The origin and development of the moral ideas

WE have found that among mankind at large there is a moral rule which forbids people to kill members of their own society. We shall now see that the stringency of this rule is subject to variations, depending on the special relationship in which persons stand to one another or on their social status, and that there are cases to which it does not apply at all.

Owing to the regard which children are expected to feel for their parents, parricide is considered the most aggravated form of murder. Nowhere have parents been more venerated by their children than among the nations of archaic culture, and nowhere has parricide been regarded with greater horror. In China it is punished with the most ignominious of all capital punishments, the so-called “cutting into small pieces”; and in some instances, when the crime has occurred in a district, in addition to all punishments inflicted on persons, the wall of the city where the deed was committed is pulled down in parts, or modified in shape, a round corner is substituted for a square one, or a gate removed to a new situation, or even closed up altogether.1 In Corea the parricide is burned to death.2 Among the ancient Egyptians, we are told, he was sentenced to be lacerated with sharpened reeds, and after being thrown on thorns he was burned.3 In Exodus we read of the “smiting” of parents, but parricide is not expressly mentioned, perhaps because the Hebrew legislator, like Solon at Athens,4 did not think it possible that any one could be guilty of so unnatural a barbarity.5 Herodotus states that the same notion was held by the ancient Persians, who said that no one ever yet killed his own father or mother, and that all cases of so-called parricide if carefully examined, would be found to have been committed by supposititious children or those born in adultery, it being beyond the bounds of probability that a true father should be murdered by his own son.6 Plato says in his ‘Laws’:—“If a

man could be slain more than once, most justly would he who in a fit of passion has slain father or mother undergo many deaths. How can he whom, alone of all men, even in defence of his life, and when about to suffer death at the hands of his parents, no law will allow to kill his father or his mother who are the authors of his being, and whom the legislator will command to endure any extremity rather than do this—how can he, I say, lawfully receive any other punishment?”7 At Athens parricides were the only persons accused of murder who were not allowed the chance of escaping before sentence was passed, but were instantly arrested.8 According to Roman Law, a committer of parricidium was not subjected to any of the regular modes of capital punishment, but for “the most execrable of crimes” was provided “the most strange of punishments.” The criminal was sewn up in a leathern sack with a cur, a cock, a viper, and an ape, and, when cooped up in this fearful prison, was hurled into the sea, or into some neighbouring river.9 But by the term parricidium was not understood the murder of a parent only.

According to the ‘Lex Pompeia de parricidiis,’ it included the murder of any of the following persons: an ascendant or descendant in any degree,10 a brother or sister, an uncle or aunt, a cousin, a husband or wife, a bridegroom or bride, a father- or mother-in-law, a son- or daughter-in-law, a step-parent or step-child, a patron; and Mommsen suggests that in earlier times it had a still wider significance, being applied to intentional homicide in general.11 But whilst the punishment just referred to was in other cases of parricidium replaced by banishment, it was, during the Empire at least, actually inflicted upon him who murdered an ascendant.12

Whilst Christianity generally increased the sanctity of human life, it could add nothing to the horror with which parricide was regarded by the ancients. The Church punished it more severely than ordinary murder,13 and so did, at least in Latin countries, the secular authorities.14 In France, even to this day, a person convicted of parricide is “conduit sur le lieu de l’exécution en chemise, nu-pieds, et la tête couverte d’un voile noir”;15 and whilst meurtre is excusable if provoked by grave personal violence or by an attempt to break into a dwelling-house by day, parricide is never excusable under any circumstances.16

As regards the feelings with which ordinary parricide is looked upon by uncivilised peoples, direct information is almost entirely wanting. It is rarely mentioned at all, no doubt because it is very unusual.17 Among the Kafirs of Natal, though murder is generally punished by a fine, death is inflicted on him who kills a parent.18 Among the Ossetes a parricide draws upon himself a fearful punishment: he is shut up in his house with all his possessions, surrounded by the populace and burned alive.19 To judge from the respect which, among the majority of uncivilised peoples, children are considered to owe to their parents, it seems very probable that the murder of a father or a mother is generally condemned by them as a particularly detestable form of homicide. But to this rule there is an important exception. According to a custom prevalent among various savages or barbarians, a parent who is worn out with age or disease is abandoned or killed.

Hearne states that, among the Northern Indians, one half at least of the aged persons of both sexes, when no longer capable of walking, are left alone to starve and perish of want.20 Among the Californian Gallinomero, when the father can no longer feebly creep to the forest to gather his back-load of fuel or a basket of acorns, and is only a burden to his sons, “the poor old wretch is not infrequently thrown down on his back and securely held while a stick is placed across his throat, and two of them seat themselves on the ends of it until he ceases to breathe.”21 The custom of killing or abandoning old parents has been noticed among several other North American tribes,22 the natives of Brazil,23 various South Sea Islanders,24 a few Australian tribes,25 and some peoples in Africa26 and Asia.27 According to ancient writers, it occurred formerly among many Asiatic28 and European nations, including the Vedic people29 and peoples of Teutonic extraction.30 As late as the fifth or sixth century it was the custom among the Heruli for relatives to kindle a funeral pile for their old folks, although a stranger was employed to give the death wound.31 And there is an old English tradition of “the Holy Mawle, which they fancy hung behind the church door, which when the father was seaventie, the sonne might fetch to knock his father in the head, as effete and of no more use.”32

However cruel this custom may appear to be, something is certainly to be said in its favour. It is particularly common among nomadic hunting tribes, owing to the hardships of life and the inability of decrepit persons to keep up in the march. Mr. Morgan observes that, whilst “among the roving tribes of the wilderness the old and helpless were frequently abandoned and, in some cases, hurried out of existence as an act of greater kindness than desertion,” this practice was unknown among the Iroquois, who “resided in permanent villages, which afforded a refuge for the aged.”33 With reference to certain tribes of Western Victoria, Mr. Dawson remarks that the old people are a burden to the tribe, and, should any sudden attack be made by an enemy, the most liable to be captured, in which case they would probably be tortured and put to a lingering death.34 Moreover, in times when the food-supply is insufficient to support all the members of a community, it is more reasonable that the old and useless should have to perish than the young and vigorous.