A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution Part 31

The condition of slaves among the Greeks furnishes us, indeed, with one of our strongest arguments against their moral code. We do not need to mention the Helots, whose name has become a synonym of degradation and misery. Slaves formed the greater part of the working population of Athens, and were much more numerous than the freemen. Nor were they necessarily even of inferior race or education. Not only did all prisoners taken in war become slaves, with their descendants forever, except as their masters chose to emanc.i.p.ate them (and the possession of such a superfluity sometimes rendered the Athenians generous in this respect), but, until the time of Solon, freemen might be sold into bondage for debt,--and not alone for a large debt, but also for a small one, and not merely until the debt was paid, but for all time. Nor have we reason to suppose that freemen were treated, even in the days of Athens' greatest culture, with great humanity. "At the opening of the Euthryphro there is a story told which is not intended to be anything exceptional, and which shows that the free laborer, or dependent, had not bettered his position since the days when Achilles cited him as the most miserable creature upon earth. 'Now the man who is dead,' says Euthryphro, 'was a poor dependent of mine who worked for us as a [free]

field-laborer at Naxos, and one day, in a fit of drunken pa.s.sion, he got into a quarrel with one of our domestic servants [slaves] and slew him.

My father bound him hand and foot and threw him into a ditch, and then sent to Athens to ask of a diviner what he should do with him. Meantime, he had no care or thought of him, deeming him a murderer, and that even if he did die, there would be no great harm. And this was just what happened. _For such was the effect of cold and hunger and chains upon him_ that before the messenger returned from the diviner he was dead.

And my father and family are angry with me for taking the part of the murderer and prosecuting my father.'"[207]

We have not much evidence as to the treatment of animals in ancient Greece. Race-horses are likely to have been well cared for,--as long as they were young and swift or beautiful. But it does not appear probable, from what we know of the Greek att.i.tude towards slaves and dependents, women and children, that a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would have flourished in Greece.

When we come to inquire as to the moral status of the Greeks with regard to honesty, truthfulness, and reliability in general, we find them particularly lacking. Their failure to come up with modern standards in this respect "every schoolboy knows." Ulysses is called the "man of many wiles," with evident intent to compliment. In the poems of Theognis, favorites with the Greek n.o.bility, "it was openly recommended to fawn upon your enemy, to deceive him till he was in your power, and then wreak vengeance upon him. It is usual, among critics, to speak of this as the att.i.tude of Theognis, and of the special aristocracy to which he belonged. They forget that we find the same att.i.tude in the moral Pindar (_Pyth._ ii. 84). It is expounded by Hesiod as proximate (*[Greek: Erg].

165 sqq.), by Thucydides as universal, at a later epoch."[208] Mahaffy says of the Greeks up to the time of Thucydides, that they "had been often treacherous and cruel, generally dishonest and selfish; but, withal, often generous and gentlemanly, always clever and agreeable, and always carried away by a love of beauty more than by a respect for truth."[209] At the time of Darius, the Milesians, who had involved that king in a b.l.o.o.d.y and expensive war, and burned his Lydian capital, were yet treated kindly by him when taken prisoners, and settled in his own country. In return they were always trying to beg or embezzle the treasure of the king at Susa. "There was, indeed, a single exception, Scythes, tyrant of Zancle--who asked leave to visit Sicily, and returned to die in Persia. 'Him Darius considered to be the most righteous of all those who had gone up to him from Greece, in that he kept his promise to the great king.'"

"What an evidence of Greek dishonesty. We can well fancy the Aryan barons of Darius' court speaking in the tone of the Roman Juvenal. To them, too, the _Graeculus esuriens_ was but too well known,--with his fascination, his cleverness, and, withal, his mean and selfish knavery.

I need hardly remind the Greek scholar," continues Mahaffy, "that all through the Ionic revolt, and through the Persian wars, this treachery and this selfishness were the mainstays of the Persians; in fact, had they depended upon these more completely, the subjugation of Greece would have been a mere question of time."[210]

"There was a certain Glaucus at Sparta, celebrated for justice, as well as in other respects, to whom a Milesian, who had heard of his fame, came and entrusted a treasure, wis.h.i.+ng as he said, to get the benefit of his justice, since Ionia was disturbed. Of course, such a temptation was too much even for this paragon of Greek honesty. When the heirs of the Milesian came with their tokens and claimed the treasure, he professed to know nothing of the affair," though when they had gone away, he consulted the oracle as to whether he might spend the money, and was so strongly rebuked, that he finally gave it back.[211] This Mahaffy mentions as an instance where the influence of the oracle was a moral one.

There remains one general and especially significant criticism to be made on Greek morals as a whole; the great ma.s.s of the people were little cared for and in a state of unfreedom. Professor Robiou of Rennes aptly remarks that the democracy of ancient times, and that of Athens in particular, had little in common with modern democracy. "The very large majority of the working population were slaves, and had, consequently, no rights of any sort, so that the 'laborers,' at whose political rights Xenophon and Aristophanes jest, were generally what we call _patrons_....

"As for the laborers and the inhabitants of the environs and villages, since political rights could be exercised only at the Athenian Pnyx and there was no idea of a representative system, it is clear that the presence of many of them in the a.s.sembly could be only an exception, in spite of the modest indemnity which was offered them; among the country people the large and middle-cla.s.s proprietors alone were in a condition to take part regularly. That is to say, one has no difficulty in concluding that, in comparison with other times and other countries, _the Athenian democracy was an aristocracy_."[212] And we may add that, all things considered, the great ma.s.s of the people had less of liberty and privilege, were far more subject to the despotism and caprice of the few, than in most modern monarchies. In what modern country not inhabited by savages would a man be permitted, at the present day, to throw even a murderer into a ditch and leave him to perish of hunger and cold? The carelessness of the Greeks in regard to the inner spirit of morals is often excused on the ground that it was at least combined with a large degree of tolerance; but this tolerance appears to be, to a great extent, mythical. The politics of Athens ostracized men whose opinion was feared by the state, or rather by a certain number of citizens, and the Greek religion stained its records with the death of Socrates and the persecution of other philosophers. Stilpo was exiled for doubting whether the Athene of Phidias was a G.o.ddess and the books of Anaxagoras and Protagoras were publicly burned. There was, moreover, an inquisitorial bureau at Athens.[213] However, it is true that the Greeks were, as a people, too little in earnest and too superst.i.tious to fall into doubt of the national mythology.

We have less difficulty in showing the superiority of modern to Roman civilization, and for the reason, partly, that we know more about Roman, than we do about Greek civilization.

The Romans were, from the beginning, a robust and warlike people, and the military discipline which made them conquerors extended into their social relations and even into their family life. The exposure of children appears to have been a common practice, and looked upon leniently even after direct infanticide was visited with some degree of general disapproval. Parents were the absolute masters of their children, having the power to put them to death, or to sell them as slaves; and this was not only true of children in their younger years, but during the whole life of the father. Livy and Valerius Maximus give numerous instances of parents who had put their children to death. It is recorded, however, that Hadrian banished a man who had killed his son, and decreed that whatever a son might earn in military service should belong to himself; while Alexander Severus forbade the killing of adult sons, and Diocletian rendered the sale of children illegal.[214] Lecky however remarks that "the sale of children in case of great necessity, though denounced by the Fathers, continued long after the time of Theodosius, nor does any Christian emperor appear to have enforced the humane enactments of Diocletian."[215]

Human sacrifices occurred among the Romans far more frequently than among the Greeks, and continued even down to a late date, says Mahaffy.

"In the year 46 B.C., Caesar sacrificed two soldiers on the altar in the Campus Martius. Augustus is said to have sacrificed a maiden named Gregoria. Even Trajan, when Antioch was rebuilt, sacrificed Calliope, and placed her statue in the theatre. Under Commodus, and later emperors, human sacrifices appear to have been more common; and a gladiator appears to have been sacrificed to Jupiter Latialis even in the time of Constantine. Yet these awful rites had been expressly forbidden B.C. 95; and Pliny a.s.serts that in his time they were never openly solemnized."[216]

If, however, the direct sacrifice of human victims came in time to be forbidden, there grew out of it, at a comparatively early period, a custom very nearly if not quite as barbarous, which was practised on an immense scale and down to a late date; namely, the gladiatorial contests. The men who took part in these contests were either slaves, criminals, military captives, or men especially trained for the "profession." Many of these last were exposed children who had been rescued for the purpose; their number being also recruited from other ranks. Lecky seems to excuse the condemnation of military captives to these shows, saying that their fate "could not strike the early Romans with the horror it would now inspire, for the right of the conquerors to ma.s.sacre their prisoners was almost universally admitted."[217] The argument is similar to that noticed and criticised above--one bad principle cannot be an excuse for another, though the two are, doubtless, in this case, coordinate. Every criminal can give us a reason for his crime out of the uniformity of his own character. The question is, simply, whether we are considering the facts from a purely indifferent standpoint, as historical, or from an ethical standpoint; and if from the latter, then we must have some standard of measurement.

We may choose to make this, in all cases, the average of the period and nation; though there will be, in that case, considerable difficulty in determining the average. Or we may use some ideal standard, which, as ideal, does not vary with all variations of the society considered, but is constant. But we have no logical right, having a.s.sumed the one standard, to confuse it with the other, treating the two as interchangeable. The standard of any age by which men judged their deeds is also part of the morality of the age, by which we may judge it. As for the criminals who fought in the arena, they were sometimes pardoned, when victorious, so that society received back again its most muscular, or skilful and alert criminals. Of all Roman authors and rulers, Lecky mentions only Seneca, Plutarch, Petronius, Junius Mauricus, and Marcus Aurelius, who condemn the games.[218] Cicero is undecided on the subject; rather in favor of them. The great satirist, Juvenal, though he repeatedly mentions, does not condemn them. And "of all the great historians who recorded them not one seems to have been conscious that he was recording a barbarity, not one appears to have seen in them any greater evils than an increasing tendency to pleasure and an excessive multiplication of a dangerous cla.s.s." On the other hand, the attempt to introduce them into Athens was unsuccessful.[219]

An immense increase of gladiators and gladiatorial shows took place in the earlier days of the empire, when the increase of slavery freed a large portion of the Roman population from the necessity of labor, and men came to occupy themselves with amus.e.m.e.nts, on the one hand as a profession, on the other as means of pa.s.sing the time. In the days of the Republic, the slaves were comparatively few in number and probably treated with more care, though scarcely with much consideration; all things were permitted the master by law, says Lecky, though probably the censor might interfere in extreme cases. "The elder Cato speaks of slaves simply as instruments for obtaining wealth, and he encouraged masters, both by his precept and his example, to sell them as useless when aged and infirm."[220] Under t.i.tus and Trajan probably occurred the greatest number of shows that "were compressed into a short time,... and no Roman seems to have imagined that the fact of 3000 men having been compelled to fight under the one, and 10,000 under the other, cast the faintest shadow upon their characters."[221] Moreover, "the mere desire for novelty impelled the people to every excess or refinement of barbarity. The simple combat became at last insipid, and every variety of atrocity was devised to stimulate the flagging interest. At one time a bear and a bull, chained together, rolled in fierce contest along the sand; at another, criminals dressed in the skins of wild beasts were thrown to bulls, which were maddened by red-hot irons, or by darts tipped with burning pitch. Four hundred bears were killed on a single day under Caligula; three hundred on another day under Claudius. Under Nero, four hundred tigers fought with bulls and elephants; four hundred bears and three hundred lions were slaughtered by his soldiers. In a single day, at the dedication of the Colosseum by t.i.tus, five thousand animals perished.... Lions, tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, giraffes, bulls, stags, even crocodiles and serpents, were employed to give novelty to the spectacle. Nor was any form of human suffering wanting. The first Gordian, when edile, gave twelve spectacles, in each of which from one hundred and fifty to five hundred pair of gladiators appeared. Eight hundred pair fought at the triumph of Aurelian. Ten thousand men fought during the games of Trajan.... Under Domitian, an army of feeble dwarfs was compelled to fight, and more than once female gladiators descended to fight in the arena. A criminal personating a fict.i.tious character was nailed to a cross, and there torn by a bear. Another, representing Scaevola, was compelled to hold his hand in a real flame. A third, as Hercules, was burnt alive upon the pile. So intense was the craving for blood, that a prince was less unpopular if he neglected the distribution of corn than if he neglected the games; and Nero himself, on account of his munificence in this respect, was probably the sovereign who was most beloved by the Roman mult.i.tude.

Heliogabalus and Galerius are reported, when dining, to have regaled themselves with the sight of criminals torn by wild beasts. It was said of the latter that 'he never supped without human blood.'" Moreover, the prince was most popular who, at the show of thumbs, "permitted no consideration of economy to make him hesitate to sanction the popular award."[222] "Even in the closing years of the fourth century, the prefect Symmachus, who was regarded as one of the most estimable pagans of his age, collected some Saxon prisoners to fight in honor of his son.

They strangled themselves in prison, and Symmachus lamented the misfortune that had befallen him from their 'impious hands,' but endeavored to calm his feelings by recalling the patience of Socrates and the precepts of philosophy."[223]

The conquest of Greece is alleged to have bettered somewhat the position of Roman slaves, since it involved the introduction of many slaves who were the intellectual superiors of their masters. But whatever good this may have effected seems to have been counteracted by the increase in number of the slaves and the consequent diminution in value of the individual slave as a piece of property. On the whole, the position of the slaves of North America, before the war of emanc.i.p.ation, bad as it was in some cases, seems to have been, on the average, quite paradisiacal when compared with that of their Roman forerunners. It has already been mentioned that Cato urged his compatriots to sell their aged slaves. Old and infirm slaves were constantly exposed to perish on an island in the Tiber. It was also customary, in case of the murder of the master, to put all the slaves of the household to death who were not in chains or helpless at the time of the murder. The testimony of the slave was generally received only under torture; he might be tortured in the attempt to compel evidence against his master; but, if he, of his own free will, accused his master of any crime, except treason, he was condemned to the arena. There were different punishments for slaves and for men of rank. "Numerous acts of the most odious barbarity were committed. The well-known anecdotes of Flaminius ordering a slave to be killed to gratify, by the spectacle, the curiosity of a guest; of Vedius Pollio feeding his fish on the flesh of slaves; and of Augustus sentencing a slave who had killed and eaten a favorite quail, to crucifixion, are the extreme examples that are recorded; for we need [!]

not regard as an historical fact the famous picture in Juvenal of a Roman lady in a moment of caprice, ordering her unoffending servant to be crucified. We have, however, many other very horrible glimpses of slave life at the close of the Republic and in the early days of the Empire. The marriage of slaves was entirely unrecognized by law, and, in their case, the words adultery, incest, or polygamy had no legal meaning.... When executed for a crime, their deaths were of a most hideous kind. The ergastula, or private prisons of the masters, were frequently their only sleeping places.... We read of slaves chained as porters to the doors, and cultivating the fields in chains. Ovid and Juvenal describe the fierce Roman ladies tearing their servants' faces, and thrusting the long pins of their brooches into their flesh. The master, at the close of the Republic, had full power to sell his slave as a gladiator or as a combatant with wild beasts."[224]

Lecky admonishes us that we should not judge the whole inst.i.tution of Roman slavery by this one side of the picture. He calls attention to the respect in which learned Greek slaves were often held, as showing a better phase of the system; but it is quite possible that certain slaves or cla.s.ses of slaves should be held in respect and that the rest of the slaves should be treated, nevertheless, with anything but respect or kindness. The great wonder to the modern mind is that the Romans felt at liberty to hold learned Greeks slaves at all. Lecky points out that slaves were emanc.i.p.ated in great numbers; but we must remember, first, that slaves were very plentiful, further, that freedmen and their descendants remained bound, by a sort of feudal tie, to their former masters until the third generation, and moreover that it was considered an honor to have many freedmen in one's following; so that the advantage of manumission was often, as Lecky himself says, on the side of the master. Slaves were sometimes emanc.i.p.ated to prevent their revealing crimes of their masters under torture, and many slaves were given their liberty especially in order that they might make a show in the funeral train. Augustus, indeed, found it necessary to restrict emanc.i.p.ation by will to _one hundred slaves_.[225] Seneca mentions that masters who ill-treated their slaves were the object of public odium; but then it may occur to us to inquire what the Romans considered ill-treatment; some of the laws which Lecky cites in evidence of the improvement of the slave's position in the third or last of the periods under which he considers this position may appear to his readers as much evidence against, as in favor of, kindness on the part of the masters. "The Petronian law," he says, "which was issued by Augustus, or more probably by Nero, forbade the master to condemn his slave to combat with wild beasts without a sentence from a judge." We may inquire as to how difficult it was to obtain such a sentence. "Under Claudius some citizens exposed their sick slaves on the island of aesculapius in the Tiber to avoid the trouble of tending them, and the emperor decreed that if [!] the slave so exposed recovered from his sickness, he should become free, and also that masters who killed their slaves _instead of exposing them_ should be punished as murderers.... Under Nero, a judge was appointed to hear their complaints, and was instructed to punish masters who treated them with barbarity, made them the instruments of l.u.s.t, or withheld from them a sufficient quant.i.ty of the necessaries of life.... Domitian made a law, which was afterwards reiterated, forbidding the Oriental custom of mutilating slaves for sensual purposes, and the reforms were renewed with great energy in the period of the Antonines.[226] Hadrian and his two successors formally deprived masters of the right of killing their slaves; forbade them to sell slaves to the lanistae or speculators in gladiators; destroyed the ergastula or private prisons; ordered that, when a master was murdered, those slaves only should be tortured who were within hearing; appointed officers through all the provinces to hear the complaints of slaves; enjoined that no master should treat slaves with excessive [?] severity; and commanded that, when such severity was proved, the master should be compelled to sell the slave he had ill-treated."[227] The humanity of the last law is open to dispute. Moreover, Lecky does not notice, here, that Constantine nevertheless felt it necessary to limit the punishment of slaves by prohibiting its administration with a cudgel, though not with the lash, and forbidding poison, mortal wounds, various kinds of torture, stoning, hanging, mutilation, or throwing from a height.[228]

But he mentions two facts which indicate some degree of humanity in certain directions, and namely: that, though the law did not recognize the marriage of a slave, "it appears not to have been common to separate his family;" also, that the private property of slaves was recognized by their masters, though part or all of it usually reverted to the master on the death of the slave. The great ma.s.s of evidence goes to show, however, that what the Romans termed humanity to slaves would have been, in the eyes of modern "civilized" peoples, extreme barbarity.

Women, among the Romans, were, like their children, under the control of the head of the family--father or husband. "The father disposed absolutely of the hand of his daughter and sometimes even possessed the power of breaking off marriages that had been actually contracted. In the forms of marriage, however, which were usual in the earlier periods of Rome, the absolute power pa.s.sed into the hands of the husband, and he had the right, in some cases, of putting her to death." "The power appears to have become quite obsolete during the Empire; but the first legal act (which was rather of the nature of an exhortation than of a command) against it was issued by Antoninus Pius, and it was only definitely abolished under Diocletian."[229] Roman women had, at first, no share by law in the heritage of their fathers; but public opinion revolted, in some cases, from the law, and gradually this was considerably altered. When marriage became, under the Empire, a mere matter of mutual consent, divorce a mere matter of repudiation, the daughter, though married, often remained in her father's house, having full control over her own property. Practically, if not always legally, the position of women among the Romans seems to have been considerably better than among the Greeks; Roman wives became, gradually, far more nearly the equals of their husbands than Greek wives ever were, and appear to have received a proportionately greater degree of love. Their position, however, falls far behind that of even German women at the present day, and certainly much behind that of every other civilized nation.

After recording the use of animals in the public games, there is little need of considering the subject of their treatment specially; there can be no doubt as to its probable nature; though certain famous Romans had their brute favorites.

It is sometimes argued that, though we are morally superior to the Greeks and Romans in some respects, we fall short of their standard in other respects. Doubtless new forms of evil may arise in later periods, which were impossible under old forms of government and the social relations of earlier peoples. Each period and nation will, according to its circ.u.mstances, have its own peculiar forms of vice and misery. But the question which we are considering is not whether or not we have some forms of evil which the ancients did not possess, but whether the particular forms which prevail among us are or are not worse than those which prevailed in Greece and Rome, and, in general, whether the average of sympathy and altruistic action in modern times and among the foremost peoples is greater than the average among the Greeks and Romans. And it must be recollected, moreover, in considering the question, that while the evil in our midst is brought very vividly before our eyes through the medium of our many methods of news-carrying and of wide personal observation,--through our railways, our telegraphs, our many newspapers and periodicals,--we have, in reality, when all is told, very scanty knowledge of the daily life of the common people, of the ordinary, every-day miseries and sufferings, among the Greeks and Romans. But there are some features of these facts that tell in favor of modern times; for the ancients were but little impressed by the miseries of the poorer cla.s.ses; and just the spirit that notes and makes much of our modern inhumanity is evidence of a broader sympathy peculiar to our later times.

Of Europe as a whole in the centuries after Rome's decline and its loss of power, it is not necessary to say much, in order to prove the moral superiority of modern times. We are all acquainted with the fierce contests between Christianity and its opponents, with the mutual persecutions, the martyrdoms of Christians and the retaliation of Christians upon "heretics," with the license and bigotry of the clergy, the robbery and oppression of the poor and dependent by these as well as by the t.i.tled castle-owners, the burning of "witches," the general intellectual and moral darkness which spread and covered even the lands of former comparative civilization and was lifted only as Europe as a whole advanced to a higher stage.

But without entering into any extended discussion of this complicated process of development as a whole, after the disturbance of the old equilibrium, it may not be undesirable to note the general course of events in some one country as typical, not in its special features, but in its general moral import, of the course of development in the other countries of Europe also.

The manner of the growth of state and social recompense for evil out of individual and tribal vengeance has already been touched upon. The enemy within, and the enemy without the tribe, the foe of the battle-field and the criminal were regarded, at many stages, with much the same feeling of animosity, the advantage being rather in favor of the criminal. To the Greek all those who were not Greeks were barbarians, against whom but little justice or mercy was necessary; and, as we have seen, the Romans condemned to the arena their war-captives equally with their criminals, together with slaves who were also, originally, war-captives.

Crime is, in ruder societies, hardly distinguished from other forms of aggression that are, later, not included under this head. The definition of crime differs greatly in different periods of a people's history, changing as the conceptions of morality as duty to society as a whole emerge from the crude conceptions of individual and tribal constraint through revenge. It is for this reason that the history of criminal law and the administration of "justice" const.i.tute, in reality, a history of moral evolution. There is nothing that is a clearer index of the moral status of a people than its treatment of those considered to be malefactors.

Caesar and Tacitus both mention human sacrifices as taking place in England before the Roman conquest; but little is known certainly on the subject. The Romans, of course, introduced their own laws and customs, which existed side by side with many ancient ones not wholly abolished.

The torture and burning of slaves for various offences was customary.

These penalties were gradually mitigated. But the invasion of the Teutonic tribes seems to have introduced many new barbarities. In the first half of the tenth century, for instance, appears a law which condemned to the stake female slaves who had stolen from any but their masters, the wood to be piled about them by eighty other slaves of their own s.e.x; this last office being designed, doubtless, to impress the lesson upon the minds of the eighty attendants. Later, many heretics were burned, and the writ for the burning of heretics was not abolished until the reign of Charles II., though it was practically annulled by the laws of 1648. However, in 1649, a number of women were burned for witchcraft in Berwicks.h.i.+re, and burning continued to be practised, much later, in cases of heresy and witchcraft; still later in cases of high and petty treason, and up to the time of George III., for murder. In the thirtieth year of the latter's reign, a statute was pa.s.sed subst.i.tuting hanging for burning. In 1784, a woman was burnt at Portsmouth for the murder of her husband. During the last years, however, in which the sentence was carried out, it seems to have been customary for the executioner to wring the malefactor's neck before the burning. But comparatively trivial offences, among these false coining, were cla.s.sed as treason, and it is noticeable also that the stake seems to have been a favorite punishment in the case of women-offenders, even in later days.[230] In the year 1530, two persons of the household of the Bishop of Rochester having died from poison thrown into some porridge by the cook, an "Act of Poisoning" was pa.s.sed, according to which offenders coming under its definition were to be boiled to death. The statute was shortly afterwards repealed, but the bishop's cook was publicly executed in accordance with its provision.[231]

But simple burning or hanging was, for the most part, considered much too good for the man who had committed high treason; he was given the mere mockery of a trial, and, if convicted, was hanged, was taken down while yet alive, disembowelled, and his entrails burnt, was beheaded, and quartered. Law modifying this penalty first comes into prominence in the reign of William III.[232] When Richard I. sailed with his army for the Holy Land, it was ordained that whoever killed a man on board s.h.i.+p was to be tied to the corpse and thrown into the sea, whosoever killed a man on sh.o.r.e was to be burnt alive with the corpse, while simply drawing blood with a knife was to be punished with the loss of a hand, and a thief was to be shaved, treated to a head-bath of boiling pitch and feathers, and put ash.o.r.e at the first place the vessel touched at.[233]

The payment of blood-money was a common custom among the Teutons, and so little distinction was made between greater and lesser crime that, while a murderer could commonly buy off the relatives of his victim, the petty thief often suffered death or mutilation for his offence. Pike says of these punishments in the early history of Britain: "It was for the free man of low estate, for the slave, and for women, that the greatest atrocities were reserved. Men branded on the forehead, without hands, without feet, without tongues, lived as an example of the danger which attended the commission of petty crimes, and as a warning to all who had the misfortune of holding no higher position than that of a churl. The horrors of the Danish invasions had no tendency to mitigate these severities; and those who were chastised with whips before were chastised with scorpions afterwards. New ingenuity was brought to bear upon the art of mutilation, which was practised in every form. The eyes were plucked out; the nose, the ears, and the upper lip were cut off; the scalp was torn away; and sometimes even, there is reason to believe, the whole body was flayed alive."[234] The law of the tenth century, according to which a female slave who had committed theft was burnt alive by eighty women-executioners, has already been mentioned; parallel to this law was the law that a male slave who was a thief was to be stoned to death by eighty slaves, any one of whom, who missed the mark three times, was to be whipped three times. "If a thief was a free woman, she was to be thrown down a precipice or drowned."[235] The law did not favor women.

The dividing line between mutilation and torture is a difficult one to draw. One of the earlier forms of "trial" was by ordeal. The accused, with his hand bound in cloth, was compelled to s.n.a.t.c.h a stone from elbow or wrist-depth in a caldron of boiling water, or to lift a weight of heated metal. If, at the end of three days, when the cloth which bound the arm was removed, no scald or burn was visible, the accused was p.r.o.nounced innocent. These ordeals took place in the church with much sprinkling of holy water and other ceremony. The clergy themselves seem to have had less trying subst.i.tutes for these ordeals, often being compelled only to take oath on the sacrament, or to partake of consecrated bread or cheese which was supposed to produce evil results in case of guilt. As Pike suggests, it is quite possible that, as priests had the preparing of this bread or cheese, it may sometimes have come up to expectations in this respect; as it is also possible that the cloths bound on the arm of the layman who was to undergo the ordeal of fire or water may have been differently arranged in different cases.[236] As late as the reign of King John, trial was made by ordeal, and mention is also made of it in the reign of Henry II. It was not formally abolished until the year 1219.[237] For remaining mute before accusers in court, the dire penalty of imprisonment with starvation was inflicted, in the reign of Edward I., and to this punishment was added, about the time of Henry IV., torture by the press.[238] In 1570, a man found guilty of forging warrants for the arrest of two persons was sentenced to the pillory for two days, on the first of which one ear, on the second the other, was to be nailed to the pillory in such a manner that he must "by his own proper motion" tear it away.[239] The rack is supposed to have been introduced into England in the reign of Henry VI., and in the reign of Henry VIII. was added "Skevington's Daughter," an instrument by which offenders were compressed rather than extended until "the miserable human being lost all form but that of a globe." Blood was forced from fingers, toes, nostrils, and mouth, and ribs and breast-bone were commonly broken in. The thumb-screw was also in use, and there was a "Dungeon among Rats," and a chamber in the Tower called "Little Ease,"

in which it was impossible either to stand upright or to lie at full length.[240] The press was not abolished until the reign of George III.[241] It is recorded of the case of Burnworth, tried for murder in 1726, that he bore pressure of nearly four hundred weight, for an hour and three-quarters, before begging for mercy and pleading Not Guilty. He was, however, found guilty and hanged.[242] In 1630, Alexander Leighton was punished for "framing, publis.h.i.+ng, and dispensing a scandalous book against kings, peers, and prelates," in the following manner: he was whipped, put in the pillory, had one of his ears cut off and one side of his nose slit, was branded on one cheek with a red-hot iron, was afterwards returned to the Fleet to be kept in close custody, and seven days later was whipped again at the pillory, had the other ear cut off, his other nostril slit, and his other cheek branded.[243] As late as 1734, John Durant, who "either was, or pretended to be, deaf and unable to read," had his thumbs tied and the knot drawn hard because he did not answer the accusation of the court; he was also threatened with the press.[244] Excepting in cases where the press was used, torture was not, according to Pike, practised in England after the first part of the seventeenth century; but the case just cited is a contradiction of so broad an a.s.sertion.

The introductions of customs of penance did much towards rendering the differences in the punishment and general treatment of the poor and rich, the humble and n.o.ble, more conspicuous. As for the clergy, they had special benefits given them, and were accustomed, in the early days of Britain, to murder, rob, and indulge their pa.s.sions very nearly as they chose, without interference from the state.[245] But the Benefit of Clergy, which rendered any one subject to it, "practically exempt from the ordinary punishments for most of the greater crimes," was applicable, in later centuries, not only to clergymen proper, but also to all clerks, the term including every one who had been married and could read.[246] The position of the slave after the Teutonic invasion has been noticed. The position of the churl was nearly as bad. "The infliction of a penalty which he could not pay, and which none would pay for him, rendered him utterly bankrupt in freedom.... If he left the place a.s.signed to him it was held that he had stolen his own body. He could be summarily hanged when caught, and his life was worth nothing to his lord, or even to his kindred, unless they redeemed him. This was the fate which was continually impending over the free man of low estate if he had the misfortune to make enemies among those who had the power to save or condemn him."[247] In the reign of Edward I., "a statute was pa.s.sed which made it a grave offence to devise or tell any false news of prelates, dukes, earls, barons, or n.o.bles of the realm. Others, too, were enumerated as being within the meaning of the act--the Chancellor, the Justices of either Bench, and all the great officers of state."

Under Richard II., the statute was reenacted and made more stringent.[248]

For most trivial offences of all sorts, extreme punishment was meted out. Mutilation was often inflicted merely for the killing of game belonging to the King's forests, and though the Forest Charter of Henry III. provided that no one should, in future, lose life or limb for the sake of the King's deer, the penalty does not seem to have gone out of use at this period, for other offences. In the reign of Edward III., a tailor was sentenced, for brawling in court, to imprisonment in the Tower of London for life and the loss of his right hand; "and the rolls of Gaol Delivery of this period show conclusively that the ordinary punishments were hanging, the pillory, and the tumbrel or dung-cart."[249] Late in the reign of Henry VIII., an act was pa.s.sed condemning any person who struck another so that blood was drawn, within the limits of the King's house, to the loss of his right hand. The pillory was in use up to the reign of Queen Victoria; "it could be applied to perjurers and suborners of perjury until the year 1837. It was even applied to women for no greater crime than fortune-telling, late in the eighteenth century."[250] "Of the other punishments a.s.sociated with the old spirit of violence, and inflicted in public, the chief was whipping. It was commonly awarded to men guilty of petty thefts.... Instances in which women were whipped were by no means uncommon at the very end of the eighteenth century." Until 1808, pocket-picking, until 1811, stealing from bleaching-grounds, were punished with death. In 1813, 1816, and 1818, a bill was introduced to abolish capital punishment for a theft of five s.h.i.+llings from shops; but it was defeated in the House of Lords. In 1820, the amount necessary to the death-sentence was raised to 15. Until 1832, horse, cattle, and sheep stealing, theft from a dwelling-house, and forgery, were capital offences. In 1833, house-breaking; in 1834, returning from transportation before expiration of the sentence; and, in 1835, sacrilege and letter-stealing ceased to be punished with death. But it was not until 1861 that hanging was limited by law to cases of murder and treason.[251]

The worst element of the punishment by pillory or in any manner in public did not lie so much in the punishment itself, as in the violence of the mob, which appears to have been regarded as a legitimate part of the ceremony, and against which the criminal seldom received any protection. Sometimes, the man or woman sentenced to the pillory for a petty offence died of stoning at the hands of the onlookers; and Pike writes of the burning of a woman in 1721, for coining: "Her last wish was that she might say a prayer in peace. But the mob which had come out to take its ease and its pleasure had no mind to sacrifice its rights for the comfort of a criminal. A woman at the stake was a good b.u.t.t for filthy missiles and ribald jests; the yelling rabble would not permit the poor wretch to collect her thoughts, or to hear her own words, and instead of sympathy they gave her stones. When the fire was kindled, even the consuming flames must have seemed less cruel than the men and women standing around."[252]

We all know the condition in which Howard found the prisons of his day; and if we possess strong powers of imagination, we may perchance be able partly to conceive what must have been their state in days when the people knew but very little of what pa.s.sed within prison-walls, and the keepers wielded an almost absolute power over the prisoners. If the abuses which were common even two centuries ago were to occur in only a few instances to-day, the whole English nation would flame with indignation. In the fourteenth century, jail-breaking was frequent in cases where the prisoner could afford to pay for his escape; judges were often bribed; a "clerk" who was delivered over to the bishop before or after sentence, according to the Benefit of Clergy, could still be acquitted by the bishop in case the requisite number of compurgators were found to swear to belief in his innocence; and, moreover, clerks who had been convicted could not afterwards be tried for any offence committed before their conviction. On the other hand, if a woman attempted to obtain sentence against the murderer of a relative, she had not only to fear the revenge of the man's allies, who seem to have had things very much their own way; but in case courage deserted her at the last, and she failed to appear against the accused, she was "waived" or outlawed; again it may be remarked that the laws of England did not favor women.[253] Writs were forged, juries were packed, judges, justices, and sheriffs bribed. In the reign of James I., the young countess of Ess.e.x, who, having fallen in love with Lord Rochester during the absence of her husband, had obtained a divorce to marry him, became angry with a friend of her lover who counselled him against the marriage, caused him to be imprisoned in the Tower, had the Lieutenant and under-keeper of the Tower replaced by friends of hers, and through the aid of these administered poison to him. The countess and her husband were arrested on charge of causing the death, and the former pleaded, the latter was proved, guilty. Yet the two were pardoned, _though some of their accomplices were executed_.[254]

It is impossible that such customs should exist, in legal relations, in connection with great justice and sympathy in other relations. Some allowance may be made for idiosyncrasy, for individual and national peculiarities; it is possible that a b.l.o.o.d.y-minded and cruel ruler may find pleasure in petting pigeons, but his pleasure will be likely to be rather of an egoistic order, and his apparent kindness easily turned to cruelty if anger comes upon him. So, too, the cruel potentate may prove a kind husband and friend, as long as his own interests coincide, and do not conflict, with those of his friends or his family. But the man who is consistently treacherous and unfeeling in any one relation will not, as a rule, show consideration and tenderness in other relations, except in so far as these other relations subserve his own ends of gain or vanity; the point where they part company with such ends is the point where he will resort to another mode of action. The same is true of nations. Accordingly, we find brigandage and open robbery common even down to the end of the last century, and not only on the part of the poorer cla.s.ses, or rather not so much on their part as on that of princes, n.o.bles, and even the clergy; we find pirating and wreckage common on the sea; we find intrigue upon intrigue at court, n.o.bles and members of the royal family continually plotting each other's murder, but nevertheless escaping punishment and received with adulation; we find the much-praised heroes of the Crusades devasting the lands through which they pa.s.sed, violating wives and daughters of their hosts, and deserting to the enemy for bribes; we find wholesale ma.s.sacres of unoffending Jews; we find perjury a profession, station an excuse for nearly every crime, religion a cloak for extortion and vice, and oppression of the poor and lowly universal. And yet we weep over modern deterioration!

We forget, when we read--perhaps with an exclamation that man is as much a savage as ever--how the onlookers at the burning of the Shanghai made no effort to save lives but only to secure spoil, that it is only a short time since such scenes must have been common enough on all the sh.o.r.es of Europe; we forget, when we shudder with horror at an exceptional case of unjust or brutal punishment on the borders of our civilization, that it is not long since torture and mutilation, barbarities of every sort, were practised among the foremost nations of the world, and for the most trivial offences. Nor do we always remember, when we grow indignant at the hard case of our poor, that there was a time when the excess of indigent population was prevented only by famines and pestilences which killed their thousands upon thousands, and of which we very seldom see the like in modern times; we forget that there was a time when the desperate rising of the continental peasantry against the bitter oppression of the landowners drew from even the reformer Luther the exclamation that the revolters ought to be throttled collectively. I have no intention to underrate present evils or to excuse them by past ones. I see no reason for believing that the present age should rest upon its laurels; on the contrary, I believe that we are only at the beginning of civilization; but I see no need for denying past evolution in order to make this a.s.sertion. Starvation is not easier to a man to-day, because it is proved to him that many more men died of hunger in the past than die of it in the present century. But just for this reason, I fail to understand why there should be so much effort expended by certain reformers in the attempt to disprove what history and observation yet so plainly show,--namely, that the condition of the ma.s.ses at present, taken for all in all, is much better than it has ever been before; that misery is not so extreme or proportionately so widely spread; that the worst sorts of crime are decreasing; that justice is more general, and that sympathy is warmer, than in any previous age. It is true that we have new methods of exploiting the poor; but we need to consider how our ancestors would have used those opportunities had they possessed them; and we need also to remember, with regard to a particular form of evil, that some time is necessary for society as a whole to grow to a comprehension of its increase and importance, and to reach unanimity of opinion as to action for its removal. As forms of evil change, some one particular form may increase for a time, swallowing up in itself, as the larger wave acc.u.mulates several small ones, various other forms, until the slowly gathered resistance of public opinion brings the reaction.

We may gather valuable evidence as to our progress, even in comparison with recent times, by reference to our artistic literature. True, the great writers have often been far ahead of their times. But if we regard the average, we shall soon perceive the signs to which I refer. The stilted mannerisms of the ancient novel mark the absence of democratic feeling, and witness to the less general diffusion of true kindness, which, wherever it appears, tends to simplicity, having no need of mannerisms. Nothing, too, is more indicative of our advancement than the change in conceptions of humor; for to know what a nation laughs about is to know what are its ideals and shortcomings. Earlier humor is often mere vulgarity or brutality, or a mixture of the two; obscenity, vice, and the heartless torture of the weak and helpless are its favorite themes, and appear in the characters of its heroes and ideals. The truthfulness of Victor Hugo's description of earlier British "fun," in his "L'Homme qui rit," is borne witness to by English literature.

All modern literature marks the progress of the democratic idea. Our history and our art are full of the people. The very unrest and dissatisfaction of the time are signs of a more general and a better education, an increase of sympathy in degree and extent, and, I believe, of better nourishment and a more energetic physique. The higher ideals which were once the property of the few are become the property of the many. Our inst.i.tutions are grown more democratic and humane. We have our free hospitals and dispensaries, our soup-kitchens and cheap lodging-houses, our asylums for the deaf, the dumb, the blind, old people and orphans, the weak and afflicted of all kinds, our guilds, "Settlements," and "Open-air" charities, our creches, our refuges and reformatories, our societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and to Animals, our "Open Doors," and "Midnight Missions," our trade and industrial schools, and our free schools and scholars.h.i.+ps and free libraries. In times of famine, disease, and disaster, we band together to aid, and funds for the distressed pour in from every side, and not only from people of the nation to which the sufferers belong, but often also from those of distant parts of the world. Fancy the Greeks subscribing to a fund in aid of cholera-stricken barbarians; imagine the Romans, even, clubbing together, in every part of the world to which they had wandered, to succour the sufferers by a Johnstown flood; or conceive of the wealthy cla.s.ses of the Middle Ages furnis.h.i.+ng fires and food as did the Parisians during the unusual winter cold of 1890-91!

Not only has sympathy become more wildly diffused within the state; it has spread outside it also. National narrowness is slowly disappearing.

The federation of the states of Europe and of the civilized world is no longer looked upon as a mad-man's fancy but as a sober possibility or even a probability. It is now agreed that war between the English-speaking nations of the earth,--between England and her colonies, or England and the United States, is very nearly, if not quite, an impossibility. The union of three of the most powerful nations of Europe, not for war but for peace, is a.s.suredly of great political importance in itself; but of even more importance in the influence insensibly exerted by its continuance upon the opinions of the world.

The ma.s.ses of the people themselves are becoming more and more cosmopolitan, and we have an ever-increasing number of international unions and congresses, political, scientific, artistic, and ethical.

On the whole, it is, perhaps, as much a lack of imagination as anything which makes us fall into the mistake of underestimating our own age and overestimating all others. The crimes and abuses far away in times different from our own are difficult to conceive, and stir our blood even less than those distant in s.p.a.ce; the sufferings of the Middle Ages, or even of one or two centuries ago, are more difficult to realize and move us less than a famine or flood in China or a murder in the heart of Africa. The things immediately before our eyes affect us most; and it is well, for many reasons, that this is so. Nevertheless, idealization of the past is evil in its consequences. For, if present progress is to some men an excuse for easy-going inactivity, the extent of existing evil is even more often an excuse for the same selfish course.

Man has had, in all periods, the tendency, in his discontent with the present, to invest with ideal attributes of every sort some past period in which the special evils he deplores did not, perhaps, exist; the dissatisfied of all times have imagined a golden age somewhere in the past. The old, who look on the innovations of a younger generation with distrust, and are likely to mistake, in remembrance, the gold of their own life's morning for an outer radiance independent of their youth, add to our delusion; while the young confuse their increasing knowledge of the evil of the world with an increase of the evil itself. But the more science progresses, and the greater our acquaintance with the facts of history becomes, the more these delusions tend to disappear. The much-praised simplicity of our ancestors was, in truth, a half-savagery, where the higher forms of justice were not practised, that finer tact and consideration which makes life best worth living was unknown, and many of the faults which we most deplore in our own day were considered rather virtues than otherwise. It is a moral pity that poets and philosophers have lent the beauty of their verse and the dignity of their eloquence to the idealization of the past. Indeed,

"I do distrust the poet who discerns No character or glory in his times, And trundles back his soul five hundred years, Past moat and drawbridge, into a castle-court, To sing--oh, not of lizard or of toad Alive i' the ditch there,--'twere excusable, But of some black chief, half knight, half sheep-lifter, Some beauteous dame, half chattel and half queen, As dead as must be, for the greater part, The poems made on their chivalric bones."[255]

It is an especial pity that the reformer should ever devote his effort to the upholding of the old idea of the inferiority of the present to the past. Not in the past, but in the future, lies the Golden Age of man.

FOOTNOTES:

[183] "The Origin of Civilization," pp. 397, 398.

[184] Ibid. pp. 402, 403.

[185] Ibid. p. 398.