Читать книгу The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas - Edward Westermarck - Страница 115

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IN the last two chapters we have only been concerned with the statement of facts; we shall now make an attempt to explain those facts. What is the source of the moral commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”? And what is the cause of its original narrowness and of its subsequent extension?

Mr. Spencer suggests that the taking of life was regarded as a wrong done to the family of the dead man or to the society of which he was a member, before it came to be conceived of as a wrong done to the murdered man himself.1 But considering the mutual sympathy which prevails in small savage communities, it seems extremely probable that sympathetic resentment felt on account of the injury suffered by the victim has from the beginning been a potent cause of the condemnation of homicide. Savages, no less than civilised mankind, practically regard a man’s life as his highest good. Whatever opinions may be held about the existence after death, whatever blessings may be supposed to await the disembodied soul, nobody likes to be hurried into that existence by another’s will. According to early beliefs, the soul of a murdered man is furious with the person who slew him, and finds no rest until his death has been avenged.2 His friends and comrades pity his fate and feel resentment on his behalf; whereas, in a state of culture where sympathy is restricted to a narrow group of people, no such resentment will be felt if the victim is a member of another group. On the contrary, when he is regarded as an actual or potential enemy, or when the slaying of him is taken for a test of courage, the manslayer will be applauded by his own people, and his deed will be styled good or meritorious. In some cases superstition, also, is an encouragement to extra-tribal homicide. The Kukis believe that, in paradise, all the enemies whom a man has killed will be in attendance on him as slaves.3 A similar belief partly lies at the bottom of the custom of head-hunting;4 whilst, according to other notions, the soul of the man whose head is procured is transformed into a guardian spirit.5 A Kayan chief said of the custom in question, “It brings us blessings, plentiful harvests, and keeps off sickness and pains; those who were once our enemies, hereby become our guardians, our friends, our benefactors.”6 Now, progress in civilisation is generally marked by an expansion of the altruistic sentiment; and this largely explains why the prohibition of homicide has come to embrace more and more comprehensive circles of men, and finally, in the most advanced cases, the whole human race.

1 Spencer, Principles of Ethics, ii.

2 See infra, on Blood-revenge.

3 Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 46.

4 Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak, ii. 141.

5 Wilken, Het animisme bij de volken van den Indischen Archipel, p. 124.

6 Furness, Home-Life of Borneo Head-Hunters, p. 59.

But whilst homicide is censured as a wrong done to the person slain, it is at the same time viewed as an injury inflicted upon the survivors. It deprived his friends of his company, his family and community of a useful member. In Arabia, when a man was killed, his tribesmen, instead of mentioning his name, used to say, “Our blood has been spilt.”7 According to Lafitau, the loss of a single person seemed to the North American Indians a subject or great regret, because it weakened the family.8 Among the Basutos, again, murder is condemned “as a violation of the sacred rights of a father, who is deprived of the services of his son, or of a widow and orphans, who are left without support.”9 Especially when a person is considered more or less the property of another, the taking of his life is largely looked upon as an offence against the owner. Mr. Warner states of the Kafirs, “All homicide must … be atoned for; the principle assumed being, that the persons of individuals are the property of the Chief, and that having been deprived of the life of a subject, he must be compensated for it.”10 We meet with a somewhat similar notion in the history of English legislation. In his book on the Commonwealth of England, Thomas Smith observes, “Attempting to impoison a man, or laying a waite to kill a man, though hee wound him dangerously, yet if death follow not, it is no fellony by the law of England, for the Prince hath lost no man, and life ought to be giuen we say for life only.”11 In the Middle Ages homicide was conceived as a breach of the “King’s peace”; and both before and afterwards it has been stigmatised as a disturbance of public tranquillity and an outrage on public safety. In the Anglo-Saxon wer and wite we find a clear distinction between the private and public aspects of homicide.12

7 Robertson Smith, Marriage and Kinship in Early Arabia, p. 26.

8 Lafitau, Mœurs des sauvages ameriquains, ii. 163.

9 Casalis, Basutos, p. 224 sq.

10 Warner, in Maclean, Compendium of Kafir Laws, p. 60 sq.

11 Thomas Smith, Common-wealth of England, p. 194 sq.

12 Cf. Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law before the Time of Edward I. i. 48.

A manslayer not only causes a loss to the group which he deprives of a member, but he also may give trouble to his own people, who, in consequence, disapprove of his act. Among the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, says Mr. Bridges, “many things conspire to make the shedding of blood a fearful thing. A murderer imperils all his friends and connections more or less, and consequently estranges them from himself. This state of things is the greatest safeguard to human life we can conceive.”13 Among the Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, “the mere killing of an individual is looked upon as a small affair, provided that he does not belong to the tribe, or to another near tribe with which it is at peace, for in the latter case it might result in war.”14

13 Bridges, in South American Missionary Magazine, xiii. 153.

14 Scott Robertson, Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, p. 194.

We have still to notice the common idea that a manslayer is unclean. The ghost of the victim persecutes him, or actually cleaves to him like a miasma; and he must undergo rites of purification to get rid of the infection. Until this is done, he is among many peoples regarded as a source of danger, and is consequently cut off from free intercourse with his fellows.

Among the Ponka Indians Mr. Dorsey found the belief that a murderer is surrounded by the ghosts, who keep up a constant whistling; that he can never satisfy his hunger, though he eat much food; and that he must not be allowed to roam at large lest high winds arise.15 Of the warriors among certain North American Indians Adair wrote that, “as they reckon they are become impure by shedding human blood,” they hasten to observe a fast of three days.16 Among the Natchez, according to Charlevoix, “those who for the first time have made a prisoner or taken off a scalp, must, for a month, abstain from seeing their wives, and from eating flesh. They imagine, that if they should fail in this, the souls of those whom they have killed or burnt, would effect their death, or that the first wound they should receive would be mortal; or at least, that they should never gain any advantage over their enemies.”17 The Kafirs and Bechuanas practise various ceremonies of purification after their fights.18 The Basutos say, “Human blood is heavy, it prevents him who has shed it from running away.”19 They consider it necessary that, on return from battle, “the warriors should rid themselves, as soon as possible, of the blood they have shed, or the shades of their victims would pursue them incessantly and disturb their slumbers”; hence they go in full armour to the nearest stream, and, as a rule, at the moment they enter the water a diviner, placed higher up, throws some purifying substances into the current.20 Among the Bantu Kavirondo, “when a man has killed an enemy in warfare he shaves his head on his return home, and his friends rub ‘medicine’ (generally the dung of goats) over his body to prevent the spirit of the deceased from worrying the man by whom he has been slain.”21 Among the Ja-luo, a warrior who has slain an enemy not only shaves his hair, but, after entering the village, prepares a big feast to propitiate the man he has killed so that his ghost may not give trouble.22 Among the Wagogo of German East Africa, the father of a young warrior who has shed blood gives to his son a goat “to clean his sword.”23 After the slaughter of the Midianites, those Israelites who had killed any one, or touched the slain, had to remain outside the camp for seven days, purifying themselves and everything in their possession either by water, or fire, or both.24 So, also, if a person had been slain in the land of Israel, and the perpetrator of the deed could not be detected, the elders of the city which was next unto the slain had to undergo a ceremony of purification in order to rid the city of “the guilt of innocent blood.25 According to the Laws of Manu, a person who has unintentionally killed a Brâhmana shall make a hut in the forest and dwell in it during twelve years;26 in order to remove the guilt he shall throw himself thrice headlong into a blazing fire,27 or walk against the stream along the whole course of the river Sarasvatî,28 or shave off all his hair.29 The ancient Greeks believed that one who had suffered a violent end, when newly dead, was angry with the author of his death.30 The blood-guilty individual, as though infected with a miasma, shunned all contact and conversation with other people, and avoided entering their dwellings.31 Even the involuntary manslayer had to leave the country for some time; according to Plato’s ‘Laws,’ he “must go out of the way of his victim for the entire period of a year, and not let himself be found in any spot which was familiar to him throughout the country.”32 Nor must he return to his land until sacrifice had been offered and ceremonies of purification performed.33

15 Dorsey, ‘Siouan Cults,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. xi. 420.

16 Adair, History of the American Indians, p. 388.

17 Charlevoix, Voyage to North America, ii. 203.

18 Arbousset and Daumas, Exploratory Tour to the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, p. 394 sqq. Alberti, De Kaffers aan de Zuidkust van Afrika, p. 104.

19 Casalis, op. cit. p. 309.

20 Ibid. p. 258.

21 Johnston, Uganda Protectorate, ii. 743 sq.

22 Ibid. ii. 794.

23 Cole, ‘Notes on the Wagogo of German East Africa,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxii. 321.

24 Numbers, xxxi. 19 sqq.

25 Deuteronomy, xxi. 1 sq.

26 Laws of Manu, xi. 73.

27 Ibid. xi. 74.

28 Ibid. xi. 78.

29 Ibid. xi. 79.

30 Plato, Leges, ix. 865.

31 Müller, Dissertations on the Eumenides of Æschylus, p. 103. Aeschylus says (Eumenides, 448 sqq.) it is the custom that a murderer should not speak anything until he has been sprinkled with the spurted blood of a slain sucking-pig. Cf. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, iv. 700 sqq.; Aristotle, De republica Atheniensium, 57.

32 Plato, Leges, ix. 865.

33 Demosthenes, Contra Aristocratem, 71 sqq., p. 643 sq. Müller, Dissertations, p. 106 sq. Frazer, Golden Bough, i. 341. On the uncleanness of manslayers see also Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. 433 sq.; Frazer, op. cit. i. 331 sqq.

The state of uncleanness incurred by the shedding of human blood does not intrinsically involve moral guilt. As appears from many of the instances just referred to, it results not only from the murder of a tribesman, but from so meritorious a deed as the slaying of a foe. In Nukahiva, for instance, a man who has killed the highest person, or one of the highest, among the enemy, is tabooed for ten days, during which he is not allowed to hold intercourse with his wife nor to meddle with fire; but, at the same time, he is treated with distinction, and presents of pigs are brought to him.34 On the other hand, there can be no doubt that in various cases the polluting effect attributed to manslaughter has exercised some influence upon the moral judgment of the act. Whenever the commission of an act of homicide has any tendency at all to call forth moral blame, the disapproval of the deed will easily be enhanced by the spiritual danger attending on it, as also by the inconvenient restrictions laid on the tabooed manslayer and the ceremonies of purification to which he is subject. The deprivations which he has to undergo come to be looked upon in the light of a punishment, and the rights of cleansing as a means of removing guilt. The taboo rules which, among the Omahas, a murderer whose life was spared had to observe for a period varying from two to four years are spoken of by Mr. Dorsey as his “punishment,” and this seems also partly to have been the native point of view. The murderer sometimes wandered at night, crying, and lamenting his offence, until, at the end of the designated period, the kindred of his victim heard his crying, and said:—“It is enough. Begone, and walk among the crowd. Put on moccasins and wear a good robe.”35 Moreover, the notion of a persecuting ghost may be replaced by the notion of an avenging god. Confusions are common in the world of mystery; doings or functions attributed to one being are afterwards transferred to another—this is a rule of which many important examples will be given in following chapters. The Jbâla of Northern Morocco do not nowadays believe in ghosts, yet they regard a person who has shed human blood to be in some degree unclean for the rest of his life. Poison oozes out from underneath his nails; hence anybody who drinks the water in which he has washed his hands will fall dangerously ill. The meat of an animal which he has killed is difficult to digest, and so is any food eaten in his company. If he comes to a place where people are digging a well, the water will at once run away. He is said to be mejnûn, haunted by jnûn (jinn), a race of beings entirely distinct from men, living or dead. The Greenlanders believed that an abortion or a child born under concealment was transformed into an evil spirit called ángiaq, for the purpose of avenging the crime.36 In Eastern Central Africa, “after killing a slave, the master is afraid of Chilope. This means that he will become emaciated, lose his eye-sight, and ultimately die a miserable death. He therefore goes to his chief and gives him a certain fee (in cloth, or slaves, or such legal tenders), and says, ‘Get me a charm (luasi), because I have slain a man.’ When he has used this charm, which may be either drunk or administered in a bath, the danger passes away.”37 Among the Omahas the ghost of the murdered man was not lost sight of; the murderer “was obliged to pitch his tent about a quarter of a mile from the rest of the tribe when they were going on the hunt lest the ghost of his victim should raise a high wind, which might cause damage.” But at the same time his deed was considered offensive to Wakanda; no one wished to eat with him, for they said, “If we eat with whom Wakanda hates, for his crime, Wakanda will hate us.”38 In the Chinese books there are numerous instances of persons haunted by the souls of their victims on their death-bed, and in most of these cases the ghosts state expressly that they are avenging themselves with the special authorisation of Heaven.39 The Greek belief in the Erinys of a murdered man no doubt originated in the earlier notion of a persecuting ghost, whose anger or curses in later times were personified as an independent spirit.40 And the transformation went further still: the Erinyes were represented as the ministers of Zeus, who by punishing the murderer carried out his divine will. Zeus was considered the originator of the rites of purification; when visited with madness by the Erinyes, Ixion appealed to Zeus Hikesios, and at the altar of Zeus Meilichios Theseus underwent purification for the shedding of kindred blood.41 Originally, as it seems, only the murder of a kinsman was an offence against Zeus and under the ban of the Erinyes, but later on their sphere of action was expanded, and all bloodshed, if the victim had any rights at all within the city, became a sin which needed purification.42 Uncleanness was thus transformed into spiritual impurity. When the pollution with which a manslayer is tainted is regarded as merely the work of a ghost or of some spirit-substitute who, like the Moorish jnûn, has nothing to do with the administration of justice, it may be devoid of all moral significance in spite of the dread it inspires; but the case is different when it comes to be conceived of as a divine punishment, or as a sin-pollution in the eyes of the supreme god. Such a transformation of ideas could hardly take place unless the act, considered polluting, were by itself apt to evoke moral disapproval. But it is obvious that the gravity of the offence is increased by the religious aspect it assumes.

34 von Langsdorf, Voyages and Travels, i. 133.

35 Dorsey, ‘Omaha Sociology,’ in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. iii. 369.