The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas. Edward Westermarck

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.

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

72 Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 71.

73 Grey, Journals of Expeditions, ii. 239.

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

75 Riedel, De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua, p. 434 (natives of Wetter). Chalmers, Pioneering in New Guinea, p. 179. Kohler, in Zeitschr. f. vergl. Rechtswiss. xiv. 446 (some Marshall Islanders). Merker, quoted by Kohler, ibid. xv. 53 sq. (Wadshagga). Brett, Indian Tribes of Guiana, p. 357. Bernau, Missionary Labours in British Guiana, p. 57. Dall, Alaska, p. 416. Boas, ‘The Central Eskimo,’ in Ann. 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. 173 sq. (ancient Teutons).

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

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

78 Hawkins, in Trans. 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,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.

79 History of Human Marriage, p. 3 sqq.

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.”80 Prof. Romanes considers this to be a good instance of “what may be called brooding resentment deliberately preparing a satisfactory revenge.”81 This, 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.82 According 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 the animal 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.”83 We 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