In the estimate of life a distinction is made not only between freemen and slaves, but between different classes of freemen. Among certain peoples a person who kills a chief is punished with death, though murder is not generally a capital offence.81 Where the system of compensation prevails, the blood-price very frequently varies according to the station or rank of the victim.82 Among the Rejangs of Sumatra the compensation for the murder of a superior chief is five hundred dollars, for that of an inferior chief two hundred and fifty dollars; for that of a common person, man or boy, eighty dollars; for that of a common person, woman or girl, one hundred and fifty dollars; for the legitimate child or wife of a superior chief, two hundred and fifty dollars.83 The body of every Ossetian has a settled value in the eyes of the judges, which seems to be fixed by public opinion; thus the father of a family bears a higher value than an unmarried man, and a noble is rated at twice as much as an ordinary freeman.84 In Eastern Tibet the murderer of a man of the upper class is fined 120 bricks of tea, the murderer of a middle-class man only 80, and so on down through the social scale, the life of a beggar being valued at a nominal amount only; but if the victim was a lama, the murderer has to pay a much higher price, possibly 300 bricks.85 According to the doctrine of modern Buddhism, “when the life of a man is taken, the demerit increases in proportion to the merit of the person slain.”86 The laws of the Brets and Scots estimated the life of the king of Scots at a thousand cows; that of an earl’s son, or a thane, at a hundred cows; that of a villein, at sixteen cows.87 A similar system prevailed among the Celtic peoples generally,88 as also among the Teutons. A man’s wergeld, or life-price, varied according to his rank, birth, or office; and so minutely was it graduated, that a great part of many Teutonic laws was taken up by provisions fixing its amount in different cases.89 In English laws of the Norman age the wer of a villanus is still only reckoned at £4, whilst that of the homo plene nobilis is £25.90

The magnitude of the crime, however, may depend not only on the rank of the victim, but on the rank of the manslayer as well.91 Among the Philippine Islanders, “murder committed by a slave was punished with death—committed by a person of rank, was indemnified by payments to the injured family.”92 In Fijian estimation, says Mr. Williams, offences “are light or grave according to the rank of the offender. Murder by a chief is less heinous than a petty larceny committed by a man of low rank.”93 Among the Ew̔e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast, “in cases of murder and manslaughter, if the homicide be of rank superior to the person killed, he pays the compensation demanded by the family of the latter, or, in default of payment, forfeits his own life. If the homicide be of equal rank with the person killed, the family of the deceased have the right to demand his life, though compensation is usually accepted; but when he is lower in rank his life is nearly always forfeited.”94 Very similar rules prevail among the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast.95 Among the Marea, if a nobleman kills another nobleman, the family of the deceased generally take revenge on him; whereas, if a commoner kills a nobleman, he is not only executed himself, but his property is confiscated and his nearest relatives become subject to the murdered man’s family.96 According to the religious law of Brahmanism, the enormity of all crimes depends on the caste of him who commits them, and on the caste of him against whom they are committed.97 If a Brâhmana slays a Brâhmana, the king shall brand him on the forehead with a heated iron and banish him from his realm, but if a man of a lower caste murders a Brâhmana, he shall be punished with death and the confiscation of all his property.98 If such a person slays a man of equal or lower caste, other suitable punishments shall be inflicted upon him.99 A fine of a thousand cows is the penalty for slaying a Kshatriya, that of a hundred for slaying a Vaisya, and that of ten cows only for slaying a Sûdra.100 In Rome, also, at a certain period of its history, the offence was magnified in proportion to the insignificance of the offender. During the Republic there was no law sanctioning such a distinction, with reference to crimes committed by free citizens; but from the beginning of the Empire, the citizens were divided into privileged classes and commonalty—uterque ordo and plebs—and, whilst a commoner who was guilty of murder was punished with death, a murderer belonging to the privileged classes was generally punished with deportatio only.101 In the Middle Ages a similar privilege was granted by Italian and Spanish laws to manslayers of noble birth.102

In a society which is divided into different classes, persons belonging to a higher class are naturally apt to sympathise more with their equals than with their inferiors. An injury inflicted on one of the former tends to arouse in them a higher degree of sympathetic resentment than a similar injury inflicted on one of the latter. So, also, their resentment towards the criminal will, ceteris paribus, be more intense if he is a person of low rank than if he is one of themselves. Where the superior class, as was originally the case everywhere, are the leaders of such a society, their feelings will find expression in its customs and laws, and thus moral distinctions will arise which are readily recognised by the common people also, owing to the admiration with which they look up to those above them. But in a progressive society this state of things will not last. The different classes gradually draw nearer to each other. The once all-powerful class loses much of its exclusiveness, as well as of its importance and influence. Sympathy expands. In consequence, distinctions which were formerly sanctioned by custom and law come to be regarded as unjust prerogatives, worthy only of abolition. And it is at last admitted that each member of the society is born with an equal claim to the most sacred of all human rights, the right to live.

CHAPTER XIX

HUMAN SACRIFICE

Men are killed with a view to gratifying the desires of superhuman beings. We meet with human sacrifice in the past history of every so-called Aryan race.1 It occurred, at least occasionally, in ancient India, and several of the modern Hindu sects practised it even in the last century.2 There are numerous indications that it was known among the early Greeks.3 At certain times it prevailed in the Hellenic cult of Zeus;4 indeed, in the second century after Christ men seem still to have been sacrificed to Zeus Lycæus in Arcadia.5 To the historic age likewise belongs the sacrifice of the three Persian prisoners of war whom Themistocles was compelled to slay before the battle of Salamis.6 In Rome, also, human sacrifices, though exceptional, were not unknown in historic times.7 Pliny records that in the year 97 B.C. a decree forbidding such sacrifices was passed by the Roman Senate,8 and afterwards the Emperor Hadrian found it necessary to renew this prohibition.9 Porphyry asks, “Who does not know that to this day, in the great city of Rome, at the festival of Jupiter Latiaris, they cut the throat of a man?”10 And Tertullian states that in North Africa, even to the proconsulship of Tiberius, infants were publicly sacrificed to Saturn.11 Human sacrifices were offered by Celts,12 Teutons,13 and Slavs;14 by the ancient Semites15 and Egyptians;16 by the Japanese in early days;17 and, in the New World, by the Mayas18 and, to a frightful extent, by the Aztecs. “Scarcely any author,” says Prescott in his ‘History of the Conquest of Mexico,’ “pretends to estimate the yearly sacrifices throughout the empire at less than twenty thousand, and some carry the number as high as fifty thousand.”19 The same practice is imputed by Spanish writers to the Incas of Peru, and probably not without good reason.20 Before their rule, at all events, it was of frequent occurrence among the Peruvian Indians.21 It also prevailed, or still prevails, among the Caribs22 and some North American tribes;23 in various South Sea islands, especially Tahiti and Fiji;24 among certain tribes in the Malay Archipelago;25 among several of the aboriginal tribes of India;26 and very commonly in Africa.27

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

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

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

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