(M105) Tales of the foregoing sort might be dismissed as fictions designed
to amuse a leisure hour, were it not for their remarkable agreement with
beliefs and customs which, as we have seen, still exist, or are known to
have existed in former times. That agreement can hardly be accidental. We
seem to be justified, therefore, in assuming that stories of the kind
really rest on a basis of facts, however much these facts may have been
distorted or magnified in passing through the mind of the story-teller,
who is naturally more concerned to amuse than instruct his hearers. Even
the legend of a line of kings of whom each reigned for a single day, and
was sacrificed at night for the good of the people, will hardly seem
incredible when we remember that to this day a kingdom is held on a
similar tenure in west Africa, though under modern conditions the throne
stands vacant.(376) And while it would be vain to rely on such stories for
exact historical details, yet they may help us in a general way to
understand the practical working of an institution which to civilised men
seems at first sight to belong to the cloudland of fancy rather than to
the sober reality of the workaday world. Remark, for example, how in these
stories the supply of kings is maintained. In the Indian tradition all the
men of the city are put on a list, and each of them, when his turn comes,
is forced to reign for a day and to die the death. It is not left to his
choice to decide whether he will accept the fatal sovereignty or not. In
the _High History of the Holy Grail_ the mode of filling the vacant throne
is different. A stranger, not a citizen, is seized and compelled to accept
office. In the end, no doubt, the dwarf volunteers to be king, thus saving
Lancelot’s life; but the narrative plainly implies that if a substitute
had not thus been found, Lancelot would have been obliged, whether he
would or not, to wear the crown and to perish in the fire.
(M106) In thus representing the succession to a throne as compulsory, the
stories may well preserve a reminiscence of a real custom. To us, indeed,
who draw our ideas of kingship from the hereditary and highly privileged
monarchies of civilised Europe, the notion of thrusting the crown upon
reluctant strangers or common citizens of the lowest rank is apt to appear
fantastic and absurd. But that is merely because we fail to realise how
widely the modern type of kingship has diverged from the ancient pattern.
In early times the duties of sovereignty are more conspicuous than its
privileges. At a certain stage of development the chief or king is rather
the minister or servant than the ruler of his people. The sacred functions
which he is expected to discharge are deemed essential to the welfare, and
even the existence, of the community, and at any cost some one must be
found to perform them. Yet the burdens and restrictions of all sorts
incidental to the early kingship are such that not merely in popular
tales, but in actual practice, compulsion has sometimes been found
necessary to fill vacancies, while elsewhere the lack of candidates has
caused the office to fall into abeyance, or even to be abolished
altogether.(377) And where death stared the luckless monarch in the face
at the end of a brief reign of a few months or days, we need not wonder
that gaols had to be swept and the dregs of society raked to find a king.
(M107) Yet we should doubtless err if we supposed that under such hard
conditions men could never be found ready and even eager to accept the
sovereignty. A variety of causes has led the modern nations of western
Europe to set on human life—their own life and that of others—a higher
value than is put upon it by many other races. The result is a fear of
death which is certainly not shared in the same degree of intensity by
some peoples whom we in our self-complacency are accustomed to regard as
our inferiors. Among the causes which thus tend to make us cowards may be
numbered the spread of luxury and the doctrines of a gloomy theology,
which by proclaiming the eternal damnation and excruciating torments of
the vast majority of mankind has added incalculably to the dread and
horror of death. The growth of humaner sentiments, which seldom fails to
effect a corresponding amelioration in the character even of the gods, has
indeed led many Protestant divines of late years to temper the rigour of
the divine justice with a large infusion of mercy by relegating the fires
of hell to a decent obscurity or even extinguishing them altogether. But
these lurid flames appear to blaze as fiercely as ever in the more
conservative theology of the Catholic Church.(378)
(M108) It would be easy to accumulate evidence of the indifference or
apathy exhibited in presence of death by races whom we commonly brand as
lower. A few examples must here suffice. Speaking of the natives of India
an English writer observes: “We place the highest value on life, while
they, being blessed with a comfortable fatalism, which assumes that each
man’s destiny is written on his forehead in invisible characters, and
being besides untroubled with any doubts or thoughts as to the nature of
their reception in the next world, take matters of life and death a great
deal more unconcernedly, and, compared with our ideas, they may be said to
present an almost apathetic indifference on these subjects.”(379) To the
same effect another English writer remarks that “the absence of that fear
of death, which is so powerful in the hearts of civilised men, is the most
remarkable trait in the Hindu character.”(380) Among the natives of Annam,
according to a Catholic missionary, “the subject of death has nothing
alarming for anybody. In presence of a sick man people will speak of his
approaching end and of his funeral as readily as of anything else. Hence
we never need to take the least verbal precaution in warning the sick to
prepare themselves to receive the last sacraments. Some time ago I was
summoned to a neophyte whose death, though certain, was still distant. On
entering the house I found a woman seated at his bedside sewing the
mourning dresses of the family. Moreover, the carpenter was fitting
together the boards of the coffin quite close to the door of the house, so
that the dying man could observe the whole proceeding from his bed. The
worthy man superintended personally all these details and gave directions
for each of the operations. He even had for his pillow part of the
mourning costume which was already finished. I could tell you a host of
anecdotes of the same sort.” Among these people it is a mark of filial
piety to present a father or mother with a coffin; the presentation is the
occasion of a family festival to which all friends are invited. Pupils
display their respect for their masters in the same fashion. Bishop
Masson, whose letter I have just quoted, was himself presented with a fine
coffin by some of his converts as a New Year gift and a token of their
respect and affection; they invited his attention particularly to the
quality of the wood and the beauty of the workmanship.(381)
(M109) With regard to the North American Indians a writer who knew them
well has said that among them “the idea of immortality is strongly dwelt
upon. It is not spoken of as a supposition or a mere belief, not fixed. It
is regarded as an actuality,—as something known and approved by the
judgment of the nation. During the whole period of my residence and
travels in the Indian country, I never knew and never heard of an Indian
who did not believe in it, and in the reappearance of the body in a future
state. However mistaken they are on the subject of accountabilities for
acts done in the present life, no small part of their entire mythology,
and the belief that sustains the man in his vicissitudes and wanderings
here, arises from the anticipation of ease and enjoyment in a future
condition, after the soul has left the body. The resignation, nay, the
alacrity with which an Indian frequently lies down and surrenders life, is
to be ascribed to this prevalent belief. He does not fear to go to a land
which, all his life long, he has heard abounds in rewards without
punishments.”(382) Another traveller, who saw much of the South American
Indians, asserts that they surpass the beasts in their insensibility to
hardship and pain, never complaining in sickness nor even when they are
being killed, and exhibiting in their last moments an apathetic
indifference untroubled by any misgiving as to the future.(383)
(M110) Wholesale butcheries of human beings were perpetrated till lately
in the name of religion in the west African kingdom of Dahomey. As to the
behaviour of the victims we are told that “almost invariably, those doomed
to die exhibit the greatest coolness and unconcern. The natural dread of
death which the instinct of self-preservation has implanted in every
breast, often leads persons who are liable to be seized for immolation to
endeavour to escape; but once they are seized and bound, they resign
themselves to their fate with the greatest apathy. This is partly due to
the less delicate nervous system of the negro; but one reason, and that
not the least, is that they have nothing to fear. As has been said, they
have but to undergo a surgical operation and a change of place of
residence; there is no uncertain future to be faced, and, above all, there
is an entire absence of that notion of a place of terrible punishment
which makes so many Europeans cowards when face to face with death.”(384)
One of the earliest European settlers on the coast of Brazil has remarked
on the indifference exhibited by the Indian prisoners who were about to be
massacred by their enemies. He conversed with the captives, men young,
strong, and handsome. To his question whether they did not fear the death
that was so near and so appalling, they replied with laughter and mockery.
When he spoke of ransoming them from their foes, they jeered at the
cowardice of Europeans.(385) The Khonds of India practised an extensive
system of human sacrifice, of which we shall hear more in the sequel. The
victims, known as Meriahs, were kept for years to be sacrificed, and their
manner of death was peculiarly horrible, since they were hacked to pieces
or slowly roasted alive. Yet when these destined victims were rescued by
the English officers who were engaged in putting down the custom, they
generally availed themselves of any opportunity to escape from their
deliverers and returned to their fate.(386) In Uganda there were formerly
many sacrificial places where human victims used to be slaughtered or
burned to death, sometimes in hundreds, from motives of superstition.
“Those who have taken part in these executions bear witness how seldom a
victim, whether man or woman, raised his voice to protest or appeal
against the treatment meted out to him. The victims went to death (so they
thought) to save their country and race from some calamity, and they laid
down their lives without a murmur or a struggle.”(387)
(M111) But it is not merely that men of other races and other religions
submit to inevitable death with an equanimity which modern Europeans in
general cannot match; they often actually seek and find it for reasons
which seem to us wholly inadequate. The motives which lead them to
sacrifice their lives are very various. Among them religious fanaticism
has probably been one of the commonest, and in the preceding pages we have
met with many instances of voluntary deaths incurred under its powerful
impulse.(388) But more secular motives, such as loyalty, revenge, and an
excessive sensibility on the point of honour, have also driven multitudes
to throw away their lives with a levity which may strike the average
modern Englishman as bordering on insanity. It may be well to illustrate
this comparative indifference to death by a few miscellaneous examples
drawn from different races. Thus, when the king of Benin died and was
about to be lowered into the earth, his favourites and servants used to
compete with each other for the privilege of being buried alive with his
body in order that they might attend and minister to him in the other
world. After the dispute was settled and the tomb had closed over the dead
and the living, sentinels were set to watch it day and night. Next day the
sepulchre would be opened and some one would call down to the entombed men
to know what they were doing and whether any of them had gone to serve the
king. The answer was commonly, “No, not yet.” The third day the same
question would be put, and a voice would reply that so-and-so had gone to
join his Majesty. The first to die was deemed the happiest. In four or
five days when no answer came up to the question, and all was silent in
the grave, the heir to the throne was informed, and he signalised his
accession by kindling a fire on the tomb, roasting flesh at it, and
distributing the meat to the people.(389) The daughter of a Mbaya chief in
South America, having been happily baptized at the very point of death,
was accorded Christian burial in the church by the Jesuit missionary who
had rescued her like a brand from the burning. But an old heathen woman of
the tribe took it sadly to heart that her chief’s daughter should not be
honoured with the usual human sacrifices. So, drawing an Indian aside, she
implored him to be so kind as to knock her on the head, that she might go
and serve her young mistress in the Land of Souls. The savage obligingly
complied with her request, and the whole horde begged the missionary that
her body might be buried with that of the chief’s daughter. The Jesuit
sternly refused. He informed them that the girl was now with the angels,
and stood in need of no such attendant. As for the old woman, he observed
grimly that she had gone to a very different place and would move in a
very different circle of society.(390) When Otho committed suicide after
the battle of Bedriacum, some of his soldiers slew themselves at his pyre,
and their example was afterwards followed by many of their comrades in the
armies which had marched with Otho to meet Vitellius; their motive was not
fear of the conqueror, but purely loyalty and devotion to their
emperor.(391)
(M112) In the East that indifference to human life which seems so strange
to the Western mind often takes a peculiar form. A man will sometimes kill
himself merely in order to be revenged on his foe, believing that his
ghost will haunt and torment the survivor, or expecting that punishment of
some sort will overtake the wretch who drove him to this extreme
step.(392) Among some peoples etiquette requires that if a man commits
suicide for this purpose, his enemy should at once follow his example. To
take a single example. There is a caste of robbers in southern India among
whom “the law of retaliation prevails in all its rigour. If a quarrel
takes place, and somebody tears out his own eye or kills himself, his
adversary must do the same either to himself or to one of his relations.
The women carry this barbarity still further. For a slight affront put on
them, a sharp word said to them, they will go and smash their head against
the door of her who offended them, and the latter is obliged immediately
to do the same. If a woman poisons herself by drinking the juice of a
poisonous herb, the other woman who drove her to this violent death must
poison herself likewise; else her house will be burned, her cattle carried
off, and injuries of all kinds done her until satisfaction is given. They
extend this cruelty even to their own children. Not long ago, a few steps
from the church in which I have the honour to write to you, two of these
barbarians having quarrelled, one of them ran to his house, took from it a
child of about four years, and crushed its head between two stones in the
presence of his enemy. The latter, without exhibiting any emotion, took
his nine-years’ old daughter, and, plunging a dagger into her breast,
said, ‘Your child was only four years old, mine was nine years old. Give
me a victim to equal her.’ ‘Certainly,’ replied the other, and seeing at
his side his eldest son, who was ready to be married, he stabbed him four
or five times with his dagger; and, not content with shedding the blood of
his two sons, he killed his wife too, in order to oblige his enemy to
murder his wife in like manner. Lastly, a little girl and a baby at the
breast had also their throats cut, so that in a single day seven persons
were sacrificed to the vengeance of two bloodthirsty men, more cruel than
the most ferocious brutes. I have actually in my church a young man who
sought refuge among us, wounded by a spear-thrust which his father
inflicted on him in order to kill him and thus oblige his foe to slay his
own son in like manner. The barbarian had already stabbed two of his
children on other occasions for the same purpose. Such atrocious examples
will seem to you to partake more of fable than of truth; but believe me
that far from exaggerating, I could produce many others not less
tragical.”(393)
(M113) The same contempt of death which many races have exhibited in
modern times was displayed in antiquity by the hardy natives of Europe
before Christianity had painted the world beyond the grave in colours at
which even their bold spirits quailed. Thus, for example, at their
banquets the rude Thracians used to suspend a halter over a movable stone
and cast lots among themselves. The man on whom the lot fell mounted the
stone with a scimitar in his hand and thrust his head into the noose. A
comrade then rolled the stone from under him, and while he did so the
other attempted to sever the rope with his scimitar. If he succeeded he
dropped to the ground and was saved; if he failed, he was hanged, and his
dying struggles were greeted with peals of laughter by his fellows, who
regarded the whole thing as a capital joke.(394) The Greek traveller
Posidonius, who visited Gaul early in the first century before our era,
records that among the Celts men were to be found who for a sum of money
or a number of jars of wine, which they distributed among their kinsmen or
friends, would allow themselves to be publicly slaughtered in a theatre.
They lay down on their backs upon a shield and a man came and cut their
throats with a sword.(395)
(M114) A Greek author, Euphorion of Chalcis, who lived in the age when the
eyes of all the world were turned on the great conflict between Rome and
Carthage for the mastery of the Mediterranean, tells us that at Rome it
was customary to advertise for men who would consent to be beheaded with
an axe in consideration of receiving a sum of five _minae_, or about
twenty pounds of our money, to be paid after their death to their heirs.
Apparently there was no lack of applicants for this hard-earned bounty;
for we are informed that several candidates would often compete for the
privilege, each of them arguing that he had the best right to be cudgelled
to death.(396) Why were these men invited to be beheaded for twenty pounds
a piece? and why in response to the invitation did they gratuitously, as
it would seem, express their readiness to suffer a much more painful death
than simple decapitation? The reasons are not stated by Euphorion in the
brief extract quoted from his work by Athenaeus, the Greek writer who has
also preserved for us the testimony of Posidonius to the Gallic
recklessness of life. But the connexion in which Athenaeus cites both
these passages suggests that the intention of the Roman as of the Gallic
practice was merely to minister to the brutal pleasure of the spectators;
for he inserts his account of the customs in a dissertation on banquets,
and he had just before described how hired ruffians fought and butchered
each other at Roman dinner-parties for the amusement of the tipsy
guests.(397) Or perhaps the men were wanted to be slaughtered at funerals,
for we know that at Rome a custom formerly prevailed of sacrificing human
beings at the tomb: the victims were commonly captives or slaves,(398) but
they may sometimes have been obtained by advertisement from among the
class of needy freemen. Such wretches in bidding against each other may
have pleaded as a reason for giving them the preference that they really
deserved for their crimes to die a slow and painful death under the cudgel
of the executioner. This explanation of the custom, which I owe to my
friend Mr. W. Wyse, is perhaps the most probable. But it is also possible,
though the language of Euphorion does not lend itself so well to this
interpretation, that a cudgelling preceded decapitation as part of the
bargain. If that was so, it would seem that the men were wanted to die as
substitutes for condemned criminals; for in old Rome capital punishment
was regularly inflicted in this fashion, the malefactors being tied up to
a post and scourged with rods before they were beheaded with an axe.(399)
There is nothing improbable in the view that persons could be hired to
suffer the extreme penalty of the law instead of the real culprits. We
shall see that a voluntary substitution of the same sort is reported on
apparently good authority to be still occasionally practised in China.
However, it is immaterial to our purpose whether these men perished to
save others, to adorn a funeral, or merely to gratify the Roman lust for
blood. The one thing that concerns us is that in the great age of Rome
there were to be found Romans willing, nay, eager to barter their lives
for a paltry sum of money of which they were not even to have the
enjoyment. No wonder that men made of that stuff founded a great empire,
and spread the terror of the Roman arms from the Grampians to the
tropics.(400)
(M115) The comparative indifference with which the Chinese regard their
lives is attested by the readiness with which they commit suicide on
grounds which often seem to the European extremely trifling.(401) A still
more striking proof of their apathy in this respect is furnished by the
readiness with which in China a man can be induced to suffer death for a
sum of money to be paid to his relatives. Thus, for example, “one of the
most wealthy of the aboriginal tribes, called Shurii-Kia-Miau, is
remarkable for the practice of a singular and revolting religious
ceremony. The people possess a large temple, in which is an idol in the
form of a dog. They resort to this shrine on a certain day every year to
worship. At this annual religious festival it is, I believe, customary for
the wealthy members of the tribe to entertain their poorer brethren at a
banquet given in honour of one who has agreed, for a sum of money paid to
his family, to allow himself to be offered as a sacrifice on the altar of
the dog idol. At the end of the banquet the victim, having drunk wine
freely, is put to death before the idol. This people believe that, were
they to neglect this rite, they would be visited with pestilence, famine,
or the sword.”(402) Further, it is said that in China a man condemned to
death can procure a substitute, who, for a small sum, will voluntarily
consent to be executed in his stead. The money goes to the substitute’s
kinsfolk, and since to increase the family prosperity at the expense of
personal suffering is regarded by the Chinese as an act of the highest
virtue, there is reported to be, just as there used to be in ancient Rome,
quite a competition among the candidates for death. Such a substitution is
even recognised by the Chinese authorities, except in the case of certain
grave crimes, as for instance parricide. The local mandarin is probably
not averse to the arrangement, for he is said to make a pecuniary profit
by the transaction, engaging a substitute for a less sum than he received
from the condemned man, and pocketing the difference.(403)
(M116) The foregoing evidence may suffice to convince us that we should
commit a grievous error were we to judge all men’s love of life by our
own, and to assume that others cannot hold cheap what we count so dear. We
shall never understand the long course of human history if we persist in
measuring mankind in all ages and in all countries by the standard,
perhaps excellent but certainly narrow, of the modern English middle class
with their love of material comfort and “their passionate, absorbing,
almost bloodthirsty clinging to life.” That class, of which I may say, in
the words of Matthew Arnold, that I am myself a feeble unit, doubtless
possesses many estimable qualities, but among them can hardly be reckoned
the rare and delicate gift of historical imagination, the power of
entering into the thoughts and feelings of men of other ages and other
countries, of conceiving that they may regulate their life by principles
which do not square with ours, and may throw it away for objects which to
us might seem ridiculously inadequate.(404)
(M117) To return, therefore, to the point from which we started, we may
safely assume that in some races, and at some periods of history, though
certainly not in the well-to-do classes of England to-day, it might be
easy to find men who would willingly accept a kingdom with the certainty
of being put to death after a reign of a year or less. Where men are
ready, as they have been in Gaul, in Rome, and in China, to yield up their
lives at once for a paltry sum of which they are themselves to reap no
benefit, would they not be willing to purchase at the same price a year’s
tenure of a throne? Among people of that sort the difficulty would
probably be not so much to find a candidate for the crown as to decide
between the conflicting claims of a multitude of competitors. In point of
fact we have heard of a Shilluk clamouring to be made king on condition of
being killed at the end of a brief reign of a single day, and we have read
how in Malabar a crowd scrambled for the bloody head which entitled the
lucky man who caught it to be decapitated after five years of unlimited
enjoyment, and how at Calicut many men used to rush cheerfully on death,
not for a kingship of a year, or even of an hour, but merely for the
honour of displaying their valour in a fruitless attack on the king.(405)