Chapter II: The Nature of the Moral Emotions (2)

From non-moral resentment we shall pass to the emotion of moral indignation. That this is closely connected with anger is indicated by language itself: we may feel indignant on other than moral grounds, and we may feel "righteous anger." The relationship between these emotions is also conspicuous in their outward expressions, which, when the emotion is strong enough, present similar characteristics. When possessed with strong moral indignation, a person looks as if he were angry,[101] and so he really is, in the wider sense of the term. This relationship has not seldom been recognised by moralists, though it has more often been forgotten. Some two thousand years ago Polybius wrote:--"If a man has been rescued or helped in an hour of danger, and, instead of showing gratitude to his preserver, seeks to do him harm, it is clearly probable that the rest will be displeased and offended with him when they know it, sympathising with their neighbour and imagining themselves in his case. Hence arises a notion in every breast of the meaning and theory of duty, which is in fact the beginning and end of justice."[102] Hartley regarded resentment and gratitude {43} as "intimately connected with the moral sense."[103] Adam Smith made the resentment of "the impartial spectator" a corner-stone of his theory of the moral sentiments.[104] Butler found the essential difference between sudden and deliberate anger to consist in this, that the "natural proper end" of the latter is "to remedy or prevent only that harm which implies, or is supposed to imply, injury or moral wrong."[105] And to Stuart Mill, the sentiment of justice, at least, appeared to be derived from "the animal desire to repel or retaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with whom one sympathises."[106]

[Footnote 101: Notice, for instance, Michelangelo's Moses.]

[Footnote 102: Polybius, _Historiae_, vi. 6.]

[Footnote 103: Hartley, _Observations on Man_, i. 520.]

[Footnote 104: Adam Smith, _op. cit._ _passim_.]

[Footnote 105: Butler, _op. cit._ p. 458.]

[Footnote 106: Stuart Mill, _Utilitarianism_, p. 79.]

Moral indignation, or disapproval, like non-moral resentment, is a reactionary attitude of mind directed towards the cause of inflicted pain. In a subsequent chapter we shall see that both are in a similar way determined by the answer given to the question, What is the cause of the pain?--a fact which, whilst strongly confirming their affinity, throws light upon some of the chief characteristics of the moral consciousness. Nay, moral indignation resembles non-moral resentment even in this respect that, in various cases, the aggressive reaction turns against innocent persons who did not commit the injury which gave rise to it. The collective responsibility assumed in certain types of blood-revenge is an evidence of this in so far as such revenge is not merely a matter of individual practice, but has the sanction of custom. And even punishment, which, in the strict sense of the term, is a more definite expression of public, or moral, indignation than the custom of private retaliation, is often similarly indiscriminate.

Like revenge, and for similar reasons, punishment sometimes falls on a relative of the culprit in cases when he himself cannot be caught. In Fiji, says Mr. Williams, "the virtue of vicarious suffering is recognised." It once happened that a warrior left his charged musket so {44} carelessly that it went off and killed and wounded some individuals, whereupon he fled himself. His case was judged worthy of death by the chiefs of the tribe, and the offender's aged father was in consequence seized and strangled.[107]

[Footnote 107: Williams and Calvert, _Fiji_, p. 24.]

In other cases an innocent person is killed for the offence of another, not because the offender cannot be seized, but with a view to inflicting on him a loss, according to the rule of like for like. The punishment, then, is meant for the culprit, though the chief sufferer is somebody else. According to the Laws of [Hv]ammurabi, "if a builder has built a house for a man and has not made strong his work, and the house he built has fallen, and he has caused the death of the owner, that builder shall be put to death." But "if he has caused the son of the owner of the house to die, one shall put to death the son of that builder."[108] Similarly, "if a man has struck a gentleman's daughter and caused her to drop what is in her womb, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for what was in her womb." But "if that woman has died, one shall put to death his daughter."[109] The following custom which Mr. Gason reports, as existing among the Australian Dieyerie, in case a man should unintentionally kill another in a fight, is probably based on a similar principle:--"Should the offender have an elder brother, then he must die in his place; or, should he have no elder brother, then his father must be his substitute; but in case he has no male relative to suffer for him, then he himself must die."[110]

[Footnote 108: _Laws of [Hv]ammurabi_, 229 _sq._]

[Footnote 109: _Ibid._ 209 _sq._]

[Footnote 110: Gason, 'Manners and Customs of the Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods, _Native Tribes of South Australia_, p. 265.]

This extreme disregard of the suffering of guiltless persons is probably not so much due to downright callousness as to a strong feeling of family solidarity. The same feeling is very obvious in those numerous instances in which both the criminal himself and members of his family are implicated in the punishment.

{45} Among the Atkha Aleuts, the punishment for certain offences was sometimes carried so far as to include the wife of the offender.[111] Among the E[(w]e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, "a person found guilty of having procured, or endeavoured to procure, the death of another through the agency of the gods Huntin and Loko, is put to death, and his family is generally enslaved as well."[112] Among the Matabele, if a person is declared by the witch-doctor to have caused injury to somebody else by making charms, he "is immediately put to death, his wife and the whole of his family sharing his fate."[113] Among the Shilluks of the White Nile, "murder is punished with death to the criminal and the forfeiture of wives and children to the Sultan, who retains them in bondage."[114] Among the Kafirs, in cases of trespasses against the king, the sentence falls not only on the individual, but on his whole house.[115] In Madagascar, the code of native laws, up to recent time, reduced for many offences the culprit's wife and children to slavery.[116] In some parts of the Malay Archipelago, according to Crawfurd, a father and child are considered almost inseparable, hence when the one is punished the other seldom escapes.[117] In Bali, the law prescribes that for certain kinds of sorcery the offender shall be put to death. It adds, "If the matter be very clearly made out, let the punishment of death be extended to his father and his mother, to his children and to his grand-children; let none of them live; let none connected with one so guilty remain on the face of the land, and let their goods be in like manner confiscated."[118]

[Footnote 111: Petroff, 'Report on Alaska,' in _Tenth Census of the United States_, p. 158.]

[Footnote 112: Ellis, _E[(w]e-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast_, p. 225.]

[Footnote 113: Decle, _Three Years in Savage Africa_, p. 153.]

[Footnote 114: Petherick, _Travels in Central Africa_, ii. 3.]

[Footnote 115: Ratzel, _History of Mankind_, ii. 445.]

[Footnote 116: Sibree, _The Great African Island_, p. 181. Ellis, _History of Madagascar_, i. 174, 175, 193.]

[Footnote 117: Crawfurd, _op. cit._ i. 82.]

[Footnote 118: _Ibid._ iii. 138.]

The Chinese doctrine of responsibility is to a great extent based upon family solidarity; in great crimes all the male relatives of the offender are held responsible for his deed. Every male relative, of whatever degree, who may be dwelling under the roof of a man guilty of treason, is doomed to death, with the exception of young boys, who are allowed their lives, but on the condition that they are made eunuchs for service in the imperial palace.[119] In ancient Mexico, traitors and conspirators were not only themselves killed, but their children and relatives {46} were made slaves to the fourth generation.[120] According to an Athenian law, a man who committed sacrilege or betrayed his country was banished with all his children.[121] Aristotle mentions a case of sacrilege in which "the bones of the guilty dead were disentombed and cast beyond the borders of Attica; the living clan were condemned to perpetual exile, and the city was subsequently purified."[122] The Macedonian law involved in punishment the kindred of conspirators against the monarch.[123] Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that some of the Greeks "think it reasonable to put to death the sons of tyrants together with their fathers, whereas others punish them with perpetual banishment"; and he contrasts this with the Roman principle that "the sons shall be exempted from all punishment, whose fathers are offenders, whether they happen to be the sons of tyrants, of parricides, or of traitors."[124] But after the end of the Marsic, and civil wars, this rule was transgressed;[125] and later on Arcadius, though expressly ordaining that the punishment of the crime shall extend to the criminal alone,[126] took a different view of the punishment for treason. By a special extension of his imperial clemency, he allows the sons of the criminal to live, although in strict justice, being tainted with hereditary guilt, they ought to suffer the punishment of their father. But they shall be incapable of inheritance; they shall be abandoned to the extreme of poverty and perpetual indigence; they shall be excluded from all honours and from the participation of religious rites; the infamy of their father shall ever attend them, and such shall be the misery of their condition, that life shall be a punishment and death a comfort.[127] Among the Anglo-Saxons, before the time of Cnut, the child, even the infant in the cradle, was liable to be sold into slavery for the payment of penalties incurred by the father, being "held by the covetous to be equally guilty as if it had discretion."[128] Even later, the child of an outlaw, following the condition of the father, also became an outlaw; and this grievance was only partly remedied by Edward the Confessor, who relieved from the consequences of the father's outlawry such children as were born before he was {47} outlawed, but not such as were born afterwards.[129] During the Middle Ages it was the invariable rule to confiscate the entire property of an impenitent heretic, a rule which was justified on the ground that his crime is so great that something of his impurity falls upon all related to him.[130] The Pope Alexander IV. also excluded the descendants of an heretic to the second generation from all offices in the Church.[131] Owing to religious influence, illegitimate children were not only deprived of the title to inheritance, but they were treated by some law-books as almost rightless beings, on a par with robbers and thieves.[132] If a person committed suicide, his goods were confiscated, and, according to a French mediæval law, his wife was besides deprived of her own private property.[133] Even in the latter half of the eighteenth century, in France, in the case of an attempt made against the life of the king, the whole family of the criminal was banished.[134] Nay, in various European countries, up to quite recent times--in England till 1870--forfeiture of property has been the punishment prescribed for certain crimes, including suicide;[135] which means, if not actually the imposition of penalties on the survivors in a case where the culprit himself is out of reach, at least a gross disregard of their ordinary rights of property. It is hardly necessary to point out how often, in the very society in which we live, "social punishments" are inflicted upon children for their father's wrongs.

[Footnote 119: Douglas, _Society in China_, p. 71 _sq._ _Ta Tsing Leu Lee_, sec. ccliv. p. 270.]

[Footnote 120: Bancroft, _Native Races of the Pacific States_, ii. 459.]

[Footnote 121: Meursius, _Themis Attica_, ii. 2, in Gronovius, _Thesaurus Graecarum Antiquitatum_, v. 1968.]

[Footnote 122: Aristotle, _De republica Atheniensium_ 1. _Cf._ _ibid._ 20.]

[Footnote 123: Curtius Rufus, _De gestis Alexandri Magni_, vi. 11. 20.]

[Footnote 124: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _Antiquitates Romanae_, viii. 80.]

[Footnote 125: _Ibid._ viii. 80.]

[Footnote 126: _Codex Iustinianus_, ix. 47. 22.]

[Footnote 127: _Ibid._ ix. 8. 5.]

[Footnote 128: Laws of Cnut, ii. 77. _Cf._ Lappenberg, _History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings_, ii. 414; Wilda, _op. cit._ p. 906.]

[Footnote 129: _Leges Edwardi Confessoris_, 19.]

[Footnote 130: Lecky, _History of Rationalism in Europe_, ii. 36, n. 1. Eicken, _Geschichte und System der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung_, p. 572 _sq._ Paramo, _De origine et progressu Sancti Inquisitionis_ p. 587 _sq._]

[Footnote 131: Eicken, _op. cit._ p. 573.]

[Footnote 132: _Ibid._ p. 573.]

[Footnote 133: Du Boys, _Histoire du droit criminel des peuples modernes_, ii. 236.]

[Footnote 134: Hertz, _Voltaire und die französische Strafrechtspflege im achtzehnten Jahrhundert_, p. 27.]

[Footnote 135: Stephen, _History of the Criminal Law of England_, i. 487 _sq._; iii. 105.]

For the explanation of these facts we have to remember what has been said before about collective responsibility in the case of revenge. Speaking of the Chinese doctrine of family solidarity, Dr. de Groot observes that, "under the influence of this doctrine, families, not men individually, came to be regarded, from the Government's point of view, as the smallest particles, the molecules of the nation, each individual being swallowed up in the circle of his kinsfolk."[136] Such a doctrine assumes that the other members of the family-group are, in a way, accessories {48} to any crime committed by a fellow-member. "Human nature," says Lord Kames, "is not so perverse, as without veil or disguise to punish a person acknowledged to be innocent. An irregular bias of imagination, which extends the qualities of the principal to its accessories, paves the way to that unjust practice. This bias, strengthened by indignation against an atrocious criminal, leads the mind hastily to conclude, that all his connections are partakers of his guilt."[137] Among the ancients we also meet with a strong belief that, according to the course of nature, wicked fathers have wicked sons. "That which is begot," says Plutarch, "is not, like some production of art unlike the begetter, for it proceeds from him, and is not merely produced by him, so that it appropriately receives his share, whether that be honour or punishment."[138] To destroy, or to make harmless, the family of an offender may be, not only an act of retaliation, but a precaution; according to an old Greek adage, "a man is a fool if he kills the father and leaves the sons alive."[139] This especially holds good for treason, which generally suggests accomplices; and of all crimes for which penalties are imposed upon other individuals besides the culprit, treason is probably the most common. This crime is also particularly apt to evoke the hatred of those who have the power to punish, hence the punishment of it, being closely allied to an act of revenge, is often inflicted without due discrimination. Moreover, by being extended to the criminal's family, the punishment falls more heavily upon himself as well. Again, in case the crime is of a sacrilegious character, it is supposed to pollute everybody connected with the criminal, and even the whole community where he dwells.

[Footnote 136: de Groot, _Religious System of China_ (vol. ii. book) i. 539.]

[Footnote 137: Kames, _Sketches of the History of Man_, iv. 148.]

[Footnote 138: Plutarch, _De sera numinis vindicta_, 16. _Cf._ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _op. cit._ viii. 80.]

[Footnote 139: Schmidt, _Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 126.]

In their administration of justice, gods are still more indiscriminate than men. They hold the individual responsible for the whole to which he belongs. They {49} punish the community for the sins of one of its members. They visit the iniquity of the fathers and forefathers upon the children and descendants.

The Sibuyaus, a tribe belonging to the Sea Dyaks, "are of opinion that an unmarried girl proving with child must be offensive to the superior powers, who, instead of always chastising the individual, punish the tribe by misfortunes happening to its members. They, therefore, on the discovery of the pregnancy fine the lovers, and sacrifice a pig to propitiate offended Heaven, and to avert that sickness or those misfortunes that might otherwise follow; and they inflict heavy mulcts for every one who may have suffered from any severe accident, or who may have been drowned within a month before the religious atonement was made."[140] According to Chinese beliefs, whole kingdoms are punished for the conduct of their rulers by spirits who act as avengers with orders or approval from the _Tao_, or Heaven.[141] Prevalent opinion in China, continuously inspired anew by literature of all times and ages, further admits that spiritual vengeance may come down upon the culprit's offspring in the form of disease or death.[142] When a maimed or deformed child is born the Japanese say that its parents or ancestors must have committed some great sin.[143] The Vedic people ask Varuna to forgive the wrongs committed by their fathers.[144] Says the poet:--"What we ourselves have sinned in mercy pardon; my own misdeeds do thou, O god, take from me, and for another's sin let me not suffer."[145] According to the ancient Greek theory of divine retribution, the community has to suffer for the sins of some of its members, children for the sins of their fathers.[146] Hesiod says that often a whole town is punished with famine, pestilence, barrenness of its women, or loss of its army or vessels for the misdeeds of a single individual.[147] Cr[oe]sus atoned by the forfeiture of his kingdom for the crime of Gyges, his fifth ancestor, who had murdered his master and usurped his throne.[148] Cytissorus brought down the anger of gods upon his descendants by {50} rescuing Athamas, whom the Achaians intended to offer up as an expiatory sacrifice on behalf of their country.[149] When hearing of the death of his wife, Theseus exclaims, "This must be a heaven-sent calamity in consequence of the sins of an ancestor, which from some remote source I am bringing on myself."[150] According to Hebrew notions, sin affects the nation through the individual and entails guilt on succeeding generations.[151] The anger of the Lord is kindled against the children of Israel on account of Achan's sin.[152] The sin of the sons of Eli is visited on his whole house from generation to generation.[153] Because Saul has slain the Gibeonites, the Lord sends, in the days of David, a three years' famine, which ceases only when seven of Saul's sons are hanged.[154] The sins of Manasseh are expiated even by the better generation under Josiah.[155] The notion of a jealous God who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him,[156] is also frequently met with in the Old Testament Apocrypha. "The inheritance of sinners' children shall perish, and their posterity shall have a perpetual reproach."[157] "The seed of an unrighteous bed shall be rooted out."[158] The same idea has survived among Christian peoples. It was referred to in Canon Law as a principle to be imitated by human justice,[159] and by Innocent III. in justification of a bull which authorised the confiscation of the goods of heretics.[160] Up to quite recent times it was a common belief in Scotland that the punishment of the cruelty, oppression, or misconduct of an individual descended as a curse on his children to the third and fourth generation. It was not confined to the common people; "all ranks were influenced by it; and many believed that if the curse did not fall upon the first or second generation it would inevitably descend upon the succeeding."[161] In the dogma that the whole human race is condemned on {51} account of the sin of its first parents, the doctrine of collective responsibility has reached its pitch.

[Footnote 140: St. John, _Life in the Forests of the Far East_, i. 63.]

[Footnote 141: de Groot, _op. cit._ (vol. iv. book) ii. 432, 435. Davis, _China_, ii. 34 _sq._]

[Footnote 142: de Groot, _op. cit._ (vol. iv. book) ii. 452.]

[Footnote 143: Griffis, _Mikado's Empire_, p. 472.]

[Footnote 144: _Rig-Veda_, vii. 86. 5. _Cf._ _Atharva-Veda_, v. 30. 4; x. 3. 8.]

[Footnote 145: _Rig-Veda_, ii. 28. 9. _Cf._ _ibid._ vi. 51. 7; vii. 52. 2.]

[Footnote 146: Nägelsbach, _Nachhomerische Theologie des griechischen Volksglaubens_, p. 34 _sq._ Schmidt, _op. cit._ i. 67 _sqq._ Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, i. 76 _sq._]

[Footnote 147: Hesiod, _Opera et dies_, 240 _sqq._]

[Footnote 148: Herodotus, i. 91.]

[Footnote 149: _Ibid._ vii. 197.]

[Footnote 150: Euripides, _Hippolytus_, 831 _sq._]

[Footnote 151: Oehler, _Theology of the Old Testament_, i. 236. Dorner, _System of Christian Doctrine_, ii. 325. Montefiore, _Hibbert Lectures_, p. 103. Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 421. Schultz, _Old Testament Theology_, ii. 308. Bernard, 'Sin,' in Hastings, _Dictionary of the Bible_, iv. 530, 534.]

[Footnote 152: _Joshua_, vii. 1.]

[Footnote 153: _1 Samuel_, ii. 27 _sqq._]

[Footnote 154: _2 Samuel_, xxi. 1 _sqq._]

[Footnote 155: _Deuteronomy_, i. 37; iii. 26; iv. 21. _2 Kings_, xxiii. 26; xxiv. 3. _Jeremiah_, xv. 4 _sqq._]

[Footnote 156: _Exodus_, xx. 5; xxiv. 7, _Numbers_, xiv. 18. _Deuteronomy_, v. 9. _Cf._ _Leviticus_, xxvi. 39.]

[Footnote 157: _Ecclesiasticus_, xli. 6. _Cf._ _ibid._ xvi. 4; xli. 5, 7 _sqq._]

[Footnote 158: _Wisdom of Solomon_, iii. 16. _Cf._ _ibid._ iii. 12, 13, 17 _sqq._]

[Footnote 159: Eicken, _op. cit._ p. 572.]

[Footnote 160: Lecky, _History of Rationalism in Europe_, ii. 37 n.]

[Footnote 161: Stewart, _Sketches of the Character, &c., of the Highlanders of Scotland_, p. 127.]

Men originally attribute to their gods mental qualities similar to their own, and imagine them to be no less fierce and vindictive than they are themselves. Thus the retribution of a god is, in many cases, nothing but an outburst of sudden anger, or an act of private revenge, and as such particularly liable to comprise, not only the offender himself, but those connected with him. Plutarch even argued that the punishments inflicted by gods on cities for ill-deeds committed by their former inhabitants allowed of a just defence, on the ground that a city is "one continuous entity, a sort of creature that never changes from age, or becomes different by time, but is ever sympathetic with and conformable to itself," and therefore "answerable for whatever it does or has done for the public weal, as long as the community by its union and federal bonds preserves its unity."[162] He further observes that a bad man is not bad only when he breaks out into crime, but has the seeds of vice in his nature, and that the deity, knowing the nature and disposition of every man, prefers stifling crime in embryo to waiting till it becomes ripe.[163]

[Footnote 162: Plutarch, _De sera numinis vindicta_, 15.]

[Footnote 163: _Ibid._ 20.]

But there are yet special reasons for extending the retribution of a god beyond the limits of individual guilt. Whilst the resentment of a man is a matter of experience, that of a god is a matter of inference. That some particular case of suffering is a divine punishment, is inferred either from its own peculiar character, suggesting the direct interference of a god, or from the assumption that a certain act, on account of its offensiveness, cannot be left unpunished. Now experience shows that, in many instances, the sinner himself escapes all punishment, leading a happy life till his death; hence the conclusion is near at hand that any grave misfortune which befalls his descendants, is the delayed retribution of the offended {52} god.[164] Such a conclusion is quite in harmony with the common notions of divine power. It especially forces itself upon a mind which has no idea of a hell with _post mortem_ punishments for the wicked. And, where the spirit of a man after his death is believed to be still ardently concerned for the welfare of his family,[165] the affliction of his descendants naturally appears as a punishment inflicted upon himself. As Dr. de Groot observes, the doctrine of the Chinese, that spiritual vengeance may descend on the offender's offspring, tallies perfectly with their conception "that the severest punishment which may be inflicted on one, both in his present life and the next, is decline or extermination of his male issue, leaving nobody to support him in his old age, nobody to protect him after his death from misery and hunger by caring for his corpse and grave, and sacrificing to his manes."[166]

[Footnote 164: _Cf._ Isocrates, _Oratio de pace_, 120; Cicero, _De natura Deorum_, iii. 38; Nägelsbach, _op. cit._ p. 33 _sq._]

[Footnote 165: _Cf._ Schmidt, _op. cit._ i. 71 _sq._ (ancient Greeks).]

[Footnote 166: de Groot, _op. cit._ (vol. iv. book) ii. 452.]

The retributive sufferings which innocent persons have to undergo in consequence of the sins of the guilty, are not always supposed to be inflicted upon them directly, as a result of divine resentment. They are often attributed to infection. Sin is looked upon in the light of a contagious matter which may be transmitted from parents to children, or be communicated by contact.

This idea is well illustrated by the funeral ceremonies of the Tahitians. "When the house for the dead had been erected, and the corpse placed upon the platform or bier, the priest ordered a hole to be dug in the earth or floor near the foot of the platform. Over this he prayed to the god by whom it was supposed the spirit of the deceased had been required. The purport of his prayer was that all the dead man's sins, and especially that for which his soul had been called to the _po_, might be deposited there, that they might not attach in any degree to the survivors, and that the anger of the god might be appeased." All who were employed in embalming the dead were also, during the process, carefully avoided by every person, {53} as the guilt of the crime for which the deceased had died was believed to contaminate such as came in contact with the corpse; and as soon as the ceremony of depositing the sins in the hole was over, all who had touched the body or the garments of the deceased, which were buried or destroyed, fled precipitately into the sea to cleanse themselves from the pollution.[167] In one part of New Zealand "a service was performed over an individual, by which all the sins of the tribe were supposed to be transferred to him, a fern stalk was previously tied to his person, with which he jumped into the river and there unbinding, allowed it to float away to the sea, bearing their sins with it."[168] The Iroquois White Dog Feast, which was held every year in January, February, or early in March,[169] implied, according to most authorities, a ceremony of sin-transference.[170] The following description of it is given by Mrs. Jemison, a white woman who was captured by the Indians in the year 1755:--Two white dogs, without spot or blemish, are strangled and hung near the door of the council-house. On the fourth or fifth day the "committee," consisting of from ten to twenty active men who have been appointed to superintend the festivities, "collect the evil spirit, or drive it off entirely, for the present, and also concentrate within themselves all the sins of their tribe, however numerous or heinous. On the eighth or ninth day, the committee having received all the sin, as before observed, into their own bodies, they take down the dogs, and after having transfused the whole of it into one of their own number, he, by a peculiar sleight of hand, or kind of magic, works it all out of himself into the dogs. The dogs, thus loaded with all the sins of the people, are placed upon a pile of wood that is directly set on fire. Here they are burnt, together with the sins with which they were loaded."[171] Among the Badágas of India, at a burial, "an elder, standing by the corpse, offers up a prayer that the dead may not go to hell, that the sins committed on earth may be forgiven, and that the sins may be borne by a calf, which is let loose in the jungle and used thenceforth for no manner of work."[172] At Utch-Kurgan, in Turkestan, Mr. Schuyler saw an old man, constantly {54} engaged in prayer, who was said to be an _iskatchi_, that is, "a person who gets his living by taking on himself the sins of the dead, and thenceforth devoting his life to prayer for their souls."[173]

[Footnote 167: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 401 _sqq._]

[Footnote 168: Taylor, _Te Ika a Maui_, p. 101.]

[Footnote 169: Beauchamp, 'Iroquois White Dog Feast,' in _American Antiquarian_, vii. 236 _sq._ Hale, 'Iroquois Sacrifice of the White Dog,' _ibid._ vii. 7.]

[Footnote 170: Beauchamp, _loc. cit._ p. 237 _sq._]

[Footnote 171: Seaver, _Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison_, p. 158 _sqq._ _Cf._ Mr. Clark's description, quoted by Beauchamp, _loc. cit._ p. 238.]

[Footnote 172: Thurston, 'Badágas of the Nilgiris,' in the Madras Government Museum's _Bulletin_, ii. 4. _Cf._ Metz, _Tribes inhabiting the Neilgherry Hills_, p. 78; Graul, _Reise nach Ostindien_, iii. 296 _sqq._]

[Footnote 173: Schuyler, _Turkistan_, ii. 28.]

In ancient Peru, an Inca, after confession of guilt, bathed in a neighbouring river, and repeated this formula:--"O thou River, receive the sins I have this day confessed unto the Sun, carry them down to the sea, and let them never more appear."[174] According to Vedic beliefs, sin is a contamination which may be inherited, or contracted in various ways,[175] and of which the sinner tries to rid himself by transferring it to some enemy,[176] or by invoking the gods of water or fire.[177] It is washed out by Varuna, in his capacity of a water-god,[178] and by Trita, another water-god,[179] and even by "the Waters" in general, as appears from the prayer addressed to them:--"O Waters, carry off whatever sin is in me and untruth."[180] For a similar reason, as it seems, water became in the later, Brahmanic age, the "essence (sap) of immortality"[181] and the belief in its purifying power still survives in modern India. No sin is too heinous to be removed, no character too black to be washed clean, by the waters of Ganges.[182] At sacred places of pilgrimage on the banks of rivers, the Hindus perform special religious shavings for the purpose of purifying soul and body from pollution; and persons who have committed great crimes or are troubled by uneasy consciences, travel hundreds of miles to such holy places where "they may be released from every sin by first being relieved of every hair and then plunging into the sacred stream."[183] So, also, according to Hindu beliefs, contact with cows purifies, and, as in the Parsi ritual, the dung and urine of cows have the power of preventing or cleansing away not only material, but moral defilements.[184] In post-Homeric Greece, individuals and a whole people were cleansed from their sins by water or some other material means of purification.[185] Plutarch, after observing {55} that "there are other properties that have connection and communication, and that transfer themselves from one thing to another with incredible quickness and over immense distances," asks whether it is "more wonderful that Athens should have been smitten with a plague which started in Arabia, than that, when the Delphians and Sybarites became wicked, vengeance should have fallen on their descendants."[186] The Hebrews annually laid the sins of the people upon the head of a goat, and sent it away into the wilderness;[187] and they cleansed every impurity with consecrated water or the sprinkling of blood.[188] To this day, the Jews in Morocco, on their New-Year's day, go to the sea-shore, or to some spring, and remove their sins by throwing stones into the water. The words of the Psalmist, "wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin,"[189] were not altogether a figure of speech; nor is Christian baptism originally a mere symbol. Its result is forgiveness of sins;[190] by the water, as a medium of the Holy Ghost, "the stains of sin are washed away."[191] That sin is contagious has been expressly stated by Christian writers. Novatian says that "the one is defiled by the sin of the other, and the idolatry of the transgressor passes over to him who does not transgress."[192]

[Footnote 174: Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, ii. 435.]

[Footnote 175: _Atharva-Veda_, v. 30. 4; x. 3. 8; vii. 64. i. _sq._ _Cf._ Oldenberg, _Religion des Veda_, p. 290.]

[Footnote 176: _Rig-Veda_, x. 36. 9; x. 37. 12.]

[Footnote 177: _Ibid._ x. 164. 3. _Atharva-Veda_, vii. 64. 2. _Cf._ Kaegi, _Rig-Veda_, p. 157; Oldenberg, _op. cit._ pp. 291-298, 319 _sqq._]

[Footnote 178: _Cf._ Hopkins, _Religions of India_ pp. 65 n. 1, 66.]

[Footnote 179: _Atharva-Veda_, vi. 113. 1 _sqq._]

[Footnote 180: _Rig-Veda_, i. 23. 22. Sin is also looked upon as a galling chain from the captivity of which release is besought (_ibid._ i. 24. 9, 13 _sq._; ii. 27. 16; ii. 28. 5; v. 85. 8; vi. 74. 3; &c.).]

[Footnote 181: Hopkins, _op. cit._ p. 196.]

[Footnote 182: Monier Williams, _Br[=a]hmanism and Hind[=u]uism_, p. 347.]

[Footnote 183: _Ibid._ p. 375.]

[Footnote 184: Barth, _Religions of India_, p. 264. _Laws of Manu_, iii. 206; v. 105, 121, 124; xi. 110, 203, 213.]

[Footnote 185: Stengel, _Die griechischen Kultusaltertümer_, p. 138 _sqq._]

[Footnote 186: Plutarch, _De sera numinis vindicta_, 14.]

[Footnote 187: _Leviticus_, xvi.]

[Footnote 188: _Numbers_, viii. 7; xix. 4-9, 13 _sqq._; xxxi. 23. _Leviticus_, xvi. 14 _sqq._]

[Footnote 189: _Psalms_, li. 2.]

[Footnote 190: Harnack, _op. cit._ ii. 140 _sqq._]

[Footnote 191: _Catechism of the Council of Trent_, ii. 2. 10, p. 162.]

[Footnote 192: Quoted by Harnack, _op. cit._ ii. 119.]

In this materialistic conception of sin there is an obvious confusion between cause and effect, between the sin and its punishment. Sin is looked upon as a substance charged with injurious energy, which will sooner or later discharge itself to the discomfort or destruction of anybody who is infected with it. The sick Chinese says of his disease, "it is my sin," instead of saying, "it is the punishment of my sin."[193] Both in Hebrew and in the Vedic language the word for sin is used in a similar way.[194] "In the consciousness of the pious Israelite," Professor Schultz observes, "sin, guilt, and punishment, are ideas so directly connected that the words for them are interchangeable."[195] {56} The prophets frequently and emphatically declare that there is in sin itself a power which must destroy the sinner.[196] So, too, as M. Bergaigne points out, there is in the Vedic notion of sin, "la croyance à une sorte de vertu propre du péché, grâce à laquelle il produit de lui-même son effet nécessaire, à savoir le châtiment du pécheur."[197] Sins are thus treated like diseases, or the germs of diseases, of which patients likewise try to rid themselves by washing or burning, or which are described in the very language often applied to sins as fetters which hold them chained.[198] All kinds of evil are in this way materialised. The Shamanistic peoples of Siberia, says Georgi, "hold evil to be a self-existing substance which they call by an infinitude of particular names."[199] According to Moorish ideas, _l-bas_, or "misfortune," is a kind of infection, which may be contracted by contact and removed by water or fire; hence in all parts of Morocco water- and fire-ceremonies are performed annually, either on the _[(]âshur_-eve or at midsummer, _l-[(]an[s.]ara_, for the purpose of purifying men, animals, and fruit-trees.[200] And just as the Moors, on these {57} occasions, rid themselves of _l-bas_, so, in modern Greece, the women make a fire on Midsummer Eve, and jump over it, crying, "I leave my sins."[201]

[Footnote 193: Edkins, _Religion in China_, p. 134.]

[Footnote 194: Holzman, 'Sünde und Sühne in den Rigvedahymnen und den Psalmen,' in _Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsychologie_, xv. 9.]

[Footnote 195: Schultz, _op. cit._ ii. 306. _Cf._ Curtiss, _Primitive Semitic Religion To-day_, p. 124 _sqq._]

[Footnote 196: _Ibid._ ii. 308 _sq._]

[Footnote 197: Bergaigne, _Religion védique_, iii. 163. _Cf._ _Rig-Veda_, x. 132. 5.]

[Footnote 198: Oldenberg, _op. cit._ p. 288.]

[Footnote 199: Georgi, _Russia_, iii. 257.]

[Footnote 200: The various methods of transferring or expelling evil, which abundantly illustrate the materialistic notions held about it, have been treated by Dr. Frazer with unrivalled learning (_The Golden Bough_), iii. 1 _sqq._ I have little doubt that the fire- and water-ceremonies, once practised all over Europe on a certain day every year, belong to the same group of rites. "The best general explanation of these European fire-festivals," says Dr. Frazer (_ibid._ iii. 300), "seems to be the one given by Mannhardt, namely, that they are sun-charms or magical ceremonies intended to ensure a proper supply of sunshine for men, animals, and plants." But it should be noticed that in Europe, as in Morocco, a purificatory purpose is expressly ascribed to them by the very persons by whom they are practised (see Frazer, _op. cit._ iii. 238 _sqq._), that they alternate with lustration by water (see Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, ii. 588 _sqq._). On the other hand, in Dr. Frazer's exhaustive description of these ceremonies I fail to discover a single fact which would make Mannhardt's hypothesis at all probable. Dr. Frazer says (_op. cit._ iii. 301), "The custom of rolling a burning wheel down a hillside, which is often observed at these times, seems a very natural imitation of the sun's course in the sky." To me it appears as a method of distributing the purificatory energy over the fields or vineyards. Notice, for instance, the following statements:--In the Rhon Mountains, Bavaria, "a wheel wrapt in combustibles, was kindled and rolled down the hill; and the young people rushed about the fields with their burning torches and brooms. . . . In neighbouring villages of Hesse . . . it is thought that wherever the burning wheels roll, the fields will be safe from hail and storm" (_ibid._ iii. 243 _sq._). At Volkmarsen, in Hesse, "in some places tar-barrels or wheels wrapt in straw used to be set on fire, and then sent rolling down the hillside. In others the boys light torches and whisps of straw at the bonfires and rush about brandishing them in their hands" (_ibid._ iii. 254). In Münsterland, "boys with blazing bundles of straw run over the fields to make them fruitful" (_ibid._ iii. 255). Dr. Frazer says (_ibid._ iii. 301), "The custom of throwing blazing discs, shaped liked suns, into the air is probably also a piece of imitative magic." But why should it not, in conformity with other practices, be regarded as a means of purifying the air? According to old writers, the object of Midsummer fires was to disperse the aerial dragons (_ibid._ iii. 267). It would carry me too far from my subject to enter into further details. I have dealt with the matter in my article 'Midsummer Customs in Morocco.' in _Folk-Lore_, xvi. 27-47.]

[Footnote 201: Grimm, _Teutonic Mythology_, ii. 623.]

Closely connected with the primitive conception of sin, is that of a curse. In fact, the injurious energy attributed to a sinful act, is in many cases obviously due to the curse of a god. The curse is looked upon as a baneful substance, as a miasma which injures or destroys anybody to whom it cleaves. The curse of Moses was said to lie on mount Ebal, ready to descend with punishments whenever there was an occasion for it.[202] The Arabs, when being cursed, sometimes lay themselves down on the ground so that the curse, instead of hitting them, may fly over their bodies.[203] According to Teutonic notions, curses alight, settle, cling, they take flight, and turn home as birds to their nests.[204] It is the vulgar opinion in Ireland "that a curse once uttered must alight on something: it will float in the air seven years, and may descend any moment on the party it was aimed at; if his guardian angel but forsake him, it takes forthwith the shape of some misfortune, sickness or temptation, and strikes his devoted head."[205] We shall later on see that curses are communicated through material media. In some parts of Morocco, if a man is not powerful enough to avenge an infringement on his marriage-bed, he leaves seven tufts of hair on his head and goes to another tribe to ask for help. This is _l-[(]âr_, a conditional curse, which is first seated in the tufts, and {58} from there transferred to those whom he invokes. Similarly, a person under the vow of blood-revenge lets his hair grow until he has fulfilled his vow. The oath clings to his hair, and will fall upon his head if he violates it.[206]

[Footnote 202: _Deuteronomy_, xi. 29.]

[Footnote 203: Goldziher, _Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie_, i. 29. Wellhausen, _Reste arabischen Heidentums_, p. 139, n. 4.]

[Footnote 204: Grimm, _op. cit._ iv. 1690.]

[Footnote 205: _Ibid._ iii. 1227. Wood-Martin, _Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland_ ii, 57 _sq._]

[Footnote 206: The same practice prevailed among the ancient Arabs (Wellhausen, _op. cit._ p. 122), and some other cases are recorded by Dr. Frazer (_op. cit._ i. 370 _sq._). I cannot accept Wellhausen's explanation (_op. cit._ p. 124) that the hair is allowed to grow for the purpose of being sacrificed when the vow is fulfilled.]

Generally, a curse follows the course which is indicated by the curser. But it does not do so in every case, and it has a tendency to spread. In ancient India[207] and among the Arabs[208] and Hebrews,[209] there was a belief that a curse, especially if it was undeserved, might fall back on the head of him who uttered it. The same belief prevailed, or still prevails, among the Irish;[210] so, also, according to an English proverb, "curses, like chickens, come home to roost." According to Plato, the curse of a father or mother taints everything with which it comes in contact. Any one who is found guilty of assaulting a parent, shall be for ever banished from the city into the country, and shall abstain from the temples; and "if any freeman eat or drink, or have any other sort of intercourse with him, or only meeting him have voluntarily touched him, he shall not enter into any temple, nor into the agora, nor into the city, until he is purified; for he should consider that he has become tainted by a curse."[211] Plutarch asks whether Jupiter's priest was forbidden to swear for the reason that "the peril of perjury would reach in common to the whole commonwealth, if a wicked, godless, and forsworn person should have the charge and superintendence of the prayers, vows, and sacrifices made on behalf of the city."[212] The Romans believed that certain horrid imprecations had such power, that not only the object of them never escaped their influence, but that the person who used them also was sure {59} to be unhappy.[213] Among the Arinzes, an oath is reckoned a terrible thing:--"They do not suffer a person, who has been under the necessity of expurgating himself in so dreadful a manner, to remain among them: he is sent into exile."[214] According to Bedouin notions, a solemn oath should only be taken at a certain distance from the camp, "because the magical nature of the oath might prove pernicious to the general body of Arabs, were it to take place in their vicinity."[215] "To take an oath of any sort," says Burckhardt, "is always a matter of great concern among the Bedouins. It seems as if they attached to an oath consequences of a supernatural kind. . . . A Bedouin, even in defence of his own right, will seldom be persuaded to take a solemn oath before a kadhy, or before the tomb of a sheikh or saint, as they are sometimes required to do; and would rather forfeit a small sum than expose himself to the dreaded consequences of an oath."[216] Exactly the same holds good for the Moors. The conditional self-curse is supposed in some degree to pollute the swearer even though the condition referred to in the oath be only imaginary, in other words, though he do not perjure himself. This, I think, is the reason why, among the Berbers in the South of Morocco, persons who have been wrongly accused of a crime, sometimes entirely undress themselves in the sanctuary where they are going to swear. They believe that, if they do so, the saint will punish the accuser; and I conclude that at the bottom of this belief there is a vague idea that the absence of all clothes will prevent the oath from clinging to themselves. They say that it is bad not only to swear, but even to be present when an oath is taken by somebody else. And at Demnat, in the Great Atlas, I was told that when a person has made oath at a shrine, he avoids going back to his house the same way as he came, since otherwise, at least if he {60} has sworn false, his family as well as himself would have to suffer.

[Footnote 207: _Atharva-Veda_, ii. 7. 5.]

[Footnote 208: Goldziher, _Abhandlungen_, i. 38 _sq._]

[Footnote 209: _Ecclesiasticus_, xxi. 27.]

[Footnote 210: Wood-Martin, _op. cit._ ii. 57 _sq._]

[Footnote 211: Plato, _Leges_, ix. 881.]

[Footnote 212: Plutarch, _Questiones Romanae_, 44.]

[Footnote 213: _Idem_, _Vita Cassi_, 16.]

[Footnote 214: Georgi, _op. cit._ iii. 54 _sq._]

[Footnote 215: Burckhardt, _Bedouins and Wahábys_, p. 73.]

[Footnote 216: _Ibid._ p. 165.]

If a curse is infectious, it is naturally liable to contaminate those who derive their origin from the infected individual. The house of Glaucus was utterly extirpated from Sparta, in accordance with the words of the oracle, "There is a nameless son of the Oath-god who has neither hands nor feet; he pursues swiftly, until, having seized, he destroys the whole race, and all the house."[217] So, too, the Erinyes visited the sins of the fathers even on the children and grandchildren;[218] and the Erinyes were originally only personifications of curses.[219] It is said in the Ecclesiasticus:--"A man that useth much swearing shall be filled with iniquity, and the plague shall never depart from his house. . . . If he swear in vain, he shall not be innocent, but his house shall be full of calamities."[220] Casalis remarks of the Basutos, that "the dreadful consequences that the curse of Noah has had for Ham and his descendants appear quite natural to these people."[221] The Dharkâr and Majhwâr in Mirzapur, believe that a person who forswears himself will lose his property and his children;[222] but as we do not know the contents of the oath, it is possible that the destruction of the latter is not ascribed to mere contagion, but is expressly imprecated on them by the swearer.[223] Among the Rejangs of Sumatra, {61} "any accident that happens to a man, who has been known to take a false oath, or to his children or grandchildren, is carefully recorded in memory, and attributed to this sole cause."[224] Among the Karens the following story is told:--"Anciently there was a man who had ten children, and he cursed one of his brethren, who had done him no injury; but the curse did the man no harm, and he did not die. Then the curse returned to the man who sent it, and all his ten children died."[225] The Moors are fond of cursing each other's father or mother, or grandfather, or grandfather's father, such a curse being understood to involve their descendants as well. The Rev. R. Taylor says of the Maoris, "To bid you go and cook your father would be a great curse, but to tell a person to go and cook his great-grandfather would be far worse, because it included every individual who has sprung from him."[226]

[Footnote 217: Herodotus, vi. 86. _Cf._ Hesiod, _Opera et dies_, 282 _sqq._]

[Footnote 218: Aeschylus, _Eumenides_, 934 _sqq._]

[Footnote 219: Aeschylus (_Eumenides_, 416 _sq._) expressly designates the Erinyes by the title of "curses" ([Greek: a)rai\]), and Pausanias derives the name Erinys from an Arcadian word signifying a fit of anger. _Cf._ von Lasaulx, 'Der fluch bei Griechen und Römern,' in _Verzeichnis der Vorlesungen an der Julius-Maximilians-Universitaet zu Würzburg im Sommer-Semester_ 1843, p. 8; Müller, _Dissertations on the Eumenides of Aeschylus_, p. 155 _sqq._; Rohde, 'Paralipomena,' in _Rheinisches Museum für Philologie_, 1895, p. 16 _sq._]

[Footnote 220: _Ecclesiasticus_, xxiii. 11. _Cf._ _ibid._ xli. 5 _sqq._; _Wisdom of Solomon_, iii. 12 _sq._, xii. 11.]

[Footnote 221: Casalis, _Basutos_, p. 305.]

[Footnote 222: Crooke, _Tribes and Castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh_, ii. 287; iii. 444. _Cf._ _ibid._ i. 132.]

[Footnote 223: Among these tribes it is usual to swear by "putting a bamboo on the head," or "touching a broad-sword, touching the feet of a Brâhman, holding a cow's tail, touching Ganges water." But among many of the other tribes described by Mr. Crooke, persons swear on the heads of their children (_ibid._ i. 11, 130, 172; ii. 96, 138, 339, 357; iii. 40, 113, 251, 262; iv. 35), or with a son or grandson in the arms (_ibid._ ii. 428), and in such cases the death of the child would naturally be expected to follow perjury as a direct result of it. Among the Kol, the usual form of an oath is, "May my children die if I lie" (_ibid._ iii. 313).]

[Footnote 224: Marsden, _History of Sumatra_, p. 240.]

[Footnote 225: Mason, in _Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal_, xxxvii. pt. ii. 137.]

[Footnote 226: Taylor, _Te Ika a Maui_, p. 208.]

Thus, from the conception that sins and curses are contagious it follows that an innocent person may have to suffer for the sin of another. His suffering does not necessarily relieve the sinner from punishment; sin, like an infectious disease, may spread without vacating the seat of infection. But, as we have seen, it may also be transferred, and sin-transference involves vicarious suffering. At the same time, this kind of vicarious suffering must not be confounded with vicarious expiatory sacrifice. As a general rule, the scapegoat is driven or cast away, not killed. The exceptions to this rule seem to be due to two different causes. On the one hand, the scapegoat may be chased to death, or perhaps be pushed over a precipice,[227] for the sake of ridding the community as {62} effectively as possible of the evils loaded on the victim. Thus the Bhotiyás of Juhár take a dog, make him drunk, "and having fed him with sweetmeats, lead him round the village and let him loose. They then chase and kill him with sticks and stones, and believe that by so doing no disease or misfortune will visit the village during the year."[228] On the other hand, the transference of evil may be combined with a sacrifice. But of such a combination only a few instances are recorded, and most of them are ambiguous. Considering further that in these cases, or at least in the best known of them, the act of transference takes place _after_ the victim has been killed, it seems to me extremely probable that we have here to do with a fusion of two distinct rites into one, and that the victim is not offered up as a sacrifice in its capacity of a scapegoat, but, once sacrificed, has been made use of as a conductor for all the evils with which the people are beset.

[Footnote 227: According to the Mishna, the Hebrew scapegoat was not allowed to go free in the wilderness, but was killed by being pushed over a precipice (Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 418). See also the ambiguous passage in Servius, _In Virgilii Aeneidos_, iii. 57.]

[Footnote 228: Atkinson, 'Notes on the History of Religion in the Himálaya of the N.W. Provinces,' in _Jour. Asiatic Soc. Bengal_, liii. pt. i. 62.]