“do not always wait for the death of the afflicted before they bury him. Immediately after the body has been deposited in the grave, it becomes necessary, according to their usages, that his death should be avenged. The hunters of the tribe go out with their lances and arrows to kill the first living creature they meet with, whether a man, a stag, a wild hog, or a buffalo.”24 Dr. Steinmetz himself quotes some other instances from the same group of islands, in which, when a man dies, his nearest kinsmen go out to requite his death by the death of the first man who comes in their way.25 It is worth noticing that the Philippine Islanders have the very worst opinion of their ghosts, and believe that these are particularly bloodthirsty soon after death.26
18 Petitot, Les Grands Esqimaux, p. 207 sq.
19 Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 127.
20 Cf. ibid. ii. 129.
21 The latter object is suggested by some funeral ceremonies which will be noticed in a following chapter. Among the Dyaks, “a father who lost his child would go out and kill the first man he met, as a funeral ceremony,” believing that he thus provided the deceased with a slave to accompany him to the habitation of souls (Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 459). Among the Garos, it was formerly the practice, “whenever the death of a great man amongst them occurred, to send out a party of assassins to murder and bring back the head of the first Bengali they met. The victims so immolated would, it was supposed, be acceptable to their gods” (Dalton, Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 68).
22 Cf. Steinmetz, op. cit. i. 343.
23 Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, p. 221.
24 Earl, Papuans, p. 132.
25 Steinmetz, op. cit. i. 335 sq.
26 Blumentritt, ‘Der Ahnencultus der Malaien des Philippinen-Archipels’ in Mittheilungen der Geogr. Gesellsch. in Wien, xxv. 166 sqq. De Mas, Informe sobre el estado de las Islas filipinas en 1842, Orijen, &c. p. 15.
Dr. Steinmetz also refers to some statements according to which, among certain Australian tribes, the relatives of a person who dies avenge his death by killing an innocent man.27 But in these cases the avenged death, though “natural” according to our terminology, is, in the belief of the savages, caused by sorcery, and the revenge is not so indiscriminate as Dr. Steinmetz seems to assume. Among the Wellington tribe, as appears from a statement which he quotes himself, it is the sorcerer’s life that must be taken for satisfaction.28 In New South Wales, after the dead man has been interrogated as to the cause of his death, his kinsmen are resolute in taking vengeance, if they “imagine that they have got sure indications of the perpetrator of the wrong.”29 Among the Central Australian natives, “not infrequently the dying man will whisper in the ear of a Railtchawa, or medicine man, the name of the man whose magic is killing him,” and if this be not done, “there is no difficulty, by some other method, of fixing sooner or later on the guilty party”; but only after the culprit has been revealed by the medicine man is it decided by a council of the old men whether an avenging party is to be arranged or not.30 Among the aborigines of West Australia, the survivors are “pretty busy in seeking out” the sorcerer who is supposed to have caused the death of their friend.31
27 Steinmetz, op. cit. i. 337 sq.
28 Hale, U.S. Exploring Expedition Vol. VI.—Ethnography and Philology, p. 115; quoted by Steinmetz, op. cit. i. 337.
29 Fraser, Aborigines of New South Wales, p. 86.
30 Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 476 sq.
31 Calvert, Aborigines of Western Australia, p. 20 sq.
To sum up: all the facts which Dr. Steinmetz has adduced as evidence for his hypothesis of an original stage of “undirected” revenge only show that, under certain circumstances, either in a fit of passion, or when the actual offender is unknown or out of reach, revenge may be taken on an innocent being, wholly unconnected with the inflicter of the injury which it is sought to revenge. There is such an intimate connection between the experience of injury and the hostile reaction by which the injured individual gives vent to his passion, that the reaction does not fail to appear even when it misses its aim. Anger, as Seneca said, “does not rage merely against its object, but against every obstacle which it encounters on its way.”32 Many infants, when angry and powerless to hurt others, “strike their heads against doors, posts, walls of houses, and sometimes on the floor.”33 Well known are the “amucks” of the Malays, in which “the desperado assails indiscriminately friend and foe,” and, with dishevelled hair and frantic look, murders or wounds all whom he meets without distinction.34 But all this is not revenge; it is sudden anger or blind rage. Nor is it revenge in the true sense of the word if a person who has been humiliated by his superior retaliates on those under him. It is only the outburst of a wounded “self-feeling,” which, when not directed against its proper object, can afford no adequate consolation to a revengeful man.
32 Seneca, De ira, iii. 1.
33 Stanley Hall, ‘A Study of Anger,’ in American Jour. of Psychology, x. 554.
34 Crawfurd, History of the Indian Archipelago, i. 67. Cf. Ellis, ‘The Amok of the Malays,’ in Jour. of Mental Science, xxxix. 325 sqq. In the Andaman Islands, it is not uncommon for a man “to vent his ill-temper, or show his resentment at any act, by destroying his own property as well as that of his neighbours” (Man, ‘Aboriginal Inhabitants of the Andaman Islands,’ in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xii. 111). Among the Kar Nicobarese, when a quarrel takes place, in serious cases, a man will probably burn his own house down (Kloss, In the Andamans and Nicobars, p. 310). But in these instances it is not certain whether the offended party destroys his own property in blind rage, or with some definite object in view.
In the institution of the blood-feud some sort of collective responsibility