[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.]
In his list of scapegoats, Dr. Frazer refers to a case of human
sacrifice witnessed by the Rev. J. C. Taylor at Onitsha, on the
Niger.[229] A young woman was drawn, with her face to the earth, from
the king's house to the river. As the people drew her along, they
cried, "Wickedness! Wickedness!" so as to notify to the passers-by to
screen themselves from witnessing the dismal scene. The sacrifice was
to take away the iniquities of the land. The body was dragged along in
a merciless manner "as if the weight of all their wickedness were thus
carried away"; and it was finally drowned in the river. Our informant
also heard that there was a man killed, as a sacrifice for the sins of
the king. "Thus two human beings were offered as sacrifices, to
propitiate their heathen deities, thinking that they would thus atone
for the individual sins of those who had broken God's laws during the
past year. . . . Those who had fallen into gross sins during the past
year--such as incendiarisms, thefts, fornications, adulteries,
witchcrafts, incests, slanders, &c.--were expected to pay in
twenty-eight _ngugus_, or _£_2 0_s._ 7½_d._, as a fine; and this money
was taken into the interior, to purchase two sickly persons, to be
{63} offered as a sacrifice for all these abominable crimes--one for
the land, and one for the river."[230] As will be seen in a following
chapter, human sacrifices to rivers are very common in the Niger
country. In the cases mentioned by the English missionary, the idea of
vicarious expiation is obvious. But I find no evidence of actual
sin-transference.
[Footnote 229: Frazer, _op. cit._ iii. 109 _sq._]
[Footnote 230: Crowther and Taylor, _Gospel on the Banks of the
Niger_, p. 344 _sq._]
Dr. Frazer further mentions a custom which, according to Strabo,
prevailed among the Albanians of the Eastern Caucasus.[231] In the
temple of the Moon they kept a number of sacred slaves, of whom many
were inspired and prophesied. When one of these men exhibited more
than usual symptoms of inspiration or insanity, the high priest had
him bound with a sacred chain and maintained him in luxury for a year.
At the end of the year he was anointed with unguents and led forth to
be sacrificed. A man thrust a sacred spear into his side, piercing his
heart. From the manner in which the victim fell, omens were drawn as
to the welfare of the commonwealth. Then the body was carried to a
certain spot where all the people stood upon it as a purificatory
ceremony.[232] Dr. Frazer maintains that "the last circumstance
clearly indicates that the sins of the people were transferred to the
victim, just as the Jewish priest transferred the sins of the people
to the scapegoat by laying his hand on the animal's head."[233] So it
may be, although, in my opinion, the purificatory ceremony described
by Strabo also allows of another interpretation. The victim was
evidently held to be saturated with magic energy; this is commonly the
case with men, or animals, or even inanimate things, that are offered
in sacrifice, and in the present instance the man was regarded as holy
already, long before he was slain. To stand on the corpse, then, might
have been regarded as purifying in consequence of the benign virtue
inherent in it, just as, according to Muhammedan notions, contact with
a saint cures disease, not by transferring it to the saint, but by
annihilating it or expelling it from the body of the patient. But
whether the ceremony in question involved the idea of sin-transference
or not, there is no indication that the sacrifice of the slave was of
an expiatory character. The same may be said both of the Egyptian
sacrifice of a bull, mentioned by Herodotus, and of the white dog
sacrifice performed by the Iroquois. The Egyptians first invoked the
god and slew the bull. They then cut off his head and flayed the body.
Next {64} they took the head, and heaped imprecations on it, praying
that, if any evil was impending either over those who sacrificed or
over the land of Egypt, it might be made to fall upon that head. And
finally, they either sold the head to Greek traders or threw it into
the river[234]--which shows that the real scapegoat, the head, was not
regarded as a sacrifice to the god. Among the Iroquois, also, the
victims were slain before the sins of the people were transferred to
them. According to Hale's and Morgan's accounts of this rite, which
have reference to different tribes of the Iroquois, no mention of
sin-transference is made in the hymn which accompanied the
sacrifice.[235] Only blessings were invoked. This was the beginning of
the chant:--"Now we are about to offer this victim adorned for the
sacrifice, in hope that the act will be pleasing and acceptable to the
All-Ruler, and that he will so adorn his children, the red men, with
his blessings, when they appear before him."[236] Mr. Morgan even
denies that the burning of the dog had the slightest connection with
the sins of the people, and states that "in the religious system of
the Iroquois, there is no recognition of the doctrine of atonement for
sin, or of the absolution or forgiveness of sins."[237]
[Footnote 231: Frazer, _op. cit._ iii. 112 _sq._]
[Footnote 232: Strabo, xi. 4. 7.]
[Footnote 233: Frazer, _op. cit._ iii. 113.]
[Footnote 234: Herodotus, ii. 39.]
[Footnote 235: Hale, in _American Antiquarian_, vii. 10 _sqq._ Morgan,
_League of the Iroquois_, p. 217 _sq._]
[Footnote 236: Hale, _loc. cit._ p. 10.]
[Footnote 237: Morgan, _op. cit._ p. 216.]
I think we can see the reason why, in some cases, a sacrificial victim
is used as scapegoat. The transference of sins or evils is not looked
upon as a mere "natural" process, it can hardly be accomplished
without the aid of mysterious, magic energy. Among the Berbers of Ait
Zel[t.]n, in Southern Morocco, sick people used to visit a
miracle-working wild olive-tree, growing in the immediate vicinity of
the supposed grave of Sîdi Butlîla. They there relieve themselves of
their complaints by tying a woollen string to one of its branches; in
case of headache the patient previously winds the string three times
round the top of his head, whilst, in case of fever, he spits on the
string, and, when tying it to the tree, says, "I left my fever in
thee, O wild olive-tree." He believes that he may thus transfer his
disease to this tree because there is _baraka_, "benign virtue," in
it; he would not expect to be cured {65} by tying the string to any
ordinary tree. This illustrates a principle of probably world-wide
application. In Morocco, and, I presume, in other countries where
disease-transference is believed in, rags tied to a tree are a sure
indication that the tree is regarded as holy. Similarly I venture to
believe that the transference of sins and evils to a scapegoat is
generally supposed to require magic aid of some kind or other. Among
the Hebrews, it took place on the Day of Atonement only, and the act
was performed by the high-priest.[238] Among the Iroquois, it was by
"a kind of magic" that the sins of the people were worked into the
white dogs;[239] and that the animals themselves were held to be
charged with supernatural energy, appears from the fact that,
according to one account, the ashes of the pyre on which one of them
was burnt were "gathered up, carried through the village, and
sprinkled at the door of every house."[240] Considering, then, that
sacrificial victims, owing to their close contact with the deities to
whom they are offered, are held more or less sacred, the idea of
employing them as scapegoats is certainly near at hand. But this does
not make the sacrifice expiatory. In fact, I know of no instance of an
expiatory sacrifice being connected with a ceremony of sin-transference.
Hence the materialistic conception of sin hardly helps to explain the
belief that the sins of a person may be atoned by another person being
offered as a sacrifice to the offended god.
[Footnote 238: _Leviticus_, xvi. 21.]
[Footnote 239: Seaver, _op. cit._ p. 160.]
[Footnote 240: Beauchamp, _loc. cit._ p. 239.]
A sacrifice is expiatory if its object is to avert the supposed anger
or indignation of a superhuman being from those on whose behalf it is
offered. In various cases the offended god is thought to be appeased
only by the death of a man. But it is not always necessary that the
victim should be the actual offender. The death of a substitute may
expiate his guilt. The expiatory sacrifice may be vicarious.
We shall see, in a subsequent chapter, that, as a general {66} rule,
human victims are sacrificed for the purpose of saving the lives of
the sacrificers: before the beginning of a battle or during a siege,
previously to a dangerous sea-expedition, during epidemics, famines,
or on other similar occasions, when murderous designs are attributed
to some superhuman being on whose will the lives of men are supposed
to depend. But these sacrifices are not always expiatory in nature. A
god may desire to cause the death of men not only because he is
offended, but because he delights in human flesh, or because he wants
human attendants, or--no one knows exactly why. It is impossible to
find out in each particular case whether the sacrifice is meant to be
an expiation or not; it is not certain that the sacrificers know it
themselves. Yet in many instances there can be no doubt that its
object is to serve as a vicarious atonement.
In Eastern Central Africa, "if a freeman were to set fire to the
grass or reeds beside a lake, and cause a great conflagration close to
the chosen abode of the deity, he is liable to be offered up to the
god that is thus annoyed," but if he be the owner of many slaves he
can easily redeem himself by offering one of them in his place.[241]
The Ojibways, it is said, were once visited with an epidemic, which
they regarded as a divine punishment sent them on account of their
wickedness; and when all other efforts failed, "it was decided that
the most beautiful girl of the tribe should enter a canoe, push into
the channel just above the Sault, and throw away her paddle."[242] In
B[oe]otia, a drunken man having killed a priest of Dionysus Aegobolus,
and a pestilence having broken out immediately after, the calamity was
regarded as a judgment on the people for the sacrilege, and the oracle
of Delphi ordered them to expiate it by sacrificing to the god a
blooming boy.[243] In his work on the Jews, Philo of Byblus states
that "it was the custom among the ancients in cases of great dangers,
that the rulers of a city or a nation, in order to avert universal
destruction, should give the dearest of their children to be killed as
a ransom offered to avenging demons."[244] The idea that sins could be
expiated by the death of one who {67} had not deserved it, was
familiar to the Hebrews. It was said that "the death of the righteous
makes atonement."[245] The passage in Isaiah liii. 12 was interpreted
of Moses, who "poured out his soul unto death[246] and was numbered
with the transgressors (the generation that died in the wilderness)
and bare the sin of many "that he might atone for the sin of the
golden calf.[247] Ezekiel suffered "that he might wipe out the
transgressions of Israel."[248] And of the Maccabaean martyrs it is
said, "Having become as it were a vicarious expiation for the sins of
the nation, and through the blood of those godly men and their atoning
death, divine providence saved Israel which had before been evil
entreated."[249] In these cases, of course, there was no sacrifice in
the proper sense of the term, but they obviously illustrate the same
characteristic of the divine mind. In fact, the death of Christ, by
which he atoned and obliterated the sins of all ages, was conceived as
a sacrifice, or spoken of in sacrificial figures.[250]
[Footnote 241: Macdonald, _Africana_, i. 96 _sq._]
[Footnote 242: Dorman, _Origin of Primitive Superstitions_, p. 208.]
[Footnote 243: Pausanias, ix. 8. 2.]
[Footnote 244: Eusebius, _Praeparatio Evangelica_, i. 10. 40 (Migne,
_Patrologia_, Ser. Gr. xxi. 85).]
[Footnote 245: Moore, in Cheyne and Black, _Encyclopaedia Biblica_,
iv. 4226.]
[Footnote 246: _Exodus_, xxxii. 32.]
[Footnote 247: _S[=o][t.][=a]h_, 14 A, quoted by Moore, _loc. cit._
col. 4226.]
[Footnote 248: _Sanhedrin_, 39 A, quoted _ibid._ col. 4226.]
[Footnote 249: _4 Maccabaeans_, xvii. 22, quoted _ibid._ col. 4232.]
[Footnote 250: See Moore, _loc. cit._ col. 4229 _sqq._]
It is said that, according to early ideas, "it did not essentially
concern divine justice that the punishment of faults committed should
fall precisely on the guilty; what did concern it was that it should
fall on some one, that it should have its accomplishment."[251] Men,
we are told, could not fail to discern that a transgression produces
suffering as its consequence, and, seeing this, they "associate
suffering with the expiation of sin, and, in atoning for their
transgressions, they mark their contrition by the suffering which they
inflict vicariously on the victim. They argue thus: 'I have broken a
law of God. God exacts pain as a consequence of such a breach. I will
therefore slay this lamb, and its sufferings shall make the atonement
requisite.'"[252] But, so far as I can see, this interpretation of the
idea of vicarious expiation is not supported by facts. The victim
whose suffering or death is calculated to appease the wrathful god is
not anybody {68} at random, whosoever he may be. He is a
representative of the community which has incurred the anger of the
god, and is accepted as a substitute on the principle of social
solidarity. So, also, according to the Western Church, Christ
discharged the punishment due to the sins of mankind and propitiated
the justice of his Father, in his capacity of a man, as a
representative of the human race; whereas in the East, where it was
maintained that the _deity_ suffered (though he suffered through the
human nature which he had made his own), the idea of substitution
could hardly take root, since, as Harnack remarks, "the dying
_God_-man really represented no one."[253] The Greek Church regarded
the death of Christ as a ransom for mankind paid to the devil, and
this doctrine was also accepted by the most important of the Western
Fathers, although it flatly contradicted their own theory of
atonement.[254] There can be no doubt that expiatory sacrifices are
frequently offered as ransoms, in other words, that the god or demon
is supposed to be appeased, not by the suffering of the victim, but by
the gift. Among men it often occurs that the offended party is induced
by some material compensation to desist from avenging the injury--in
many societies such placability is even prescribed by custom,--and
something similar is naturally believed to be the case with gods. From
this point of view, of course, it is not necessary that the victim
should be a person who is connected with the offender by ties of
social solidarity, although he may still be regarded as in a way a
substitute. He may be an alien or a slave; or animals or inanimate
things may be offered to expiate the sins of men. Among the Dacotahs,
"for the expiation of sins or crimes a sacrifice is made of some kind
of an animal."[255] Of the Melanesian sacrifices, says Dr. Codrington,
"some are propitiatory, substituting an animal for the person who has
offended."[256] The Shánárs of Tinnevelly offer up a {69} goat, a
sheep, or a fowl, in order "to appease the angry demon, and induce him
to remove the evil he has inflicted, or abstain from the infliction he
may meditate."[257] It would be almost absurd to suppose that in
similar cases the suffering or death of the animal is looked upon in
the light of a vicarious _punishment_. Of the Hebrew sin-offering,
Professor Kuenen aptly remarks:--[258]"According to the Israelite's
notion, Yahveh in his clemency permits the soul of the animal
sacrificed to take the place of that of the sacrificer. No transfer of
guilt to the animal sacrificed takes place: the blood of the latter is
clean and remains so, as is evident from the very fact that this blood
is put upon the altar; it is a token of mercy on Yahveh's part that he
accepts it. . . . Nor can it be asserted that the animal sacrificed
undergoes the punishment in the place of the transgressor: this is
said nowhere, and therefore, in any case, gives another, more sharply
defined idea than that which the Israelite must have formed for
himself; moreover, it is irreconcilable with the rule that the
indigent may bring the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour as a
sin-offering."[259] It should also be noticed that a purifying effect
was ascribed to contact with the victim's blood: the high priest
should put or sprinkle some blood upon the altar "and cleanse it, and
hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel."[260]
[Footnote 251: Réville, _Prolegomena of the History of Religions_,
p. 135.]
[Footnote 252: Baring-Gould, _Origin and Development of Religious
Belief_, i. 387 _sq._]
[Footnote 253: Harnack, _op. cit._ iii. 312 _sqq._]
[Footnote 254: _Ibid._ iii. 307, 315 n. 2.]
[Footnote 255: Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes of the United States_,
ii. 196.]
[Footnote 256: Codrington, _Melanesians_, p. 127.]
[Footnote 257: Percival, _Land of the Veda_, p. 309 _sq._ _Cf._
Caldwell, _Tinnevelly Shánárs_, p. 37.]
[Footnote 258: Kuenen, _Religion of Israel_, ii. 266 _sq._]
[Footnote 259: _Leviticus_, v. 11 _sqq._]
[Footnote 260: _Ibid._ xvi. 18 _sq._]
To sum up:--The fact that punishments for offences are frequently
inflicted, or are supposed to be inflicted, by men or gods upon
individuals who have not committed those offences, is explicable from
circumstances which in no way clash with our thesis that moral
indignation is, in its essence, directed towards the assumed cause of
inflicted pain. In many cases the victim, in accordance with the
doctrine of collective responsibility, is punished because he is
considered to be involved in the guilt--even when he is really
innocent--or because he is regarded as a fair {70} representative of
an offending community. In other cases, he is supposed to be polluted
by a sin or a curse, owing to the contagious nature of sins and
curses. The principle of social solidarity also accounts for the
efficacy ascribed to vicarious expiatory sacrifices; but in many
instances expiatory sacrifices only have the character of a ransom or
bribe.
And whilst thus our thesis as to the true direction of moral
indignation is not in the least invalidated by facts, apparently, but
only apparently, contradictory, it is, on the other hand, strongly
supported by the protest which the moral consciousness, when
sufficiently guided by discrimination and sympathy, enters against the
infliction of penal suffering upon the guiltless. Such a protest is
heard from various quarters, both with reference to human justice and
with reference to the resentment of gods.
Confucius taught that the vices of a father should not discredit a
virtuous son.[261] Plato lays down the rule that "the disgrace and
punishment of the father is not to be visited on the children"; on the
contrary, he says, if the children of a criminal who has been punished
capitally avoid the wrongs of their father, they shall have glory, and
honourable mention shall be made of them, "as having nobly and
manfully escaped out of evil into good."[262] According to Roman law,
"crimen vel poena paterna nullam maculam filio infligere potest."[263]
"Nothing," says Seneca, "is more unjust than that any one should
inherit the quarrels of his father."[264] The Deuteronomist enjoins,
"The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall
the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put
to death for his own {71} sin."[265] Lawgivers have been anxious to
restrict the blood-feud to the actual culprit. The Koran forbids the
avenger of blood to kill any other person than the manslayer
himself.[266] In England, according to a law of Edmund, the feud was
not to be prosecuted against the kindred of the slayer, unless they
made his misdeed their own by harbouring him.[267] So, also, in
Sweden, in the thirteenth century, the blood feud was limited by law
to the guilty individual;[268] and we meet with a similar restriction
in Slavonic law-books.[269]
[Footnote 261: _Lun Yü_, vi. 4. _Cf._ _Thâi-Shang_ 4.]
[Footnote 262: Plato, _Leges_, ix. 854 _sqq._ Plato makes an exception
for those whose fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers have
successively undergone the penalty of death: "Such persons the city
shall send away with all their possessions to the city and country of
their ancestors, retaining only and wholly their appointed lot"
(_ibid._ ix. 856). But this enactment had no doubt a purely
utilitarian foundation, the offspring of a thoroughly wicked family
being considered a danger to the city.]
[Footnote 263: _Digesta_, xlviii. 19. 26. _Cf._ _ibid._ xlviii. 19. 20.]
[Footnote 264: Seneca, _De ira_, ii. 34. _Cf._ Cicero, _De officiis_,
i. 25.]
[Footnote 265: _Deuteronomy_, xxiv. 16. _Cf._ _2 Kings_ xiv. 6.]
[Footnote 266: _Koran_, xvii. 35.]
[Footnote 267: _Laws of Edmund_, ii. 1.]
[Footnote 268: Nordström, _Bidrag till den svenska
samhälls-författningens historia_, ii. 103, 334, 335, 399. Wilda,
_op. cit._ p. 174.]
[Footnote 269: Kovalewsky, _Coutume contemporaine_, p. 248. In
Montenegro it was enjoined by Daniel I. (Post, _Anfänge des Staats- und
Rechtsleben_, p. 181).]
Passing to the vengeance of gods: according to the Atharva-Veda, Agni,
who forgives sin committed through folly and averts Varuna's wrath,
also frees from the consequence of a sin committed by a man's father
or mother.[270] Theognis asks, "How, O king of immortals, is it just
that whoso is aloof from unrighteous deeds, holding no transgression,
nor sinful oath, but being righteous, should suffer what is not
just?"[271] According to Bion, the deity, in punishing the children of
the wicked for their fathers' crimes, is more ridiculous than a doctor
administering a potion to a son or grandson for a father's or
grandfather's disease.[272] The early Greek notion of an inherited
curse was modified into the belief that the curse works through
generations because the descendants each commit new acts of
guilt.[273] The persons who prohibited the sons of such as had been
proscribed by Sylla, from standing candidates for their fathers'
honours, and from being admitted into the senate, were supposed to
have been punished by the gods for this injustice:--"In process of
time," says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, "a blameless punishment, the
avenger of their crimes, pursued {72} them, by which they themselves
were brought down from the greatest height of glory, to the lowest
degree of obscurity; and none, even, of their race are now left, but
women."[274] Among the Hebrews, Jeremiah and Ezekiel broke with the
old notion of divine vengeance. The law of individual responsibility,
which had already previously been laid down as a principle of human
justice, was to be extended to the sphere of religion.[275] "Every one
shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape,
his teeth shall be set on edge."[276] "The soul that sinneth, it shall
die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall
the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the
righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be
upon him."[277]
[Footnote 270: _Atharva-Veda_, v. 30. 4. _Cf._ Macdonell, _Vedic
Mythology_, p. 98.]
[Footnote 271: Theognis, 743 _sqq._]
[Footnote 272: Plutarch, _De sera numinis vindicta_ 19. _Cf._ _ibid._
12; Cicero, _De natura Deorum_, iii. 38.]
[Footnote 273: Farnell, _op. cit._ i. 77. Maine, _Ancient Law_, p. 127.]
[Footnote 274: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _op. cit._ viii. 80.]
[Footnote 275: _Cf._ Montefiore, _op. cit._ p. 220; Kuenen, _op. cit._
ii. 35 _sq._]
[Footnote 276: _Jeremiah_, xxxi. 30.]
[Footnote 277: _Ezekiel_, xviii. 20. For Talmudic views, see Deutsch,
_Literary Remains_, p. 52.]