[219] Even nowadays, in the North of Europe, there is a wide-spread fear of being the first to enter a new building or of going over a newly-built bridge; "if to do this is not everywhere and in all cases thought to entail death, it is considered supremely unlucky."[220] This superstition has been interpreted as a survival of a previous sacrifice;[221] but there can be no doubt, I think, that the foundation sacrifice itself owes its origin to similar notions and fears of supernatural dangers. Uncultured people are commonly afraid of anything new, or of doing an act for the first time;[222] and, apart from this, the erecting of a new building is an intrusion upon {464} the land of the local spirit, and therefore likely to arouse its anger. There are houses which remain haunted by spirits all their time.[223] It is natural, then, that attempts should be made to avert the danger. And, human life being at stake, no preventive could be more effective than the offering up of a human victim.

[Footnote 215: Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 343.]

[Footnote 216: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, iv. 322.]

[Footnote 217: Burns, 'Kayans of the North-West of Borneo,' in Journal of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 145.]

[Footnote 218: Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 126. Cf. Krauss, loc. cit. p. 21 sq. (Southern Slavs).]

[Footnote 219: Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, i. 45, n. 2.]

[Footnote 220: Baring-Gould, Strange Survivals, p. 2. For various instances of similar beliefs, see Sartori, in Zeitschr. f. Ethnol. xxx. 14 sqq.; Crawley, Mystic Rose, p. 25.]

[Footnote 221: Baring-Gould, op. cit. p. 4.]

[Footnote 222: Crawley, op. cit. p. 25.]

[Footnote 223: Westermarck, 'Nature of the Arab [vG]inn, illustrated by the Present Beliefs of the People of Morocco,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxix. 253, 260.]

On the other hand it is maintained that the foundation-sacrifice is partly, if not exclusively, performed for the purpose of converting the soul of the victim into a protecting demon.[224] This opinion, no doubt, has the support of beliefs actually held by some of the peoples who practise the rite. When the gate of the new city of Tavoy, in Tenasserim, was built, Mason was told by an eye-witness that a criminal was put in each post-hole to become a guardian spirit.[225] The Burmese kings used to have victims buried alive at the gates of their capitals, "so that their spirits might watch over the city."[226] Formerly, in Siam, "when a new city gate was being erected, it was customary for a number of officers to lie in wait near the spot, and seize the first four or eight persons who happened to pass by, and who were then buried alive under the gate-posts, to serve as guardian angels."[227] But whatever be the present notions of certain peoples concerning the object of the building-sacrifice, I do not believe that its primary object could have been to procure a spirit-guardian. According to early ideas, the ghost of a murdered man is not a friendly being, and least of all is he kindly disposed towards those who killed him. Several instances are known in which later generations have put upon human sacrifices an interpretation obviously foreign to their original purpose.[228] Thus, according to a North {465} German tradition, a master-builder was immured by a certain knight in the tower which he had built, as a punishment for boasting that he could have built a still finer tower if he had liked to do so.[229] An Indian raja, we are told, was once building a bridge over the river Jargoat Chunâr, and when it fell down several times he was advised to sacrifice a Brahman girl to the local deity; however, "she has now become the Marî or ghost of the place, and is regularly worshipped in time of trouble."[230] Considering that the foundation-sacrifice was offered for the purpose of protecting the living against the attacks of the spirit of the place, it is quite intelligible that the ghost of the victim came in time to be looked upon as a guardian spirit; and it was all the more natural to attribute to the dead the function of a guard in cases where he was buried at the gate. But he was buried there, I presume, simply because that spot was thought to be the most dangerous. The gate of a town corresponds to the entrance of a house, and the threshold has almost universally been regarded as the proper haunt of what the Moors call "the owners of the place."[231]

[Footnote 224: Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 106. Grant Allen, op. cit. p. 248 sqq. Lippert, Christenthum, Volksglaube und Volksbrauch, p. 456 sq. Idem, Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, ii. 270. Gaidoz, in Mélusine, iv. 14 sqq. Sartori, in Zeitsthr. f. Ethnol. xxx. 32 sqq.]

[Footnote 225: Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 107.]

[Footnote 226: Woodthorpe, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxvi. 24. See also Shway Yoe, The Burman, i. 286.]

[Footnote 227: Alabaster, Wheel of the Law, p. 212 sq. Cf. Gaidoz, loc. cit. p. 14 sq.]

[Footnote 228: See Nyrop, Romanske Mosaiker, p. 73 sqq.; also infra, p. 465 sq.]

[Footnote 229: Nyrop, op. cit. p. 73.]

[Footnote 230: Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, ii. 174.]

[Footnote 231: See Trumbull, Threshold Covenant, passim.]

Whilst the man who is sacrificed is in some cases described as a guardian, he is in other cases regarded as a messenger. The Mayas of Yucatan maintained that the human victims whom they offered in times of distress were sent as messengers to the spirit-world to make known the wants of the people.[232] The same idea prevailed in Great Benin. When the head jujuman had said the prayer in which he asked Ogiwo to let no sickness come for Benin, he thus addressed the slaves who were going to be clubbed to death and tied in the sacrifice-trees:--"So you shall tell Ogiwo. Salute him proper."[233] A message was likewise sent to the head juju with the slave who was sacrificed to it;[234] and a message saluting the rain-god was put in the {466} mouth of the woman who was sacrificed when there was too much rain.[235] Mr. Ling Roth suggests that the main object of the human sacrifices which were offered in Benin "was the sending of prayers, by means of the special messengers, for the welfare of the community, to the spirits of the departed, or to other spirits, such as the spirits of the beads, the Rain-God, Sun-God, the God-Ogiwo"; and he thinks that this explains "a cult of world-wide prevalence."[236] But considering that in Yucatan and Benin, as elsewhere, the human victim was sacrificed for the avowed purpose of averting some mortal danger from the community or the king, I conclude that there, also, the primary object of the rite was to offer a substitute, though this substitute came to be used as a messenger.

[Footnote 232: Dorman, op. cit. p. 213.]

[Footnote 233: Moor and Roupell, quoted by Read and Dalton, op. cit. p. 7; also by Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 72.]

[Footnote 234: Supra, p. 456.]

[Footnote 235: Supra, p. 444.]

[Footnote 236: Ling Roth, op. cit. p. 72.]

I do not affirm that the practice of human sacrifice is in every case based on the idea of substitution; the notion that a certain god has a desire for such sacrifices may no doubt induce his worshippers to gratify this desire for a variety of purposes. But I think there is sufficient evidence to prove that, when men offer the lives of their fellow-men in sacrifice to their gods, they do so as a rule in the hopes of thereby saving their own. Human sacrifice is essentially a method of life-insurance--absurd, no doubt, according to our ideas, but not an act of wanton cruelty. When practised for the benefit of the community or in a case of national distress, it is hardly more cruel than to advocate the infliction of capital punishment on the ground of social expediency, or to compel thousands of men to suffer death on the battle-field on behalf of their country. The custom of human sacrifice admits that the life of one is taken to save the lives of many, or that an inferior individual is put to death for the purpose of preventing the death of somebody who has a higher right to live. Sometimes the king or chief is sacrificed in times of scarcity or pestilence, but then he is probably held personally responsible for the calamity.[237] Very frequently {467} the victims are prisoners of war or other aliens, or slaves, or criminals, that is, persons whose lives are held in little regard. And in many cases these are the only victims allowed by custom.

[Footnote 237: Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 15 sq.]

This was generally the case among the ancient Teutons,[238] though they sometimes deemed a human sacrifice the more efficacious the more distinguished the victim, and the nearer his relationship to him who offered the sacrifice.[239] The Gauls, says Cæsar, "consider that the oblation of such as have been taken in theft, or robbery, or any other offence, is more acceptable to the immortal gods; but when a supply of that class is wanting, they have recourse to the oblation of even the innocent."[240] Diodorus Siculus states that the Carthaginians in former times used to sacrifice to Saturn the sons of the most eminent persons, but that, of later times, they secretly bought and bred up children for that purpose.[241] The chief aim of the wars of the ancient Mexicans was to make prisoners for sacrificial purposes; other victims were slaves who were purchased for this object, and many criminals "who were condemned to expiate their crimes by the sacrifice of their lives."[242] The Yucatans sacrificed captives taken in war, and only if such victims were wanting they dedicated their children to the altar "rather than let the gods be deprived of their due."[243] In Guatemala the victims were slaves or captives or, among the Pipiles, illegitimate children from six to twelve years old who belonged to the tribe.[244] In Florida the human victim who was offered up at harvest time was chosen from among the Spaniards wrecked on the coast.[245] Of the Peruvian Indians before the time of the Incas, Garcilasso de la Vega states that, "besides ordinary things such as animals and maize, they sacrificed men and women of all ages, being captives taken in wars which they made against each other."[246] Among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, "the persons ordinarily sacrificed to the gods are prisoners of war or slaves. When the latter, they are usually aliens, as a protecting god is not so well satisfied with the sacrifice of his own people."[247] In Great Benin, according to Captain Roupell, the people who were kept for sacrifice were bad men, or men with bad sickness, {468} and they were all slaves.[248] In Fiji the victims were generally prisoners of war, but sometimes they were slaves procured by purchase from other tribes.[249] In Nukahiva "the custom of the country requires that the men destined for sacrifice should belong to some neighbouring nation, and accordingly they are generally stolen."[250] In Tahiti "the unhappy wretches selected were either captives taken in war, or individuals who had rendered themselves obnoxious to the chiefs or the priests.**"[251] The Muruts of Borneo "never sacrifice one of their own people, but either capture an individual of a hostile tribe, or send to a friendly tribe to purchase a slave for the purpose."[252] It is said to be contrary to the Káyán custom to sell or sacrifice one of their own nation.[253] The G[=a]ro hill tribes "generally select their victims out of the Bengali villages in the plains."[254] The Kandhs considered that the victim must be a stranger. "If we spill our own blood," they said, "we shall have no descendants";[255] and even the children of Meriahs, who were reared for sacrificial purposes, were never offered up in the village of their birth.[256]

[Footnote 238: Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, i. 45.]

[Footnote 239: Holtzmann, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 232.]

[Footnote 240: Cæsar, De bello gallico, vi. 16.]

[Footnote 241: Diodorus Siculus, xx. 14.]

[Footnote 242: Clavigero, op. cit. i. 282.]

[Footnote 243: Bancroft, op. cit. ii. 704.]

[Footnote 244: Stoll, op. cit. p. 40.]

[Footnote 245: Bry, op. cit. p. 11.]

[Footnote 246: Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 50.]

[Footnote 247: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 170.]

[Footnote 248: Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 70.]

[Footnote 249: Hale, U.S. Exploring Expedition. Vol. VI. Ethnography and Philology, p. 57. Cf. Wilkes, op. cit. iii. 97.]

[Footnote 250: Lisiansky, op. cit. p. 81 sq.]

[Footnote 251: Ellis, Polynesian Researches, i. 346.]

[Footnote 252: Denison, quoted by Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak, ii. 216.]

[Footnote 253: Burns, in Jour. of Indian Archipelago, iii. 145.]

[Footnote 254: Godwin-Austen, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. ii. 394.]

[Footnote 255: Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 121.]

[Footnote 256: Campbell, Wild Tribes of Khondistan, p. 53.]

We find that various peoples who at a certain period have been addicted to the practice of human sacrifice, have afterwards, at a more advanced stage of civilisation, voluntarily given it up. The cause of this is partly an increase, or expansion, of the sympathetic sentiment, partly a change of ideas. With the growth of enlightenment men would lose faith in this childish method of substitution, and consequently find it not only useless, but objectionable; and any sentimental disinclination to the practice would by itself, in the course of time, lead to the belief that the deity no longer cares for it, or is averse to it. Brahmanism gradually abolished the immolation of human victims, incompatible as it was with the precept of ahimsâ, or respect for everything that has life; "the liberation of the victim, or the substitution in its stead and place of a {469} figure made of flour paste, both of which were at first matter of sufferance, became at length matter of requirement."[257] According to the Mahabharata, the priest who performs a human sacrifice is cast into hell.[258] In Greece, in the historic age, the practice was held in horror at least by all the better minds, though it was regarded as necessary on certain occasions.[259] It was strongly condemned by enlightened Romans. Cicero speaks of it as a "monstrous and barbarous practice" still disgracing Gaul in his day;[260] and Pliny, referring to the steps taken by Tiberius to stop it, declares it impossible to estimate the debt of the world to the Romans for their efforts to put it down.[261]

[Footnote 257: Barth, Religions of India, p. 97.]

[Footnote 258: Supra, p. 458.]

[Footnote 259: Stengel, op. cit. p. 117. Cf. Donaldson, loc. cit. p. 464.]

[Footnote 260: Cicero, Pro Fonteio, 10 (21).]

[Footnote 261: Pliny, Historia naturalis, xxx. 4 (1).]

The growing reluctance to offer human sacrifice led to various practices intended to replace it.[262] Speaking of the Italian custom of dedicating as a sacrifice to the gods every creature that should be born in the following spring, Festus adds that, since it seemed cruel to kill innocent boys and girls, they were kept till they had grown up, then veiled and driven beyond the boundaries.[263] Among various peoples human effigies or animals were offered instead of men.

[Footnote 262: Cf. Krause, 'Die Ablösung der Menschenopfer,' in Kosmos, 1878, iii. 76 sqq.]

[Footnote 263: Festus, op. cit. 'Ver sacrum,' p. 379.]

Among the Malays of the Malay Peninsula dough models of human beings, actually called "the substitutes," are offered up to the spirits on the sacrificial trays; and in the same sense are the directions of magicians, that "if the spirit craves a human victim a cock may be substituted."[264] We are told that, in Egypt, King Amosis ordered three waxen images to be burned in the temple of Heliopolis in lieu of the three men who in earlier times used to be sacrificed there.[265] The Romans offered dolls;[266] and in old Hindu families belonging to the sect of the Vámácháris a practice still obtains of sacrificing an effigy {470} instead of a living man.[267] In India, Greece, and Rome, animals, also, were substituted for human victims.[268] Of a similar substitution there is probably a trace in the Biblical story of Isaac being exchanged for a ram, and in the paschal sacrifice.[269] On the Gold Coast the human victim who was formerly sacrificed to the god of the Prah is nowadays replaced by a bullock which is specially reserved and fattened for the purpose.[270]

[Footnote 264: Skeat, Malay Magic, p. 72.]

[Footnote 265: Porphyry, op. cit. ii. 55.]

[Footnote 266: Leist, Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 272 sqq.]

[Footnote 267: Rájendralála Mitra, op. cit. ii. 109 sq.]

[Footnote 268: Leist, Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 267 sqq. Frazer, Golden Bough, ii. 38, n. 2. Pausanias, ix. 8. 2. For various modifications of human sacrifice in India, see Wilson, Works, ii. 267 sq.; Crooke, Popular Religion of Northern India, ii. 175 sq.]

[Footnote 269: See supra, p. 458.]

[Footnote 270: Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples, p. 66.]

In other cases human sacrifices have been succeeded by practices involving the effusion of human blood without loss of life. We are told that, in Laconia, Lycurgus established the scourging of lads at the altar of Artemis Orthia, in place of the sacrifice of men, which had previously been offered to her;[271] and Euripides represents Athena as ordaining that, when the people celebrate the festival of Artemis the Taurian goddess, the priest, to compensate her for the sacrifice of Orestes, "must hold his knife to a human throat, and blood must flow to satisfy the sacred claims of the goddess, that she may have her honours."[272] There are also many instances of bleeding or mutilation practised for the same purpose as human sacrifice, probably according to the principle of pars pro toto, though it is impossible to decide whether they really are survivals of an earlier sacrifice.

[Footnote 271: Pausanias, ix. 16. 10.]

[Footnote 272: Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, 1458 sqq.]

Besides the ceremony of nawgia, already described,[273] the Tonga Islanders had another ceremony called tootoo-nima, or cutting off a portion of the little finger, as a sacrifice to the gods, for the recovery of a superior relation who was ill; and so commonly was this done that, in Mariner's days, there was scarcely a person living in the Tonga Islands who had not lost one or both little fingers, or at least a considerable portion of them.[274] In Chinese literature there are frequently mentioned instances of persons cutting off flesh from their bodies to cure parents or paternal grandparents dangerously ill. In most cases {471} it remains unmentioned how the flesh was prepared; but it is sometimes stated that porridge or broth was made of it, or that it was mixed with medicine. Dr. de Groot maintains that it was in the first place the ascription of therapeutic virtues to parts of the human body that prompted such filial self-mutilation. But he adds that "often also we read of thigh-cutters invoking Heaven beforehand, solemnly asking this highest power to accept their own bodies as a substitute for the patients' lives they wanted to save; their mutilation thus assuming the character of self-immolation."[275] According to the testimony of a native writer, there is scarcely a respectable house in all Bengal, the mistress of which has not at one time or other shed her blood, under the notion of satisfying the goddess Chandiká by the operation. "Whenever her husband or a son is dangerously ill, a vow is made that on the recovery of the patient, the goddess would be regaled with human blood. . . . The lady performs certain ceremonies, and then bares her breast in the presence of the goddess, and with a nail-cutter (naruna) draws a few drops of blood from between her breasts and offers them to the divinity."[276] Garcilasso de la Vega states that, whilst some of the Peruvian Indians before the time of the Incas sacrificed men, there were others who, though they mixed human blood in their sacrifices, did not obtain it by killing anyone, but by bleeding the arms and legs, according to the importance of the sacrifice, and, in the most solemn cases, by bleeding the root of the nose where it is joined by the eyebrows.[277]

[Footnote 273: Supra, p. 455.]

[Footnote 274: Mariner, op. cit. ii. 222.]

[Footnote 275: de Groot, Religious System of China, (vol, iv. book) ii. 386 sq.]

[Footnote 276: Rájendralála Mitra, op. cit. i. 111 sq.]

[Footnote 277: Garcilasso de la Vega, op. cit. i. 52.]

There is one form of human sacrifice which has outlived all others, namely, the penal sacrifice of offenders. There can be no moral scruples in regard to a rite which involves a punishment regarded as just. Indeed, this kind of human sacrifice is even found where the offering of animals or lifeless things has fallen out of use or become a mere symbol. For this is the only sacrifice which is intended to propitiate the deity by the mere death of the victim; and gods are believed to be capable of feeling anger and revenge long after they have ceased to have material needs. The last trace of human sacrifice has {472} disappeared only when men no longer punish offenders capitally with a view to appeasing resentful gods.

* * * * *

Human beings are sacrificed not only to gods, but to dead men, in order to serve them as companions or servants, or to vivify their spirits, or to gratify their craving for revenge.

From various quarters of the world we hear of the immolation of men for the service of the dead, the victims generally being slaves, wives, or captives of war, or, sometimes, friends.[278] This rite occurs or has occurred, more or less extensively, in Borneo[279] and the Philippine Islands,[280] in Melanesia and Polynesia,[281] in many different parts of Africa,[282] and among some American tribes.[283] In America, however, it was carried to its height by the more civilised nations of Central America and Mexico, Bogota and Peru.[284] There is evidence to show that the funeral ceremonies {473} of the ancient Egyptians occasionally included human sacrifice at the gate of the tomb, although the practice would seem to have been exceptional, at any rate after Egypt had entered upon her period of greatness.[285] It has been suggested that in China the burial of living persons with the dead dates from the darkest mist of ages, and that the cases on record in the native books are of relatively modern date only because in high antiquity the custom was so common, that it did not occur to the annalists and chroniclers to set down such everyday matters as anything remarkable.[286] In the fourteenth century of our era, the funeral sacrifice of men was abolished, even for emperors and members of the imperial family,[287] but it has assumed a modified shape under which it still maintains itself in China. "Daughters, daughters-in-law, and widows especially imbued with the doctrine that they are the property of their dead parents, parents-in-law, and husbands, and accordingly owe them the highest degree of submissive devotion, often take their lives, in order to follow them into the next world." And though it has been enacted that no official distinctions shall be awarded to such suttees, whereas honours are granted to widowed wives, concubines, and brides who, instead of destroying themselves, simply abjure matrimonial life for good, sutteeism of widows and brides still meets with the same applause as ever, and many a woman is no doubt prevailed upon, or even compelled, by her own relations, to become a suttee.[288] Professor Schrader observes that "it is no longer possible to doubt that ancient Indo-Germanic custom ordained that the wife should die with her husband."[289] It has been argued, it is true, that the burning of widows begins rather late in India;[290] yet, though the modern ordinance of suttee-burning be a corrupt departure {474} from the early Brahmanic ritual, the practice seems to be, not a new invention by the later Hindu priesthood, but the revival of an ancient rite belonging originally to a period even earlier than the Veda.[291] In the Vedic ritual there are ceremonies which obviously indicate the previous existence of such a rite.[292] From Greece we have the instances of Evadne throwing herself into the funeral pile of her husband,[293] and of the suicide of the three Messenian widows mentioned by Pausanias.[294] Sacrifice of widows occurred, as it seems as a regular custom, among the Scandinavians,[295] Heruli,[296] and Slavonians.[297] "The fact," says Mr. Ralston, "that, in Slavonic lands, a thousand years ago, widows used to destroy themselves in order to accompany their dead husbands to the world of spirits, seems to rest on incontestable evidence"; and if the dead was a man of means and distinction, he was also solaced by the sacrifice of his slaves.[298] Funeral offerings of slaves occurred among the Teutons[299] and the Gauls of Cæsar's time;[300] and in the Iliad we read of twelve captives being laid on the funeral pile of Patroclus.[301]

[Footnote 278: See Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 458 sqq.; Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 203 sqq.; Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 380 sq.; Schneider, Naturvölker, i. 202 sqq.; Hehn, op. cit. p. 416 sqq.; Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 125 sq.; Frazer, Pausanias, iii. 199 sq.]

[Footnote 279: Brooke, Ten Years in Saráwak, i. 74. Hose and McDougall, 'Relations between Men and Animals in Sarawak,' in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxi. 207 sq. Bock, Head-Hunters of Borneo, pp. 210 n., 219 sq.]

[Footnote 280: Blumentritt, 'Der Ahnencultus und die religiösen Anschauungen der Malaien des Philippinen Archipels,' in Mittheilungen d. Geograph. Gesellsch. in Wien, xxv. 152 sq.]

[Footnote 281: Westermarck, op. cit. p. 125 sq. Brenchley, op. cit. p. 208 (natives of Tana). Williams and Calvert, op. cit. p. 161 sq. (Fijians). Lisiansky, op. cit. p. 81 (Nukahivans). Mariner, op. cit. ii. 220 sq. (Tonga Islanders). Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, p. 218 (Maoris). von Kotzebue, op. cit. iii. 247 (Sandwich Islanders).]

[Footnote 282: Rowley, Africa Unveiled, p. 127. Idem, Religion of the Africans, p. 102 sq. Schneider, Religion der afrikanischen Naturvölker, p. 118 sqq. Westermarck, op. cit. p. 125. Ramseyer and Kühne, Four Years in Ashantee, p. 50. Mockler-Ferryman, British Nigeria, pp. 235, 259 sqq. Burton, Mission to Gelele, ii. 19 sqq. (Dahomans). Idem, Abeokuta, i. 220 sq. Idem, Lake Regions of Central Africa, i. 124 (Wadoe); ii. 25 sq. (Wanyamwezi). Wilson, Western Africa, pp. 203, 219. Ellis, Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast, p. 159 sqq. Idem, E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast, pp. 117, 118, 121 sqq. Nachtigal, Sahara und Sudan, ii. 687 (Somraï and Njillem). Baker, Ismaïlia, p. 317 sq. (Wanyoro). Casati, Ten Years in Equatoria, i. 170 (Mambettu). Callaway, Religious System of the Amazulu, p. 212 sq.]

[Footnote 283: Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 204. Dorman, op. cit. p. 210 sqq. Westermarck, op. cit. p. 125. Macfie, Vancouver Island and British Columbia, p. 448. Charlevoix, Voyage to North America, ii. 196 sq. (Natchez). Rochefort, Histoire naturelle et morale des Iles Antilles, p. 568 sq. (Caribs).]

[Footnote 284: Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 461. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 205. Dorman, op. cit. p. 212 sqq. Acosta, op. cit. ii. 313, 314, 344 (Peruvians).]

[Footnote 285: Wiedemann, Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul, p. 62 n.]

[Footnote 286: de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 721.]

[Footnote 287: Ibid. (vol. ii. book) i. 724.]

[Footnote 288: Ibid. (vol. ii. book) i. 735, 754, 748.]

[Footnote 289: Schrader, Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, p. 391.]

[Footnote 290: Hopkins, op. cit. p. 274.]

[Footnote 291: Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 465 sqq. Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, p. 331.]

[Footnote 292: Rig-Veda, x. 18. 8 sq. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology, p. 165. Hillebrandt, 'Eine Miscelle aus dem Vedaritual,' in Zeitschr. d. Deutschen Morgenländ. Gesellsch. xl. 711. Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 587.]

[Footnote 293: Euripides, Supplices, 1000 sqq.]

[Footnote 294: Pausanias, iv. 2. 7.]

[Footnote 295: Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 451.]

[Footnote 296: Procopius, op. cit. ii. 14.]

[Footnote 297: Dithmar of Merseburg, Chronicon, viii. 2 (Pertz, Monumenta Germaniæ historica, v. 861). Zimmer, op. cit. p. 330.]

[Footnote 298: Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 327 sq.]

[Footnote 299: Grimm, op. cit. p. 344.]

[Footnote 300: Cæsar, De bello gallico, vi. 19. In the ancient annals of the Irish there is one trace of human sacrifice being offered as a funeral rite (Cusack, History of the Irish Nation, p. 115 n.*).]

[Footnote 301: Iliad, xxiii. 175.]

According to early notions, men require wives and servants not only during their life-time, but after their death. The surviving relatives want to satisfy their needs, out of affection or from fear of withholding from the dead what belongs to them--their wives and their slaves. The destruction of innocent life seems justified by the low social standing of the victims and their subjection to their husbands or masters. However, with advancing civilisation this sacrifice has a tendency to {475} disappear, partly, perhaps, on account of a change of ideas as regards the state after death, but chiefly, I presume, because it becomes revolting to public feelings. It then dwindles into a survival. As a probable instance of this may be mentioned a custom prevalent among the Tacullies of North America: the widow is compelled by the kinsfolk of the deceased to lie on the funeral pile where the body of her husband is placed, whilst the fire is lighting, until the heat becomes intolerable.[302] In ancient Egypt little images of clay, or wood, or stone, or bronze, made in human likeness and inscribed with a certain formula, were placed within the tomb, presumably in the hopes that they would there attain to life and become the useful servants of the dead.[303] So also the Japanese[304] and Chinese, already in early times, placed images in, or at, the tombs of their dead as substitutes for human victims; and these images have always been considered to have no less virtual existence in the next world than living servitors, wives, or concubines. In China the original immolations were, moreover, replaced by the custom of allowing the nearest relatives and slaves of the deceased simply to settle on the tomb, instead of entering it, there to sacrifice to the manes, and by prohibiting widows from remarrying.[305]

[Footnote 302: Wilkes, U.S. Exploring Expedition, iv. 453.]

[Footnote 303: Wiedemann, Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul, p. 63.]

[Footnote 304: Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 463.]

[Footnote 305: de Groot, op. cit. (vol. ii. book) i. 794 sqq.]

The practice of sacrificing human beings to the dead is not exclusively based on the idea that they require servants and companions. It is extremely probable that the funeral sacrifice of men and animals in many cases involves an intention to vivify the spirits of the deceased with the warm, red sap of life.[306] This seems to be the meaning of the Dahoman custom of pouring blood over the graves of the ancestors of the king.[307] So, also, in Ashanti "human sacrifices are frequent and ordinary, to {476} water the graves of the Kings."[308] In the German folk-tale known under the name of 'Faithful John,' the statue said to the King, "If you, with your own hand, cut off the heads of both your children, and sprinkle me with their blood, I shall be brought to life again."[309] According to primitive ideas, blood is life; to receive blood is to receive life; the soul of the dead wants to live, and consequently loves blood. The shades in Hades are eager to drink the blood of Odysseus' sacrifice, that their life may be renewed for a time.[310] And it is all the more important that the soul should get what it desires as it otherwise may come and attack the living. The belief that the bloodless shades leave their graves at night and seek renewed life by drawing the blood of the living, is prevalent in many parts of the world.[311] As late as the eighteenth century this belief caused an epidemic of fear in Hungary, resulting in a general disinterment, and the burning or staking of the suspected bodies.[312] It is also possible that the mutilations and self-bleedings which accompany funerals are partly practised for the purpose of refreshing the departed soul.[313] The Samoans called it "an offering of blood" for the dead when the mourners beat their heads with stones till the blood ran.[314]

[Footnote 306: Cf. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 288 sq.; Rockholz, Deutscher Glaube und Brauch, i. 55; Sepp, Völkerbrauch bei Hochzeit, Geburt und Tod, p. 154; Trumbull, Blood Covenant, p. 110 sqq.]

[Footnote 307: Reade, Savage Africa, p. 51 sq.]

[Footnote 308: Bowdich, Mission from Cape Castle to Ashantee, p. 289.]

[Footnote 309: Grimm, Kinder- und Hausmärchen, p. 29 sq.]

[Footnote 310: Odyssey, xi. 153.]

[Footnote 311: Trumbull, Blood Covenant, p. 114 sq.]

[Footnote 312: Farrer, Primitive Manners and Customs, p. 23 sq.]

[Footnote 313: Cf. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, i. 181 sq.]

[Footnote 314: Turner, Nineteen Years in Polynesia, p. 227.]

Finally, as offenders are sacrificed to gods in order to appease their wrath, so manslayers are in many cases killed in order to satisfy their victims' craving for revenge. In the next chapter we shall see that the execution of blood-revenge largely falls under the heading of "human sacrifice for the dead."

XX. BLOOD-REVENGE AND COMPENSATION--THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH

ACCORDING to early custom, a person who takes the life of another may himself be killed by the relatives of his victim, or some other member of his family, clan, or tribe may be killed in his stead.[1] The custom of blood-revenge is found among a host of existing savages and barbarians, and has long survived among many peoples who have reached a higher degree of culture.

[Footnote 1: The collective responsibility usually involved in the blood-feud has been discussed supra, p. 30 sqq.]

We meet with blood-revenge in the midst of Japanese civilisation, not as a mere fact, but as a legally permitted custom. The avenger had only to observe certain prescribed formalities and regulations: there was a regular official to whom he must announce his resolve, and he must fix the time within which he would carry it out. The way in which the enemy was killed was of no importance, except that, even in ancient times, the man who had recourse to assassination was reprehensible.[2] Among the Hebrews blood-revenge continued to exist during the periods of the Judges and Kings, and even later; under the Old Kingdom, says Wellhausen, "the administration of justice was at best but a scanty supplement to the practice of self-help."[3] It is a rule among {478} all the Arabs that whoever sheds the blood of a man owes blood on that account to the family of the slain person.[4] Says the Koran:--"O ye who believe! Retaliation is prescribed for you for the slain."[5] In ancient Eran blood-revenge survived the establishment of tribunals.[6] There is evidence left of its prevalence in early times among the Aryan population of India, though no mention is made in the Sûtras of blood revenge as an existing custom.[7] Among the Greeks it was only in the post-Homeric age that it was given up as a fundamental principle, the avenger being transformed into an accuser.[8] In Gaul and Ireland, though justice was administered by Druids or Brehons, their judgments seem to have been merely awards founded upon a submission to arbitration, the injured person being at liberty to take the law into his own hands and redress himself.[9] In the preface to the Senchus Mór we read that retaliation prevailed in Erin before Patrick, and that Patrick brought forgiveness with him.[10] Among the clans of Scotland, as is well known, the blood-feud has existed up to quite modern times; in the Catholic period even the Church recognised its power by leaving the right hand of male children unchristened, that it might deal the more unhallowed and deadly a blow to the enemy.[11] In England it was at least theoretically possible down to the middle of the tenth century for a manslayer to elect to bear the feud of the kindred of the slain, instead of paying the wer;[12] and long after the Conquest we still meet with a law against the system of {479} private revenge.[13] In Frisland, Lower Saxony, and parts of Switzerland, the blood-feud was practised as late as the sixteenth century.[14] In Italy it prevailed extensively, even among the upper classes, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[15] In Corsica,[16] Albania,[17] and Montenegro,[18] it exists even to this day.

[Footnote 2: Rein, Japan, p. 326. Dautremer, 'The Vendetta or Legal Revenge in Japan,' in Trans. Asiatic Soc. Japan, xiii. 84 sq.]

[Footnote 3: Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Israel, p. 467.]

[Footnote 4: Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 85.]

[Footnote 5: Koran, ii. 173. Cf. ibid. xvii. 35.]

[Footnote 6: Geiger, Civilization of the Eastern Ir[=a]nians, ii. 31 sqq.]

[Footnote 7: Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 422.]

[Footnote 8: Idem, Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, § 50 sq., especially pp. 375, 381. In Rome blood-revenge appears to have been very early suppressed. There is an echo of it in certain legends, but even in them it is represented as objectionable (Mommsen, History of Rome, i. 190).]

[Footnote 9: Maine, Early History of Institutions, lect. ii. d'Arbois de Jubainville, 'Des attributions judiciaires de l'autorité publique chez les Celtes,' in Revue Celtique, vii. 5. Ancient Laws of Ireland, iii. p. lxxxix.]

[Footnote 10: Skene, Celtic Scotland, iii. 152.]

[Footnote 11: Mackintosh, History of Civilisation in Scotland, ii. 279.]

[Footnote 12: Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. i. 48.]

[Footnote 13: Cherry, Growth of Criminal Law in Ancient Communities, p. 85.]

[Footnote 14: Günther, Idee der Wiedervergeltung, i. 207 sq. Frauenstädt, Blutrache und Todtschlagsühne im Deutschen Mittelalter, p. 21. Cf. Arnold, Deutsche Urzeit, p. 342.]

[Footnote 15: Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen âge, xvi. 456.]

[Footnote 16: Gregorovius, Wanderings in Corsica, i. 176 sqq.]

[Footnote 17: Gop[vc]evi['c], Oberalbanien und seine Liga, p. 322 sqq.]

[Footnote 18: Kohl, Reise nach Istrien, i. 406 sqq. Popovi['c], Recht und Gericht in Montenegro, p. 69.]

Blood-revenge is regarded not only as a right, but as a duty. We are told that the holiest duty a West Australian native is called on to perform is that of avenging the death of his nearest relation. "Until he has fulfilled this task, he is constantly taunted by the old women; his wives, if he be married, would soon quit him; if he is unmarried, not a single young woman would speak to him; his mother would constantly cry, and lament she should ever have given birth to so degenerate a son; his father would treat him with contempt, and reproaches would constantly be sounded in his ear."[19] Among the tribes of Western Victoria "a man would consider it his bounden duty to kill his most intimate friend for the purpose of avenging a brother's death, and would do so without the slightest hesitation."[20] In his description of the Eskimo about Behring Strait, Mr. Nelson states that blood-revenge is considered a sacred duty among all the Eskimo, a duty incumbent on the nearest male relative; if the son of the murdered man is an infant, it rests with him to seek revenge as soon as he attains puberty.[21] Among the Dacotahs "no one can escape this law of retaliation; public opinion would brand with disgrace whoever fled under such circumstances."[22] The Brazilian aborigines {480} consider it a moral obligation, a matter of conscience, for a son, a brother, or a nephew, to avenge the death of his relative.[23] Speaking of the Guiana Indians, Sir E. F. Im Thurn observes that, "in all primitive societies where there are no written laws and no supreme authority to enforce justice, such vengeance has been held as a sacred duty."[24] Confucius affirmed, in the strongest and most unrestricted terms, the duty of avenging the murder of a father or a brother.[25] In Japan "the man who was weak enough not to try to put to death the murderer of his father or his lord, was obliged to flee into hiding; from that day, he was despised by his own companions."[26] The Lord said to Moses:--"The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer; when he meeteth him, he shall slay him."[27] A similar rule, as we have seen, is laid down in the Koran.[28] The idea that blood-revenge is a sacred duty incumbent on the kindred of the deceased was probably held by all so-called Aryan peoples.[29] It still prevails in Albania,[30] Montenegro,[31] and Corsica. "Not to take revenge is considered by the genuine Corsicans as degrading. . . . Any one who shrinks from avenging himself . . . is allowed no rest by his relations, and all his acquaintances upbraid him with pusillanimity."[32]

[Footnote 19: Grey, Journals of Expeditions of Discovery in North-West and Western Australia, ii. 240.]

[Footnote 20: Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 71.]

[Footnote 21: Nelson, 'Eskimo about Bering Strait,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xviii. p. 292 sq.]

[Footnote 22: Domenech, Seven Years' Residence in the Great Deserts of North America, ii. 338.]

[Footnote 23: von Martius, Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika's, i. 128.]

[Footnote 24: Im Thurn, Among the Indians of Guiana, p. 329 sq.]

[Footnote 25: Legge, Chinese Classics, i. 111. Douglas, Confucianism and Taouism, p. 145.]

[Footnote 26: Dautremer, loc. cit. p. 83. Cf. Griffis, Corea, p. 227 (Coreans).]

[Footnote 27: Numbers, xxxv. 19.]

[Footnote 28: For modern Arabs, see Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 313 sq.; Blunt, Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, ii. 207.]

[Footnote 29: Geiger, op. cit. ii. 32 (Avesta people). Leist, Alt-arisches Jus Gentium, p. 422. Idem, Græco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, p. 323 sqq. de Valroger, op. cit. p. 472 (Celts). Nordström, Bidrag till den svenska samhälls-författningens historia, ii. 229; Stemann, Den Danske Retshistorie indtil Christian V.'s Lov, p. 574; Keyser, Efterladte Skrifter, ii. pt. ii. 95; Rosenberg, Nordboernes Aandsliv, i. 487 (Teutons). Miklosich, 'Die Blutrache bei den Slaven,' in Denkschriften der kaiserl. Akademie d. Wissensch. Philos. histor. Classe, Vienna, xxxvi. 127 sqq. Ewers, Das alteste Recht der Russen, p. 50 sq.]

[Footnote 30: Hahn, Albanesische Studien, i. 176.]

[Footnote 31: Popovi['c], op. cit. p. 69. Kohl, op. cit. i. 409, 413 sqq. Miklosich, loc. cit. p. 145.]

[Footnote 32: Gregorovius, op. cit. i. 180 sq. For other instances of blood-revenge as a duty, see Boas, 'Central Eskimo,' Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. vi. 582; Petroff, 'Report on Alaska,' in Tenth Census of the United States, p. 158 (Atkha Aleuts); Kohler, in Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss. vii. 376 (Papuans of New Guinea); Modigliani, Viaggio a Nías, p. 471; Bowring, Visit to the Philippine Islands, p. 177; Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 82 (Kandhs); Radde, Die Chews'uren, p. 115; von Haxthausen, Transcaucasia, p. 406 sqq. (Ossetes); Munzinger, Die Sitten und das Recht der Bogos, p. 87; Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior of Africa, p. 13 (Feloops bordering on the Gambia); Leuschner, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse von eingeborenen Völkern in Afrika und Ozeanien, p. 23 (Bakwiri); ibid. p. 49 (Banaka and Bapuku); Nicole, ibid. p. 132 (Diakité-Sarrakolese); Lang, ibid. p. 256 sq. (Washambala); Kraft, ibid. p. 292 (Wapokomo); Viehe, ibid. p. 311 (Ovaherero); Rautanen, ibid. p. 341 (Ondonga); Sorge, ibid. p. 418 (Nissan Islanders in the Bismarck Archipelago).]

{481} The duty of blood-revenge is, in the first place, regarded as a duty to the dead, not merely because he has been deprived of his highest good, his life, but because his spirit is believed to find no rest after death until the injury has been avenged.[33] The disembodied soul carries into its new existence an eager longing for revenge, and, till the crime has been duly expiated, hovers about the earth, molesting the manslayer or trying to compel its own relatives to take vengeance on him.

[Footnote 33: See Kohler, Shakespeare vor dem Forum der Jurisprudenz, p. 131 sq.; Steinmetz, Ethnol. Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, i. 291 sqq.; Idem, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 49 (Banaka and Bapuku); Nicole, ibid. p. 132 (Diakité-Sarrakolese); Lang, ibid. p. 257 (Washambala).]

According to Yakut beliefs, a person who is murdered becomes a yor, that is, his ghost never comes to rest.[34] The Cheremises imagine that the spirits of persons who have died a violent death cause illness, especially fever and ague.[35] The Saoras of India seem to have most fear of the spirits of those who have died violent deaths.[36] The Burmese believe that persons who meet a violent death become "nats "and haunt the place where they were killed.[37] The Hudson Bay Eskimo regard the island of Akpatok as tabooed since the murder of part of the crew of a wrecked vessel, who camped on that island; "not a soul visits that locality lest the ghosts of the victims should appear and supplicate relief from the natives, who have not the proper offerings to make to appease them."[38] The Omahas believe that the spirits of those who have been killed reappear after death, their errand being "to solicit vengeance on the perpetrators of the deed."[39] According to Genesis, the voice of {482} blood shed cried for vengeance until the murderer was punished.[40] A similar notion prevailed among the Bedouins, hence they thought they might escape the taking of revenge by covering up the blood with earth.[41] One of the most popular ghost stories in folk-tales is that which treats of the ghost of a murdered person flitting about the haunts of the living with no gratification but to terrify them.[42] According to Rohde, this belief was in full force at Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ.[43] Aeschylus attributes an Erinys to the heinous crime of a man's neglecting his duty as avenger of blood[44]--in other words, the soul of the slain turned its anger against the neglectful relative. Traces of the same belief still survive in various parts of Europe.[45] In Wärend, in Sweden, the people maintain that the unsatisfied ghost of a murdered man visits his relatives at night, and disturbs their rest; and it was an ancient custom among them that, if the murderer was not known, the nearest relation of the dead, before the knell began, went forward to the corpse and asked the dead himself to avenge his murder.[46]

[Footnote 34: Sumner, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxi. 101.]

[Footnote 35: Abercromby, Pre- and Proto-historic Finns, i. 168 sq.]

[Footnote 36: Fawcett, in Jour. Anthrop. Soc. Bombay, i. 59.]

[Footnote 37: Schway Yoe, The Burman, i. 286.]

[Footnote 38: Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 186.]

[Footnote 39: James, Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, i. 267.]

[Footnote 40: Genesis, iv. 10.]

[Footnote 41: Jacob, Leben der vorislâmischen Beduinen, p. 146. Cf. Schwally, Leben nach dem Tode, p. 52 sq.]

[Footnote 42: See Dyer, The Ghost World, p. 65 sqq.; Andree, Ethnographische Parallelen, p. 80 sqq.]

[Footnote 43: Rohde, Psyche, p. 240. Cf. Idem, 'Paralipomena,' in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 1895, p. 19 sq.; Schmidt, Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 125 sqq.]

[Footnote 44: Aeschylus, Choephori, 283 sqq. Cf. ibid. 400 sqq.; Plato, Leges, ix. 866.]

[Footnote 45: Dyer, op. cit. p. 68 sqq. Thorpe, Northern Mythology, ii. 19 sq.]

[Footnote 46: Hyltén-Cavallius, Wärend och Wirdarne, ii. 274; i. 473.]

From one point of view, blood-revenge is thus a form of human sacrifice. Sometimes it even formally bears a strong resemblance to certain other human sacrifices which are offered to the dead. Among some Queensland tribes, when the assassin has been caught red-handed, the slayer and slain are buried together in the same grave;[47] and among the ancient Teutons the avenger by preference slew the culprit at the feet of the murdered man, or at his tomb.[48] Blood-revenge also resembles other kinds of human sacrifice so far that it serves as a safeguard for the sacrificer--in this case the avenger, who would otherwise expose himself to the persecutions of the revengeful spirit of the dead.

[Footnote 47: Roth, Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 165.]

[Footnote 48: Wilda, Strafrecht der Germanen, pp. 170, 692.]

But the practice of blood-revenge is not exclusively {483} based on a desire to avenge the injury done to a fellow-creature and to gratify the angry passion of his soul. The act which caused his death is at the same time an injury inflicted upon the survivors. Hence, in many cases, a murder committed within the family or kin is left unavenged.[49] Among the Iroquois, says Loskiel, any one who has murdered his own relative escapes without much difficulty, since the family, who alone have a right to take revenge, do not choose to weaken their influence by depriving themselves of another member besides the one whom they have already lost.[50] Again, when the murderer belongs to an extraneous family, the injury inflicted on the relatives of the murdered man suggests not only revenge, but reparation.

[Footnote 49: Steinmetz, Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, ii. 159 sqq. Mauss, 'La religion et les origines du droit pénal,' in Revue de l'histoire des religions, xxxv. 44. Kovalewsky, 'Les origines du devoir,' in Revue internationale de Sociologie, ii. 86. Cf. Seebohm, Tribal Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law, pp. 30, 42 (Welsh); Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 420; Idem, Marriage and Kinship in early Arabia, p. 25. Among the Jbâla of Northern Morocco blood-revenge is taken for the killing of a cousin, but not for the killing of a brother.]

[Footnote 50: Loskiel, History of the Mission of the United Brethren among the Indians in North America, i. 16.]

The taking of life for life may itself, in a way, serve as compensation. It seems that, in some cases, the blood of the slain homicide is supposed to restore, as it were, to the family of his victim the loss of life which he has caused them.[51] Such an idea probably underlies a custom which Burckhardt heard existed among the Hallenga, who draw their origin from Abyssinia. When the slayer has been seized by the relatives of the deceased, a family feast is proclaimed, at which the murderer is brought into their midst. While his throat is then slowly cut with a razor, the blood is caught in a bowl and handed round amongst the guests, "every one of whom is bound to drink of it at the moment the victim breathes his last."[52] Among various Arabic-speaking tribes in Morocco I have met with a practice which also, possibly, involves a vague idea of restoration. On the perpetration of his deed the avenger {484} licks off the blood from the blade of the dagger with which he killed his victim; and in one instance related to me, he bit off a piece of flesh from the dead body and sucked its blood.[53] Mr. Trumbull even goes so far as to believe that, among the Hebrews, the primal idea of the goel's mission was not to wreak vengeance, but "to restore life for life, or to secure the adjusted equivalent of a lost life."[54] But it is difficult to suppose that the exacting of blood-revenge ever could have been looked upon as an equivalent in the full sense of the term. If the loss of life is to be compensated some other practice must take its place.

[Footnote 51: Cf. Trumbull, Blood Covenant, p. 126 sqq.]

[Footnote 52: Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, p. 356.]

[Footnote 53: Cf. Goldziher, in Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 296 n. 1.]

[Footnote 54: Trumbull, Blood Covenant, pp. 260, 263.]

Sometimes the manslayer, instead of being killed, is adopted as a member of the family of his victim.[55] Among the Kabyles of Algeria, for instance, a person who has killed another unintentionally, goes to the parents of the dead and says to them: "If you want to kill me, kill me, here is my winding-sheet. If not, pardon me, and I shall henceforth be one of your children." And from this day the manslayer is considered to belong to the kharouba, or gens, of the deceased.[56] Among the Jbâla of Northern Morocco, again, a homicide sometimes induces the avenger to abstain from his persecutions by giving him his sister or daughter in marriage; and a similar custom has been noticed among the Beni Amer[57] and Bogos.[58] In other cases slaves are given to the relatives of the slain in order to atone for the guilt;[59] but most commonly the compensation consists of cattle, money, or other property.

[Footnote 55: See Steinmetz, Studien, i. 410 sqq., 439 sqq.; Kovalewsky, in Revue Internationale de Sociologie, ii. 87 sq.]

[Footnote 56: Hanoteau and Letourneux, La Kabylie, iii. 68 sq.]

[Footnote 57: Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 322.]

[Footnote 58: Idem, Die Sitten und das Recht der Bogos, p. 83. Cf. Kohler, Nachwort zu Shakespeare vor dem Forum der Jurisprudenz, p. 15 sq.]

[Footnote 59: Squier, 'Archæology and Ethnology of Nicaragua,' in Trans. American Ethn. Soc. iii. pt. i. 129. Idem, Nicaragua, ii. 345 (ancient Nicaraguans). Macdonald, Africana, i. 171 (Eastern Central Africans).]

By giving presents to the relatives of his victim, the offender not only repairs the loss which he has inflicted {485} upon them, but also appeases their wounded feelings.[60] The pleasure of gain tends to suppress their passion, and the loss and humiliation which the adversary suffers by the gift exercise a healing influence on their resentment.[61] Sometimes the present is chiefly intended to serve as an apology. Among the Iroquois, according to Mr. Morgan, the white wampum which the murderer sent to the family of his victim and which, if accepted, for ever wiped out the memory of his deed, "was not in the nature of a compensation for the life of the deceased, but of a regretful confession of the crime, with a petition for forgiveness."[62] Compensation, moreover, has the advantage of saving the injured party the dangers involved in a blood-feud, the uncertainty of the issue, and the serious consequences which may result from the accomplished act of revenge. Whilst the carrying out of the principle of "life for life" often leads to protracted hostilities between the parties, compensation has a tendency to bring about a durable peace. For this reason it is to the interest of society at large to encourage the latter practice; and this encouragement naturally adds to its attractions.

[Footnote 60: Rée, Entstehung des Gewissens, p. 57 sqq. Steinmetz, Studien, i. 472 sq.]

[Footnote 61: Cf. Miklosich, loc. cit. p. 148; Kohl, op. cit. i. 426, 436 (Montenegrines and Albanians).]

[Footnote 62: Morgan, League of the Iroquois, pp. 331, 333. Cf. Turner, Samoa, p. 326 (people of Aneiteum).]

But in spite of its merits, the practice of composition has, in comparison with blood-revenge, various disadvantages. It is not equally calculated to satisfy a revengeful mind. It has to contend with the conservatism of ancient custom. It may be taken as a token of cowardice or weakness, whereas the blood-feud gives to its perpetrator an opportunity to display his courage and skill. It may be considered offensive to the dead kinsman. Finally, if it is to flourish, it presupposes a certain amount of wealth.[63] {486} The importance of these difficulties depends on the circumstances in each special case. Vindictiveness, conservatism, the desire for fighting, and the estimation in which courage and martial ability are held, are naturally subject to variations, and so are people's wealth and their willingness to compensate. The ideas held concerning the spirits of the departed are likewise variable. The readiness with which blood-money was accepted among the Greeks of the Homeric age has been explained by their belief in the disembodied soul's dreamlike existence in Hades, without strong passions and without the power to molest the living; whilst the later custom of demanding life for life has been interpreted as the result of a change of ideas which attributed much greater activity to the dead.[64] In other cases the deceased is supposed to be appeased by a mere ceremony, or by a vicarious sacrifice. The Ossetes believe that he often appears in a dream to some of his descendants, "tantôt pour exiger de lui la vengeance, tantôt pour lui permettre, au contraire, de la remplacer par un simple office des morts . . . . Revêtu d'habits de deuil, les cheveux épars, l'assassin Ossète vient sur la tombe de celui qu'il a tué, pour accomplir une cérémonie dont le but avéré est de se consacrer lui-même à sa victime. Cette cérémonie est connue sous le nom de kifaeldicïn: le meurtrier se livre spontanément au défunt, qui, en la personne de son descendant, lui pardonne son offense."[65] In Eastern Central Africa, says Mr. Macdonald, "if one man slay another, the friends of the deceased are justified in killing the murderer on the spot. But if they catch him alive they put him in a slave-stick, till compensation be made by a heavy fine of from four to twenty slaves. When the fine is paid the life of the murderer is not demanded, but several of the slaves obtained in compensation are killed, to accompany the deceased."[66] In other instances the dead is perhaps supposed to be appeased by the mere compensation {487} paid to his descendants, or his feelings are simply disregarded when they collide with the interests of the living.[67] Generally speaking, the question whether compensation is to be accepted or not, must be settled by a balancing of advantages and drawbacks.

[Footnote 63: For the influence of wealth on the practice of composition, see Steinmetz, Studien, i. 427 sqq., and Lippert, Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, ii. 591. Occasionally, however, composition occurs even among such a poor people as the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego. "Sometimes," says Mr. Bridges (in A Voice for South America, xiii. 207), "the murderer is suffered to live, but he is much beaten and hurt, and has to make many presents to the relatives of the dead."]

[Footnote 64: Schmidt, Ethik der alten Griechen, ii. 125 sqq. Rohde, Psyche, pp. 8 sqq., 238.]

[Footnote 65: Kovalewsky, Coutume contemporaine et loi ancienne, p. 238.]

[Footnote 66: Macdonald, Africana, i. 170 sq.]

[Footnote 67: Cf. Steinmetz, Studien, i. 452.]

We may expect, then, to find the customs regarding blood-revenge and compensation to vary exceedingly among different peoples. Among many the rule of revenge is strictly followed, and compensation never, or rarely, accepted, at least for intentional homicide. This group includes not only tribes who are in a state of savagery, but peoples like the Beni Amer,[68] Marea,[69] Kabyles of Jurjura,[70] and Jbâla of Morocco. Burckhardt says of the Bedouins:--"The stronger and the more independent a tribe is, the more remote from cultivated provinces, and the wealthier its individuals, the less frequently are the rights of the Thar commuted into a fine. Great sheiks, all over the Desert, regard it as a shameful transaction to compromise in any degree for the blood of their relations."[71] Among the mountains of Daghestan[72] and in parts of Albania[73] it is likewise considered disgraceful to accept compensation for the murder of a relative.

[Footnote 68: Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 321 sq.]

[Footnote 69: Ibid. p. 242.]

[Footnote 70: Hanoteau and Letourneux, op. cit. iii. 61 sq.]

[Footnote 71: Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 178, Cf. Burton, Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, ii. 103.]

[Footnote 72: Kovalesky, in Revue internationale de Sociologie, ii. 87.]

[Footnote 73: Hahn, op. cit. i. 178.]

In some instances the acceptance of compensation does not necessarily mean that the family of the slain altogether renounce their right of revenge. Among the Ahts, "though it is usual to accept large presents as expiation for murder, yet, practically, this expiation is not complete, and blood alone effectually atones for blood. An accepted present never quite cancels the obligation to punish in the breast of the offended person or tribe."[74] Among the Somals, "after the equivalent is paid, the {488} murderer or one of his clan, contrary to the spirit of El Islam, is generally killed by the kindred or tribe of the slain."[75] Among the Berbers (Shlu[h.]) of the province of Sûs, in Southern Morocco, a person who commits homicide immediately flees to another tribe, and places himself under its protection. His relatives then pay ddit, or blood-money, to the family of the victim, but this only prevents the offended party from taking revenge on any of them, and does not entitle the murderer to return; if he appears outside the tribe to whom he has fled for refuge, he is at any time liable to be killed. Among the Ossetes, again, it was formerly "a prevalent custom for a murderer to pay a fixed price for a certain time to the family of the murdered man, say for a year, during which time the blood-revenge remained dormant."[76]

[Footnote 74: Sproat, Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 153.]

[Footnote 75: Burton, First Footsteps in East Africa, p. 87 n. [dagger]. Cf. Paulitschke, Ethnographie Nordost-Afrikas, p. 263.]

[Footnote 76: von Haxthausen, Transcaucasia, p. 405.]

In many instances, on the other hand, custom allows the acceptance of compensation as a perfectly justifiable alternative for blood-revenge, or even regards it as the proper method of settling the case. Among the Indians of Western Washington and North-Western Oregon the principle of life for life, though fully recognised, is sometimes abrogated in favour of material damages.[77] Among the Thlinkets "the murder of a relative can be atoned for by a certain number of blankets."[78] Among the Californian Karok the murder of a man's nearest relative may be compounded for by the payment of money.[79] The Kutchin demand blood-money for a slain kinsman, but avenge his death should such be denied.[80] Among the Kandhs the custom of blood-revenge was modified by the principle of money compensation, the acceptance of such compensation being in no case considered disgraceful.[81] In the Malay Archipelago, whilst the more ferocious tribes {489} insist, in many situations, upon a literal compliance with the law of retaliation, other tribes constantly accept a pecuniary compensation.[82] Among the majority of the Bedawee tribes of Egypt compensation is generally taken in commutation for vengeance;[83] and the same is the case among the Aenezes, though it would reflect shame on the friends of the slain person if they were to make the first overture.[84] Among the Wadshagga, again, the acceptance of blood-money is obligatory.[85] The Vendîdâd forbids the followers of Zoroastrianism to refuse the compensation offered for a deed of bloodshed.[86] Among the Irish the public opinion of the village held that the quarrels between its members should be compromised in a certain manner. However, if the guilty party did not pay the amount awarded, the community did not compel him to do so, and the injured party was then at liberty to avenge his own wrongs by reprisals or levying of private war.[87] Among the Teutons the kindred of the slain might, in early times, choose between taking revenge or accepting compensation, just as they liked; but later on they were expected by public opinion, and finally required by public authority, not to pursue the feud if the proper composition was forthcoming, except in a few extreme cases.[88]

[Footnote 77: Gibbs, 'Tribes of Western Washington and Northwestern Oregon,' in Contributions to North American Ethnology, i. 189.]

[Footnote 78: Petroff, loc. cit. p. 165.]

[Footnote 79: Powers, Tribes of California, p. 21.]

[Footnote 80: Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, i. 386.]

[Footnote 81: Hunter, Annals of Rural Bengal, ii. 76. Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 82.]

[Footnote 82: Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 111.]

[Footnote 83: Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, p. 120.]

[Footnote 84: Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys, p. 87.]

[Footnote 85: Merker, quoted by Kohler, in Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss. xv. 56.]

[Footnote 86: Geiger, op. cit. ii. 34.]

[Footnote 87: Ancient Laws of Ireland, iii. p. lxxx.]

[Footnote 88: Keyser, op. cit. ii. pt. ii. 95. Pollock and Maitland, op. cit. i. 46 sq. Gotlands-Lagen, 13.]

Thus the exaction of life for life, from being a duty incumbent on the family of the dead, becomes a mere right of which they may or may not avail themselves, as they please, and is at last publicly disapproved of or actually prohibited. Among the circumstances by which this process has been brought about there is still one which calls for special attention, namely, the pressure of some intervening authority, the elders of the tribe,[89] or {490} the chief, inducing the avenger to lay down his weapon and to accept money for blood. I do not say that the practice of compensation has originated in such an intervention; we meet it among peoples who know nothing of courts, judges, or regular arbitrators.[90] But when we hear of chiefs making efforts to check the blood-feud by persuading the injured party to accept remuneration in money or property, it is impossible to doubt that some connection exists between the system of compensation and the judicial power of the chief. Among the Indians of Brazil, when blood is shed, either designedly or accidentally, by one of the same tribe, the chief not seldom insists upon the acceptance of compensation by the family of the deceased.[91] Of the people of Nias, amongst whom the offender may suffer death at the hands of the avenger, we read that even grave cases, when brought before the chief, are often punished by fines only.[92] Among the Dooraunees, in Western Afghanistan, "if the offended party complains to the Sirdar, or if he hears of a murder committed, he first endeavours to bring about a compromise, by offering the Khoon Behau, or of price of blood."[93] The Teutonic nations, as Kemble observes, in the course of time made the State the arbitrator between the parties "by establishing a tariff at which injuries should be rated, and committing to the State the duty of compelling the injured person to receive, and the wrong-doer to pay, the settled amount. It thus engaged to act as a mediator between the conflicting interests, with a view to the maintenance of the general peace."[94]

[Footnote 89: Cf. Vámbéry, Das Türkenvolk, p. 305 sq. (Kirghiz); Munzinger, Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 500 (Barea and Kunáma).]

[Footnote 90: E.g., the Fuegians (Bridges, in South American Missionary Magazine, xiii. 152. Idem, in A Voice for South America, xiii. 207).]

[Footnote 91: von Martius, Beiträge zur Ethnographie Amerika's, i. 130. Idem, in Jour. Roy. Geographical Soc. ii. 199.]

[Footnote 92: Modigliani, Viaggio a Nías, p. 496.]

[Footnote 93: Elphinstone, Kingdom of Caubul, ii. 105 sq.]

[Footnote 94: Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 270.]

We have previously discussed the important measure of substituting punishment for revenge by transferring the judicial and executive power of the avenger to a special authority within the body politic, commissioned with {491} the administration of justice. The system of compensation was only one or the methods adopted by such an authority for the settling of disputes; and, on the whole, it was a sign of weakness. Speaking of the Rejangs of Sumatra, Marsden observes that the practice of expiating murder by the payment of a certain sum of money "had doubtless its source in the imbecility of government, which being unable to enforce the law of retaliation, the most obvious rule of punishment, had recourse to a milder scheme of retribution, as being preferable to absolute indemnity."[95] When the central power of jurisdiction is firmly established, the rule of life for life regains its sway.[96] Thus, in the mature legislation of semi-civilised and civilised peoples, up to quite recent times, murder has almost invariably been treated as a capital offence--unless, indeed, committed by some person belonging to a specially privileged class, such as the Peruvian Incas,[97] the Brâhmanas of India,[98] or, in England, all who had the benefit of Clergy, that is, every man who knew how to read, with the exception of those who were married to widows.[99] But among many of the lower races, also, manslayers are subject to capital punishment, in the proper sense of the term--to death inflicted, not by an individual avenger, but by the community at large or by some special authority.[100]

[Footnote 95: Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 246.]

[Footnote 96: Cf. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 599 sq. (Teutonic peoples).]

[Footnote 97: Réville, Hibbert Lectures on the Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 151.]

[Footnote 98: Laws of Manu, viii. 380 sq.]

[Footnote 99: Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, i. 458 sqq. According to the Cornelian law, a free Roman citizen could not be punished capitally for the commission of murder, but was simply exiled from Italy, whereas a slave was executed for a similar crime (Mommsen, Römisches Strafrecht, p. 631 sq.).]

[Footnote 100: Supra, pp. 171, 172, 189. Veniaminof, quoted by Petroff, loc. cit. p. 152 (Aleuts). Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 150. Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 331. Harmon, Journals of Voyages and Travels, p. 348 (Indians on the east side of the Rocky Mountains). Turner, Samoa, pp. 178, 295, 334 (Samoans, natives of Arorae, Efatese). Thomson, in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxi. 143 (Savage Islanders). Hickson, A Naturalist in North Celebes, p. 198 (Sangirese, in former days). Abreu de Galindo, History of the Discovery and Conquest of the Canary Islands, p. 27 (aborigines of Ferro). Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, ii. 882 (Mutei). Beltrame, Il Fiume Bianco e i Dénka, p. 77. In all these cases homicide or murder is said to be punished with death; but it may be that, in some of them, our authorities have not sufficiently distinguished between punishment and blood-revenge.]

It is not only by the slaying of a fellow-creature that a person may forfeit his right to live. Among various peoples custom allows, or sometimes even compels, the offended party to kill the offender in cases which involve {492} no blood-guiltiness, especially adultery;[101] and we hear of capital punishment being inflicted not only for homicide, but for treason,[102] incest,[103] adultery,[104] witchcraft,[105] sacrilege,[106] theft,[107] and other offences.[108] We have seen that among semi-civilised and civilised nations, particularly, the punishment of death has been applied to a great variety of offences, many of which appear to us almost venial.[109] And we have discussed both the origin of the idea that justice requires life for life, and the circumstances that have led to the infliction of punishments the severity of which, apparently at least, bears no proportion to the magnitude of the crime.[110]

[Footnote 101: Supra, p. 290 sqq. Infra, on Sexual Morality. Post, Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Familienrechts, p. 134 sq.]

[Footnote 102: Supra, p. 189.]

[Footnote 103: Infra, on Sexual Morality.]

[Footnote 104: Supra, p. 189. Infra, on Sexual Morality.]

[Footnote 105: Supra, p. 189 sq.]

[Footnote 106: Supra, p. 197.]

[Footnote 107: Infra, on the Right of Property.]

[Footnote 108: Supra, p. 195.]

[Footnote 109: Supra, p. 186 sqq.]

[Footnote 110: Supra, ch. vii.]

But whilst, among peoples of culture, capital punishment has been inflicted far beyond the limits of the lex talionis, we meet, on the other hand, among such peoples with opinions to the effect that it should not be applied even in the most atrocious cases. The old philosopher Lao-tsze, the founder of Taouism, condemned it both as useless and as irreverent. The people, he argued, do not fear death; to what purpose, then, is it to try to frighten them with death? There is only one who presides over the infliction of it. "He who would inflict death in the room of him who presides over it may be described as hewing wood instead of a great carpenter. Seldom is it that he who undertakes the hewing, instead of the great carpenter, does not cut his own hands."[111] Nor does Confucius seem to have been in favour of capital punishment. When Chî {493} K'ang asked his opinion as to the killing of "the unprincipled for the good of the principled," Confucius replied:--"Sir, in carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good."[112] The early Christians generally condemned the punishment of death, as well as all other forms of shedding human blood;[113] but when the Church obtained an ascendency, the condemnation of it was modified into the doctrine that no priest or bishop must take any part in a capital charge.[114] Later on, from the twelfth century at least, the priest might assist at judicial proceedings resulting in a sentence of death, if only he withdrew for the moment, when the sentence was passed.[115] And whilst ostentatiously sticking to the principle, "Ecclesia non sitit sanguinem,"[116] the Church had frequent recourse to the convenient method of punishing heretics by relegating the execution of the sentence to the civil power, with a prayer that the culprit should be punished "as mildly as possible and without the effusion of blood," that is, by the death of fire.[117] In modern times the views of the early Christians regarding capital punishment have been revived by the Quakers;[118] but the powerful movement in favour of its abolition chiefly derives its origin from the writings of Beccaria and the French Encyclopedists.

[Footnote 111: Tâo Teh King, 74.]

[Footnote 112: Lun Yü, xii. 19.]

[Footnote 113: Hetzel, Die Todesstrafe, p. 71 sqq. Günther, Die Idee der Wiedervergeltung, i. 271. Lactantius, Divinæ Institutiones, vi. ('De vero cultu') 20 (Migne, Patrologiæ cursus, vi. 708): ". . . occidere hominem sit semper nefas, quem Deus sanctum animal esse voluit."]

[Footnote 114: Supra, p. 381 sq. Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 39. Laurent, Études sur l'histoire de l'Humanité, iv. 223; vii. 233.]

[Footnote 115: Gerhohus, De ædificio Dei, 35 (Migne, op. cit. cxciv. 1282).]

[Footnote 116: Katz, Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts, p. 54.]

[Footnote 117: Lecky, History of European Morals, ii. 41.]

[Footnote 118: Gurney, Views & Practices of the Society of Friends, pp. 377 n. 1, 389.]

The great motive force of this movement has been sympathy with human suffering and horror of the destruction of human life--feelings which have been able to operate the more freely, the less they have been checked either by the belief in the social expediency of {494} capital punishment, or by the notion of a vindictive god who can be conciliated only by the death of the offender. It has been argued that the punishment of death is no more effective as a deterrent from crime than are certain other punishments. According to Beccaria, it is not the intensity of a pain which produces the greatest effect on the mind of man, but its continuance; hence the execution of a culprit, occupying a short time only, must be a less deterring example than perpetual slavery, which ought to be the penalty for the greatest crimes.[119] Moreover, the circumstances which unavoidably attend the practical application of the punishment of death are such as excite the sympathy of the public in favour of the perpetrator of the crime and thereby seriously impair the efficacy of the punishment as an example.[120] An execution is regarded as less degrading than many other forms of punishment; when a man dies on the scaffold there is a counterpoise to the disgrace in the admiration excited by his firmness, whereas there is no such counterpoise when a man goes off in the prison van to be immured in a cell.[121] Statistical data prove, it is said, that, where capital punishment has been abolished either for certain crimes or generally, crime has not become more frequent after the abolition, whilst the re-enactment of capital punishment, or greater strictness in its execution, has nowhere diminished the number of offences punishable with death.[122] And the punishment of death is no more required by the dictates of abstract justice than it is requisite for the safety of the community. It is quite an arbitrary assumption, based on the rude theory of talion, that death must be inflicted on him who has caused death; such an assumption can be refuted simply by showing that there are many degrees of homicide.[123] Nay, far from being postulates of the highest justice, laws which {495} prescribe capital punishment may lead to the highest injustice. As Bentham observes, "the punishment of death is not remissible"; error is possible in all judgments, but whilst in every other case of judicial error compensation can be made, death alone admits of no compensation.[124] And not only may the innocent have to suffer an irreparable punishment, but the criminal easily escapes his punishment altogether. Experience shows that the punishment of death has the disadvantage of diminishing the repressive power of the legal menace, because witnesses, judges, and jurymen exert themselves to the utmost in order to avoid arriving at a verdict of guilty in many cases where an execution would be the consequence of such a verdict.[125] Finally, the punishment of death almost entirely misses one of the most essential aims of every legitimate punishment, the reformation of the criminal. Nay, by putting him to a speedy death we actually prevent him from morally reforming himself, and from manifesting the fruits of sincere repentance; and we perhaps deprive him of the opportunity of making good his claim to mercy at the hands of another and a higher Tribunal, on which we are arrogantly encroaching in a matter of which we are wholly unfit to judge.[126]

[Footnote 119: Beccaria, Dei delitti e delle pene, § 16.]

[Footnote 120: Romilly, Punishment of Death, p. 56 sqq.]

[Footnote 121: Ibid. p. 47 sq. Hetzel, op. cit. p. 454 sqq.]

[Footnote 122: Mittermaier, Die Todesstrafe, p. 150 sqq. Olivecrona, Om dödsstraffet, p. 130 sqq.]

[Footnote 123: Mittermaier, op. cit. pp. 62, 133. von Mehring, Frage von der Todesstrafe, p. 19 sqq.]

[Footnote 124: Bentham, Rationale of Punishment, p. 186 sqq. Cf. Hetzel, op. cit. p. 442 sqq.]

[Footnote 125: Bentham, op. cit. p. 191 sq. Mittermaier, op. cit. pp. 98 sqq., 148.]

[Footnote 126: Romilly, op. cit. p. 3 sqq.]

Under the influence of these and similar arguments, but chiefly owing to an increasing reluctance to take human life, the legislation of Europe has, from the end of the eighteenth century, undergone a radical change with reference to the punishment of death. In several European and American States it has been formally abolished, or is nowadays never inflicted,[127] whilst in the rest it is practically restricted to cases of wilful murder. But it still has as strenuous advocates as ever, and receives much support from popular feelings. It is said that the abolition of capital punishment would remove one of the {496} best safeguards of society; that it definitely prevents the criminal from doing further mischief; that it is a much more effective means of deterring from crime than any other penalty; that its abolition would have the disadvantage of crimes widely differing in their nature being placed on the same footing; that a person criminally disposed, if he knew that he would only be punished with imprisonment for life, would, instead of merely perpetrating robbery, commit murder at the same time, being aware that no higher penalty on that account would be inflicted; and so forth. As usually, religion also is called in to give strength to the argument. Several writers maintain that the statements in the Bible which command capital punishment have an obligatory power on all Christian legislators;[128] we even meet with the assertion that the object of this punishment is not the protection of civil society, but to carry out the justice of God, in whose name "the judge should sentence and the executioner strike."[129] But I venture to believe that the chief motive for retaining the punishment of death in modern legislation is the strong hold which the principle of talion has on the minds of legislators, as well as on the mind of the public. This supposition derives much support from the fact that capital punishment is popular only in the case of murder. "Blood, it is said, will have blood, and the imagination is flattered with the notion of the similarity of the suffering, produced by the punishment, with that inflicted by the criminal."[130]

[Footnote 127: Günther, op. cit. iii. 347 sqq. von Liszt, Lehrbuch des Deutschen Strafrechts, p. 261.]

[Footnote 128: Mittermaier, op. cit. p. 128 sqq.]

[Footnote 129: Clay, The Prison Chaplain, p. 357.]

[Footnote 130: Bentham, Rationale of Punishment, p. 191.]

XXI. THE DUEL

WHEN the system of revenge was replaced by the system of punishment, the offended party generally lost the right of killing the offender. But there are noteworthy exceptions to this rule. In a previous chapter we have seen that, among various peoples, in cases involving unusually great provocation, an avenger who slays his adversary is either entirely excused by custom or law, or becomes subject to a comparatively lenient punishment.[1] A few words still remain to be said about the most persistent survival of the custom of exacting vengeance with eventual destruction of life, the modern duel. But in connection with this survival it seems appropriate to discuss the practice of duelling in general, in its capacity of a recognised social institution.

[Footnote 1: Supra, p. 290 sqq.]

Duelling, or the fighting in single combat on previous challenge, is sometimes resorted to as a means of bringing to an end hostilities between different groups of people. Among the aborigines of New South Wales "the war often ends in a single combat between chosen champions."[2] In Western Victoria quarrels between tribes are sometimes settled by duels between the chiefs, and the result is accepted as final. "At other times disputes are decided by combat between equal numbers of warriors, painted {498} with red clay and dressed in war costume; but real fighting seldom takes place, unless the women rouse the anger of the men and urge them to come to blows. Even then it rarely results in a general fight, but comes to single combats between warriors of each side; who step into the arena, taunt one another, exchange blows with the liangle, and wrestle together. The first wound ends the combat."[3] Among the Thlinkets feuds between clans or families were commonly settled by duels between chosen champions, one from each side.[4] Ancient writers tell us that among the Greeks, Romans, and Teutons, combats were likewise agreed upon to take place between a definite number of warriors, for the sake of ending a war.[5] According to Tacitus, the Germans had the custom of deciding the event of battle by a duel fought between some captive of the enemy and a representative of the home army.[6] In all these cases, as it seems, the duel originates in a desire for a speedy peace.

[Footnote 2: Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 40.]

[Footnote 3: Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 77.]

[Footnote 4: Holmberg, 'Ethnographische Skizzen über die Völker des russischen Amerika,' in Acta Societatis Scientiarum Fennicæ, iv. 322 sq.]

[Footnote 5: See Grotius, De jure belli et pacis, ii. 20. 43. 1; Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 928.]

[Footnote 6: Tacitus, Germania, 10.]

In other instances duels are fought for the purpose of settling disputes between individuals, either by conferring on the victor the right of possessing the object of the strife, or by gratifying a craving for revenge and wiping off the affront.

Thus, among the pagan Norsemen, any person who confided in his strength and dexterity with his weapons could acquire property by simply challenging its owner to surrender his land or fight for it. The combat was strictly regulated; the person challenged was allowed to strike first, he who retired or who lost his weapon was regarded as vanquished, and he who received the first wound, or who was most seriously wounded, had to pay a fixed sum of money in order to save his life.[7] In the {499} islands outside Kamchatka, if a husband found that a rival had been with his wife, he would admit that the rival had at least an equal claim to her. "Let us try, then," he would say, "which of us has the greater right, and shall have her." After that they would take off their clothes and begin to beat each other's backs with sticks, and he who first fell to the ground unable to bear any more blows, lost his right to the woman.[8] Among the Eskimo about Behring Strait Mr. Nelson was told by an old man that in ancient times, when a husband and a lover quarrelled about a woman, they were disarmed by the neighbours and then settled the trouble with their fists or by wrestling, the victor in the struggle taking the woman.[9] Among the Chippewyans Richardson saw more than once a stronger man assert his right to take the wife of a weaker countryman in consequence of a successful combat. "Any one," he says, "may challenge another to wrestle, and, if he overcomes, may carry off his wife as the prize. . . . The bereaved husband meets his loss with the resignation which custom prescribes in such a case, and seeks his revenge by taking the wife of another man weaker than himself."[10] In the tribes of Western Victoria, described by Mr. Dawson, a young chief who cannot get a wife, and falls in love with one belonging to a chief who has more than two, can, with her consent, challenge the husband to single combat, and, if the husband is defeated, the conqueror makes her his legal wife.[11] "In some points," says Mr. Riedel, "the aboriginal law of retaliation in Australia corresponds with the code of honour, so called, which certain classes in Europe have long maintained. When one blackfellow carries off the {500} wife of another, the injured husband and the betrayer meet in mortal combat; and the spear that spills the life blood repairs the wounded honour of the one, or justifies in the eyes of society the crime of the other."[12] Among the aborigines of Western Australia "duels are common between individuals who have private quarrels to settle, a certain number of spears being thrown until honour is satisfied."[13] Among the Dieyerie tribe, should anybody accuse another wrongfully, he is challenged to fight by the person he has accused, and this settles the matter.[14] Of the duels fought among the natives of North-West-Central Queensland Dr. Roth gives us an interesting account. Supposing an individual considers himself aggrieved, a duel often takes place at a distance from camp. There is no intention of killing. With two-handed swords, the combatants would only aim at striking each other on the head; with spears, they would only make for the fleshy parts of the thighs; with stone-knives, they would only cut into the shoulders, flanks, and buttocks, producing gashes an inch or more deep, and up to seven or even eight inches long. The lying upon the back on the ground--a posture in which no lawful incisions with a stone-knife can be made--is the sign of defeat, indicating that the combatant has had enough, and gives in. But the matter has not yet come to an end; the duels of these savages are not so defective in point of justice as the modern duels of Europe. "The fight between the two individuals being at length brought to a termination, steps are taken by the old men and elders to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the dispute. If the victor turns out to be the aggrieved party he has to show good cause, as for instance that the man whom he had just taken upon himself to punish had raped his gin, gave him the munguni [or death-bone], or wrought him some similarly flagrant wrong: under such circumstances, no further action is taken by anyone. If, {501} on the other hand, the victor happens to be the aggrieved party only in his own opinion, and not in that of those to whom he is answerable, and who do not believe the grounds on which he commenced the fight to be sufficient, he has to undergo exactly the same mutilations subsequently at the hands of the vanquished as he himself had inflicted." And should one of the combatants be killed in the duel, which may sometimes happen, the survivor, unless he can show that he had sufficient provocation or cause, "will be put to death in similar manner, at the instance of the camp-council, and usually undergo the extra degradation of digging his own as well as his victim's grave."[15] Of the South American Charruas Azara writes:--"Ce sont les parties elles-mêmes qui arrangent leurs différends particuliers: si elles ne sont pas d'accord, elles se chargent à coups de poing, jusqu'à ce qu'une des deux tourne le dos et laisse l'autre, sans reparler de l'affaire. Dans ces duels, ils ne font jamais usage des armes; et je n'ai jamais ouï dire qu'il y ait eu quelqu'un de tué."[16] If an Apache kills another, "the next-of-kin to the defunct individual may kill the murderer--if he can. He has the right to challenge him to single combat, which takes place before all assembled in the camp, and both must abide the result of the conflict. There is no trial, no set council, no regular examination into the crime or its causes; but the ordeal of battle settles the whole matter."[17] Among the Central Eskimo, "strange as it may seem, a murderer will come to visit the relatives of his victim (though he knows that they are allowed to kill him in revenge) and will settle with them. He is kindly welcomed, and sometimes lives quietly for weeks and months. Then he is suddenly challenged to a wrestling match, and if defeated is killed, or if victorious he may kill one of the opposite party, or when hunting, he is {502} suddenly attacked by his companions and slain."[18] Richardson heard that some of the Eskimo "decided their quarrels by alternate blows of the fist, each in turn presenting his head to his opponent."[19] The Tunguses formerly had a duel with arrows called koutschiguera, which was fought "only in the presence of the elders, who marked out the spot, settled the distance of the combatants, and gave the signal for letting fly."[20] The Santals have a tradition that years long since there was a custom amongst them "of deciding their disputes, when the parties were males, by the ordeal of single combat. The bow and arrow or hanger served in lieu of pistol and sword for these rustic duels. Such affairs of honour were always fatal to one party, but of late times, as equitable remedies have been brought nearer to them, this remnant of a barbarous age has disappeared.**"[21] Mr. Man also heard that the Kols at one time preferred the duel to any other mode of seeking redress for a wrong.[22] The ancient Swedes were even compelled by law to fight duels to repair their wounded honour. The so-called 'Hedna-lag,' a fragment of an old pagan law, prescribes that, if any man says to another, "You are not a man's equal, you have not the heart of a man," and the other replies, "I am a man as good as you," they shall encounter in a place where three roads meet. If he who has suffered the insult does not appear, he shall be held to be what the other one called him, and he shall henceforth be allowed neither to swear nor to give evidence in any case. If, on the other hand, they meet in single combat, and the offended party kills the offender, he shall have to pay no compensation for it; but if the offender kills his opponent, he shall pay half his price.[23]

[Footnote 7: Lea, Superstition and Force, p. 111 sq. Keyser, Efterladte Skrifter, ii. pt. i. 391. Weinhold, Altnordisches Leben, p. 297. von Amira, 'Recht,' in Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, iii. 217 sq. Arnesen, Historisk Indledning til den gamle og nye Islandske Raettergang, p. 158 sq. Rosenberg, Traek af Livet paa Island i Fristats-Tiden, p. 98 n.]

[Footnote 8: Steller, Beschreibung von dem Lande Kamtschatka, p. 348.]

[Footnote 9: Nelson, 'Eskimo about Behring Strait,' in Ann. Rep. Bur, Ethn. xviii. 292.]

[Footnote 10: Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, ii. 24 sq.]

[Footnote 11: Dawson, op. cit. p. 36. For other instances of rights to women being acquired by duels, see Westermarck, History of Human Marriage, p. 159 sqq.; Post, Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, ii. 23 sq. (people of Kordofan).]

[Footnote 12: Riedel, Aborigines of Australia, p. 6.]

[Footnote 13: Calvert, Aborigines of Western Australia, p. 22.]

[Footnote 14: Gason, 'Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, p. 266.]

[Footnote 15: Roth, Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, p. 139 sq.]

[Footnote 16: Azara, Voyages dans l'Amérique méridionale, ii. 16.]

[Footnote 17: Cremony, Life among the Apaches, p. 293.]

[Footnote 18: Boas, 'Central Eskimo,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. vi. 582.]

[Footnote 19: Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, i. 367 sq.]

[Footnote 20: Georgi, Russia, iii. 83.]

[Footnote 21: Man, Sonthalia and the Sonthals, p. 90.]

[Footnote 22: Ibid. p. 90.]

[Footnote 23: Leffler, Om den fornsvenska hednalagen, p. 40 sq. (in K. Vitterhets Historie och Antiqvitets Akademiens Månadsblad, 1879, p. 139 sq.). Professor Leffler is inclined to believe that this fragment once formed a part of the older Vestgötalag (op. cit. p. 35, in the Månadsblad, p. 134).]

{503} These customs and rules are due to a variety of circumstances. To recognise the duel as a means of acquiring a right to land or women, is a concession to superior strength in a society where there is no government, or where the government is weak; whilst in the opportunity given to the challenged party to oppose the avenger on equal terms we may trace the interfering influence of public opinion. The duel is also in a higher degree than downright violence calculated to bring about a definite arrangement; and in some cases, as we have seen, it is a mere sham-fight, which may serve as a preventive against the infliction of more serious injuries, by showing which party is the weaker and, consequently, has to give in. In other cases, again, the challenge is a method of bringing forward an offender who otherwise might be out of reach, and of limiting the fight to the parties themselves, so as to prevent whole families from making war upon each other.[24] Moreover, a duel may be preferable to an ordinary act of revenge as a means of wiping off an affront and of satisfying the claims of honour; it displays more courage, it commands more respect. In several of the cases referred to it is obviously a mitigated form of revenge, a method of settling a point of honour in a comparatively harmless way, and as such it has certain advantages over the practice of compensation; it requires no wealth on the part of the offender, and allows of no doubt as to the courage of the sufferer.[25] The Queensland aborigines are said to be very proud of the wounds they receive in their single combats,[26] and the duelling Eskimo "consider it cowardly to evade a stroke."[27] The duel {504} may, finally, be regarded as the most equitable form of settling disputes in cases where both parties claim to be in the right. Sometimes it is even resorted to as a means of ascertaining the truth, as an ordeal or "judgment of God."

[Footnote 24: Cf. Arnesen, op. cit. pp. 150, 166 sq.]

[Footnote 25: According to Dr. Steinmetz, the origin of the duel is "die Beschränkung des Rachekampfes. . . . Die treibende Kraft, welche zu dieser duellartigen Beschränkung führte, war die Exogamie, die verwandtschaftlichen Beziehungen zwischen Gruppen, der Friedensverlangen erzeugende, erweiterte Verkehr derselben. Negative Bedingungen waren: das Fehlen einer rechtsprechenden centralen Regierungsgewalt, und das nicht Erfülltsein der Entwicklungsbedingungen der Composition, namentlich der Mangel an ökonomischen Gütern, welche die materielle Entschädigung unmöglich machte" (Steinmetz, Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, ii. 67, 87).]

[Footnote 26: Roth, op. cit. p. 140.]

[Footnote 27: Richardson, Arctic Searching Expedition, i. 368.]

The wager of battle is well known to every student of mediæval law. Outside Europe we meet with a similar institution in the Malay Archipelago. In his 'History of the Indian Archipelago,' Mr. Crawfurd states:--"The trial by combat or duel, and the appeal to the judgment of God by various descriptions of ordeal, are not unknown. The Malay laws direct that the combat or ordeal shall be had recourse to in the absence of evidence, in the following words: 'If one accuse and another deny, and there be no witnesses on either side, the parties shall either fight or submit to the ordeal of melted tin or boiling oil.'"[28] The natives of the Barito River basin in Borneo have the following ordeal, called the Hagalangang:--"Both parties are placed in boxes at a distance of seven fathoms opposite one another, the boxes being made of nibong laths and so high as to reach a man's breast. Then both receive a sharpened bamboo of a lance's length to throw at each other at a given signal. The wounded person is supposed to be guilty."[29] Among the Teutons the judicial combat seems to have developed out of the ancient practice of settling disputes by private duelling. In a time when the community did its best to suppress acts of revenge, it was no doubt a wise measure to adopt the duel as a form of judicial procedure, investing it with the character of an ordeal.[30] It seems probable that the duel assumed this character already among the pagan Teutons.[31] Like other ordeals it was resorted to in cases where there was some doubt as to the guilt of the accused.[32] To {505} appeal to "the judgment of God" was an expedient substitute for human evidence in a society where nothing was more difficult than to procure reliable witnesses, and where superstition reigned supreme. Speaking of the Franks, M. Esmein observes:--"En dehors du flagrant délit ou de l'aveu de l'accusé, tout était incertitude. . . . Par solidarité forcée, jamais un homme ne témoignera contre un autre homme du même groupe; il ne témoignera pas non plus par crainte de la vengeance et des représailles contre un homme appartenant à un autre groupe."[33] I shall later on try to prove that the ordeal is not, as it is often supposed to be, primordially based on the belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful, and just god, who protects the innocent and punishes the guilty, but that it largely springs from the same notion as underlies the belief in the efficacy of an oath. The ordeal, then, intrinsically involves an imprecation with reference to the guilt or innocence of a suspected person, and its proper object is to give reality to this imprecation, for the purpose of establishing the validity or invalidity of the suspicion. This also holds good of the judicial combat. The issue of the fight decided the question of guilt because of the imprecation involved in the oath preceding the duel. Before the conflict commenced each party asserted his good cause in the most positive manner, confirmed his assertion by a solemn oath on the Gospels or on a relic of approved sanctity, and called upon God to grant victory to the right. Such an oath was an indispensable preliminary to every combat, and the defeat was thus not merely the loss of the suit, but also a conviction of perjury, to be punished as such.[34] That the real object of the judicial duel was to correct the abuses of compurgation by oath appears from various {506} facts. Gundebald, king of the Burgundians, says expressly, in the preamble to a law by which he authorises the wager of battle, that his reason for doing so is, that his subjects may no longer take oaths upon uncertain matters, or forswear themselves upon certain.[35] Charlemagne urged the use of the duel as greatly preferable to the shameless oaths which were taken with so much facility, and Otho II. ordered its employment in various forms of procedure for the same reason.[36] Witnesses might have to fight as well as principals. A Bavarian law even directed the claimant of an estate to combat not the defendant, but his witness;[37] and in the later Middle Ages, after enlightened legislators had been strenuously and not unsuccessfully endeavouring to limit the abuse of the judicial combat, the challenging of witnesses was still the favourite mode of escaping legal condemnation.[38] Some codes required the witnesses to come into court armed, and to have their weapons blessed on the altar before giving their testimony.[39] The practice of blessing the arms before the duel took place[40] was no doubt intended to enable them the better to carry out the imprecation by saturating them with sanctity, or by increasing their natural sanctity; weapons are commonly regarded with superstitious veneration, hence oaths taken upon them are held to be particularly binding.[41] But though the judicial duel fundamentally derived its efficacy as a means of ascertaining the truth from its connection with an oath, it has, owing to the tendency of magic to fuse into religion, readily come to be regarded as an appeal to the justice of God, just as curses are transformed into {507} prayers and perjury becomes an offence against the Deity.

[Footnote 28: Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, iii. 92.]

[Footnote 29: Schwaner, Borneo, i. 212.]

[Footnote 30: Dahn observes (Bausteine, ii. 57) that "der Kampf ursprünglich gar kein Gottesurtheil, sondern lediglich eine Verweisung der Parteien auf Selbsthülfe . . . war." Cf. Patetta, Le ordalie, p. 178.]

[Footnote 31: Patetta, op. cit. p. 179.]

[Footnote 32: See Unger, 'Der gerechtliche Zweikampf bei den germanischen Völkern,' in Göttinger Studien, 1847, Zweite Abtheilung, p. 358 sq.]

[Footnote 33: Esmein, Cours élémentaire du droit français, p. 96 sq.]

[Footnote 34: Lex Baiuwariorum, ii. 1. Jourdan, Decrusy, and Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, ii. 840 sqq. Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, fol. 141 b sq., vol. ii. 438 sqq.: "Sic me Deus adjuvet & haec sancta." Lea, Superstition and Force, p. 166 sq. Brunner, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, ii. 415. von Amira, 'Recht,' in Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, iii. 218. Unger, loc. cit. p. 386. Tuchmann, in Mélusine, iv. 130.]

[Footnote 35: Leges Burgundionum, Leges Gundebati, 45.]

[Footnote 36: Lea, op. cit. p. 118.]

[Footnote 37: Lex Baiuwariorum, xvii. 2 (xvi. 2).]

[Footnote 38: Beaumanoir, Coutumes du Beauvoisis, lxi. 58, vol. ii. 398. Lea, op. cit. p. 120 sq. Unger, loc. cit. p. 379 sqq.]

[Footnote 39: Lea, op. cit. p. 120.]

[Footnote 40: Esmein, op. cit. p. 95.]

[Footnote 41: For the worship of, and swearing by, weapons, see Du Cange, 'Juramentum super arma,' in Glossarium ad scriptores mediæ et infimæ Latinitatis, iii. 1616 sq.; Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, pp. 165, 166, 896; Pollock, Oxford Lectures, p. 269 sq. n. 1; Joyce Social History of Ancient Ireland, i. 286 sq. In Morocco, also, an oath taken on a weapon is considered a particularly solemn form of swearing.]

In most European countries the judicial duel survived the close of the Middle Ages, but disappeared shortly afterwards.[42] Various circumstances contributed to its decline and final disappearance. From an early period Councils and popes had declared against it,[43] but with little success; many ecclesiastics, indeed, not only connived at the practice, but authorised it, and questions concerning the property of churches and monasteries were decided by combat.[44] There were other more powerful causes at work--the growth of communes, devoted to the arts of peace, seeking their interest in the pursuits of industry and commerce, and enjoying the advantage of settled and permanent tribunals; the revival of Roman law, which began to undermine all the institutions of feudalism;[45] the ascendency of the royal power in its struggle against the nobles; the increase of enlightenment, the decrease of superstition. But though finally banished from the courts of justice, the duel did not die. In the sixteenth century, when the judicial combat faded away, the duel of honour began to flourish.[46] Buckle justly observes that, "as the trial by battle became disused, the people, clinging to their old customs, became more addicted to duelling";[47] hence the judicial duel may be regarded as the direct parent of the modern duel.[48] The Church and the State naturally tried to suppress this sanguinary survival of barbarism. The Council of Trent declared that "the detestable custom of duelling, introduced by the contrivance of the devil, that by the bloody death of the body {508} he may accomplish the ruin of the soul," was to be utterly exterminated from the Christian world, and that not only principals and seconds, but anyone who had given counsel in the case of a duel, or had in any other way persuaded a person thereunto, as also the spectators thereof, should be subjected to excommunication and perpetual malediction.[49] In England, Cromwell's Parliament made a determined effort to check the practice.[50] A Scotch law of 1600 rendered the bare act of engaging in a duel, without license from the king, a capital offence.[51] About the same period the Spanish Cortes passed a law which subjected all parties to a duel to the penalties of treason.[52] In 1602, Henry IV. of France issued an edict condemning to death whoever should give or accept a challenge or act as second;[53] and already several edicts against duelling had been promulgated under Louis XIII.[54] when, in 1626, there was published a new one punishing with death any person who had killed his adversary in a duel, or had been found guilty of sending a challenge a second time.[55] But all these enactments had little or no effect. We are told that in the eight years between 1601 and 1609, two thousand men of noble birth fell in duels in France; and, according to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who was ambassador at the court of Louis XIII., there was scarce a Frenchman worth looking on who had not killed his man in a duel.[56] As Robertson observes, in reference to duelling, "no custom, how absurd soever it may be, if it has subsisted long, or derives its force from the manners and prejudices of the age in which it prevails, was ever abolished by the bare promulgation of laws and statutes."[57] In spite of laws which directly prohibit duelling, or which punish with great severity anyone who kills another in a duel, sometimes even subjecting {509} him to punishment for murder,[58] the duel still prevails in many European countries as a recognised custom, so much supported by public opinion that the laws referring to it are seldom or never applied.

[Footnote 42: Lea, op. cit. p. 199 sqq. In England, however, it was formally abolished by law as late as 1819 (Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, i. 249 sq.).]

[Footnote 43: Du Boys, Histoire du droit criminel des peuples modernes, ii. 182. Lea, op. cit. p. 206 sqq.]

[Footnote 44: Robertson, History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V. i. 357 sq. 'Notitia gurpitionis,' in Bouquet, Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ix. 729.]

[Footnote 45: Lea, op. cit. pp. 200-205, 211 sq. Unger, loc. cit. p. 392 sqq.]

[Footnote 46: Storr, 'Duel,' in Encyclopædia Britannica, vii. 512.]

[Footnote 47: Buckle, Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works, i. 386. Cf. Bosquett, Treatise on Duelling, p. 79.]

[Footnote 48: Storr, loc. cit. p. 511.]

[Footnote 49: Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent, Session xxv. 19, p. 274 sq.]

[Footnote 50: Pike, History of Crime in England, ii. 192.]

[Footnote 51: Hume, Commentaries on the Law of Scotland, ii. 281. Erskine, Principles of the Law of Scotland, p. 560.]

[Footnote 52: Truman, Field of Honor, p. 70.]

[Footnote 53: Isambert, Taillandier, and Decrusy, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, xv. 351 sq.]

[Footnote 54: Ibid. xvi. 21, 106, 146.]

[Footnote 55: Ibid. xvi. 176, 179.]

[Footnote 56: Storr, loc. cit. p. 512.]

[Footnote 57: Robertson, op. cit. i. 66.]

[Footnote 58: Günther, Die Idee der Wiedervergeltung, iii. 225, n. 467. Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England, iii. 99 sqq. Gelli, Il duello, p. 21.]

This curious practice of taking the law into one's own hands, which we find existing in the midst of modern civilisation, is explicable, partly from the indifference with which legislators have treated offences against honour,[59] partly from the force of habit. The insulted person, finding no adequate legal remedy for the affront he has suffered, determines to be his own avenger, and challenges the offender to fight. Nor is revenge his only motive. He desires also to wash off the indignity by showing that he respects his honour more than his life. The notion that a challenge to mortal combat effaces the blot which an insult has imprinted upon a man's honour is a survival from a period when the honourable man was above everything a brave man.[60] By displaying courage the offended party demonstrates that he is not worthy of contempt, by showing timidity he condemns himself. So far as justice is concerned, the duel, of course, became an absurdity as soon as it ceased to be looked upon in the light of an ordeal. It compels the insulted person to expose himself to a fresh injury from the side of an impudent offender, it allows the scoundrel to repay the most condign censure with a mortal stroke. But when a man's honour is at stake the voice of justice is easily silenced, and the pressure of ancient habit is greater than ever. As is usual in similar cases, a variety of more or less futile arguments are adduced to give their support to the survival. Lord Kames maintained that, if two persons agree to decide their quarrel by single combat, the State has nothing to do with it, since they need not make use of the protection which the State offers them.[61] But, as a matter of fact, the {510} duel is not a private affair between two individuals. As Moore observed, "a refusal of the duel is attended with such mortifying circumstances, with such an imputation of meanness and cowardice . . . , with such a studied contempt in public, and exclusion from the polite circle in private, as renders the alternative both cruel and inhuman";[62] and it would seem that the State ought to protect its members against such a compulsion. It is said that the duel "grasps the sword of justice, which the laws have dropped, punishing what no code can chastise--contempt and insult."[63] But we find that in countries where it no longer prevails, laws against insults, courts of honour, and especially more refined ideas as regards honorary satisfaction, have made it as useless as it is absurd, a matter of the past which nobody desires to revive.

[Footnote 59: Cf. Bentham, Theory of Legislation, p. 299 sqq.]

[Footnote 60: That the modern duel is a special development of Chivalry has been pointed out by Buckle (History of Civilization in England, ii. 136 sq.).]

[Footnote 61: Kames, Sketches of the History of Man, i. 415 n.]

[Footnote 62: Moore, Full Inquiry into the Subject of Suicide, ii. 276.]

[Footnote 63: Quoted by Millingen, History of Duelling, i. 300.]