a young man on reaching a marriageable age can find no wife, he
is presented with a boy-wife, known as _chookadoo_. In this case,
also, the ordinary exogamic rules are observed, and the "husband"
has to avoid his "mother-in-law," just as if he were married to a
woman. The _chookadoo_ is a boy of five years to about ten, when
he is initiated. "The relations which exist between him and his
protecting _billalu_" says Mr. Hardman, "are somewhat doubtful.
There is no doubt they have connection, but the natives repudiate
with horror and disgust the idea of sodomy."[22] Such marriages
are evidently exceedingly common. As the women are generally
monopolised by the older and more influential men of the tribe,
it is rare to find a man under thirty or forty who has a wife;
hence it is the rule that, when a boy becomes five years old, he
is given as a boy-wife to one of the young men.[23] According to
Mr. Purcell's description of the natives of the same district,
"every useless member of the tribe" gets a boy, about five or
seven years old; and these boys, who are called _mullawongahs_,
are used for sexual purposes.[24] Among the Chingalee of South
Australia, Northern Territory, old men are often noticed with no
wives but accompanied by one or two boys, whom they jealously
guard and with whom they have sodomitic intercourse.[25] {461}
That homosexual practices are not unknown among other Australian
tribes may be inferred from Mr. Hewitt's statement relating to
South-Eastern natives, that unnatural offences are forbidden to
the novices by the old men and guardians after leaving the
initiation camp.[26]
[Footnote 22: Hardman, 'Notes on some Habits and Customs of the
Natives of the Kimberley District,' in _Proceed. Roy. Irish
Academy_, ser. iii. vol. i. 74.]
[Footnote 23: _Ibid._ pp. 71, 73.]
[Footnote 24: Purcell, 'Rites and Customs of Australian
Aborigines,' in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch. Anthrop._ 1893,
p. 287.]
[Footnote 25: Ravenscroft, 'Some Habits and Customs of the
Chingalee Tribe,' in _Trans. Roy. Soc. South Australia_, xv. 122.
I am indebted to Mr. N. W. Thomas for drawing my attention to
these statements.]
[Footnote 26: Howitt, 'Some Australian Ceremonies of Initiation,'
in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xiii. 450.]
In Madagascar there are certain boys who live like women and have
intercourse with men, paying those men who please them.[27] In an
old account of that island, dating from the seventeenth century,
it is said: "II y a . . . quelques hommes qu'ils appellent
Tsecats, qui sont hommes effeminez et impuissans, qui recherchent
les garçons, et font mine d'en estre amoureux, en contrefaisans
les filles et se vestans ainsi qu'elles leurs font des presents
pour dormir auec eux, et mesmes se donnent des noms de filles, en
faisant les honteuses et les modestes. . . . Ils haïssent les
femmes et ne les veulent point hanter."[28] Men behaving like
women have also been observed among the Ondonga in German
South-West Africa[29] and the Diakité-Sarracolese in the French
Soudan,[30] but as regards their sexual habits details are
wanting. Homosexual practices are common among the Banaka and
Bapuku in the Cameroons.[31] But among the natives of Africa
generally such practices seem to be comparatively rare,[32]
except among Arabic-speaking {462} peoples and in countries like
Zanzibar,[33] where there has been a strong Arab influence. In
North Africa they are not restricted to the inhabitants of towns;
they are frequent among the peasants of Egypt[34] and universal
among the Jbâla inhabiting the Northern mountains of Morocco. On
the other hand, they are much less common or even rare among the
Berbers and the nomadic Bedouins,[35] and it is reported that the
Bedouins of Arabia are quite exempt from them.[36]
[Footnote 27: Lasnet, in _Annales d'hygiène et de médecine
coloniales_, 1899, p. 494, quoted by Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._
p. 10. _Cf._ Rencurel, in _Annales d'hygiène_, 1900, p. 562,
quoted _ibid._ p. 11 _sq._ See also Leguével de Lacombe, _Voyage
à Madagascar_, i. 97 _sq._ Pederasty prevails to some extent in
the island of Nossi-Bé, close to Madagascar, and is very common
at Ankisimane, opposite to it, on Jassandava Bay (Walter, in
Steinmetz, _Rechtsverhältnisse_, p. 376).]
[Footnote 28: de Flacourt, _Histoire de la grande isle
Madagascar_, p. 86.]
[Footnote 29: Rautanen, in Steinmetz, _Rechtsverhältnisse_, p. 333.]
[Footnote 30: Nicole, _ibid._ p. 111.]
[Footnote 31: _Ibid._ p. 38.]
[Footnote 32: Munzinger, _Ostafrikanische Studien_, p. 525 (Barea
and Kunáma). Baumann, 'Conträre Sexual-Erscheinungen bei der
Neger-Bevölkerung Zanzibars,' in _Verhandl. der Berliner
Gesellsch. für Anthropologie_, 1899, p. 668. Felkin, 'Notes on
the Waganda Tribe of Central Africa,' in _Proceed. Roy. Soc.
Edinburgh_, xiii. 723. Johnston, _British Central Africa_, p. 404
(Bakongo). Monrad, _Skildring af Guinea-Kysten_, p. 57 (Negroes
of Accra). Torday and Joyce, 'Ethnography of the Ba-Mbala,' in
_Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxv. 410. Nicole, in Steinmetz,
_Rechtsverhältnisse_, p. 111 (Muhammedan Negroes). Tellier,
_ibid._ p. 159 (Kreis Kita in the French Soudan). Beverley,
_ibid._ p. 210 (Wagogo). Kraft, _ibid._ p. 288 (Wapokomo).]
[Footnote 33: Baumann, in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch.
Anthrop._ 1899, p. 668 _sq._]
[Footnote 34: Burckhardt, _Travels in Nubia_, p. 135.]
[Footnote 35: d'Escayrac de Lauture, _Afrikanische Wüste_, p. 93.]
[Footnote 36: Burckhardt, _Travels in Arabia_, i. 364. See also
von Kremer, _Culturgeschichte des Orients_, ii. 269.]
Homosexual love is spread over Asia Minor and Mesopotamia.[37] It
is very prevalent among the Tartars and Karatchai of the
Caucasus,[38] the Persians,[39] Sikhs,[40] and Afghans; in Kaubul
a bazaar or street is set apart for it.[41] Old travellers make
reference to its enormous frequency among the Muhammedans of
India,[42] and in this respect time seems to have produced no
change.[43] In China, where it is also extremely common, there
are special houses devoted to male prostitution, and boys are
sold by their parents about the age of four, to be trained for
this occupation.[44] In Japan pederasty is said by some to have
prevailed from the most ancient times, whereas others are of
opinion that it was introduced by Buddhism about the sixth
century of our era. The monks used to live with handsome youths,
to whom they were often passionately devoted; and in feudal times
nearly every knight had as {463} his favourite a young man with
whom he entertained relations of the most intimate kind, and on
behalf of whom he was always ready to fight a duel when occasion
occurred. Tea-houses with male _gheishas_ were found in Japan
till the middle of the nineteenth century. Nowadays pederasty
seems to be more prevalent in the Southern than in the Northern
provinces of the country, but there are also districts where it
is hardly known.[45]
[Footnote 37: Burton, _Arabian Nights_, x. 232.]
[Footnote 38: Kovalewsky, _Coutume contemporaine_, p. 340.]
[Footnote 39: Polak, 'Die Prostitution in Persien,' in _Wiener
Medizinische Wochenschrift_, xi. 627 _sqq._ _Idem_, _Persien_, i.
237. Burton, _Arabian Nights_, x. 233 _sq._ Wilson, _Persian Life
and Customs_, p. 229.]
[Footnote 40: Malcolm, _Sketch of the Sikhs_, p. 140. Havelock
Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 5, n. 2. Burton, _Arabian Nights_, x. 236.]
[Footnote 41: Wilson, _Abode of Snow_, p. 420. Burton, _Arabian
Nights_, x. 236.]
[Footnote 42: Stavorinus, _Voyages to the East-Indies_, i. 456.
Fryer, _New Account of East-India_, p. 97. Chevers, _Manual of
Medical Jurisprudence for India_, p. 705.]
[Footnote 43: Chevers, _op. cit._ p. 708.]
[Footnote 44: _Indo-Chinese Gleaner_, iii. 193. Wells Williams,
_The Middle Kingdom_, i. 836. Matignon, 'Deux mots sur la
pédérastie en Chine,' in _Archives d'anthropologie criminelle_,
xiv. 38 _sqq._ Karsch, _Das gleichgeschlechtliche Leben der
Ostasiaten_, p. 6 _sqq._]
[Footnote 45: Jwaya, 'Nan sho k,' in _Jahrbuch für sexuelle
Zwischenstufen_, iv. 266, 268, 270. Karsch, _op. cit._ p. 71 _sqq._]
No reference is made to pederasty either in the Homeric poems or
by Hesiod, but later on we meet with it almost as a national
institution in Greece. It was known in Rome and other parts of
Italy at an early period;[46] but here also it became much more
frequent in the course of time. At the close of the sixth
century, Polybius tells us, many Romans paid a talent for the
possession of a beautiful youth.[47] During the Empire "il était
d'usage, dans les families patriciennes, de donner au jeune homme
pubère un esclave du même âge comme compagnon de lit, afin qu'il
pût satisfaire . . . 'ses premiers élans' génésiques";[48] and
formal marriages between men were introduced with all the
solemnities of ordinary nuptials.[49] Homosexual practices
occurred among the Celts,[50] and were by no means unknown to the
ancient Scandinavians, who had a whole nomenclature on the
subject.[51]
[Footnote 46: Dionysius of Halicarnassus, _Antiquitates Romanæ_,
vii. 2. Athenæus, _Deipnosophistæ_, xii. 14, p. 518 (Etruscans).
Rein, _Criminalrecht der Römer_, p. 863.]
[Footnote 47: Polybius, _Historiæ_, xxxii. 11. 5.]
[Footnote 48: Buret, _La syphilis aujourd'hui et chez les
anciens_, p. 197 _sqq._ Catullus, _Carmina_, lxi. ('In Nuptias
Juliæ et Manlii'), 128 _sqq._ _Cf._ Martial, _Epigrammata_, viii.
44. 16 _sq._]
[Footnote 49: Juvenal, _Satiræ_, ii. 117 _sqq._ Martial, _op.
cit._ xii. 42.]
[Footnote 50: Diodorus Siculus, _Bibliotheca historica_, v. 32.
7. Aristotle, _Politica_, ii. 9, p. 1269 b.]
[Footnote 51: 'Spuren von Konträrsexualität bei den alten
Skandinaviern,' in _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, iv.
244 _sqq._]
Of late years a voluminous and constantly increasing literature
on homosexuality[52] has revealed its frequency in modern Europe.
No country and no class of society is free from it. In certain
parts of Albania it even exists as a popular custom, the young
men from the age of sixteen {464} upwards regularly having boy
favourites of between twelve and seventeen.[53]
[Footnote 52: See _infra_, Additional Notes.]
[Footnote 53: Hahn, _Albanesische Studien_, i. 168.]
The above statements chiefly refer to homosexual practices
between men, but similar practices also occur between women.[54]
Among the American aborigines there are not only men who behave
like women, but women who behave like men. Thus in certain
Brazilian tribes women are found who abstain from every womanly
occupation and imitate the men in everything, who wear their hair
in a masculine fashion, who go to war with a bow and arrows, who
hunt together with the men, and who would rather allow themselves
to be killed than have sexual intercourse with a man. "Each of
these women has a woman who serves her and with whom she says she
is married; they live together as husband and wife."[55] So also
there are among the Eastern Eskimo some women who refuse to
accept husbands, preferring to adopt masculine manners, following
the deer on the mountains, trapping and fishing for
themselves.[56] Homosexual practices are said to be common among
Hottentot[57] and Herero[58] women. In Zanzibar there are women
who wear men's clothes in private, show a preference for
masculine occupations, and seek sexual satisfaction among women
who have the same inclination, or else among normal women who are
won over by presents or other means.[59] In Egyptian harems every
woman is said to have a "friend."[60] In Bali homosexuality is
almost as common among women as among men, though it is exercised
more secretly;[61] and the same seems to be the case in
India.[62] From Greek antiquity we {465} hear of "Lesbian" love.
The fact that homosexuality has been much more frequently noticed
in men than in women does not imply that the latter are less
addicted to it. For various reasons the sexual abnormalities of
women have attracted much less attention,[63] and moral opinion
has generally taken little notice of them.
[Footnote 54: Karsch, in _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_,
iii. 85 _sqq._ Ploss-Bartels, _Das Weib_, i. 517 _sqq._ von
Krafft-Ebing, _Psychopathia sexualis_, p. 278 _sqq._ Moll, _Die
Conträre Sexualempfindung_, p. 247 _sqq._ Havelock Ellis, _op.
cit._ p. 118 _sqq._]
[Footnote 55: Magalhanes de Gandavo, _Histoire de la Province de
Sancta-Cruz_, p. 116 _sq._]
[Footnote 56: Dall, _op. cit._ p. 139.]
[Footnote 57: Fritsch, quoted by Karsch, in _Jahrbuch für
sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, iii. 87 _sq._]
[Footnote 58: Fritsch, _Die Eingeborenen Süd-Afrika's_, p. 227.
_Cf._ Schinz, _Deutsch-Südwest-Afrika_, pp. 173, 177.]
[Footnote 59: Baumann, in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch.
Anthrop._ 1899, p. 668 _sq._]
[Footnote 60: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 123.]
[Footnote 61: Jacobs, _Eenigen tijd onder de Baliërs_, p. 134 _sq._]
[Footnote 62: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 124 _sq._]
[Footnote 63: See _ibid._ p. 121 _sq._]
Homosexual practices are due sometimes to instinctive preference,
sometimes to external conditions unfavourable to normal
intercourse.[64] A frequent cause is congenital sexual inversion,
that is, "sexual instinct turned by inborn constitutional
abnormality toward persons of the same sex."[65] It seems likely
that the feminine men and the masculine women referred to above
are, at least in many instances, sexual inverts; though, in the
case of shamans, the change of sex may also result from the
belief that such transformed shamans, like their female
colleagues, are particularly powerful.[66] Dr. Holder affirms the
existence of congenital inversion among the North-Western tribes
of the United States,[67] Dr. Baumann among the people of
Zanzibar;[68] and in Morocco, also, I believe it is common
enough. But as regards its prevalence among non-European peoples
we have mostly to resort to mere conjectures; our real knowledge
of congenital inversion is derived from the voluntary confessions
of inverts. The large majority of travellers are totally ignorant
of the psychological side of the subject, and even to an expert
it must very often be impossible to decide whether a certain case
of inversion is congenital or acquired. Indeed, acquired
inversion itself presupposes an innate disposition which under
certain circumstances develops into actual inversion.[69] Even
between inversion and normal sexuality {466} there seem to be all
shades of variation. Professor James thinks that inversion is "a
kind of sexual appetite, of which very likely most men possess
the germinal possibility."[70] This is certainly the case in
early puberty.[71]
[Footnote 64: Another reason for such practices is given by Mr.
Beardmore (in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xix. 464), with reference to
the Papuans of Mowat. He says that they indulge in sodomy because
too great increase of population is undesired amongst the younger
portion of the married people. _Cf._ _infra_, p. 484 _sqq._]
[Footnote 65: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 1.]
[Footnote 66: Jochelson, _op. cit._ p. 52 _sq._]
[Footnote 67: Holder, quoted by Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 9 _sq._]
[Footnote 68: Baumann, in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch.
Anthrop._ 1899, p. 668 _sq._]
[Footnote 69: Féré, _L'instinct sexuel_, quoted by Havelock
Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 41.]
[Footnote 70: James, _Principles of Psychology_, ii. 439. See
also Ives, _op. cit._ p. 56 _sqq._]
[Footnote 71: Dr. Dessoir ('Zur Psychologie der Vita sexualis,'
in _Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie_, l. 942) even goes so
far as to conclude that "an undifferentiated sexual feeling is
normal, on the average, during the first years of puberty." But
this is certainly an exaggeration (_cf._ Havelock Ellis, _op.
cit._ p. 47 _sq._).]
A very important cause of homosexual practices is absence of the
other sex. There are many instances of this among the lower
animals.[72] Buffon long ago observed that, if male or female
birds of various species were shut up together, they would soon
begin to have sexual relations among themselves, the males sooner
than the females.[73] The West Australian boy-marriage is a
substitute for ordinary marriage in cases when women are not
obtainable. Among the Bororó of Brazil homosexual intercourse is
said to occur in their men-houses only when the scarcity of
accessible girls is unusually great.[74] Its prevalence in Tahiti
may perhaps be connected with the fact that there was only one
woman to four or five men, owing to the habit of female
infanticide.[75] Among the Chinese in certain regions, for
instance Java, the lack of accessible women is the principal
cause of homosexual practices.[76] According to some writers such
practices are the results of polygamy.[77] In Muhammedan
countries they are no doubt largely due to the seclusion of
women, preventing free intercourse between the sexes and
compelling the unmarried people to associate almost exclusively
with members of their own sex. Among the mountaineers of Northern
Morocco the excessive indulgence in pederasty thus goes hand in
hand with great isolation of the women {467} and a very high
standard of female chastity, whereas among the Arabs of the
plains, who are little addicted to boy-love, the unmarried girls
enjoy considerable freedom. Both in Asia[78] and Europe[79] the
obligatory celibacy of the monks and priests has been a cause of
homosexual practices, though it must not be forgotten that a
profession which imposes abstinence from marriage is likely to
attract a comparatively large number of congenital inverts. The
temporary separation of the sexes involved in a military mode of
life no doubt accounts for the extreme prevalence of homosexual
love among warlike races,[80] like the Sikhs, Afghans, Dorians,
and Normans.[81] In Persia[82] and Morocco it is particularly
common among soldiers. In Japan it was an incident of knighthood,
in New Caledonia and North America of brotherhood in arms. At
least in some of the North American tribes men who were dressed
as women accompanied the other men as servants in war and the
chase.[83] Among the Banaka and Bapuku in the Cameroons pederasty
is practised especially by men who are long absent from their
wives.[84] In Morocco I have heard it advocated on account of the
convenience it affords to persons who are travelling.
[Footnote 72: Karsch, in _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_,
ii. 126 _sqq._ Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 2 _sq._]
[Footnote 73: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 2.]
[Footnote 74: von den Steinen, _Unter den Naturvölkern
Zentral-Brasiliens_, p. 502.]
[Footnote 75: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 257 _sq._]
[Footnote 76: Matignon, in _Archives d'anthropologie criminelle_,
xiv. 42. Karsch, _op. cit._ p. 32 _sqq._]
[Footnote 77: Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvölker_, iii. 113.
Bastian, _Der Mensch in der Geschichte_, iii. 305 (Dahomans).]
[Footnote 78: _Supra_, ii. 462. Karsch. _op. cit._ pp. 7.
(China), 76 _sqq._ (Japan), 132 (Corea).]
[Footnote 79: See Voltaire, _Dictionnaire philosophique_, 'Amour
Socratique' (_[OE]uvres_, vii. 82); Buret, _Syphilis in the
Middle Ages and in Modern Times_, p. 88 _sq._]
[Footnote 80: _Cf._ Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 5.]
[Footnote 81: Freeman, _Reign of William Rufus_, i. 159.]
[Footnote 82: Polak, in _Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift_,
xi. 628.]
[Footnote 83: Marquette, _op. cit._ p. 53 (Illinois). Perrin du
Lac, _Voyage dans les deux Louisianes et chez les nations
sauvages du Missouri_, p. 352. _Cf._ Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, _loc.
cit._ p. 538 (concerning the Indians of Florida):--" . . . tiran
arco y llevan muy gran carga."]
[Footnote 84: Steinmetz, _Rechtsverhältnisse_, p. 38.]
Dr. Havelock Ellis justly observes that when homosexual
attraction is due simply to the absence of the other sex we are
not concerned with sexual inversion, but merely with the
accidental turning of the sexual instinct into an abnormal
channel, the instinct being called out by an approximate
substitute, or even by diffused emotional excitement, in the
absence of the normal object.[85] But it seems to me probable
that in such cases the homosexual {468} attraction in the course
of time quite easily develops into genuine inversion. I cannot
but think that our chief authorities on homosexuality have
underestimated the modifying influence which habit may exercise
on the sexual instinct. Professor Krafft-Ebing[86] and Dr.
Moll[87] deny the existence of acquired inversion except in
occasional instances; and Dr. Havelock Ellis takes a similar
view, if putting aside those cases of a more or less morbid
character in which old men with failing sexual powers, or younger
men exhausted by heterosexual debauchery, are attracted to
members of their own sex.[88] But how is it that in some parts of
Morocco such a very large proportion of the men are distinctly
sexual inverts, in the sense in which this word is used by Dr.
Havelock Ellis,[89] that is, persons who for the gratification of
their sexual desire prefer their own sex to the opposite one? It
may be that in Morocco and in Oriental countries generally, where
almost every individual marries, congenital inversion, through
the influence of heredity, is more frequent than in Europe, where
inverts so commonly abstain from marrying. But that this could
not be an adequate explanation of the fact in question becomes at
once apparent when we consider the extremely unequal distribution
of inverts among different neighbouring tribes of the same stock,
some of which are very little or hardly at all addicted to
pederasty. I take the case to be, that homosexual practices in
early youth have had a lasting effect on the sexual instinct,
which at its first appearance, being somewhat indefinite, is
easily turned into a homosexual direction.[90] In Morocco
inversion is most prevalent among the scribes, who from childhood
have lived in very close association with their fellow-students.
Of course, influences of this kind "require a favourable organic
predisposition to act on";[91] but this predisposition is
probably no abnormality at all, only a {469} feature in the
ordinary sexual constitution of man.[92] It should be noticed
that the most common form of inversion, at least in Muhammedan
countries, is love of boys or youths not yet in the age of
puberty, that is, of male individuals who are physically very
like girls. Voltaire observes:--"Souvent un jeune garçon, par la
fraîcheur de son teint, par l'éclat de ses couleurs, et par la
douceur de ses yeux, ressemble pendant deux ou trois ans à une
belle fille; si on l'aime, c'est parce que la nature se
méprend."[93] Moreover, in normal cases sexual attraction depends
not only on sex, but on a youthful appearance as well; and there
are persons so constituted that to them the latter factor is of
chief importance, whilst the question of sex is almost a matter
of indifference.
[Footnote 85: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 3.]
[Footnote 86: Krafft-Ebing, _op. cit._ p. 211 _sq._]
[Footnote 87: Moll, _op. cit._ p. 157 _sqq._]
[Footnote 88: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 50 _sq._ _Cf._
_ibid._ p. 181 _sqq._]
[Footnote 89: _Ibid._ p. 3.]
[Footnote 90: _Cf._ Norman, 'Sexual Perversion,' in Tuke's
_Dictionary of Psychological Medicine_, ii. 1156.]
[Footnote 91: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 191.]
[Footnote 92: Dr. Havelock Ellis also admits (_op. cit._ p. 190)
that, if in early life the sexual instincts are less definitely
determined than when adolescence is complete, "it is conceivable,
though unproved, that a very strong impression, acting even on a
normal organism, may cause arrest of sexual development on the
psychic side. It is a question," he adds, "I am not in a position
to settle."]
[Footnote 93: Voltaire, _Dictionnaire Philosophique_, art. 'Amour
Socratique,' (_[OE]uvres_, vii. 81). _Cf._ Ovid, _Metamorphoses_,
x. 84 _sq._]
In ancient Greece, also, not only homosexual intercourse but
actual inversion, seems to have been very common; and although
this, like every form of love, must have contained a congenital
element, there can be little doubt, I think, that it was largely
due to external circumstances of a social character. It may, in
the first place, be traced to the methods of training the youth.
In Sparta it seems to have been the practice for every youth of
good character to have his lover, or "inspirator,"[94] and for
every well-educated man to be the lover of some youth.[95] The
relations between the "inspirator" and the "listener" were
extremely intimate: at home the youth was constantly under the
eyes of his lover, who was supposed to be to him a model and
pattern of life;[96] in battle they stood near one another and
their fidelity and affection were often shown till death;[97] if
his relatives were absent, the youth {470} might be represented
in the public assembly by his lover;[98] and for many faults,
particularly want of ambition, the lover could be punished
instead of the "listener."[99] This ancient custom prevailed with
still greater force in Crete, which island was hence by many
persons considered to be the place of its birth.[100] Whatever
may have been the case originally, there can be no doubt that in
later times the relations between the youth and his lover implied
unchaste intercourse.[101] And in other Greek states the
education of the youth was accompanied by similar consequences.
At an early age the boy was taken away from his mother, and spent
thenceforth all his time in the company of men, until he reached
the age when marriage became for him a civic duty.[102] According
to Plato, the gymnasia and common meals among the youth "seem
always to have had a tendency to degrade the ancient and natural
custom of love below the level, not only of man, but of the
beasts."[103] Plato also mentions the effect which these habits
had on the sexual instincts of the men: when they reached manhood
they were lovers of youths and not naturally inclined to marry or
beget children, but, if at all, they did so only in obedience to
the law.[104] Is not this, in all probability, an instance of
acquired inversion? But besides the influence of education there
was another factor which, co-operating with it, favoured the
development of homosexual tendencies, namely, the great gulf
which mentally separated the sexes. Nowhere else has the
difference in culture between men and women been so immense as in
the fully developed Greek civilisation. The lot of a wife in
Greece was retirement and ignorance. She lived in almost absolute
seclusion, in a separate part of the house, together with her
female slaves, deprived of all the educating influence of male
society, and having no place at those public spectacles {471}
which were the chief means of culture.[105] In such circumstances
it is not difficult to understand that men so highly intellectual
as those of Athens regarded the love of women as the offspring of
the common Aphrodite, who "is of the body rather than of the
soul."[106] They had reached a stage of mental culture at which
the sexual instinct normally has a craving for refinement, at
which the gratification of mere physical lust appears brutal. In
the eyes of the most refined among them those who were inspired
by the heavenly Aphrodite loved neither women nor boys, but
intelligent beings whose reason was beginning to be developed,
much about the time at which their beards began to grow.[107] In
present China we meet with a parallel case. Dr. Matignon
observes:--"Il y a tout lieu de supposer que certains Chinois,
raffinés au point de vue intellectuel, recherchent dans la
pédérastie la satisfaction des sens et de l'esprit. La femme
chinoise est peu cultivée, ignorante même, quelle que soit sa
condition, honnête femme ou prostituée. Or le Chinois a souvent
l'âme poétique: il aime les vers, la musique, les belles
sentences des philosophes, autant de choses qu'il ne peut trouver
chez le beau sexe de l'Empire du Milieu."[108] So also it seems
that the ignorance and dullness of Muhammedan women, which is a
result of their total lack of education and their secluded life,
is a cause of homosexual practices; Moors are sometimes heard to
defend pederasty on the plea that the company of boys, who have
always news to tell, is so much more entertaining than the
company of women.
[Footnote 94: Servius, _In Vergilii Æneidos_, x. 325. For the
whole subject of pederasty among the Dorians see Mueller,
_History and Antiquities of the Doric Race_, ii. 307 _sq._]
[Footnote 95: Aelian, _Varia historia_, iii. 10.]
[Footnote 96: Mueller, _op. cit._ ii. 308.]
[Footnote 97: Xenophon, _Historia Græca_, iv. 8. 39.]
[Footnote 98: Plutarch, _Lycurgus_, xxv. 1.]
[Footnote 99: _Ibid._ xviii. 8. Aelian, _op. cit._ iii. 10.]
[Footnote 100: Aelian, _op. cit._ iii. 9. Athenaeus,
_Deipnosophistæ_, xiii. 77, p. 601.]
[Footnote 101: _Cf._ Symonds, 'Die Homosexualität in
Griechenland,' in Havelock Ellis and Symonds, _Das konträre
Geschlechtsgefühl_, p. 55.]
[Footnote 102: _Ibid._ p. 116. Döllinger, _The Gentile and the
Jew_, ii. 244.]
[Footnote 103: Plato, _Leges_, i. 636. _Cf._ Plutarch,
_Amatorius_, v. 9.]
[Footnote 104: Plato, _Symposium_, p. 192.]
[Footnote 105: 'State of Female Society in Greece,' in _Quarterly
Review_, xxii. 172 _sqq._ Lecky, _History of European Morals_,
ii. 287. Döllinger, _op. cit._ ii. 234.]
[Footnote 106: Plato, _Symposium_, p. 181. That the low state of
the Greek women was instrumental to pederasty has been pointed
out by Döllinger (_op. cit._ ii. 244) and Symonds (_loc. cit._
pp. 77, 100, 101, 116 _sqq._).]
[Footnote 107: Plato, _Symposium_, p. 181.]
[Footnote 108: Matignon, in _Archives d'anthropologie
criminelle_, xiv. 41.]
We have hitherto dealt with homosexual love as a fact; we shall
now pass to the moral valuation to which it is subject. Where it
occurs as a national habit we may assume that no censure, or no
severe censure, is passed on it. Among the Bataks of Sumatra
there is no punishment {472} for it.[109] Of the _bazirs_ among
the Ngajus of Pula Patak, in Borneo, Dr. Schwaner says that "in
spite of their loathsome calling they escape well-merited
contempt."[110] The Society Islanders had for their homosexual
practices "not only the sanction of their priests, but the direct
example of their respective deities."[111] The _tsekats_ of
Madagascar maintained that they were serving the deity by leading
a feminine life;[112] but we are told that at Ankisimane and in
Nossi-Bé, opposite to it, pederasts are objects of public
contempt.[113] Father Veniaminof says of the Atkha Aleuts that
"sodomy and too early cohabitation with a betrothed or intended
wife are called among them grave sins";[114] but apart from the
fact that his account of these natives in general gives the
impression of being somewhat eulogistic, the details stated by
him only show that the acts in question were considered to
require a simple ceremony of purification.[115] There is no
indication that the North American aborigines attached any
opprobrium to men who had intercourse with those members of their
own sex who had assumed the dress and habits of women. In Kadiak
such a companion was on the contrary regarded as a great
acquisition; and the effeminate men themselves, far from being
despised, were held in repute by the people, most of them being
wizards.[116] We have previously noticed the connection between
homosexual practices and shamanism among various Siberian
peoples; and it is said that such shamans as had changed their
sex were greatly feared by the people, being regarded as very
powerful.[117] Among the Illinois and Naudowessies the {473}
effeminate men assist in all the juggleries and the solemn dance
in honour of the _calumet_, or sacred tobacco pipe, for which the
Indians have such a deference that one may call it "the god of
peace and war, and the arbiter of life and death"; but they are
not permitted either to dance or sing. They are called into the
councils of the Indians, and nothing can be decided upon without
their advice; for because of their extraordinary manner of living
they are looked upon as _manitous_, or supernatural beings, and
persons of consequence.[118] The Sioux, Sacs, and Fox Indians
give once a year, or oftener if they choose, a feast to the
_Berdashe_, or _I-coo-coo-a_, who is a man dressed in woman's
clothes, as he has been all his life. "For extraordinary
privileges which he is known to possess, he is driven to the most
servile and degrading duties, which he is not allowed to escape;
and he being the only one of the tribe submitting to this
disgraceful degradation, is looked upon as 'medicine' and sacred,
and a feast is given to him annually; and initiatory to it, a
dance by those few young men of the tribe who can . . . . dance
forward and publicly make their boast (without the denial of the
Berdashe) . . . . Such, and such only, are allowed to enter the
dance and partake of the feast."[119] Among some American tribes,
however, these effeminate men are said to be despised, especially
by the women.[120] In ancient Peru, also, homosexual practices
seem to have entered in the religious cult. In some particular
places, says Cieza de Leon, boys were kept as priests in the
temples, with whom it was rumoured that the lords joined in
company on days of festivity. They did not meditate, he adds, the
committing of such sin, but only the offering of sacrifice to the
demon. If the Incas by chance had some knowledge of such
proceedings in the temple, they might have {474} ignored them out
of religious tolerance.[121] But the Incas themselves were not
only free from such practices in their own persons, they would
not even permit any one who was guilty of them to remain in the
royal houses or palaces. And Cieza heard it related that, if it
came to their knowledge that somebody had committed an offence of
that kind, they punished it with such a severity that it was
known to all.[122] Las Casas tells us that in several of the more
remote provinces of Mexico sodomy was tolerated, if not actually
permitted, because the people believed that their gods were
addicted to it; and it is not improbable that in earlier times
the same was the case in the entire empire.[123] But in a later
age severe measures were adopted by legislators in order to
suppress the practice. In Mexico people found guilty of it were
killed.[124] In Nicaragua it was punished capitally by
stoning,[125] and none of the Maya nations was without strict
laws against it.[126] Among the Chibchas of Bogota the punishment
for it was the infliction of a painful death.[127] However, it
should be remembered that the ancient culture nations of America
were generally extravagant in their punishments, and that their
penal codes in the first place expressed rather the will of their
rulers than the feelings of the people at large.[128]
[Footnote 109: Junghuhn, _op. cit._ ii. 157, n.]
[Footnote 110: Schwaner, _op. cit._ i. 186.]
[Footnote 111: Ellis, _Polynesian Researches_, i. 258. _Cf._
Moerenhout, _Voyages aux îles du Grand Océan_, ii. 167 _sq._]
[Footnote 112: de Flacourt, _op. cit._ p. 86.]
[Footnote 113: Walter, in Steinmetz, _Rechtsverhältnisse_, p. 376.]
[Footnote 114: Veniaminof, quoted by Petroff, _Report on Alaska_,
p. 158.]
[Footnote 115: _Ibid._ p. 158:--"The offender desirous of
unburdening himself selected a time when the sun was clear and
unobscured; he picked up certain weeds and carried them about his
person; then deposited them and threw his sin upon them, calling
the sun as a witness, and, when he had eased his heart of all
that had weighed upon it, he threw the grass or weeds into the
fire, and after that considered himself cleansed of his sin."]
[Footnote 116: Davydow, quoted by Holmberg, _loc. cit._ p. 400
_sq._ Lisianski, _op. cit._ p. 199.]
[Footnote 117: Bogoraz, quoted by Demidoff, _op. cit._ p. 75.
Jochelson, _op. cit._ p. 52 _sq._]
[Footnote 118: Marquette, _op. cit._ p. 53 _sq._]
[Footnote 119: Catlin, _North American Indians_, ii. 214 _sq._]
[Footnote 120: 'La Salle's Last Expedition in North America,' in
_Collections of the New-York Historical Society_, ii. 238
(Illinois). Perrin du Lac, _Voyage dans les deux Louisianes et
chez les nations sauvages du Missouri_, p. 352. Bossu, _op. cit._
i. 303 (Chactaws). Oviedo y Valdés, _loc. cit._ p. 508
(Isthmians). von Martius, _Von dem Rechtszustande unter den
Ureinwohnern Brasiliens_, p. 28 (Guaycurús).]
[Footnote 121: Cieza de Leon, _Segunda parte de Crónica del
Perú_, ch. 25, p. 99. See also _Idem_, _Crónica del Perú [primera
parte]_, ch. 64 (_Biblioteca de autores españoles_, xxvi. 416 _sq._).]
[Footnote 122: _Idem_, _Segunda parte de Crónica del Perú_, ch.
25, p. 98. See also Garcilasso de la Vega, _op. cit._ ii. 132.]
[Footnote 123: Las Casas, quoted by Bancroft, _op. cit._ ii. 467
_sq._ _Cf._ _ibid._ ii. 677.]
[Footnote 124: Clavigero, _History of Mexico_, i. 357.]
[Footnote 125: Squier, 'Archæology and Ethnology of Nicaragua,'
in _Trans. American Ethn. Soc._ iii. pt. i. 128.]
[Footnote 126: Bancroft, _op. cit._ ii. 677.]
[Footnote 127: Piedrahita, _Historia general de las conquistas
del nuevo reyno de Granada_, p. 46.]
[Footnote 128: See _supra_, i. 186, 195.]
Homosexual practices are said to be taken little notice of even
by some uncivilised peoples who are not addicted to them. In the
Pelew Islands, where such practices occur only sporadically, they
are not punished, although, if I understand Herr Kubary rightly,
the persons committing them may be put to shame.[129] The Ossetes
of the Caucasus, {475} among whom pederasty is very rare, do not
generally prosecute persons for committing it, but ignore the
act.[130] The East African Masai do not punish sodomy.[131] But
we also meet with statements of a contrary nature. In a Kafir
tribe Mr. Warner heard of a case of it--the only one during a
residence of twenty-five years--which was punished with a fine of
some cattle claimed by the chief.[132] Among the Ondonga
pederasts are hated, and the men who behave like women are
detested, most of them being wizards.[133] The Washambala
consider pederasty a grave moral aberration and subject it to
severe punishment.[134] Among the Waganda homosexual practices,
which have been introduced by the Arabs and are of rare
occurrence, "are intensely abhorred," the stake being the
punishment.[135] The Negroes of Accra, who are not addicted to
such practices, are said to detest them.[136] In Nubia pederasty
is held in abhorrence, except by the Kashefs and their relations,
who endeavour to imitate the Mamelukes in everything.[137]
[Footnote 129: Kubary, 'Die Verbrechen und das Strafverfahren auf
den Pelau-Inseln,' in _Original-Mittheilungen aus der
ethnologischen Abtheilung der königlichen Museen zu Berlin_, i. 84.]
[Footnote 130: Kovalewsky, _Coutume contemporaine_, p. 340.]
[Footnote 131: Merker, _Die Masai_, p. 208. The Masai, however,
slaughter at once any bullock or he-goat which is noticed to
practise unnatural intercourse, for fear lest otherwise their
herds should be visited by a plague as a divine punishment
(_ibid._ p. 159).]
[Footnote 132: Warner, in Maclean, _Compendium of Kafir Laws_,
p. 62.]
[Footnote 133: Rautanen, in Steinmetz, _Rechtsverhältnisse_,
p. 333 _sq._]
[Footnote 134: Lang, _ibid._ p. 232.]
[Footnote 135: Felkin, in _Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh_, xiii. 723.]
[Footnote 136: Monrad, _op. cit._ p. 57.]
[Footnote 137: Burckhardt, _Travels in Nubia_, p. 135.]
Muhammed forbade sodomy,[138] and the general opinion of his
followers is that it should be punished like fornication--for
which the punishment is, theoretically, severe enough[139]--unless
the offenders make a public act of penitence. In order to
convict, however, the law requires that four reliable persons
shall swear to have been eye-witnesses,[140] and this alone would
make the law a dead letter, even if it had the support of popular
feelings; but such support is certainly wanting. In Morocco
active {476} pederasty is regarded with almost complete
indifference, whilst the passive sodomite, if a grown-up
individual, is spoken of with scorn. Dr. Polak says the same of
the Persians.[141] In Zanzibar a clear distinction is made
between male congenital inverts and male prostitutes; the latter
are looked upon with contempt, whereas the former, as being what
they are "by the will of God," are tolerated.[142] The
Muhammedans of India and other Asiatic countries regard
pederasty, at most, as a mere peccadillo.[143] Among the Hindus
it is said to be held in abhorrence,[144] but their sacred books
deal with it leniently. According to the 'Laws of Manu,' "a
twice-born man who commits an unnatural offence with a male, or
has intercourse with a female in a cart drawn by oxen, in water,
or in the day-time, shall bathe, dressed in his clothes"; and all
these are reckoned as minor offences.[145]
[Footnote 138: _Koran_, iv. 20.]
[Footnote 139: Sachau, _Muhammedanisches Recht nach
Schafiitischer Lehre_, pp. 809, 818:--"Sodomita si _mu[h.][s.]an_
(that is, a married person in possession of full civic rights)
est punitur lapidatione, si non est _mu[h.][s.]an_ punitur et
flagellatione et exsilio."]
[Footnote 140: Burton, _Arabian Nights_, x. 224.]
[Footnote 141: Polak, in _Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift_,
xi. 628 _sq._]
[Footnote 142: Baumann, in _Verhandl. Berliner Gesellsch.
Anthrop._ 1899, p. 669.]
[Footnote 143: Chevers, _op. cit._ p. 708. Burton, _Arabian
Nights_, x. 222 _sqq._]
[Footnote 144: Burton, _Arabian Nights_, x. 237.]
[Footnote 145: _Laws of Manu_, xi. 175. _Cf._ _Institutes of
Vishnu_, liii. 4; _Âpastamba_, i. 9. 26. 7; _Gautama_, xxv. 7.]
Chinese law makes little distinction between unnatural and other
sexual offences. An unnatural offence is variously considered
according to the age of the patient, and whether or not consent
was given. If the patient be an adult, or a boy over the age of
twelve, and consent, the case is treated as a slightly aggravated
form of fornication, both parties being punished with a hundred
blows and one month's cangue, whilst ordinary fornication is
punished with eighty blows. If the adult or boy over twelve
resist, the offence is considered as rape; and if the boy be
under twelve, the offence is rape irrespective of consent or
resistance, unless the boy has previously gone astray.[146] But,
as a matter of fact, unnatural offences are regarded as less
hurtful to the community than ordinary immorality,[147] and
pederasty is not looked down upon. "L'opinion publique reste tout
à fait indifférente à ce genre de distraction et la {477} morale
ne s'en émeut en rien: puisque cela plaît à l'opérateur et que
l'opéré est consentant, tout est pour le mieux; la loi chinoise
n'aime guère à s'occuper des affaires trop intimes. La pédérastie
est même considérée comme une chose de bon ton, une fantaisie
dispendieuse et partout un plaisir élégant. . . . La pédérastie a
une consécration officielle en Chine. Il existe, en effet, des
pédérés pour l'Empereur."[148] Indeed, the only objection which
Dr. Matignon has heard to be raised to pederasty by public
opinion in China is that it has a bad influence on the
eyesight.[149] In Japan there was no law against homosexual
intercourse till the revolution of 1868.[150] In the period of
Japanese chivalry it was considered more heroic if a man loved a
person of his own sex than if he loved a woman; and nowadays
people are heard to say that in those provinces of the country
where pederasty is widely spread the men are more manly and
robust than in those where it does not prevail.[151]
[Footnote 146: Alabaster, _Notes and Commentaries on Chinese
Criminal Law_, p. 367 _sqq._ _Ta Tsing Leu Lee_, Appendix, no.
xxxii. p. 570.]
[Footnote 147: Alabaster, _op. cit._ p. 369.]
[Footnote 148: Matignon, in _Archives d'anthropologie
criminelle_, xiv. 42, 43, 52.]
[Footnote 149: _Ibid._ p. 44.]
[Footnote 150: Karsch, _op. cit._ p. 99.]
[Footnote 151: Jwaya, in _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_,
iv. 266, 270 _sq._]
The laws of the ancient Scandinavians ignored homosexual
practices; but passive pederasts were much despised by them. They
were identified with cowards and regarded as sorcerers. The
epithets applied to them--_argr_, _ragr_, _blandr_, and others
assumed the meaning of "poltroon" in general, and there are
instances of the word _arg_ being used in the sense of
"practising witchcraft." This connection between pederasty and
sorcery, as a Norwegian scholar justly points out, helps us to
understand Tacitus' statement that among the ancient Teutons
individuals whom he describes as _corpore infames_ were buried
alive in a morass.[152] Considering that drowning was a common
penalty for sorcery, it seems probable that this punishment was
inflicted upon them not, in the first place, on account of their
sexual practices, but in their capacity of wizards. It is certain
that the opprobrium which the pagan Scandinavians attached to
homosexual love was chiefly restricted to him who played the
woman's part. In one of the poems {478} the hero even boasts of
being the father of offspring borne by another man.[153]
[Footnote 152: Tacitus, _Germania_, 12.]
[Footnote 153: 'Spuren von Konträrsexualität bei den alten
Skandinaviern (Mitteilungen eines norwegischen Gelehrten),' in
_Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, iv. 245, 256 _sqq._]
In Greece pederasty in its baser forms was censured, though
generally, it seems, with no great severity, and in some states
it was legally prohibited.[154] According to an Athenian law, a
youth who prostituted himself for money lost his rights as a free
citizen and was liable to the punishment of death if he took part
in a public feast or entered the _agora_.[155] In Sparta it was
necessary that the "listener" should accept the "inspirator" from
real affection; he who did so out of pecuniary considerations was
punished by the ephors.[156] We are even told that among the
Spartans the relations between the lover and his friend were
truly innocent, and that if anything unlawful happened both must
forsake either their country or their lives.[157] But the
universal rule in Greece seems to have been that when decorum was
observed in the friendship between a man and a youth, no
inquiries were made into the details of the relationship.[158]
And this attachment was not only regarded as permissible, but was
praised as the highest and purest form of love, as the offspring
of the heavenly Aphrodite, as a path leading to virtue, as a
weapon against tyranny, as a safeguard of civic liberty, as a
source of national greatness and glory. Phaedrus said that he
knew no greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life
than a virtuous lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth; for
the principle which ought to be the guide of men who would lead a
noble life cannot be implanted by any other motive so well as by
love.[159] The Platonic Pausanias argued that if love of youths
is held in ill repute it is so only because it is inimical to
tyranny; "the interests of rulers require that their subjects
should {479} be poor in spirit, and that there should be no
strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love,
above all other motives, is likely to inspire."[160] The power of
the Athenian tyrants was broken by the love of Aristogeiton and
the constancy of Harmodius; at Agrigentum in Sicily the mutual
love of Chariton and Melanippus produced a similar result; and
the greatness of Thebes was due to the Sacred Band established by
Epaminondas. For "in the presence of his favourite, a man would
choose to do anything rather than to get the character of a
coward."[161] It was pointed out that the greatest heroes and the
most warlike nations were those who were most addicted to the
love of youths;[162] and it was said that an army consisting of
lovers and their beloved ones, fighting at each other's side,
although a mere handful, would overcome the whole world.[163]
[Footnote 154: Xenophon, _Lacedæmoniorum respublica_, ii. 13.
Maximus Tyrius, _Dissertationes_, xxv. 4; xxvi. 9.]
[Footnote 155: Aeschines, _Contra Timarchum_, 21.]
[Footnote 156: Aelian, _Varia historia_, iii. 10. _Cf._ Plato,
_Leges_, viii. 910.]
[Footnote 157: Aelian, _op. cit._ iii. 12. _Cf._ Maximus Tyrius,
_op. cit._ xxvi. 8.]
[Footnote 158: _Cf._ Symonds, _loc. cit._ p. 92 _sqq._]
[Footnote 159: Plato, _Symposium_, p. 178.]
[Footnote 160: Plato, _Symposium_, p. 182.]
[Footnote 161: Hieronymus, the Peripatetic, referred to by
Athenaeus, _op. cit._ xiii. 78, p. 602. See also Maximus Tyrius,
_op. cit._ xxiv. 2.]
[Footnote 162: Plutarch, _Amatorius_, xvii. 14.]
[Footnote 163: Plato, _Symposium_, p. 178.]
Herodotus asserts that the love of boys was introduced from
Greece into Persia.[164] Whether his statement be correct or not,
such love could certainly not have been a habit of the Mazda
worshippers.[165] In the Zoroastrian books "unnatural sin" is
treated with a severity to which there is a parallel only in
Hebrewism and Christianity. According to the Vendîdâd, there is
no atonement for it.[166] It is punished with torments in the
other world, and is capital here below.[167] Even he who
committed it involuntarily, by force, is subject to corporal
punishment.[168] Indeed, it is a more heinous sin than the
slaying of a righteous man.[169] "There is no worse sin than this
in the good religion, and it is proper to call those who commit
it worthy of death in reality. If any one comes forth to them,
and shall see {480} them in the act, and is working with an axe,
it is requisite for him to cut off the heads or to rip up the
bellies of both, and it is no sin for him. But it is not proper
to kill any person without the authority of high-priests and
kings, except on account of committing or permitting unnatural
intercourse."[170]
[Footnote 164: Herodotus, i. 135.]
[Footnote 165: Ammianus Marcellinus says (xxiii. 76) that the
inhabitants of Persia were free from pederasty. But see also
Sextus Empiricus, _Pyrrhoniæ hypotyposes_, i. 152.]
[Footnote 166: _Vendîdâd_, i. 12; viii. 27.]
[Footnote 167: Darmesteter, in _Sacred Books of the East_,
iv. p. lxxxvi.]
[Footnote 168: _Vendîdâd_, viii. 26.]
[Footnote 169: _Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad_, xxxvi. 1 _sqq._]
[Footnote 170: _Sad Dar_, ix. 2, _sqq._]
Nor are unnatural sins allowed to defile the land of the Lord.
Whosoever shall commit such abominations, be he Israelite or
stranger dwelling among the Israelites, shall be put to death,
the souls that do them shall be cut off from their people. By
unnatural sins of lust the Canaanites polluted their land, so
that God visited their guilt, and the land spued out its
inhabitants.[171]
[Footnote 171: _Leviticus_, xviii. 22, 24 _sqq._; xx. 13.]
This horror of homosexual practices was shared by Christianity.
According to St. Paul, they form the climax of the moral
corruption to which God gave over the heathen because of their
apostasy from him.[172] Tertullian says that they are banished
"not only from the threshold, but from all shelter of the church,
because they are not sins, but monstrosities."[173] St. Basil
maintains that they deserve the same punishment as murder,
idolatry, and witchcraft.[174] According to a decree of the
Council of Elvira, those who abuse boys to satisfy their lusts
are denied communion even at their last hour.[175] In no other
point of morals was the contrast between the teachings of
Christianity and the habits and opinions of the world over which
it spread more radical than in this. In Rome there was an old law
of unknown date, called Lex Scantinia (or Scatinia), which
imposed a mulct on him who committed pederasty with a free
person;[176] but this law, of which {481} very little is known,
had lain dormant for ages, and the subject of ordinary homosexual
intercourse had never afterwards attracted the attention of the
pagan legislators.[177] But when Christianity became the religion
of the Roman Empire, a veritable crusade was opened against it.
Constantius and Constans made it a capital crime, punishable with
the sword.[178] Valentinian went further still and ordered that
those who were found guilty of it should be burned alive in the
presence of all the people.[179] Justinian, terrified by certain
famines, earthquakes, and pestilences, issued an edict which
again condemned persons guilty of unnatural offences to the
sword, "lest, as the result of these impious acts, whole cities
should perish together with their inhabitants," as we are taught
by Holy Scripture that through such acts cities have perished
with the men in them.[180] "A sentence of death and infamy," says
Gibbon, "was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence
of a child or a servant, . . . and pederasty became the crime of
those to whom no crime could be imputed."[181]
[Footnote 172: _Romans_, i. 26 _sq._]
[Footnote 173: Tertullian, _De pudicitia_, 4 (Migne, _Patrologiæ
cursus_, ii. 987).]
[Footnote 174: St. Basil, quoted by Bingham, _Works_, vi. 432 _sq._]
[Footnote 175: _Concilium Eliberitanum_, ch. 71 (Labbe-Mansi,
_Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio_, ii. 17).]
[Footnote 176: Juvenal, _Satiræ_, ii. 43 _sq._ Valerius Maximus,
_Facta dictaque memorabilia_, vi. 1. 7. Quintilian, _Institutio
oratoria_, iv. 2. 69:--"Decem milia, quae poena stupratori
constituta est, dabit." Christ, _Hist. Legis Scatiniæ_, quoted by
Döllinger, _op. cit._ ii. 274. Rein, _Criminalrecht der Römer_,
p. 865 _sq._ Bingham, _op. cit._ vi. 433 _sqq._ Mommsen,
_Römisches Strafrecht_, p. 703 _sq._]
[Footnote 177: Mommsen, _op. cit._ p. 704. Rein, _op. cit._ p.
866. The passage in _Digesta_, xlviii. 5. 35. 1, refers to
_stuprum_ independently of the sex of the victim.]
[Footnote 178: _Codex Theodosianus_, ix. 7. 3. _Codex
Justinianus_, ix. 9. 30.]
[Footnote 179: _Codex Theodosianus_, ix. 7. 6.]
[Footnote 180: _Novellæ_, 77. See also _ibid._ 141, and
_Institutiones_, iv. 18. 4.]
[Footnote 181: Gibbon, _History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire_, v. 323.]
This attitude towards homosexual practices had a profound and
lasting influence on European legislation. Throughout the Middle
Ages and later, Christian lawgivers thought that nothing but a
painful death in the flames could atone for the sinful act.[182]
In England Fleta {482} speaks of the offender being buried
alive;[183] but we are elsewhere told that burning was the due
punishment.[184] As unnatural intercourse, however, was a subject
for ecclesiastical cognizance, capital punishment could not be
inflicted on the criminal unless the Church relinquished him to
the secular arm; and it seems very doubtful whether she did
relinquish him. Sir Frederick Pollock and Professor Maitland
consider that the statute of 1533, which makes sodomy felony,
affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had
not punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it for
a very long time past.[185] It was said that the punishment for
this crime--which the English law, in its very indictments,
treats as a crime not fit to be named[186]--was determined to be
capital by "the voice of nature and of reason, and the express
law of God";[187] and it remained so till 1861,[188] although in
practice the extreme punishment was not inflicted.[189] In France
persons were actually burned for this crime in the middle and
latter part of the eighteenth century.[190] But in this, as in so
many other respects, the rationalistic movement of that age
brought about a change.[191] To punish sodomy with death, it was
said, is atrocious; when unconnected with violence, the law ought
to take no notice of it at all. It does not violate any other
person's right, its influence on society is merely indirect, like
that of drunkenness and free love; it is a disgusting vice, but
its only proper punishment is contempt.[192] This view was
adopted by the French 'Code pénal,' according to which homosexual
practices in private, between two consenting adult parties,
whether men or women, are absolutely {483} unpunished. The
homosexual act is treated as a crime only when it implies an
outrage on public decency, or when there is violence or absence
of consent, or when one of the parties is under age or unable to
give valid consent.[193] This method of dealing with
homosexuality has been followed by the legislators of various
European countries,[194] and in those where the law still treats
the act in question _per se_ as a penal offence, notably in
Germany, a propaganda in favour of its alteration is carried on
with the support of many men of scientific eminence. This changed
attitude of the law towards homosexual intercourse undoubtedly
indicates a change of moral opinions. Though it is impossible to
measure exactly the degree of moral condemnation, I suppose that
few persons nowadays attach to it the same enormity of guilt as
did our forefathers. And the question has even been put whether
morality has anything at all to do with a sexual act, committed
by the mutual consent of two adult individuals, which is
productive of no offspring, and which on the whole concerns the
welfare of nobody but the parties themselves.[195]
[Footnote 182: Du Boys, _Histoire du droit criminel de
l'Espagne_, pp. 93, 403. _Les Établissements de Saint Louis_, i.
90, vol. ii. 147. Beaumanoir, _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_, xxx. 11,
vol. i. 413. Montesquieu, _De l'esprit des lois_, xii. 6
(_[OE]uvres_, p. 283). Hume, _Commentaries on the Law of
Scotland_, ii. 335; Pitcairn, _Criminal Trials in Scotland_, ii.
491, n. 2. Clarus, _Practica criminalis_, book v. § Sodomia, 4
(_Opera omnia_, ii. 151). Jarcke, _Handbuch des gemeinen
deutschen Strafrechts_, iii. 172 _sqq._ Charles V.'s _Peinliche
Gerichtsordnung_, art. 116. Henke, _Geschichte des deutschen
peinlichen Rechts_, i. 289. Numa Praetorius, 'Die strafrechtlichen
Bestimmungen gegen den gleichgeschlechtlichen Verkehr,' in
_Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, i. 124 _sqq._ In the
beginning of the nineteenth century sodomy was still nominally
subject to capital punishment by burning in Bavaria (von
Feuerbach, _Kritik des Kleinschrodischen Entwurfs zu einem
peinlichen Gesetzbuche für die Chur-Pfalz-Bayrischen Staaten_,
ii. 13), and in Spain as late as 1843 (Du Boys, _op. cit._ p. 721).]
[Footnote 183: Fleta, i. 37. 3, p. 84.]
[Footnote 184: Britton, i. 10, vol. i. 42.]
[Footnote 185: Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law
before the Time of Edward I._ ii. 556 _sq._]
[Footnote 186: Coke, _Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of
England_, p. 58 _sq._ Blackstone, _Commentaries on the Laws of
England_, iv. 218.]
[Footnote 187: Blackstone, _op. cit._ iv. 218.]
[Footnote 188: Stephen, _History of the Criminal Law of England_,
i. 475.]
[Footnote 189: Blackstone, _op. cit._ iv. 218.]
[Footnote 190: Desmaze, _Pénalités anciennes_, p. 211. Havelock
Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 207.]
[Footnote 191: Numa Praetorius, _loc. cit._ p. 121 _sqq._]
[Footnote 192: Note of the editors of Kehl's edition of
Voltaire's 'Prix de la justice et de l'humanité,' in _[OE]uvres
complètes_, v. 437, n. 2.]
[Footnote 193: _Code pénal_, 330 _sqq._ _Cf._ Chevalier,
_L'inversion sexuelle_, p. 431 _sqq._; Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._
p. 207 _sq._]
[Footnote 194: Numa Praetorius, _loc. cit._ pp. 131-133, 143 _sqq._]
[Footnote 195: See, _e.g._, Bax, _Ethics of Socialism_, p. 126.]
From this review of the moral ideas on the subject, incomplete
though it be, it appears that homosexual practices are very
frequently subject to some degree of censure, though the degree
varies extremely. This censure is no doubt, in the first place,
due to that feeling of aversion or disgust which the idea of
homosexual intercourse tends to call forth in normally
constituted adult individuals whose sexual instincts have
developed under normal conditions. I presume that nobody will
deny the general prevalence of such a tendency. It corresponds to
that instinctive repugnance to sexual connections with women
which is so frequently found in congenital inverts; whilst that
particular form of it with which legislators have chiefly busied
themselves evokes, in addition, a physical disgust of its own.
And in a society where the {484} large majority of people are
endowed with normal sexual desires their aversion to
homosexuality easily develops into moral censure and finds a
lasting expression in custom, law, or religious tenets. On the
other hand, where special circumstances have given rise to widely
spread homosexual practices, there will be no general feeling of
disgust even in the adults, and the moral opinion of the society
will be modified accordingly. The act may still be condemned, in
consequence of a moral doctrine formed under different
conditions, or of the vain attempts of legislators to check
sexual irregularities, or out of utilitarian considerations; but
such a condemnation would in most people be rather theoretical
than genuine. At the same time the baser forms of homosexual love
may be strongly disapproved of for the same reasons as the baser
forms of intercourse between men and women; and the passive
pederast may be an object of contempt on account of the feminine
practices to which he lends himself, as also an object of hatred
on account of his reputation for sorcery. We have seen that the
effeminate men are frequently believed to be versed in
magic;[196] their abnormalities readily suggest that they are
endowed with supernatural power, and they may resort to
witchcraft as a substitute for their lack of manliness and
physical strength. But the supernatural qualities or skill in
magic ascribed to men who behave like women may also, instead of
causing hatred, make them honoured or reverenced.
[Footnote 196: See also Bastian, in _Zeitschr. f. Ethnol._ i. 88
_sq._ Speaking of the witches of Fez, Leo Africanus says
(_History and Description of Africa_, ii. 458) that "they haue a
damnable custome to commit vnlawfull Venerie among themselues."
Among the Patagonians, according to Falkner (_Description of
Patagonia_, p. 117), the male wizards are chosen for their office
when they are children, and "a preference is always shown to
those who at that early time of life discover an effeminate
disposition." They are obliged, as it were, to leave their sex,
and to dress themselves in female apparel.]
It has been suggested that the popular attitude towards
homosexuality was originally an aspect of economics, a question
of under- or over-population, and that it was forbidden or
allowed accordingly. Dr. Havelock Ellis thinks it probable that
there is a certain relationship {485} between the social reaction
against homosexuality and against infanticide:--"Where the one is
regarded leniently and favourably, there generally the other is
also; where the one is stamped out, the other is usually stamped
out."[197] But our defective knowledge of the opinions of the
various savage races concerning homosexuality hardly warrants
such a conclusion; and if a connection really does exist between
homosexual practices and infanticide it may be simply due to the
numerical disproportion between the sexes resulting from the
destruction of a multitude of female infants.[198] On the other
hand we are acquainted with several facts which are quite at
variance with Dr. Ellis's suggestion. Among many Hindu castes
female infanticide has for ages been a genuine custom,[199] and
yet pederasty is remarkably rare among the Hindus. The ancient
Arabs were addicted to infanticide,[200] but not to homosexual
love,[201] whereas among modern Arabs the case is exactly the
reverse. And if the early Christians deemed infanticide and
pederasty equally heinous sins, they did so certainly not because
they were anxious that the population should increase; if this
had been their motive they would hardly have glorified celibacy.
It is true that in a few cases the unproductiveness of homosexual
love has been given by indigenous writers as a reason for its
encouragement or condemnation. It was said that the Cretan law on
the subject had in view to check the growth of population; but,
like Döllinger,[202] I do not believe that this assertion touches
the real root of the matter. More importance may be attached to
the following passage in one of the Pahlavi texts:--"He who is
wasting seed makes a practice of causing the death of progeny;
when the custom is completely continuous, which produces an evil
stoppage of the progress of the race, the creatures have become
annihilated; and certainly, that action, from which, when it is
universally proceeding, the depopulation {486} of the world must
arise, has become and furthered the greatest wish of
Aharman."[203] I am, however, of opinion that considerations of
this kind have generally played only a subordinate, if any, part
in the formation of the moral opinions concerning homosexual
practices. And it can certainly not be admitted that the severe
Jewish law against sodomy was simply due to the fact that the
enlargement of the population was a strongly felt social need
among the Jews.[204] However much they condemned celibacy, they
did not put it on a par with the abominations of Sodom. The
excessive sinfulness which was attached to homosexual love by
Zoroastrianism, Hebrewism, and Christianity, had quite a special
foundation. It cannot be sufficiently accounted for either by
utilitarian considerations or instinctive disgust. The abhorrence
of incest is generally a much stronger feeling than the aversion
to homosexuality. Yet in the very same chapter of Genesis which
describes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah we read of the
incest committed by the daughters of Lot with their father; [205]
and, according to the Roman Catholic doctrine, unnatural
intercourse is an even more heinous sin than incest and
adultery.[206] The fact is that homosexual practices were
intimately associated with the gravest of all sins: unbelief,
idolatry, or heresy.
[Footnote 197: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 206. See Additional
Notes.]
[Footnote 198: _Cf._ _supra_, ii. 466 (Tahitians).]
[Footnote 199: _Supra_, i. 407.]
[Footnote 200: _Supra_, i. 406 _sq._]
[Footnote 201: von Kremer, _Culturgeschichte des Orients_, ii. 129.]
[Footnote 202: Döllinger, _op. cit._ ii. 239.]
[Footnote 203: _Dâdistân-î Dînîk_, lxxvii. 11.]
[Footnote 204: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 206.]
[Footnote 205: _Genesis_, xix. 31 _sqq._]
[Footnote 206: Thomas Aquinas, _Summa theologica_, ii.-ii. 154.
12. Katz, _Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts_, pp. 104, 118,
120. Clarus, _Practica criminalis_, book v. § Sodomia,
Additiones, 1 (_Opera omnia_, ii. 152):--"Hoc vitium est majus,
quam si quis propriam matrem cognosceret."]
According to Zoroastrianism, unnatural sin had been created by
Angra Mainyu.[207] "Aharman, the wicked, miscreated the demons
and fiends, and also the remaining corrupted ones, by his own
unnatural intercourse."[208] Such intercourse is on a par with
Afrâsiyâb, a Turanian king who conquered the Iranians for twelve
years;[209] with Dahâk, a king or dynasty who is said to have
conquered Yim and reigned for a thousand years;[210] with Tûr-i
Brâdar-vakhsh, {487} a heterodox wizard by whom the best men were
put to death.[211] He who commits unnatural sin is "in his whole
being a Daêva";[212] and a Daêva-worshipper is not a bad
Zoroastrian, but a man who does not belong to the Zoroastrian
system, a foreigner, a non-Aryan.[213] In the Vendîdâd, after the
statement that the voluntary commission of unnatural sin is a
trespass for which there is no atonement for ever and ever, the
question is put, When is it so? And the answer given is:--If the
sinner be a professor of the religion of Mazda, or one who has
been taught in it. If not, his sin is taken from him, in case he
makes confession of the religion of Mazda and resolves never to
commit again such forbidden deeds.[214] This is to say, the sin
is inexpiable if it involves a downright defiance of the true
religion, it is forgiven if it is committed in ignorance of it
and is followed by submission. From all this it appears that
Zoroastrianism stigmatised unnatural intercourse as a practice of
infidels, as a sign of unbelief. And I think that certain facts
referred to above help us to understand why it did so. Not only
have homosexual practices been commonly associated with sorcery,
but such an association has formed, and partly still forms, an
incident of the shamanistic system prevalent among the Asiatic
peoples of Turanian stock, and that it did so already in remote
antiquity is made extremely probable by statements which I have
just quoted from Zoroastrian texts. To this system Zoroastrianism
was naturally furiously opposed, and the "change of sex" therefore
appeared to the Mazda worshipper as a devilish abomination.
[Footnote 207: _Vendîdâd_, i. 12.]
[Footnote 208: _Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad_, viii. 10.]
[Footnote 209: _Sad Dar_, ix. 5. West's note to _Dînâ-î Maînôg-î
Khirad_, viii. 29 (**_Sacred Books of the East_, xxiv. 35, n. 4.)]
[Footnote 210: _Sad Dar_, ix. 5. West's note to _Dînâ-î Maînôg-î
Khirad_, viii. 29 (_Sacred Books of the East_, xxiv. 35, n. 3).]
[Footnote 211: _Sad Dar_, ix. 5. West's note to _Dâdistân-î
Dînîk_, lxxii. 8 (_Sacred Books of the East_, xviii. 218).]
[Footnote 212: _Vendîdâd_, viii. 32.]
[Footnote 213: Darmesteter, in _Sacred Books of the East_, iv. p. li.]
[Footnote 214: _Vendîdâd_, viii. 27 _sq._]
So also the Hebrews abhorrence of sodomy was largely due to their
hatred of a foreign cult. According to Genesis, unnatural vice
was the sin of a people who were not the Lord's people, and the
Levitical legislation represents Canaanitish abominations as the
chief reason {488} why the Canaanites were exterminated.[215] Now
we know that sodomy entered as an element in their religion.
Besides _[k.]ed[=e]sh[=o]th_, or female prostitutes, there were
_[k.]ed[=e]sh[=i]m_, or male prostitutes, attached to their
temples.[216] The word _[k.]ad[=e]sh_, translated "sodomite,"
properly denotes a man dedicated to a deity;[217] and it appears
that such men were consecrated to the mother of the gods, the
famous Dea Syria, whose priests or devotees they were considered
to be.[218] The male devotees of this and other goddesses were
probably in a position analogous to that occupied by the female
devotees of certain gods, who also, as we have seen, have
developed into libertines; and the sodomitic acts committed with
these temple prostitutes may, like the connections with
priestesses, have had in view to transfer blessings to the
worshippers.[219] In Morocco supernatural benefits are expected
not only from heterosexual, but also from homosexual intercourse
with a holy person.[220] The _[k.]ed[=e]sh[=i]m_ are frequently
alluded to in the Old Testament, especially in the period of the
monarchy, when rites of foreign origin made their way into both
Israel and Judah.[221] And it is natural that the Yahveh
worshipper should regard their practices with the utmost horror
as forming part of an idolatrous cult.
[Footnote 215: _Leviticus_, xx. 23.]
[Footnote 216: _Deuteronomy_, xxiii. 17. Driver, _Commentary on
Deuteronomy_, p. 264.]
[Footnote 217: Driver, _op. cit._ p. 264 _sq._ Selbie,
'Sodomite,' in Hastings, _Dictionary of the Bible_, iv. 559.]
[Footnote 218: St. Jerome, _In Osee_, i. 4. 14 (Migne, _op. cit._
xxv. 851). Cook's note to _1 Kings_, xiv. 24, in his edition of
_The Holy Bible_, ii. 571. See also Lucian, _Lucius_, 38.]
[Footnote 219: Rosenbaum suggests (_Geschichte der Lustseuche im
Alterthume_, p. 120) that the eunuch priests connected with the
cult of the Ephesian Artemis and the Phrygian worship of Cybele
likewise were sodomites.]
[Footnote 220: See Westermarck, _The Moorish Conception of
Holiness_, p. 85.]
[Footnote 221: _1 Kings_, xiv. 24; xv. 12; xxii. 46. _2 Kings_,
xxiii. 7. _Job_, xxxvi. 14. Driver, _op. cit._ p. 265.]
The Hebrew conception of homosexual love to some extent affected
Muhammedanism, and passed into Christianity. The notion that it
is a form of sacrilege was here strengthened by the habits of the
gentiles. St. Paul found the abominations of Sodom prevalent
among nations who had "changed the truth of God into a lie, and
worshipped and served the creature more than the {489}
Creator."[222] During the Middle Ages heretics were accused of
unnatural vice as a matter of course.[223] Indeed, so closely was
sodomy associated with heresy that the same name was applied to
both. In 'La Coutume de Touraine-Anjou' the word _herite_, which
is the ancient form of _hérétique_,[224] seems to be used in the
sense of "sodomite";[225] and the French _bougre_ (from the Latin
_Bulgarus_, Bulgarian), as also its English synonym, was
originally a name given to a sect of heretics who came from
Bulgaria in the eleventh century, and was afterwards applied to
other heretics, but at the same time it became the regular
expression for a person guilty of unnatural intercourse.[226] In
mediæval laws sodomy was also repeatedly mentioned together with
heresy, and the punishment was the same for both.[227] It thus
remained a religious offence of the first order. It was not only
a "vitium nefandum et super omnia detestandum,"[228] but it was
one of the four "clamantia peccata," or crying sins,[229] a
"crime de Majestie, vers le Roy celestre."[230] Very naturally,
therefore, it has come to be regarded with somewhat greater
leniency by law and public opinion in proportion as they have
emancipated themselves from theological doctrines. And the fresh
light which the scientific study of the sexual impulse has lately
thrown upon the subject of homosexuality must also necessarily
influence the moral ideas relating to it, in so far as no
scrutinising judge can fail to take into account the pressure
which a powerful non-volitional desire exercises upon an agent's
will.
[Footnote 222: _Romans_, i. 25 _sqq._]
[Footnote 223: Littré, _Dictionnaire de la langue française_, i.
386, 'Bougre.' Haynes, _Religious Persecution_, p. 54.]
[Footnote 224: Littré, _op. cit._ i. 2010, 'Hérétique.']
[Footnote 225: _Les Établissements de Saint Louis_, i. 90, vol.
ii. 147. Viollet, in his Introduction to the same work, i. 254.]
[Footnote 226: Littré, _op. cit._ i. 386, 'Bougre.' Murray, _New
English Dictionary_, i. 1160, 'Bugger.' Lea, _History of the
Inquisition of the Middle Ages_, i. 115, note.]
[Footnote 227: Beaumanoir, _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_, xxx. 11,
vol. i. 413:--"Qui erre contre le foi, comme en mescreance, de le
quele il ne veut venir à voie de verité, ou qui fet sodomiterie,
il doit estre ars, et forfet tout le sien en le maniere dessus."
Britton, i. 10, vol. i. 42. Montesquieu, _De l'esprit des lois_,
xii. 6 (_[OE]uvres_, p. 283). Du Boys, _Histoire du droit
criminel de l'Espagne_, pp. 486, 721.]
[Footnote 228: Clarus, _Practica criminalis_, book v. § Sodomia,
1 (_Opera omnia_, ii. 151).]
[Footnote 229: Coke, _Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of
England_, p. 59.]
[Footnote 230: _Mirror_, quoted _ibid._ p. 58.]
CHAPTER XLIV
REGARD FOR THE LOWER ANIMALS
MEN'S conduct towards the lower animals is frequently a subject
of moral valuation.
Totem animals must be treated with deference by those who bear
their names, and animals generally regarded as divine must be
respected by all; of this more will be said in a subsequent
chapter.[1] Among various peoples the members of certain animal
species must not be killed, because they are considered to be
receptacles for the souls of departed men,[2] or because the
species is believed to have originated through a transformation
of men into animals.[3] The Dyaks of Borneo have a superstitious
dread of killing orang-utans, being of opinion that these apes
are men who went to live in the forest and abstain from speaking
merely in order to be exempt from paying taxes.[4] The Moors
consider it wrong to kill a monkey, because the monkey was once a
man whom God changed into his present shape as a punishment for
the sin he committed by performing his ablutions with milk; and
they would never do harm to a stork, because, as they say, the
stork was originally a judge, who passed unjust sentences upon
his fellow creatures and therefore became what he is. They also
account it a sin to kill a swallow or a pigeon, a white spider or
a bee, because they regard them as holy. Other creatures, again,
are spared by the Moors because they {491} appear uncanny or are
suspected of being evil spirits in disguise. It is believed that
anybody who kills a raven easily goes mad and that he who kills a
toad will get fever or die; and no Moor would dare to hit a cat
or a dog in the dark, since it seems very doubtful what kind of
being it really is. Superstitions of this sort are world-wide.]
[Footnote 1: _Infra_, on Duties to Gods.]
[Footnote 2: _Infra_, p. 516 _sq._]
[Footnote 3: See Meiners, _Allgemeine Geschichte der Religionen_,
i. 213 _sqq._]
[Footnote 4: Selenka, _Sonnige Welten_, p. 57.]
It is a common belief among uncultured peoples that a person who
slays an animal is exposed to the vengeance either of its
disembodied spirit or of all the other creatures belonging to the
same species.[5] Hence, as Sir J. G. Frazer has shown, the savage
often makes it a rule to spare the lives of those animals which
he has no pressing motive for killing, at least such fierce and
dangerous ones as are likely to exact a bloody revenge for the
slaughter of any of their kind; and when, for some reason or
other, he overcomes his superstitious scruples and takes the life
of the beast, he is anxious to appease the victim and its kindred
by testifying his respect for them, or making apologies, or
trying to conceal his share in procuring the death of the animal,
or promising that its remains will be honourably treated.[6] The
Stiêns of Cambodia, for instance, who believe that animals have
souls which wander about after death, ask pardon when they have
killed one, lest its soul should visit and torment them; and they
also offer it sacrifices proportioned to the strength and size of
the animal.[7] When a party of Koriaks have killed a bear or a
wolf, they skin the beast, dress one of their family in the skin,
and dance round the skin-clad man, saying that it was not they
who killed the animal but someone else, by preference a
Russian.[8] The Eskimo about Behring Strait maintain that the
dead bodies of various animals must be treated very carefully by
the hunter who obtains them, so that their shades may not be
offended and bring bad luck or even death upon him or his people.[9]
[Footnote 5: _Supra_, i. 258.]
[Footnote 6: Frazer, _Golden Bough_, ii. 389 _sqq._]
[Footnote 7: Mouhot, _Travels in the Central Parts of
Indo-China_, i. 252.]
[Footnote 8: Bastian, _Der Mensch in der Geschichte_, iii. 26.]
[Footnote 9: Nelson, 'Eskimo about Bering Strait,' in _Ann. Rep.
Bur. Ethn._ xviii. 438.]
{492} The savage, moreover, desires to keep on good terms with
animals which, without being feared, are either eaten or valued
for their skins. Hence, when he captures one, he shows such
deference for it as may be necessary for inducing its fellows to
come and be killed also.[10] Alaskan hunters preserve the bones
of sables and beavers out of reach of the dogs for a year and
then bury them carefully, lest the spirits which look after these
species should consider that "they are regarded with contempt and
hence no more should be killed or trapped."[11] The Thompson
River Indians of British Columbia said that when a deer was
killed its fellows would be well pleased if the hunters butchered
the animal nicely and cleanly.[12] The Hurons refrained from
throwing fish bones into the fire, lest the souls of the fish
should go and warn the other fish not to let themselves be
caught, since, if they were, their own bones would also be
burned.[13] Some savages respect the bones of the animals which
they eat because they believe that the bones, if preserved, will,
in the course of time, be reclothed with flesh and the animal
thus come to life again.[14]
[Footnote 10: Frazer, _op. cit._ ii. 403 _sqq._]
[Footnote 11: Dall, _Alaska_, p. 89.]
[Footnote 12: Teit, 'Thompson Indians of British Columbia,' in
_Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History_,
'Anthropology,' i. 346.]
[Footnote 13: Sagard, _Le grand voyage du pays des Hurons_, p. 255.]
[Footnote 14: Frazer, _op. cit._ ii. 415 _sqq._]
Besides the creatures which primitive man treats with respect
because he dreads their strength and ferocity or on account of
the benefits he expects from them, there is yet a third class of
animate beings which he sometimes deems it necessary to
conciliate, namely, vermin that infest the crops.[15] Among the
Saxons of Transylvania, in order to keep sparrows from the corn,
the sower begins by throwing the first handful of seed backwards
over his head, saying, "That is for you, sparrows."[16] And of
the Drâvidian tribes of Mirzapur we are told that, when locusts
threaten to eat up the fruits of the earth, the people catch one,
decorate its head with a spot of red {493} lead, salaam to it,
and let it go; after which civilities the whole flight
immediately departs.[17]
[Footnote 15: _Ibid._ ii. 422 _sqq._]
[Footnote 16: Heinrich, quoted _ibid._ ii. 423.]
[Footnote 17: Crooke, _Popular Religion and Folk-lore of
Northern India_, ii. 303.]
Domestic animals are frequently objects of superstitious
reverence.[18] They are expected to reward masters who treat them
well, whereas those who harm them are believed to expose
themselves to their revenge. Among the Eskimo about Behring
Strait dogs are never beaten for biting people, lest the _inua_
or shade of the dog should become angry and prevent the wound
from healing.[19] Butchers are often regarded as unclean, and the
original reason for this was in all probability the idea that
they were haunted by the spirits of the animals they had slain.
Among the Guanches of the Canary Islands it was unlawful for
anybody but professional butchers to kill cattle, and a butcher
was forbidden to enter other persons' houses, to touch their
property, and to keep company with any one not of his own
trade.[20] In Morocco a butcher, like a manslayer, is thought to
be haunted by _jnûn_ (_jinn_), and it seems that in this case
also the notion of haunting _jnûn_ has replaced an earlier belief
in troublesome ghosts.[21] So, too, the ancient Troglodytes of
East Africa, who derived their whole sustenance from their flocks
and herds, are said to have looked upon butchers as unclean.[22]
In the rural districts of Japan it is believed that a butcher
will have a cripple among his descendants.[23]
[Footnote 18: See Robertson Smith, _Religion of the Semites_,
p. 296 _sqq._]
[Footnote 19: Nelson, in _Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn._ xviii. 435.]
[Footnote 20: Abreu de Galindo, _History of the Discovery and
Conquest of the Canary Islands_, p. 71 _sq._ Bory de St. Vincent,
_Essais sur les Isles Fortunées_, p. 103 _sq._]
[Footnote 21: _Cf._ _supra_, i. 378.]
[Footnote 22: Robertson Smith, _op. cit._ p. 296 _sq._]
[Footnote 23: Griffis, _Mikado's Empire_, p. 472.]
How far ideas of this sort may account for the great
disinclination of many peoples to kill their cattle, it is
impossible to say; but they certainly do not constitute the only
motive. We have noticed above that pastoral tribes are unwilling
to reduce their herds and agricultural peoples to kill the
ploughing ox, because this would imply {494} loss of valuable
property.[24] And apart from economic considerations, we may
assume that feelings of genuine sympathy also induce them to
treat their animals with kindness. The altruistic sentiment has
not necessarily reference to members of the same species only; of
this we find instances even among animals in confinement and
domesticated animals, which frequently become attached to
individuals of a different species with whom they live
together.[25] And the savage feels himself much more closely
related to the animal world than does his civilised fellow
creature; indeed, as we have seen, he habitually obliterates the
boundaries between man and beast and regards all animals as
practically on a footing of equality with himself.[26] Among the
pastoral races of Africa the men delight in attending their
cattle, and spend much time in ornamenting and adorning them; the
herdsman knows every beast in his herd, calls it by its name, and
affectionately observes all its peculiarities.[27] Of the Bahima,
a cow tribe in Uganda, the Rev. J. Roscoe tells us that the men
form warm attachments for their cattle; some of them love the
animals like children, pet and coax them, talk to them, and weep
over their ailments, and should a favourite die their grief is so
extreme that it sometimes leads to suicide.[28] The mythical
founder of the kingdom of Uganda, Kintu, is said to have been so
humane and averse from the sight of blood, that "even cattle
killed for necessary food were slaughtered at some distance from
his dwelling."[29] But cattle are not the only dumb creatures
that excite tender feelings in the bosom of a savage. The For
tribe of Central Africa regard it as a characteristic of a good
man to be kind to animals in general, and consider it wicked to
be otherwise.[30] Concerning the Eastern Central Africans Mr.
{495} Macdonald writes that if they appear destitute of pity,
say, for their fowls in their methods of carrying them, it is
because they do not reflect that it gives them pain--"all would
admit that it was a cruel thing to pain the fowl"; and they have
fables in their language which show a desire to enter minutely
into the feelings of dumb creatures, representing, for instance,
fowls as reasoning on their hard fate in being killed for their
master's supper.[31] Among the Indians of the province of Quito,
according to Juan and Ulloa, the women are so fond of their fowls
that they will not sell them, much less kill them with their own
hands; "so that if a stranger, who is obliged to pass the night
in one of their cottages, offers ever so much money for a fowl,
they refuse to part with it, and he finds himself under a
necessity of killing the fowl himself. At this his landlady
shrieks, dissolves in tears, and wrings her hands, as if it had
been an only son; till seeing the mischief past remedy she wipes
her eyes, and quietly takes what the traveller offers her."[32]
North American Indians, again, are very fond of their hunting
dogs. Those on the west side of the Rocky Mountains "appear to
have the same affection for them that they have for their
children; and they will discourse with them, as if they were
rational beings. They frequently call them their sons or
daughters; and when describing an Indian, they will speak of him
as father of a particular dog which belongs to him. When these
dogs die, it is not unusual to see their masters or mistresses
place them on a pile of wood, and burn them in the same manner as
they do the dead bodies of their relations; and they appear to
lament their deaths, by crying and howling, fully as much as if
they were their kindred."[33] So also the natives of Australia
often display much affection for their dogs; Mr. Gason has seen
women crying over a dog when bitten by a snake as if it had been
one of their own children, and if a puppy has lost its mother the
{496} women suckle and nurse it.[34] Of the Maoris of New Zealand
we read that their extreme love of offspring "was also carried
out to excess towards the young of brutes--especially of their
dogs, and, afterwards, of cats and pigs introduced. Hence it was
by no means an unusual sight to see a woman carrying her child at
her back, and a pet dog, or pig, in her bosom."[35] The Chukchi
of North-Eastern Siberia believe that if a person is cruel to
brutes his soul will after his death migrate into some domestic
animal--a dog, a horse, or a reindeer.[36] Even the miserable
Veddahs of Ceylon are said to be indignant at the needless
killing of a beast.[37]
[Footnote 24: _Supra_, ii. 331.]
[Footnote 25: See _supra_, i. 112.]
[Footnote 26: _Supra_, i. 258.]
[Footnote 27: Ratzel, _History of Mankind_, ii. 415.]
[Footnote 28: Roscoe, 'Bahima,' in _Jour. Anthr. Inst._ xxxvii.
94 _sq._]
[Footnote 29: Felkin, 'Notes on the Waganda Tribe,' in _Proceed.
Roy. Soc. Edinburgh_, xiii. 764.]
[Footnote 30: Felkin, 'Notes on the For Tribe,' in _Proceed. Roy.
Soc. Edinburgh_, xiii. 232 _sq._]
[Footnote 31: Macdonald, _Africana_, i. 10 _sq._]
[Footnote 32: Juan and Ulloa, _Voyage to South America_, i. 426
_sq._]
[Footnote 33: Harmon, _Journal of Voyages in the Interior of
North America_, p. 335 _sq._]
[Footnote 34: Gason, 'Dieyerie Tribe,' in Woods, _Native Tribes
of South Australia_, p. 259. Fraser, _Aborigines of New South
Wales_, p. 5. Williams, 'Yircla Meening Tribe,' in Curr, _The
Australian Race_, i. 402.]
[Footnote 35: Colenso, _Maori Races of New Zealand_, p. 43.]
[Footnote 36: Ratzel, _op. cit._ ii. 231.]
[Footnote 37: Sarasin, _Ergebnisse naturwissenschaftlicher
Forschungen auf Ceylon_, iii. 539.]
On the other hand we also hear of savages who are greatly lacking
in sympathy for the brute creation. Darwin says that humanity to
the lower animals is apparently unfelt by savages, except towards
their pets.[38] Mr. Atkinson charges the New Caledonians with
great cruelty to animals.[39] The Tasmanians appeared much to
enjoy the tortures of a wounded bird or beast.[40] It is not to
be expected that people whose kindly feelings towards men hardly
extend beyond the borders of their own communities should be
compassionate to wild animals. They may also appear wantonly
cruel because they do not realise the pain which they inflict.
And, like children, they may enjoy the agony of a suffering beast
or bird because it excites their curiosity.
[Footnote 38: Darwin, _Descent of Man_, p. 123.]
[Footnote 39: Atkinson, 'Natives of New Caledonia,' in
_Folk-lore_, xiv. 248.]
[Footnote 40: Davies, quoted by Ling Roth, _Tasmanians_, p. 66.]
It is obvious from what has been said above that already at the
savage stage men's conduct towards the lower animals must in some
cases be a matter of moral concern. For hand in hand with the
altruistic sentiment we always find the feeling of sympathetic
resentment whenever there is an occasion for its outburst.
Moreover, {497} acts which are, or are believed to be, injurious
to the agent, by exposing him to an animal's revenge or
otherwise, are prohibited because they are imprudent; and, as we
have often noticed, such prohibitions are apt to assume a moral
character. Finally, if a certain mode of conduct is considered to
be productive of public harm, as is the case with any act or
omission which reduces, or is supposed to reduce, the supply of
food or animal clothing, it is naturally looked upon as a wrong
against the community.
Similar facts have, among peoples of a higher culture, led to
moral rules inculcating regard for animals--rules which have
often assumed a definite shape in their laws or religious books.
According to Brahmanism tenderness towards all creatures is a
duty incumbent upon the four castes. It is said that "he who
injures innoxious beings from a wish to give himself pleasure,
never finds happiness, neither living nor dead."[41] If a blow is
struck against animals in order to give them pain, the judge
shall inflict a fine in proportion to the amount of pain caused,
just as if the blow had been struck against a man.[42] The
killing of various creatures, including fish and snakes, reduces
the offender to a mixed caste;[43] and, according to 'Vishnu
Purana,' fishermen go after death to the same hell as awaits
prisoners, incendiaries, and treacherous friends.[44] To kill a
cow is a great crime;[45] whereas he who unhesitatingly abandons
life for the sake of a cow is freed even from the guilt of the
murder of a Brâhmana, and so is he who saves the life of a
cow.[46] Among many of the Hindus the slaughter of a cow excites
more horror than the killing of a man, and is punished with great
severity, even with death.[47]
[Footnote 41: _Laws of Manu_, v. 45.]
[Footnote 42: _Ibid._ viii. 286.]
[Footnote 43: _Ibid._ xi. 69.]
[Footnote 44: _Vish['n]u Purá['n]a_, p. 208 _sq._]
[Footnote 45: _Institutes of Vishnu_, l. 16 _sqq._ _Gautama_,
xxii. 18. _Âpastamba_, i. 26. 1. _Laws of Manu_, xi. 109 _sqq._]
[Footnote 46: _Laws of Manu_, xi. 80.]
[Footnote 47: Barth, _Religions of India_, p. 264. Kipling,
_Beast and Man in India_, p. 118 _sq._ Crooke, _Things Indian_,
p. 91.]
In Buddhism, Jainism, and Taouism the respect for animal life is
extreme. A disciple of Buddha may not {498} knowingly deprive any
creature of life, not even a worm or an ant. He may not drink
water in which animal life of any kind whatever is contained, and
must not even pour it out on grass or clay.[48] And the doctrine
which forbids the killing of animate beings is not only
professed, but in a large measure followed, by the great majority
of people in Buddhistic countries. In Siam the tameness of many
living creatures which in Europe fly from the presence of man is
very striking. Instances have been known in which natives have
quitted the service of Europeans on account of their
unwillingness to destroy reptiles and vermin, and it is a not
uncommon practice for rich Siamese to buy live fish to have the
merit of restoring them to the sea.[49] In Burma, though fish is
one of the staple foods of the people, the fisherman is despised;
not so much, perhaps, as if he killed other living things, but he
is still an outcast from decent society, and "will have to suffer
great and terrible punishment before he can be cleansed from the
sins that he daily commits."[50] The Buddhists of Ceylon are more
forbearing: they excuse the fisherman by saying that he does not
kill the fish, but only removes it from the water.[51] In Tibet
all dumb creatures are treated with humanity, and the taking of
animal life is rather strictly prohibited, except in the case of
yaks and sheep needed for food. Owing to the coldness of the
climate, flesh forms an essential staple of diet; but the
butchers are regarded as professional sinners and are therefore
the most despised of all classes in Tibet. Wild animals and even
small birds and fish are seldom or never killed, on account of
the religious penalties attached to this crime.[52]
[Footnote 48: Oldenberg, _Buddha_, pp. 290 **n. *, 351.]
[Footnote 49: Bowring, _Siam_, i. 107.]
[Footnote 50: Fielding Hall, _The Soul of a People_, p. 230.]
[Footnote 51: Schmidt, _Ceylon_, p. 316 _sq._]
[Footnote 52: Waddell, _Buddhism of Tibet_, p. 567 _sq._]
The Jain is stricter still in his regard for animal life. He
sweeps the ground before him as he goes, lest animate things be
destroyed; he walks veiled, lest he inhale a living organism; he
considers that the evening and night are {499} not times for
eating, since one might then swallow a live thing by mistake; and
he rejects not only meat but even honey, together with various
fruits that are supposed to contain worms, not because of his
distaste for worms but because of his regard for life.[53] Some
towns in Western India in which Jains are found have their beast
hospitals, where animals are kept and fed. At Surat there was
quite recently an establishment of this sort with a house where a
host of noxious and offensive vermin, dense as the sands on the
sea-shore, were bred and nurtured; and at Anjár, in Kutch, about
five thousand rats were kept in a certain temple and daily fed
with flour, which was procured by a tax on the inhabitants of the
town.[54]
[Footnote 53: Hopkins, _Religions of India_, p. 288. Barth, _op.
cit._ p. 145. Kipling, _op. cit._ p. 10 _sq._]
[Footnote 54: Burnes, 'Notice of a remarkable Hospital for
Animals at Surat,' in _Jour. Roy. Asiatic Soc._ i. 96 _sq._]
According to 'Thâi-Shang,' one of the books of Taouism, a good
man will feel kindly towards all creatures, and refrain from
hurting even the insect tribes, grass, and trees; and he is a bad
man who "shoots birds and hunts beasts, unearths the burrowing
insects and frightens roosting birds, blocks up the dens of
animals and overturns nests, hurts the pregnant womb and breaks
eggs."[55] In the book called 'Merits and Errors Scrutinised,'
which enjoys great popularity in China, it is said to be
meritorious to save animals from death--even insects if the
number amounts to a hundred,--to relieve a brute that is greatly
wearied with work, to purchase and set at liberty animals
intended to be slaughtered. On the other hand, to confine birds
in a cage, to kill ten insects, to be unsparing of the strength
of tired animals, to disturb insects in their holes, to destroy
the nests of birds, without great reason to kill and dress
animals for food, are all errors of various degrees. And "to be
the foremost to encourage the slaughter of animals, or to hinder
persons from setting them at liberty," is regarded as an error of
the same magnitude as the crime of devising a person's death or
of drowning or murdering a child.[56] Kindness {500} to animals
is conspicuous in the writings of Confucius and Mencius;[57] the
Master angled but did not use a net, he shot but not at birds
perching.[58] Throughout Japan, according to Sir Edward Reed,
"the life of animals has always been held more or less sacred. . . .,
neither Shintoism nor Buddhism requiring or justifying the
taking of the life of any creature for sacrifice."[59]
[Footnote 55: _Thâi-Shang_, 3 _sq._]
[Footnote 56: _Indo-Chinese Gleaner_, iii. 164, 205 _sq._]
[Footnote 57: Mencius, i. 1. 7.]
[Footnote 58: _Lun Yü_, vii. 26.]
[Footnote 59: Reed, _Japan_, i. 61.]
The regard for the lower animals which is shown by these Eastern
religions and their adherents is to some extent due to
superstitious ideas, similar to those which we found prevalent
among many savages. Dr. de Groot observes that in China the
virtues of benevolence and humanity are extended to animals
because these, also, have souls which may work vengeance or bring
reward.[60] The conduct of Orientals towards the brute creation
has further been explained by their belief in the transmigration
of souls. But it seems that the connection between their theory
of metempsychosis and their rules relating to the treatment of
animals is not exclusively, nor even chiefly, one of cause and
effect, but rather one of a common origin. This theory itself may
in some measure be regarded as a result of that intimacy which
prevails in the East between animals and men. Buddhism recognises
no fundamental distinction between them, only an accidental or
phenomenal difference;[61] and the step is not long from this
attitude to the doctrine of metempsychosis. Captain Forbes
maintains that the humanity with which the Burmans treat dumb
animals comes "more from the innate good nature and easiness of
their dispositions than from any effect over them of this
peculiar doctrine";[62] and they laugh at the suggestion made by
Europeans that Buddhists abstain from taking life because they
believe in the transmigration of souls, having never heard of it
before. Their motive, says Mr. Fielding Hall, is compassion and
_noblesse oblige_.[63] But by its punishments {501} and rewards,
religion has greatly increased the natural regard for animal life
and welfare, and introduced a new motive for conduct which
originally sprang in the main from kindly feeling.
[Footnote 60: de Groot, _Religious System of China_, (vol. iv.
book) ii. 450.]
[Footnote 61: Rhys Davids, _Hibbert Lectures on Buddhism_, p. 214.]
[Footnote 62: Forbes, _British Burma_, p. 321.]
[Footnote 63: Fielding Hall, _op. cit._ p. 237 _sq._]
In Zoroastrianism we meet with a different attitude towards the
lower animal world. A fundamental distinction is made between the
animals of Ormuzd and those of Ahriman. To kill one of the former
is a heinous sin, to kill one of the latter is a pious deed.[64]
Sacred above all other animals is the dog. The ill-feeding and
maltreatment of dogs are prosecuted as criminal, and extreme
penalties are inflicted on those who venture to kill them.[65]
Nay, if there be in the house of a worshipper of Mazda a mad dog
who has no scent, the worshippers of Mazda "shall attend him to
heal him, in the same manner as they would do for one of the
faithful."[66] In the eyes of the Parsis, animals are enlisted
under the standards of either Ormuzd or Ahriman according as they
are useful or hurtful to man; but M. Darmesteter is of opinion
that they originally belonged to the one or the other not on
account of any such qualities, but according as they chanced to
have lent their forms to either the god or the fiend in the storm
tales. "It was not animal psychology," he says, "that disguised
gods and fiends as dogs, otters, hedge-hogs, and cocks, or as
snakes, tortoises, frogs, and ants, but the accidents of physical
qualities and the caprice of popular fancy, as both the god and
the fiend might be compared with, and transformed into, any
object, the idea of which was suggested by the uproar of the
storm, the blazing of the lightning, the streaming of the water,
or the hue and shape of the clouds."[67] This hypothesis,
however, seems to attach undue importance to mythical fancies,
and it presupposes an almost unbounded and capricious allegorism,
for which there is apparently little foundation {502} in facts.
The suggestion that the animals are referred to either the one or
the other category according as they are useful or obnoxious to
man, is at all events borne out by a few salient features,
although in many details the matter remains obscure.
[Footnote 64: Darmesteter, _Ormazd et Ahriman_, p. 283.]
[Footnote 65: _Vendîdâd_, xiii. _sq._ Geiger, _Civilization of
the Eastern Iranians_, ii. 36.]
[Footnote 66: _Vendîdâd_, xiii. 35.]
[Footnote 67: Darmesteter, in _Sacred Books of the East_, iv.
(1st edit.) p. lxxii. _sq._ See also _Idem_, _Ormazd et Ahriman_,
p. 283 _sqq._]
It appears that among the Zoroastrians, also, the respect for the
life of animals is partly due to superstitious ideas about their
souls and fear of their revenge. According to the 'Yasts,' "the
souls of the wild beasts and of the tame" are objects of
worship;[68] and in one of the Pahlavi texts it is said that
people should abstain from unlawfully slaughtering any species of
animals, since otherwise, in punishment for such an act, each
hair of the animal killed becomes like a sharp dagger, and he who
is unlawfully a slaughterer is slain.[69] But here again we may
assume the co-operating influence of the feeling of sympathy.
Various passages in the Zoroastrian 'Gathas' which enjoin
kindness to domestic animals[70] suggest as their motives not
only considerations of utility but genuine tenderness. In a later
age Firdausi sang, "Ah! spare yon emmet rich in hoarded grain: He
lives with pleasure, and he dies with pain."[71] And of the
modern Persian Dr. Polak says that, "naturally not cruel, he
treats animals with more consideration than men."[72] His present
religion, too, enjoins kindness to animals as a duty.
[Footnote 68: _Yasts_, xiii. 154.]
[Footnote 69: _Shâyast Lâ-Shâyast_, x. 8.]
[Footnote 70: Darmesteter, in _Le Zend-Avesta_, i. p. cvi.]
[Footnote 71: Firdausi, quoted by Jones, 'Tenth Anniversary
Discourse,' in _Asiatick Researches_, iv. 12.]
[Footnote 72: Polak, _Persien_, i. 12.]
According to Muhammedanism, beasts, birds, fish, insects, are
all, like man, the slaves of God, the tools of His will. There is
no intrinsic distinction between them and the human species,
except what accidental diversity God may have been pleased to
make.[73] Muhammed said to his followers:--"There is not a beast
upon the earth nor a bird that flies with both its wings, but is
a nation like to you; . . . to their Lord shall they be
gathered."[74] Muhammedan law prescribes that domestic animals
shall {503} be treated with consideration and not be
overworked;[75] and in various Muhammedan countries this law has
also been habitually put into practice. The Moslems of India are
kind to animals.[76] In his earlier intercourse with the people
of Egypt, Mr. Lane noticed much humanity to beasts.[77] Montaigne
said that the Turks gave alms to brutes and had hospitals for
them;[78] and Mr. Bosworth Smith is of opinion that beasts of
burden and domestic animals are nowhere in Christendom with the
one exception, perhaps, of Norway treated with such unvarying
kindness and consideration as they are in Turkey. "In the East,"
he adds, "so far as it has not been hardened by the West, there
is a real sympathy between man and the domestic animals; they
understand one another."[79]
[Footnote 73: _Cf._ Palgrave, _Journey through Central and
Eastern Arabia_, i. 368.]
[Footnote 74: _Koran_, vi. 38.]
[Footnote 75: Sachau, _Muhammedanisches Recht_, pp. 18, 103.]
[Footnote 76: Pool, _Studies in Mohammedanism_, pp. 176, 177,
247. _Cf._ Heber, _Journey through the Upper Provinces of India_,
ii. 131.]
[Footnote 77: Lane, _Modern Egyptians_, p. 293.]
[Footnote 78: Montaigne, _Essais_, ii. 11.]
[Footnote 79: Bosworth Smith, _Mohammed and Mohammedanism_, pp.
180, 217.]
So also the ancient Greeks were on familiar terms with the animal
world. This appears from the frequency with which their poets
illustrate human qualities by metaphors drawn from it. And as men
were compared with animals, so animals were believed to possess
human peculiarities. When a beast was going to be sacrificed it
had to give its consent to the act by a nod of the head before it
was killed.[80] Animals were held in some measure responsible for
their deeds; they were tried for manslaughter, sentenced, and
executed.[81] On the other hand, honours were bestowed upon
beasts which had rendered signal services to their masters. The
graves of Cimon's mares with which he three times conquered at
the Olympic games were still in the days of Plutarch to be seen
near his own tomb;[82] and a certain Xanthippus honoured his dog
by burying it on a promontory, since then called "the dog's
grave," because when the Athenians were compelled to abandon
their city it swam by the side of his galley to Salamis.[83]
According to Xenocrates, there were in existence {504} at Eleusis
three laws which had been made by an ancient legislator,
namely:--"Honour your parents; Sacrifice to the gods from the
fruits of the earth; Injure not animals."[84] At Athens a man was
punished for flaying a living ram.[85] The Areopagites once
condemned a boy to death because he had picked out the eyes of
some quails.[86] As we have noticed before, the life of the
ploughing ox was sacred;[87] and young animals in particular were
believed to be under the protection of the gods.[88] An ancient
proverb says that "there are Erinyes even for dogs."[89] This
seems to indicate that the Greeks, also, were influenced by the
common notion that the soul of an animal may take revenge upon
him who killed it, the Erinys of the slain animal being
originally its persecuting ghost. Among the Pythagoreans, again,
the rule that animals which are not obnoxious to the human race
should be neither injured nor killed[90] was connected with their
theory of metempsychosis;[91] and in some cases the prohibition
of slaying useful animals may be traced to utilitarian
motives.[92] But both in Greece and Rome kindness to brutes was
also inculcated for their own sake, on purely humanitarian
grounds. Porphyry says that, as justice pertains to rational
beings and animals have been proved to be possessed of reason, it
is necessary that we should act justly towards them.[93] He adds
that "he who does not restrict harmless conduct to man alone, but
extends it to other animals, most closely approaches to divinity;
and if it were possible to extend it to plants, he would preserve
this image in a still greater degree."[94] According to Plutarch
kindness and beneficence to creatures of every species flow from
the breast of a well-natured man as {505} streams that issue from
the living fountain. We ought to take care of our dogs and horses
not only when they are young, but when they are old and past
service.[95] We ought not to violate or kill anything whatsoever
that has life, unless it hurt us first.[96] And if we cannot live
unblamably we should at least sin with discretion: when we kill
an animal in order to satisfy our hunger we should do so with
sorrow and pity, without abusing and tormenting it.[97] Cicero
says it is a crime to injure an animal.[98] And Marcus Aurelius
enjoins man to make use of brutes with a generous and liberal
spirit, since he has reason and they have not.[99]
[Footnote 80: Schmidt, _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, ii. 96
_sq._]
[Footnote 81: _Supra_, i. 254.]
[Footnote 82: Plutarch, _Cato Major_, v. 6.]
[Footnote 83: _Ibid._ v. 7.]
[Footnote 84: Porphyry, _De abstinentia ab esu animalium_, iv. 22.]
[Footnote 85: Plutarch, _De carnium esu oratio I._ vii. 2.]
[Footnote 86: Quintilian, _De institutione oratoria_, v. 9. 13.]
[Footnote 87: _Supra_, ii. 331.]
[Footnote 88: Aeschylus, _Agamemnon_, 48 _sqq._ Xenophon,
_Cynegeticus_, v. 14.]
[Footnote 89: Schmidt, _op. cit._ ii. 96.]
[Footnote 90: Jamblichus, _De Pythagorica vita_, 21 (98).]
[Footnote 91: Diogenes Laertius, _Vitæ philosophorum_, viii. 2.
12 (77). Aristotle, _Rhetorica_, i. 13. 2, p. 1373 b. Schmidt,
_op. cit._ ii. 94.]
[Footnote 92: Porphyry, _op. cit._ iv. 22. _Supra_, ii. 331.]
[Footnote 93: Porphyry, _op. cit._ iii. 18.]
[Footnote 94: _Ibid._ iii. 28.]
[Footnote 95: Plutarch, _Cato Major_, v. 3 _sq._]
[Footnote 96: _Idem_, _Questiones Romanæ_, 75.]
[Footnote 97: _Idem_, _De carnium esu oratio II._ i. 3.]
[Footnote 98: Cicero, _De republica_, iii. 11.]
[Footnote 99: Marcus Aurelius, _Commentarii_, vi. 23.]
In the Old Testament we meet with several instances of kindly
feeling towards animals.[100] God watches over and controls the
sustenance of their life. He sends springs into the valleys which
will give drink to every beast of the field. He gives nests to
the birds of the heaven, which sing among the branches. He causes
grass to grow for the cattle; and the young lions, roaring after
their prey, seek their food from God.[101] Whilst the Jews, as
Professor Toy observes, found it hard to conceive of the God of
Israel as thinking kindly of its enemies, they had no such
feeling of hostility towards beasts and birds.[102] But at the
same time man is the centre of the creation, a being set apart
from all other sentient creatures as God's special favourite, for
whose sake everything else was brought into existence. The sun,
the moon, and the stars were placed in the firmament of the
heaven to give light upon the estate of man.[103] For his
sustenance the fruits of the earth were made to grow, and to him
was given dominion over the fish of the sea, {506} and over the
fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the
earth.[104] And when the earth is to be replenished after the
deluge, the same privileges are again granted to him. The fear of
man and the dread of man shall be upon all living creatures, into
his hand are they all delivered, they shall all be meat for
him.[105] And they are given over to his supreme and
irresponsible control without the slightest injunction of
kindness or the faintest suggestion of any duties towards them.
They are to be regarded by him simply as food.[106]
[Footnote 100: See Bertholet, _Die Stellung der Israeliten zu den
Fremden_, p. 14. Various passages, however, which are often
quoted as instances of tenderness towards animals allow of
another and more natural interpretation. This is especially the
case with the Sabbatarian injunctions referring to domestic
animals.]
[Footnote 101: _Psalms_, civ. 10-12, 14, 17, 21.]
[Footnote 102: Toy, _Judaism and Christianity_, p. 81.]
[Footnote 103: _Genesis_, i. 16 _sq._]
[Footnote 104: _Genesis_, i. 28.]
[Footnote 105: _Ibid._ ix. 2 _sq._]
[Footnote 106: _Cf._ Evans, 'Ethical Relations between Man and
Beast,' in _Popular Science Monthly_, xlv. 637 _sq._]
Among the Hebrews the harshness of this anthropocentric doctrine
was somewhat mitigated by the sympathy which a simple pastoral
and agricultural people naturally feels for its domestic animals.
In Christianity, on the other hand, it was further strengthened
by the exclusive importance which was attached to the spiritual
salvation of man. He was now more than ever separated from the
rest of sentient beings. Even his own animal nature was regarded
with contempt, the immortality of his soul being the only object
of religious interest. "It would seem," says Dr. Arnold, "as if
the primitive Christian, by laying so much stress upon a future
life in contradistinction to this life, and placing the lower
creatures out of the pale of hope, placed them at the same time
out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for
this utter disregard of animals in the light of our
fellow-creatures."[107] St. Paul asks with scorn, "Doth God take
care for oxen?"[108] No creed in Christendom teaches kindness to
animals as a dogma of religion.[109] In the Middle Ages various
councils of the Church declared hunting unlawful for the
clergy;[110] but the obvious reason for this prohibition was its
horror of bloodshed,[111] not any consideration {507} for the
animals. Mr. Mauleverer in Sir Arthur Helps' 'Talk about Animals
and their Masters,' says, "Upon a moderate calculation, I think I
have heard, in my time, 1320 sermons; and I do not recollect that
in any one of them I ever heard the slightest allusion made to
the conduct of men towards animals."[112] Nor is there any such
allusion in most treatises on Ethics which base their teachings
upon distinctly Christian tenets. The kindest words, I think,
which from a Christian point of view have been said about animals
have generally come from Protestant sectarians, Quakers and
Methodists,[113] whereas Roman Catholic writers--with a few
exceptions[114]--when they deal with the subject at all, chiefly
take pains to show that animals are entirely destitute of rights.
Brute beasts, says Father Rickaby, cannot have any rights for the
reason that they have no understanding and therefore are not
persons. We have no duties of any kind to them, as neither to
stocks and stones; we only have duties _about_ them. We must not
harm them when they are our neighbour's property, we must not vex
and annoy them _for_ sport, because it disposes him who does so
to inhumanity towards his own species. But there is no shadow of
evil resting on the practice of causing pain to brutes _in_
sport, where the pain is not the sport itself, but an incidental
concomitant of it. Much more in all that conduces to the
sustenance of man may we give pain to animals, and we are not
"bound to any anxious care to make this pain as little as may be.
Brutes are as _things_ in our regard: so far as they are useful
to us, they exist for us, not for themselves; and we do right in
using them unsparingly for our need and convenience, though not
for our wantonness."[115] According to another {508} modern
Catholic writer the infliction of suffering upon an animal is not
only justifiable, but a duty, "when it confers a certain, a solid
good, however small, on the spiritual nature of man."[116] Pope
Pius IX. refused a request for permission to form in Rome a
Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals on the professed
ground that it was a theological error to suppose that man owes
any duty to an animal.[117]
[Footnote 107: Arnold, quoted by Evans, in _Popular Science
Monthly_, xlv. 639.]
[Footnote 108: _1 Corinthians_, ix. 9.]
[Footnote 109: The Manichæans prohibited all killing of animals
(Baur, _Das Manichäische Religionssystem_, p. 252 _sqq._); but
Manichæism did not originate on Christian ground (Harnack,
'Manichæism,' in _Encyclopædia Britannica_, xv. 485; _supra_,
ii. 312).]
[Footnote 110: Le Grand d'Aussy, _Histoire de la vie privée des
François_, i. 394 _sq._]
[Footnote 111: _Supra_, i. 381 _sq._]
[Footnote 112: Helps, _Some Talk about Animals and their
Masters_, p. 20. _Cf._ Mrs. Jameson, _Common-Place Book of
Thoughts_, p. 212.]
[Footnote 113: See Gurney, _Views and Practices of the Society of
Friends_, p. 392 _sq._ n. 8; Richmond, 'Sermon on the Sin of
Cruelty to the Brute Creation,' in _Methodist Magazine_ (London),
xxx. 490 _sqq._; Chalmers, 'Cruelty to Animals,' in _Methodist
Magazine_ (New York), ix. 259 _sqq._]
[Footnote 114: See de la Roche-Fontenelles, _L'Église et la pitié
envers animaux_, _passim_.]
[Footnote 115: Rickaby, _Moral Philosophy_, p. 248 _sqq._ See
also Addis and Arnold, _Catholic Dictionary_, p. 33; Clarke,
'Cruelty to Animals,' in _The Month and Catholic Review_, xxv.
401 _sqq._; Hedley, 'Dr. Mivart on Faith and Science,' in _Dublin
Review_, ser. iii. vol. xviii. 418.]
[Footnote 116: Clarke, in _The Month and Catholic Review_,
xxv. 406.]
[Footnote 117: Cobbe, _Modern Rack_, p. 6.]
It is not only theological moralists that maintain that animals
can have no rights and that abstinence from wanton cruelty is a
duty not to the animal but to man. This view has been shared by
Kant[118] and by many later philosophers.[119] So also the legal
protection of animals has often been vindicated merely on the
ground that cruelty to animals might breed cruelty to men or
shows a cruel disposition of mind,[120] or that it wounds the
sensibilities of other people.[121] In 'Parliamentary History and
Review' for 1825-1826 it is stated that no reason can be
assigned for the interference of the legislator in the protection
of animals unless their protection be connected, either directly
or remotely, with some advantage to man.[122] The Bill for the
abolition of bear-baiting and other cruel practices was expressly
propounded on the ground that nothing was more conducive to crime
than such sports, that they led the lower orders to gambling,
that they educated them for thieves, that they gradually trained
them up to bloodshed and murder.[123] The criminal code of the
German Empire, again, imposes a fine upon any person "who
spitefully tortures or cruelly ill-treats beasts, {509} either
publicly or in a manner to create scandal"[124]--in other words,
he is punished, not because he puts the animal to pain, but
because his conduct is offensive to his fellow men.
[Footnote 118: Kant, _Metaphysische Anfangungsgründe der
Tugendlehre_, § 16 _sq._, pp. 106, 108.]
[Footnote 119: _E.g._, Alexander, _Moral Order and Progress_,
p. 281; Ritchie, _Natural Rights_, p. 110 _sq._]
[Footnote 120: Hommel, quoted by von Hippel, _Die Thielquälerei
in der Strafgesetzgebung_, p. 110. Tissot, _Le droit pénal_, i.
17. Lasson, _System der Rechtsphilosophie_, p. 548
_sq._]
[Footnote 121: Lasson, _op. cit._ p. 548. von Hippel, _op. cit._
p. 125.]
[Footnote 122: _Parliamentary History and Review_, 1825-6, p. 761.]
[Footnote 123: _Ibid._ p. 546.]
[Footnote 124: _Strafgesetzbuch_, § 360 (13).]
Indifference to animal suffering has been a characteristic of
public opinion in European countries up to quite modern times.
Only a little more than a hundred years ago Thomas Young declared
in his 'Essay on Humanity to Animals' that he was sensible of
laying himself open to no small portion of ridicule in offering
to the public a book on such a subject.[125] Till the end of the
eighteenth century and even later cock-fighting was a very
general amusement among the English and Scotch, entering into the
occupations of both the old and young. Travellers agreed with
coachmen that they were to wait a night if there was a cock-fight
in any town through which they passed. Schools had their
cock-fights; on Shrove Tuesday every youth took to the village
schoolroom a cock reared for his special use, and the
schoolmaster presided at the conflict.[126] Those who felt that
the practice required some excuse found it in the idea that the
race was to suffer this annual barbarity by way of punishment for
St. Peter's crime;[127] but the number of people who had any
scruples about the game cannot have been great considering that
even such a strong advocate of humanity to animals as Lawrence
had no decided antipathy to it.[128] Other pastimes indulged in
were dog-fighting, bull-baiting and badger-baiting; and in the
middle of the eighteenth century the bear-garden was described by
Lord Kames as one of the chief entertainments of the English,
though it was held in abhorrence by the French and "other polite
nations," being too savage an amusement to be relished {510} by
those of a refined taste.[129] As late as 1824 Sir Robert (then
Mr.) Peel argued strongly against the legal prohibition of
bull-baiting.[130]
[Footnote 125: Young, _Essay on Humanity to Animals_, p. 1.]
[Footnote 126: Roberts, _Social History of the People of the
Southern Counties of England_, p. 421 _sqq._ Rogers, _Social Life
in Scotland_, ii. 340. In 1856, when Roberts wrote his book,
cock-penance was still paid in some English grammar schools to
the master as a perquisite on Shrove Tuesday (Roberts, p. 423).]
[Footnote 127: Roberts, _op. cit._ p. 422.]
[Footnote 128: Lawrence, _Philosophical and Practical Treatise on
Horses_, ii. 12.]
[Footnote 129: Kames, _Essays on the Principles of Morality_, p. 7.]
[Footnote 130: Hansard, _Parliamentary Debates_, New Series,
x. 491 _sqq._]
About two years previously, however, humanity to animals had, for
the first time, become a subject of English legislation by the
Act which prevented cruel and improper treatment of cattle.[131]
This Act was afterwards followed by others which prohibited
bear-baiting, cock-fighting, and similar pastimes, as also
cruelty to domestic animals in general. In 1876 vivisection for
medical or scientific purposes was subjected to a variety of
restrictions, and since 1900 cases of ill-treatment of wild
animals in captivity may be dealt with under the Wild Animals in
Captivity Protection Act.[132] On the Continent cruelty to
animals was first prohibited by criminal law in Saxony, in
1838,[133] and subsequently in most other European states. But in
the South of Europe there are still countries in which the law is
entirely silent on the subject.[134]
[Footnote 131: _Statutes of Great Britain and Ireland_, lxii. 403
_sqq._]
[Footnote 132: Stephen, _New Commentaries on the Laws of England_,
iv. 213 _sqq._]
[Footnote 133: von Hippel, _op. cit._ p. 1.]
[Footnote 134: _Ibid._ p. 90 _sq._]