[227] Beaumanoir, Coutumes du Beauvoisis, xxx. 11, vol. i. 413:—“Qui erre contre le foi, comme en mescreance, de le quele il ne veut venir à voie de verité, ou qui fet sodomiterie, il doit estre ars, et forfet tout le sien en le maniere dessus.” Britton, i. 10, vol. i. 42. Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, xii. 6 (Œuvres, p. 283). Du Boys, Histoire du droit criminel de l’Espagne, pp. 486, 721.
[228] Clarus, Practica criminalis, book v. § Sodomia, 1 (Opera omnia, ii. 151).
[229] Coke, Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, p. 59.
[230] Mirror, quoted ibid. p. 58.
CHAPTER XLIV
REGARD FOR THE LOWER ANIMALS
MEN’S conduct towards the lower animals is frequently a subject of moral valuation.
Totem animals must be treated with deference by those who bear their names, and animals generally regarded as divine must be respected by all; of this more will be said in a subsequent chapter.[1] Among various peoples the members of certain animal species must not be killed, because they are considered to be receptacles for the souls of departed men,[2] or because the species is believed to have originated through a transformation of men into animals.[3] The Dyaks of Borneo have a superstitious dread of killing orang-utans, being of opinion that these apes are men who went to live in the forest and abstain from speaking merely in order to be exempt from paying taxes.[4] The Moors consider it wrong to kill a monkey, because the monkey was once a man whom God changed into his present shape as a punishment for the sin he committed by performing his ablutions with milk; and they would never do harm to a stork, because, as they say, the stork was originally a judge, who passed unjust sentences upon his fellow creatures and therefore became what he is. They also account it a sin to kill a swallow or a pigeon, a white spider or a bee, because they regard them as holy. Other creatures, again, are spared by the Moors because they appear uncanny or are suspected of being evil spirits in disguise. It is believed that anybody who kills a raven easily goes mad and that he who kills a toad will get fever or die; and no Moor would dare to hit a cat or a dog in the dark, since it seems very doubtful what kind of being it really is. Superstitions of this sort are world-wide.
[1] Infra, on [Duties to Gods].
[2] Infra, [p. 516 sq.]