Might is right to a very great extent in the administration of justice. For a given crime, one family, on account of superior war footing, or superior diplomacy, or on account of being better bluffers, will be able to exact much more severe penalties than another. Especially is Ifugao administration of justice likely to be unfair when persons of different classes are parties to a controversy. I doubt very much, however, whether this characteristic of Ifugao administration of justice be more pronounced than it is in our own.
5. Stage of development of Ifugao law.—Reasons have already been given for believing the Ifugao’s culture to be very old. His legal system must also be old. Yet it is in the first stage of the development of law. It is, however, an example of a very well developed first-stage legal system. It ranks fairly with Hebrew law, or even with the Mohammedan law of a century ago. R. R. Cherry in his lectures on the Growth of Criminal Law in Ancient Communities demonstrates these stages of legal development: First, a stage of simple retaliation—“an eve for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life.” Second, a stage in which vengeance may be bought off “either by the individual who has inflicted the injury or by his tribe.” Third, a stage in which the tribe or its chiefs or elders intervene to fix penalty-payments and to pronounce sentence of outlawry on those who refuse to pay proper fines. Fourth, a stage in which offenses come to be clearly recognized as crimes against the peace and welfare of the king or the state.
No Ifugao would dream of taking a payment for the deliberate or intentional murder of a kinsman. He would be universally condemned if he did so. However, he would usually accept a payment for an accidental taking of life. There is still, however, an element of doubt as to whether even in such a case payment would be accepted. For nearly all other offenses payments are accepted in extenuation. Ifugao law, then, may be said to be in the latter part of the first stage of legal development.
[1] The present population of the Philippine Islands is about 10,000,000. Notwithstanding, there are vast stretches of unoccupied lowlands. At the coming of the Spaniards the population of the tribes that now are Christian has been estimated at 500,000. These second Malay immigrants undoubtedly gained the principal part of their livelihood from agriculture, for which they needed little land. Why, then, is it hypothesized that any immigration drove another to the mountains? My own belief is that the first immigrants went to the mountains of their own volition for the reason that they had been a mountain people and a terrace-building people in their former home.
[2] I use the word “district” to denote the inhabitants of one of the many smaller culture sections into which the habitat of the Ifugaos is divided.
[3] The possibility that these sex taboos are survivals of a former clan system in which exogamy was the rule does not in the least invalidate this statement.
[4] Taboo is for the most part undoubtedly derived from magic. Indeed, there are not wanting those who hold that all taboo has its origin in magic. While doubting if so sweeping an assertion as this can be true, especially when we consider that even in its most primitive phases human life is exceedingly complex and intricate, I invite attention to the fact that magic is such an all-embracing thing in primitive society, and is so closely connected with matters of morality and public policy, that there is nothing in this paragraph that can offend even those who hold that the field of taboo is one wholly of magic prohibitions.