Chapter 5

54Walter,Das alte Wales, p. 138.

55Mackintosh,History of Civilisation in Scotland, ii. 279.

56Gregorovius,Wanderings in Corsica, i. 179.

57Gopčević,Oberalbanienund seine Liga, p. 324sqq.

58Miklosich, ‘Die Blutrache bei den Slaven,’ inDenkschriften der kaiserl. Akademie d. Wissensch. Philos.-histor. Classe, Vienna, xxxvi. 131, 146sq.Krauss,Sitte und Brauch der Südslaven, p. 39.

59Lago,Memorie sulla Dalmazia, ii. 90.

60Gopčević,op. cit.p. 325.

There is no difficulty in explaining these facts. The following statement made by Mr. Romilly with referenceto 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.”61Though it may happen that a manslayer is abandoned by his own people,62the 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,63in 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.”64Among 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.65The 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.”66And 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.”67In 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.68If, 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.69If, 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.70In 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 besacrificed 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.

61Romilly,Western Pacific and New Guinea, p. 81.Cf.Friedrichs, ‘Mensch und Person,’ inDas Ausland, 1891, p. 299.

62See,e.g., Scott Robertson,The Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, p. 440.

63Dr. Post’s statement (Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit, p. 156) that the blood-revenge “characterisirt sich … ganz und gar als ein Privatkrieg zwischen zwei Geschlechtsgenossenschaften,” however, is not quite correct in this unqualified form, as may be seen,e.g., from von Martius’s description of the blood-revenge of the Brazilian Indians,op. cit.i. 127sqq.

64Wilkins,Modern Hinduism, p. 411.

65Krauss,op. cit.p. 39.

66Blunt,Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, ii. 206sq.

67Powers,Tribes of California, p. 320.

68Munzinger,Ostafrikanische Studien, p. 243.

69Blumentritt, quoted by Spencer,Principles of Ethics, i. 370sq.

70Jagor,Travels in the Philippines, p. 213.

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.71It 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.72Concerning 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.”73Among 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.74That 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;75and it isprobable 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.76Von 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.77With 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.”78The same is decidedly the case in those parts of Morocco where the blood-feud still prevails.

71Fison and Howitt,Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 221.

72Dawson,Australian Aborigines, p. 71.

73Grey,Journals of Expeditions, ii. 239.

74Bamler, quoted by Kohler, inZeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss.xiv. 380.

75Riedel,De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 434 (natives of Wetter). Chalmers,Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 179. Kohler, inZeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss.xiv. 446 (some Marshall Islanders). Merker, quoted by Kohler,ibid.xv. 53sq.(Wadshagga). Brett,Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 357. Bernau,Missionary Labours in British Guiana, p. 57. Dall,Alaska, p. 416. Boas, ‘The Central Eskimo,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.vi. 582. Jacob,Leben der vorislâmischen Beduinen, p. 144. Kovalewsky,Coutume contemporaine, p. 248 (Ossetes). Popović,Recht und Gericht in Montenegro, p. 69; Lago,op. cit.ii. 90 (Montenegrines). Miklosich,loc. cit.p. 131 (Slavs). Wilda,Strafrecht der Germanen, p. 173sq.(ancient Teutons).

76Hyades and Deniker,Mission scientifique du Cap Horn, vii. 375.

77von Martius,op. cit.i. 128.

78Hawkins, inTrans. American Ethn. Soc.iii. 67.

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,79and 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 ofhuman 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.

79History of Human Marriage, p. 3sqq.

On the authority of a zoologist “whose scrupulous accuracy was known to many persons,” Darwin relates the following story:—“At the Cape of Good Hope an officer had often plagued a certain baboon, and the animal, seeing him approaching one Sunday for parade, poured water into a hole and hastily made some thick mud, which he skilfully dashed over the officer as he passed by, to the amusement of many bystanders. For long afterwards the baboon rejoiced and triumphed whenever he saw his victim.”80Prof. Romanes considers this to be a good instance of “what may be called brooding resentment deliberately preparing a satisfactory revenge.”81This, I think, is to put into the statement somewhat more than it really contains; but at all events it records a case of revenge, in the sense in which Dr. Steinmetz uses the word. The same may be said of other instances mentioned by so accurate observers as Brehm and Rengger in their descriptions of African and American monkeys, and of various examples of resentment in elephants and even in camels.82According to Palgrave, the camel possesses the passion of revenge, and in carrying it out “shows an unexpected degree of far-thoughted malice, united meanwhile with all the cold stupidity of his usual character.” The following instance, which occurred in a small Arabian town, deserves to be quoted, since it seems to have escaped the notice of the students of animal psychology. “A lad of about fourteen had conducted a large camel, laden with wood, from that very village to another at half an hour’s distance or so. As theanimal loitered or turned out of the way, its conductor struck it repeatedly, and harder than it seems to have thought he had a right to do. But not finding the occasion favourable for taking immediate quits, it ‘bode its time’; nor was that time long in coming. A few days later the same lad had to re-conduct the beast, but unladen, to his own village. When they were about half way on the road, and at some distance from any habitation, the camel suddenly stopped, looked deliberately round in every direction, to assure itself that no one was within sight, and, finding the road far and near clear of passers-by, made a step forward, seized the unlucky boy’s head in its monstrous mouth, and lifting him up in the air flung him down again on the earth with the upper part of his skull completely torn off, and his brains scattered on the ground.”83We are also told that elephants, though very sensitive to insults, are never provoked, even under the most painful or distracting circumstances, to hurt those from whom they have received no harm.84Sometimes animals show a remarkable degree of discrimination in finding out the proper object for their resentment. It is hardly surprising to read that a baboon, which was molested in its cage with a stick, tried to seize, not the stick, but the hand of its tormentor.85More interesting is the “revenge” which an elephant at Versailles inflicted upon a certain artist who had employed his servant to tease the animal by making a feint of throwing apples into its mouth:—“This conduct enraged the elephant; and, as if it knew that the painter was the cause of this teasing impertinence, instead of attacking the servant, it eyed the master, and squirted at him from its trunk such a quantity of water as spoiled the paper on which he was drawing.”86

80Darwin,Descent of Man, p. 69.

81Romanes,Animal Intelligence, p. 478.

82Brehm,Thierleben, i. 156.Idem,From North Pole to Equator, p. 305. Rengger (Naturgeschichte der Säugethiere von Paraguay, p. 52) gives the following information about the Cay:—“Fürchtet er … seinen Gegner, so nimmt er seine Zuflucht zur Verstellung, und sucht sich erst dann an ihm zu rächen, wenn er ihn unvermuthet überfallen kann. So hatte ich einen Cay, welcher mehrere Personen die ihn oft auf eine grobe Art geneckt hatten, in einem Augenblicke lass, wo sie im besten Vernehmen mit ihm zu sein glaubten. Nach verübter That kletterte er schnell auf einen hohen Balken, wo man ihm nicht beikommen konnte, und grinste schadenfroh den Gegenstand seiner Rache an.” See, moreover, Watson,The Reasoning Power in Animals, especially pp. 20, 21, 24, 156sq.; Romanes,op. cit.p. 387sqq.; but also Morgan,Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 401sq.

83Palgrave,Narrative of a Year’s Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia, i. 40.

84Watson,op. cit.p. 26sq.

85Aas,Sjaeleliv og intelligens hos Dyr, i. 72.

86Smellie,Philosophy of Natural History, i. 448.

I find it inconceivable that anybody, in the face of such facts, could still believe that the revenge of early man was at first essentially indiscriminating, and became gradually discriminating from considerations of social expediency. But by this I certainly do not mean to deny that violation of the “self-feeling” is an extremely common and powerful incentive to resentment. It is soamong savage87and civilised men alike; even dogs and monkeys get angry when laughed at. Nothing more easily rouses in us anger and a desire for retaliation, nothing is more difficult to forgive, than an act which indicates contempt, or disregard of our feelings. Long after the bodily pain of a blow has ceased, the mental suffering caused by the insult remains and calls for vengeance. This is an old truth often told. According to Seneca, “the greater part of the things which enrage us are insults, not injuries.”88Plutarch observes that, though different persons fall into anger for different reasons, yet in nearly all of them is to be found the idea of their being despised or neglected.89“Contempt,” says Bacon, “is that which putteth an edge upon anger, as much, or more, than the hurt itself.”90But, indeed, there is no need to resort to different principles in order to explain the resentment excited by different kinds of pain. In all cases revenge implies, primordially and essentially, a desire to cause pain or destruction in return for hurt suffered, whether the hurt be bodily or mental; and, if to this impulse is added a desire to enhance the wounded “self-feeling,” that does not interfere with the true nature of the primary feeling of revenge. There are genuine specimens of resentment without the co-operation of self-regarding pride;91and, on the other hand, the reaction of the wounded “self-feeling” is not necessarily, in the first place, concerned with the infliction of pain. If a person has written a bad book which is severely criticised, he may desire to repair his reputation by writing a better book, not by humiliating his critics; and if he attempts the latter rather than the former, he does so, not merely in order to enhance his “self-feeling,”but because he is driven on by revenge. Dr. Boas tells us that the British Columbia Indian, when his feelings are hurt, sits down or lies down sullenly for days without partaking of food, and that, “when he rises his first thought is, not how to take revenge, but to show that he is superior to his adversary.92

87Turner, ‘Ethnology of the Ungava District,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.xi. 270 (Hudson Bay Indians). Georgi,Russia, iii. 205 (Aleuts). Sarasin,Ergebnisse naturwiss. Forschungen auf Ceylon, iii. 537 (Veddahs). von Wrede,Reise in Ḥadhramaut, p. 157 (Bedouins). Winterbottom,Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, i. 211.

88Seneca,De ira, iii. 28.

89Plutarch,De cohibenda ira, 12.

90Bacon, ‘Essay LVII. Of Anger,’ inEssays, p. 514.

91Bain,Emotions and the Will, p. 177.

92Boas,First General Report on the Indians of British Columbia, read at the Newcastle-upon-Tyne meeting of the British Association, 1889, p. 19.

In the feeling of gratification which results from successful resentment, the pleasure of power or superiority also may form a very important element, but it is never the exclusive element.93As the satisfaction of every desire is accompanied by pleasure, so the satisfaction of the desire involved in resentment gives a pleasure by itself. The angry or revengeful man who succeeds in what he aims at, delights in the pain he inflicts for the very reason that he desired to inflict it.

93Cf.Ribot,op. cit.p. 221sq.

Revenge thus only forms a link in a chain of emotional phenomena, for which “non-moral resentment” may be used as a common name. In this long chain there is no missing link. Anger without any definite desire to cause suffering, anger with such a desire, more deliberate resentment—all these phenomena are so inseparably connected with each other that no one can say where one passes into another. Their common characteristic is that they are mental states marked by an aggressive attitude towards the cause of pain.

As to their origin, the evolutionist can hardly entertain a doubt. Resentment, like protective reflex action, out of which it has gradually developed, is a means of protection for the animal. Its intrinsic object is to remove a cause of pain, or, what is the same, a cause of danger. Two different attitudes may be taken by an animal towards another which has made it feel pain: it may either shun or attack its enemy. In the former case its action is prompted by fear, in the latter by anger, and it depends on the circumstances which of these emotions is the actualdeterminant. Both of them are of supreme importance for the preservation of the species, and may consequently be regarded as elements in the animal’s mental constitution which have been acquired by means of natural selection in the struggle for existence. We have already noted that, originally, the impulse of attacking the enemy could hardly have been guided by a representation of the enemy as suffering. But, as a successful attack is necessarily accompanied by such suffering, the desire to produce it naturally, with the increase of intelligence, entered as an important element in resentment. The need for protection thus lies at the foundation of resentment in all its forms.

This view is not new. More than one hundred and fifty years before Darwin, Shaftesbury wrote of resentment in these words:—“Notwithstanding its immediate aim be indeed the ill or punishment of another, yet it is plainly of the sort of those [affections] which tend to the advantage and interest of the self-system, the animal himself; and is withal in other respects contributing to the good and interest of the species.”94A similar opinion is expressed by Butler, according to whom the reason and end for which man was made liable to anger is, that he might be better qualified to prevent and resist violence and opposition, while deliberate resentment “is to be considered as a weapon, put into our hands by nature, against injury, injustice, and cruelty.”95Adam Smith, also, believes that resentment has “been given us by nature for defence, and for defence only,” as being “the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.”96Exactly the same view is taken by several modern evolutionists as regards the “end” of resentment, though they, of course, do not rest contented with saying that this feeling has been given us by nature, but try to explain in what way it has developed. “Among members of the same species,” says Mr. Herbert Spencer, “those individuals which have not, in any considerable degree, resented aggressions, must have ever tended to disappear, and to have left behind those which have with some effect made counter-aggressions.”97Mr.Hiram Stanley, too, quoting Junker’s statement regarding the pigmies of Africa, that “they are much feared for their revengeful spirit,”98observes that, “other things being equal, the most revengeful are the most successful in the struggle for self-conservation and self-furtherance.”99This evolutionist theory of revenge has been criticised by Dr. Steinmetz, but in my opinion with no success. He remarks that thefeelingof revenge could not have been of any use to the animal, even though theactof vengeance might have been useful.100But this way of reasoning, according to which the whole mental life would be excluded from the influence of natural selection, is based on a false conception of the relation between mind and body, and, ultimately, on a wrong idea of cause and effect.

94Shaftesbury, ‘Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit,’ ii. 2. 2, inCharacteristicks, ii. 145.

95Butler, ‘Sermon VIII.—Upon Resentment,’op. cit.p. 457.

96Adam Smith,Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 113.

97Spencer,Principles of Ethics, i. 361.

98Junker,Travels in Africa during the Years 1882–1886, p. 85.

99Hiram Stanley,op. cit.p. 180.Cf.also Guyau,Esquisse d’une Morale sans obligation ni sanction, p. 162sq.

100Steinmetz,Ethnol. Studien, &c.i. 135.

From non-moral resentment we shall pass to the emotion of moral indignation. That this is closely connected with anger is indicated by language itself: we may feel indignant on other than moral grounds, and we may feel “righteous anger.” The relationship between these emotions is also conspicuous in their outward expressions, which, when the emotion is strong enough, present similar characteristics. When possessed with strong moral indignation, a person looks as if he were angry,101and so he really is, in the wider sense of the term. This relationship has not seldom been recognised by moralists, though it has more often been forgotten. Some two thousand years ago Polybius wrote:—“If a man has been rescued or helped in an hour of danger, and, instead of showing gratitude to his preserver, seeks to do him harm, it is clearly probable that the rest will be displeased and offended with him when they know it, sympathising with their neighbour and imagining themselves in his case. Hence arises a notion in every breast of the meaning and theory of duty, which is in fact the beginning and end of justice.”102Hartley regarded resentment and gratitudeas “intimately connected with the moral sense.”103Adam Smith made the resentment of “the impartial spectator” a corner-stone of his theory of the moral sentiments.104Butler found the essential difference between sudden and deliberate anger to consist in this, that the “natural proper end” of the latter is “to remedy or prevent only that harm which implies, or is supposed to imply, injury or moral wrong.”105And to Stuart Mill, the sentiment of justice, at least, appeared to be derived from “the animal desire to repel or retaliate a hurt or damage to oneself, or to those with whom one sympathises.”106

101Notice, for instance, Michelangelo’s Moses.

102Polybius,Historiae, vi. 6.

103Hartley,Observations on Man, i. 520.

104Adam Smith,op. cit.passim.

105Butler,op. cit.p. 458.

106Stuart Mill,Utilitarianism, p. 79.

Moral indignation, or disapproval, like non-moral resentment, is a reactionary attitude of mind directed towards the cause of inflicted pain. In a subsequent chapter we shall see that both are in a similar way determined by the answer given to the question, What is the cause of the pain?—a fact which, whilst strongly confirming their affinity, throws light upon some of the chief characteristics of the moral consciousness. Nay, moral indignation resembles non-moral resentment even in this respect that, in various cases, the aggressive reaction turns against innocent persons who did not commit the injury which gave rise to it. The collective responsibility assumed in certain types of blood-revenge is an evidence of this in so far as such revenge is not merely a matter of individual practice, but has the sanction of custom. And even punishment, which, in the strict sense of the term, is a more definite expression of public, or moral, indignation than the custom of private retaliation, is often similarly indiscriminate.

Like revenge, and for similar reasons, punishment sometimes falls on a relative of the culprit in cases when he himself cannot be caught. In Fiji, says Mr. Williams, “the virtue of vicarious suffering is recognised.” It once happened that a warrior left his charged musket socarelessly that it went off and killed and wounded some individuals, whereupon he fled himself. His case was judged worthy of death by the chiefs of the tribe, and the offender’s aged father was in consequence seized and strangled.107

107Williams and Calvert,Fiji, p. 24.

In other cases an innocent person is killed for the offence of another, not because the offender cannot be seized, but with a view to inflicting on him a loss, according to the rule of like for like. The punishment, then, is meant for the culprit, though the chief sufferer is somebody else. According to the Laws of Ḫammurabi, “if a builder has built a house for a man and has not made strong his work, and the house he built has fallen, and he has caused the death of the owner, that builder shall be put to death.” But “if he has caused the son of the owner of the house to die, one shall put to death the son of that builder.”108Similarly, “if a man has struck a gentleman’s daughter and caused her to drop what is in her womb, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for what was in her womb.” But “if that woman has died, one shall put to death his daughter.”109The following custom which Mr. Gason reports, as existing among the Australian Dieyerie, in case a man should unintentionally kill another in a fight, is probably based on a similar principle:—“Should the offender have an elder brother, then he must die in his place; or, should he have no elder brother, then his father must be his substitute; but in case he has no male relative to suffer for him, then he himself must die.”110

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