Other examples of the severe punishment of sexual crime. I will conclude this part of my subject with a few more instances of the extreme severity with which certain races have visited what they deemed improper connexions between the sexes.
The Indians of Brazil. Among the Indians who inhabited the coast of Brazil near Rio de Janeiro about the middle of the sixteenth century, a married woman who gave birth to an illegitimate child was either killed or abandoned to the caprice of the young men who could not afford to keep a wife. Her child was buried alive; for they said that were he to grow up he would only serve to perpetuate his mother’s disgrace; he would not be allowed to go to war with the rest for fear of the misfortunes and disasters he might draw down upon them, and no one would eat any food, whether venison, fish, or what not, which the miserable outcast had touched.[96.2] The natives of Ruanda. In Ruanda, a district of Central Africa, down to recent years any unmarried woman who was got with child used to be put to death with her baby, whether born or unborn. A spot at the mouth of the Akanyaru river was the place of execution, where the guilty women and their innocent offspring were hurled into the water. As usual, this Puritanical strictness of morality has been relaxed under European influence; illegitimate children are still killed, but their mothers escape with the fine of a cow.[97.1] The Saxons. Among the Saxons down to the days of St. Boniface the adulteress or the maiden who had dishonoured her father’s house was compelled to hang herself, was burned, and her paramour hung over the blazing pile; or she was scourged or cut to pieces with knives by all the women of the village till she was dead.[97.2] The Southern Slavs. Among the Slav peoples of the Balkan peninsula women convicted of immoral conduct used to be stoned to death. About the year 1770 a young betrothed couple were thus executed near Cattaro in Dalmatia, because the girl was found to be with child. The youth offered to marry her, and the priest begged that the sentence of death might be commuted to perpetual banishment; but the people declared that they would not have a bastard born among them; and the two fathers of the luckless couple threw the first stones at them. When Miss M. Edith Durham related this case to some Montenegrin peasantry, they all said that in the old days stoning was the proper punishment for unchaste women; the male paramours were shot by the relations of the girls whom they had seduced. When “that modern Messalina,” Queen Draga of Servia, was murdered, a decent peasant woman remarked that “she ought to be under the cursed stone heap” (pod prokletu gomilu). The country-folk of Montenegro, who heard the news of the murder from Miss Durham, “looked on it as a cleansing—a casting out of abominations—and genuinely believed that Europe would commend the deed, and that the removal of this sinful woman would bring prosperity to the land.”[97.3] Even down to the second half of the nineteenth century in cases of seduction among the Southern Slavs the people proposed to stone both the culprits to death.[98.1] This happened, for example, in Herzegovina in the year 1859, when a young man named Milutin seduced or (to be more exact) was seduced by three unmarried girls and got them all with child. The people sat in judgment upon the sinners, and, though an elder proposed to stone them all, the court passed a milder sentence. The young man was to marry one of the girls, to rear the infants of the other two as his legitimate children, and next time there was a fight with the Turks he was to prove his manhood by rushing unarmed upon the enemy and wresting their weapons from them, alive or dead. The sentence was fulfilled to the letter, though many years passed before the culprit could carry out the last part of it. However, his time came in 1875, when Herzegovina revolted against the Turks. Then Milutin ran unarmed upon a regiment of the enemy and found among the Turkish bayonets a hero’s death.[98.2] Even now the Old Catholics among the South Slavs believe that a village in which a seducer is not compelled to marry his victim will be punished with hail and excessive rain. For this article of faith, however, they are ridiculed by their enlightened Catholic neighbours, who hold the far more probable view that thunder and lightning are caused by the village priest to revenge himself for unreasonable delays in the payment of his salary. A heavy hail-storm has been known to prove almost fatal to the local incumbent, who was beaten within an inch of his life by his enraged parishioners.[98.3]
Inference from the severe punishments inflicted for sexual offences. It is difficult to believe that in these and similar cases the community would inflict such severe punishment for sexual offences if it did not believe that its own safety, and not merely the interest of a few individuals, was imperilled thereby.
Why should illicit relations between the sexes be thought to disturb the balance of nature? If now we ask why illicit relations between the sexes should be supposed to disturb the balance of nature and particularly to blast the fruits of the earth, a partial answer may be conjecturally suggested. It is not enough to say that such relations are displeasing to the gods, who punish indiscriminately the whole community for the sins of a few. For we must always bear in mind that the gods are creations of man’s fancy; he fashions them in human likeness, and endows them with tastes and opinions which are merely vast cloudy projections of his own. To affirm, therefore, that something is a sin because the gods will it so, is only to push the enquiry one stage farther back and to raise the further question, Why are the gods supposed to dislike and punish these particular acts? The reason why the gods of savages are supposed to punish sexual crimes so severely may perhaps be found in a mistaken belief that irregularities of the human sexes prevent the reproduction of edible animals and plants and thereby strike a fatal blow at the food supply. In the case with which we are here concerned, the reason why so many savage gods prohibit adultery, fornication, and incest under pain of their severe displeasure may perhaps be found in the analogy which many savage men trace between the reproduction of the human species and the reproduction of animals and plants. The analogy is not purely fanciful, on the contrary it is real and vital; but primitive peoples have given it a false extension in a vain attempt to apply it practically to increasing the food supply. They have imagined, in fact, that by performing or abstaining from certain sexual acts they thereby directly promoted the reproduction of animals and the multiplication of plants.[99.1] All such acts and abstinences, it is obvious, are purely superstitious and wholly fail to effect the desired result. They are not religious but magical; that is, they compass their end, not by an appeal to the gods, but by manipulating natural forces in accordance with certain false ideas of physical causation. In the present case the principle on which savages seek to propagate animals and plants is that of magical sympathy or imitation: they fancy that they assist the reproductive process in nature by mimicking or performing it among themselves. Now in the evolution of society such efforts to control the course of nature directly by means of magical rites appear to have preceded the efforts to control it indirectly by appealing to the vanity and cupidity, the good-nature and pity of the gods; in short, magic seems to be older than religion.[100.1] In most races, it is true, the epoch of unadulterated magic, of magic untinged by religion, belongs to such a remote past that its existence, like that of our ape-like ancestors, can be a matter of inference only; almost everywhere in history and the world we find magic and religion side by side, at one time allies, at another enemies, now playing into each other’s hands, now cursing, objurgating, and vainly attempting to exterminate one another. On the whole the lower intelligences cling closely, though secretly, to magic, while the higher intelligences have discerned the vanity of its pretensions and turned to religion instead. The result has been that beliefs and rites which were purely magical in origin often contract in course of time a religious character; they are modified in accordance with the advance of thought, they are translated into terms of gods and spirits, whether good and beneficent, or evil and malignant. We may surmise, though we cannot prove, that a change of this sort has come over the minds of many races with regard to sexual morality. At some former time, perhaps, straining a real analogy too far, they believed that those relations of the human sexes which for any reason they regarded as right and natural had a tendency to promote sympathetically the propagation of animals and plants and thereby to ensure a supply of food for the community; while on the contrary they may have imagined that those relations of the human sexes which for any reason they deemed wrong and unnatural had a tendency to thwart and impede the propagation of animals and plants and thereby to diminish the common supply of food.
Such a belief would account both for the horror with which many savages regard such crimes, and for the severity with which they punish them. Such a belief, it is obvious, would furnish a sufficient motive for the strict prohibition of what were deemed improper relations between men and women; and it would explain the deep horror and detestation with which sexual irregularities are viewed by many, though certainly not by all, savage tribes. For if improper relations between the human sexes prevent animals and plants from multiplying, they strike a fatal blow at the existence of the tribe by cutting off its supply of food at the roots. No wonder, therefore, that wherever such superstitions have prevailed the whole community, believing its very existence to be put in jeopardy by sexual immorality, should turn savagely on the culprits, and beat, burn, drown or otherwise exterminate them in order to rid itself of so dangerous a pollution. And when with the advance of knowledge men began to perceive the mistake they had made in imagining that the commerce of the human sexes could affect the propagation of animals and plants, they would still through long habit be so inured to the idea of the wickedness of certain sexual relations that they could not dismiss it from their minds, even when they discerned the fallacious nature of the reasoning by which they had arrived at it. The old practice would therefore stand, though the old theory had fallen: the old rules of sexual morality would continue to be observed, but if they were to retain the respect of the community, it was necessary to place them on a new theoretical basis. That basis, in accordance with the general advance of thought, was supplied by religion. Sexual relations which had once been condemned as wrong and unnatural because they were supposed to thwart the natural multiplication of animals and plants and thereby to diminish the food supply, would now be condemned because it was imagined that they were displeasing to gods or spirits, those stalking-horses which savage man rigs out in the cast-off clothes of his still more savage ancestors. The moral practice would therefore remain the same, though its theoretical basis had been shifted from magic to religion. In this or some such way as this we may conjecture that the Karens, Dyaks, and other savages reached those curious conceptions of sexual immorality and its consequences which we have been considering. But from the nature of the case the development of moral theory which I have sketched is purely hypothetical and hardly admits of verification.
But the reason why savages came to regard certain sexual relations as irregular and immoral remains obscure. However, even if we assume for a moment that the savages in question reached their present view of sexual immorality in the way I have surmised, there still remains the question, How did they originally come to regard certain relations of the sexes as immoral? For clearly the notion that such immorality interferes with the course of nature must have been secondary and derivative: people must on independent grounds have concluded that certain relations between men and women were wrong and injurious before they extended the conclusion by false analogy to nature. The question brings us face to face with the deepest and darkest problem in the history of society, the problem of the origin of the laws which still regulate marriage and the relations of the sexes among civilized nations; for broadly speaking the fundamental laws which we recognize in these matters are recognized also by savages, with this difference, that among many savages the sexual prohibitions are far more numerous, the horror excited by breaches of them far deeper, and the punishment inflicted on the offenders far sterner than with us. The problem has often been attacked, but never solved. Perhaps it is destined, like so many riddles of that Sphinx which we call nature, to remain for ever insoluble. At all events this is not the place to broach so intricate and profound a discussion. I return to my immediate subject.
Sexual immorality is thought by many savages to injure the delinquents themselves, their offspring, and their innocent spouses. In the opinion of many savages the effect of sexual immorality is not merely to disturb, directly or indirectly, the course of nature by blighting the crops, causing the earth to quake, volcanoes to vomit fire, and so forth: the delinquents themselves, their offspring, or their innocent spouses are supposed to suffer in their own persons for the sin that has been committed. Thus among the Baganda of Central Africa “adultery was also regarded as a danger to children; it was thought that women who were guilty of it during pregnancy caused the child to die, either prior to birth, or at the time of birth. Sometimes the guilty woman would herself die in childbed; or, if she was safely delivered, she would have a tendency to devour her child, and would have to be guarded lest she should kill it.”[103.1] “When there was a case of retarded delivery, the relatives attributed it to adultery; they made the woman confess the name of the man with whom she had had intercourse, and if she died, her husband was fined by the members of her clan, for they said: ‘We did not give our daughter to you for the purpose of adultery, and you should have guarded her.’ In most cases, however, the medicine-men were able to save the woman’s life, and upon recovery she was upbraided, and the man whom she accused was heavily fined.”[103.2] The Baganda thought that the infidelity of the father as well as of the mother endangered the life of the child. For “it was also supposed that a man who had sexual intercourse with any woman not his wife, during the time that any one of his wives was nursing a child, would cause the child to fall ill, and that unless he confessed his guilt and obtained from the medicine-man the necessary remedies to cancel the evil results, the child would die.”[103.3] The common childish ailment which was thought to be caused by the adultery of the father or mother was called amakiro, and its symptoms were well recognized: they consisted of nausea and general debility, and the only cure for them was a frank confession by the guilty parent and the performance of a magical ceremony by the medicine-man.[103.4]
Disastrous effects of adultery on adulteress and her child. Similar views as to the disastrous effects of adultery on mother and child seem to be widespread among Bantu tribes. Thus among the Awemba of Northern Rhodesia, when both mother and child die in childbirth, great horror is expressed by all, who assert that the woman must assuredly have committed adultery with many men to suffer such a fate. They exhort her even with her last breath to name the adulterer; and whoever is mentioned by her is called the “murderer” (musoka) and has afterwards to pay a heavy fine to the injured husband. Similarly if the child is born dead and the mother survives, the Awemba take it for granted that the woman has been unfaithful to her husband, and they ask her to name the murderer of her child, that is, the man whose guilty love has been the death of the babe.[104.1] In like manner the Thonga, a Bantu tribe of South Africa, about Delagoa Bay, are of opinion that if a woman’s travail pangs are unduly prolonged or she fails to bring her offspring to the birth, she must certainly have committed adultery, and they insist upon her making a clean breast as the only means of ensuring her delivery; should she suppress the name even of one of several lovers with whom she may have gone astray, the child cannot be born. So convinced are the women of the sufferings which adultery, if unacknowledged, entails on the guilty mother in childbed, that a woman who knows her child to be illegitimate will privately confess her sin to the midwife before she is actually brought to bed, in the hope thereby of alleviating and shortening her travail pangs.[104.2] Sympathetic relation between an adulterer and the injured husband. Further, the Thonga believe that adultery establishes a physical relationship of mutual sympathy between the adulterer and the injured husband such that the life of the one is in a manner bound up with the life of the other; indeed this relationship is thought to arise between any two men who have had sexual connexion with the same woman. As a native put it to a missionary, “They have met together in one life through the blood of that woman; they have drunk from the same pool.” To express it otherwise, they have formed a blood covenant with each other through the woman as intermediary. “This establishes between them a most curious mutual dependence: should one of them be ill, the other must not visit him; the patient might die. If he runs a thorn into his foot, the other must not help him to extract it. It is taboo. The wound would not heal. If he dies, his rival must not assist at his mourning or he would die himself.” Hence if a man has committed adultery, as sometimes happens, with one of his father’s younger wives, and the father dies, his undutiful son may not take the part which would otherwise fall to him in the funeral rites; indeed should he attempt to attend the burial, his relations would drive him away in pity, lest by this mark of respect and perhaps of remorse he should forfeit his life.[105.1] Injurious effects of adultery on the innocent husband, wife, or child. In like manner the Akikuyu of British East Africa believe that if a son has adulterous intercourse with one of his father’s wives, the innocent father, not the guilty young scapegrace, contracts a dangerous pollution (thahu), the effect of which is to make him ill and emaciated or to break out into sores or boils, and even in all probability to die, if the danger is not averted by the timely intervention of a medicine-man.[105.2] The Anyanja of British Central Africa believe that if a man commits adultery while his wife is with child, she will die; hence on the death of his wife the widower is often roundly accused of having killed her by his infidelity.[105.3] Without going so far as this, the Masai of German East Africa hold that if a father were to touch his infant on the day after he had been guilty of adultery, the child would fall sick.[105.4] According to the Akamba of British East Africa, if a woman after giving birth to a child is false to her husband before her first menstruation, the child will surely die.[105.5] Injurious effects of incest on the offspring. The Akamba are also of opinion that if a woman is guilty of incest with her brother she will be unable to bring to the birth the seed which she has conceived by him. In that case the man must purge his sin by bringing a big goat to the elders, and the woman is ceremonially smeared with the contents of the animal’s stomach.[106.1] Among the Washamba of German East Africa it happened that a married woman lost three children, one after the other, by death. A diviner being called in to ascertain the cause of this calamity, attributed it to incest of which she had been accidentally guilty with her father.[106.2]
Wife’s infidelity at home thought to endanger the absent husband in the chase or the war. Again, it appears to be a common notion with savages that the infidelity of a wife prevents her husband from killing game, and even exposes him to imminent risk of being himself killed or wounded by wild beasts. This belief is entertained by the Wagogo and other peoples of East Africa, by the Moxos Indians of Bolivia, and by Aleutian hunters of sea-otters. In such cases any mishap that befalls the husband during the chase is set down by him to the score of his wife’s misconduct at home; he returns in wrath and visits his ill-luck on the often innocent object of his suspicions even, it may be, to the shedding of her blood.[106.3] While the Huichol Indians of Mexico are away seeking for a species of cactus which they regard as sacred, their women at home are bound to be strictly chaste; otherwise they believe that they would be visited with illness and would endanger the success of the men’s expedition.[106.4] An old writer on Madagascar tells us that though Malagasy women are voluptuous they will not allow themselves to be drawn into an intrigue while their husbands are absent at the wars, for they believe that infidelity at such a time would cause the absent spouse to be wounded or slain.[106.5] The Baganda of Central Africa held similar views as to the fatal effect which a wife’s adultery at home might have on her absent husband at the wars; they thought that the gods resented her misconduct and withdrew their favour and protection from her warrior spouse, thus punishing the innocent instead of the guilty. Indeed, it was believed that if a woman were even to touch a man’s clothing while her husband was away with the army, it would bring misfortune on her husband’s weapon, and might even cost him his life. The gods of the Baganda were most particular about women strictly observing the taboos during their husbands’ absence and having nothing to do with other men all that time. On his return from the war a man tested his wife’s fidelity by drinking water from a gourd which she handed to him before he entered his house. If she had been unfaithful to him during his absence, the water was supposed to make him ill; hence should it chance that he fell sick after drinking the draught, his wife was at once clapped into the stocks and tried for adultery; and if she confessed her guilt and named her paramour, the offender was heavily fined or even put to death.[107.1] Similarly among the Bangala or the Boloki of the Upper Congo, “when men went to fight distant towns their wives were expected not to commit adultery with such men as were left in the town, or their husbands would receive spear wounds from the enemy. The sisters of the fighters would take every precaution to guard against the adultery of their brothers’ wives while they were on the expedition.”[107.2] So among the Haida Indians of the Queen Charlotte Islands, while the men were away at the wars, their wives “all slept in one house to keep watch over each other; for, if a woman were unfaithful to her husband while he was with a war-party, he would probably be killed.”[107.3] If only King David had held this belief he might have contented himself with a single instead of a double crime, and need not have sent his Machiavellian order to put the injured husband in the forefront of the battle.[107.4]
Injurious effect of wife’s infidelity on her husband. The Zulus imagine that an unfaithful wife who touches her husband’s furniture without first eating certain herbs causes him to be seized with a fit of coughing of which he soon dies. Moreover, among the Zulus “a man who has had criminal intercourse with a sick person’s wife is prohibited from visiting the sick-chamber; and, if the sick person is a woman, any female who has committed adultery with her husband must not visit her. They say that, if these visits ever take place, the patient is immediately oppressed with a cold perspiration and dies. This prohibition was thought to find out the infidelities of the women and to make them fear discovery.”[108.1] African chiefs thought to be injuriously affected by the incontinence of their subjects. For a similar reason, apparently, during the sickness of a Caffre chief his tribe was bound to observe strict continence under pain of death.[108.2] The notion seems to have been that any act of incontinence would through some sort of magical sympathy prove fatal to the sick chief. The Ovakumbi, a tribe in the south of Angola, think that the carnal intercourse of young people under the age of puberty would cause the king to die within the year, if it were not severely punished. The punishment for such a treasonable offence used to be death.[108.3] Similarly, in the kingdom of Congo, when the sacred pontiff, called the Chitomé, was going his rounds throughout the country, all his subjects had to live strictly chaste, and any person found guilty of incontinence at such times was put to death without mercy. They thought that universal chastity was essential to the preservation of the life of the pontiff, whom they revered as the head of their religion and their common father. Accordingly when he was abroad he took care to warn his faithful subjects by a public crier, that no man might plead ignorance as an excuse for a breach of the law.[108.4]