The origin and development of the moral ideas

ACCORDING to early custom, a person who takes the life of another may himself be killed by the relatives of his victim, or some other member of his family, clan, or tribe may be killed in his stead.1 The custom of blood-revenge is found among a host of existing savages and barbarians, and has long survived among many peoples who have reached a higher degree of culture.

We meet with blood-revenge in the midst of Japanese civilisation, not as a mere fact, but as a legally permitted custom. The avenger had only to observe certain prescribed formalities and regulations: there was a regular official to whom he must announce his resolve, and he must fix the time within which he would carry it out. The way in which the enemy was killed was of no importance, except that, even in ancient times, the man who had recourse to assassination was reprehensible.2 Among the Hebrews blood-revenge continued to exist during the periods of the Judges and Kings, and even later; under the Old Kingdom, says Wellhausen, “the administration of justice was at best but a scanty supplement to the practice of self-help.”3 It is a rule among all the Arabs that whoever sheds the blood of a man owes blood on that account to the family of the slain person.4 Says the Koran:—“O ye who believe!

Retaliation is prescribed for you for the slain.”5 In ancient Eran blood-revenge survived the establishment of tribunals.6 There is evidence left of its prevalence in early times among the Aryan population of India, though no mention is made in the Sûtras of blood revenge as an existing custom.7 Among the Greeks it was only in the post-Homeric age that it was given up as a fundamental principle, the avenger being transformed into an accuser.8 In Gaul and Ireland, though justice was administered by Druids or Brehons, their judgments seem to have been merely awards founded upon a submission to arbitration, the injured person being at liberty to take the law into his own hands and redress himself.9 In the preface to the Senchus Mór we read that retaliation prevailed in Erin before Patrick, and that Patrick brought forgiveness with him.10 Among the clans of Scotland, as is well known, the blood-feud has existed up to quite modern times; in the Catholic period even the Church recognised its power by leaving the right hand of male children unchristened, that it might deal the more unhallowed and deadly a blow to the enemy.11 In England it was at least theoretically possible down to the middle of the tenth century for a manslayer to elect to bear the feud of the kindred of the slain, instead of paying the wer;12 and long after the Conquest we still meet with a law against the system of private revenge.13 In Frisland, Lower Saxony, and parts of Switzerland, the blood-feud was practised as late as the sixteenth century.14 In Italy it prevailed extensively, even among the upper

Blood-revenge is regarded not only as a right, but as a duty. We are told that the holiest duty a West Australian native is called on to perform is that of avenging the death of his nearest relation. “Until he has fulfilled this task, he is constantly taunted by the old women; his wives, if he be married, would soon quit him; if he is unmarried, not a single young woman would speak to him; his mother would constantly cry, and lament she should ever have given birth to so degenerate a son; his father would treat him with contempt, and reproaches would constantly be sounded in his ear.”19 Among the tribes of Western Victoria “a man would consider it his bounden duty to kill his most intimate friend for the purpose of avenging a brother’s death, and would do so without the slightest hesitation.”20 In his description of the Eskimo about Behring Strait, Mr. Nelson states that blood-revenge is considered a sacred duty among all the Eskimo, a duty incumbent on the nearest male relative; if the son of the murdered man is an infant, it rests with him to seek revenge as soon as he attains puberty.21 Among the Dacotahs “no one can escape this law of retaliation; public opinion would brand with disgrace whoever fled under such circumstances.”22 The Brazilian aborigines consider it a moral obligation, a matter of conscience, for a son, a brother, or a nephew, to avenge the death of his relative.23 Speaking of the Guiana Indians, Sir E. F.

Im Thurn observes that, “in all primitive societies where there are no written laws and no supreme authority to enforce justice, such vengeance has been held as a sacred duty.”24 Confucius affirmed, in the strongest and most unrestricted terms, the duty of avenging the murder of a father or a brother.25 In Japan “the man who was weak enough not to try to put to death the murderer of his father or his lord, was obliged to flee into hiding; from that day, he was despised by his own companions.”26 The Lord said to Moses:—“The revenger of blood himself shall slay the murderer; when he meeteth him, he shall slay him.”27 A similar rule, as we have seen, is laid down in the Koran.28 The idea that blood-revenge is a sacred duty incumbent on the kindred of the deceased was probably held by all so-called Aryan peoples.29 It still prevails in Albania,30 Montenegro,31 and Corsica. “Not to take revenge is considered by the genuine Corsicans as degrading…. Any one who shrinks from avenging himself … is allowed no rest by his relations, and all his acquaintances upbraid him with pusillanimity.”32

The duty of blood-revenge is, in the first place, regarded as a duty to the dead, not merely because he has been deprived of his highest good, his life, but because his spirit is believed to find no rest after death until the injury has been avenged.33 The disembodied soul carries into its new existence an eager longing for revenge, and, till the crime has been duly expiated, hovers about the earth, molesting the manslayer or trying to compel its own relatives to take vengeance on him.