The origin and development of the moral ideas

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