[75] Plato, Respublica, iii. 390.
[76] Genesis, xxviii. 20 sqq.
In many cases the sacrificial victims are intended to serve as substitutes for other individuals, whose lives are in danger. We have previously noticed that the practice of human sacrifice is mainly based on the idea of substitution.[77] We have also seen that a growing reluctance to this practice often led to the offering of animals instead of men.[78] But we have no right to assume that the sacrifice of an animal for the purpose of saving the life of a man is in every case a later modification of a previous human sacrifice. The idea that spirits which threaten the lives of men are appeased by other than human blood may in some instances be primary though in others it is derivative. The Moors invariably sacrifice an animal at the foundation of a new building; and though this is said to be ʿâr upon the spirit owners of the place some idea of substitution seems also to be connected with the act, as they maintain that if no animal were killed the inmates of the house would die or remain childless. A similar practice prevails in Syria, where the people believe that “every house must have its death, either man, woman, child, or animal.”[79] Among the Jews it is or has been the custom for the master of each house to kill a cock on the eve of the fast of atonement. Before doing so he strikes his head with the cock three times, saying at each stroke, “Let this cock be a commutation for me, let him be substituted for me”; and when he strangles his victim by compressing the neck with his hand, he at the same time reflects that he himself deserves to be strangled.[80] These customs can certainly not be regarded as survivals of an earlier practice of killing a human being. Moreover an animal is sometimes sacrificed for the purpose of saving the lives of other animals. Thus in a place in Scotland, in 1767, a young heifer was offered in the holy fire during a cattle-plague.[81] And in Great Benin, in West Africa, on the anniversary of the death of Adolo, king Overami’s father, not only twelve men, but twelve cows, twelve goats, twelve sheep, and twelve fowls were offered, and Overami, addressing his father, asked him to look after the “cows, goats, and fowls, and everything in the farms,” as well as the people.[82] Sacrifices which are substitutional in character may or may not be intended to satisfy the material needs of supernatural beings. In some cases, as we have seen, their object is to appease a resentful god by the mere death of the victim.[83]
[78] Supra, [i. 469 sq.]
[79] Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day, p. 224 sq.
[80] Allen, Modern Judaism, p. 406.
[81] Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, ii. 608.
[82] Moor and Roupell, quoted by Read and Dalton, Antiquities from the City of Benin, p. 6, and by Ling Roth, Great Benin, p. 70 sq.
[83] Supra, [i. 438 sqq.]