The origin and development of the moral ideas

There is no difficulty in explaining these facts. The following statement made by Mr. Romilly with reference to the Solomon Islanders has, undoubtedly, a much wider application:—“In the cases which call for punishment, the difficulties in the way of capturing the actual culprits are greater than any one, who has not been engaged in this disagreeable work, can imagine.”61 Though it may happen that a manslayer is abandoned by his own people,62 the system of blood-revenge more often seems to imply, not only that all the members of a group are engaged, more or less effectually, in the act of revenge, but that they mutually protect each other against the avengers. A homicide frequently provokes a war,63 in which family stands against family, clan against clan, or tribe against tribe. In such cases the whole group take upon themselves the deed of the perpetrator, and any of his fellows, because standing up for him, becomes a proper object of revenge. The guilt extends itself, as it were, in the eyes of the offended party. So, also, any person who lives on friendly terms with the offender, or is supposed to sympathise with him, is liable to arouse a feeling of resentment, and may consequently, in extreme cases, have to expiate his crime.

Moreover, because of the close relationship which exists between the members of the same group, the actual culprit will be mortified by any successful attack that the avengers make on his people, and, if he be dead, its painful and humiliating effects may still be supposed to reach his spirit. “When the offender himself is beyond the reach of direct attack,” says Mr. Wilkins, “it is not beneath a Bengali’s view to try to wound him through his children or other members of his family.”64 Among the South Slavonians, in a similar case, the avengers of blood first attempt to kill the father, brother, or grown-up son of the murderer, “so as to inflict upon him a very heavy and painful loss”; and only when this has been tried in vain, are more distant relatives attacked.65 The Bedouins of the Euphrates even prefer killing the chief man among the murderer’s relations within the second degree to taking his own life, on the principle, “You have killed my cousin, I will kill yours.”66 And the Californian Nishinam “consider that the keenest and most bitter revenge which a man can take is, not to slay the murderer himself, but his dearest friend.”67 In these instances vengeance is exacted with reference rather to the loss suffered by the survivors than to the injury committed against the murdered man, the culprit being subjected to a deprivation similar to that which he has inflicted himself.

So, also, among the Marea, if a commoner is slain by a nobleman, his death is not avenged directly on the slayer, but on some commoner who is subservient to him.68 If, again, among the Quianganes of Luzon, a noble is killed by a plebeian, another nobleman, of the kin of the murderer, must be killed, while the murderer himself is ignored.69 If, among the Igorrotes, a man slays a woman of another house, her nearest kinsman endeavours to slay a woman belonging to the household of the homicide, but to the guilty man himself he does nothing.70 In all these cases the culprit is not lost sight of; vengeance is invariably wreaked upon somebody connected with him. But any consideration of guilt or innocence is overshadowed by the blind subordination to that powerful rule which requires strict equivalence between injury and punishment—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—and which, when strained to the utmost, cannot allow the life of a man to be sacrificed for that of a woman, or the life of a nobleman to be sacrificed for that of a commoner, or the life of a commoner to expiate the death of a noble. This rule, as we shall see later on, is not suggested by revenge itself, but is due to the influence of other factors which intermingle with this feeling, and help, with it, to determine the action.

Nevertheless, the strong tendency to discrimination which characterises resentment, is not wholly lost even behind the veil of common responsibility. Mr. Howitt has come to the conclusion that, among the Australian Kurnai, if a homicide has been committed by an alien tribe, the feud “cannot be satisfied but by the death of the offender,” although it is carried on, not against him alone, but against the whole group of which he is a member.71 It is only “if they fail to secure the guilty person” that the natives of Western Victoria consider it their duty to kill one of his nearest relatives.72 Concerning the West Australian aborigines, Sir George Grey observes, “The first great principle with regard to punishments is, that all the relations of a culprit, in the event of his not being found, are implicated in his guilt; if, therefore, the principal cannot be caught, his brother or father will answer nearly as well, and failing these, any other male or female relative, who may fall into the hands of the avenging party.”73 Among the Papuans of the Tami Islands, revenge may be taken on some other member of the murderer’s family only if it is absolutely impossible to catch the guilty person himself.74 That the blood-revenge is in the first place directed against the malefactor, and against some relative of his only if he cannot be found out, is expressly stated with reference to various peoples in different parts of the world;75 and it is probable that much more to the same effect might have been discovered, if the observers of savage life had paid more attention to this

particular aspect of the matter. Among the Fuegians, the most serious riots take place when a manslayer, whom some one wishes to punish, takes refuge with his relations or friends.76 Von Martius remarks of the Brazilian Indians in general that, even when an intertribal war ensues from the committing of homicide, the nearest relations of the killed person endeavour, if possible, to destroy the culprit himself and his family.77 With reference to the Creek Indians, Mr. Hawkins says that though, if a murderer flies and cannot be caught, they will take revenge upon some innocent individual belonging to his family, they are “generally earnest of themselves, in their endeavours to put the guilty to death.”78 The same is decidedly the case in those parts of Morocco where the blood-feud still prevails.

Not only has Dr. Steinmetz failed to prove his hypothesis that revenge was originally “undirected,” but this hypothesis is quite opposed to all the most probable ideas we can form with regard to the revenge of early man. For my own part I am convinced that we may obtain a good deal of knowledge about the primitive condition of the human race, but not by studying modern savages only. I have dealt with this question at some length in another place,79 and wish now merely to point out that those general physical and psychical qualities which are not only common to all races of mankind, but which are shared by them with the animals most allied to man, may be assumed to have been present also in the earlier stages of human development. Now, concerning revenge among animals, more especially among monkeys, many anecdotes have been told by trustworthy authorities, and in every case the revenge has been clearly directed against the offender.