who has offended.”256 The Shánárs of Tinnevelly offer up a goat, a sheep, or a fowl, in order “to appease the angry demon, and induce him to remove the evil he has inflicted, or abstain from the infliction he may meditate.”257 It would be almost absurd to suppose that in similar cases the suffering or death of the animal is looked upon in the light of a vicarious punishment. Of the Hebrew sin-offering, Professor Kuenen aptly remarks:—258“According to the Israelite’s notion, Yahveh in his clemency permits the soul of the animal sacrificed to take the place of that of the sacrificer. No transfer of guilt to the animal sacrificed takes place: the blood of the latter is clean and remains so, as is evident from the very fact that this blood is put upon the altar; it is a token of mercy on Yahveh’s part that he accepts it. … Nor can it be asserted that the animal sacrificed undergoes the punishment in the place of the transgressor: this is said nowhere, and therefore, in any case, gives another, more sharply defined idea than that which the Israelite must have formed for himself; moreover, it is irreconcilable with the rule that the indigent may bring the tenth part of an ephah of fine flour as a sin-offering.”259 It should also be noticed that a purifying effect was ascribed to contact with the victim’s blood: the high priest should put or sprinkle some blood upon the altar “and cleanse it, and hallow it from the uncleanness of the children of Israel.”260
251 Réville, Prolegomena of the History of Religions, p. 135.
252 Baring-Gould, Origin and Development of Religious Belief, i. 387 sq.
253 Harnack, op. cit. iii. 312 sqq.
254 Ibid. iii. 307, 315 n. 2.
255 Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes of the United States, ii. 196.
256 Codrington, Melanesians, p. 127.
257 Percival, Land of the Veda, p. 309 sq. Cf. Caldwell, Tinnevelly Shánárs, p. 37.
258 Kuenen, Religion of Israel, ii. 266 sq.
259 Leviticus, v. 11 sqq.
260 Ibid. xvi. 18 sq.
To sum up:—The fact that punishments for offences are frequently inflicted, or are supposed to be inflicted, by men or gods upon individuals who have not committed those offences, is explicable from circumstances which in no way clash with our thesis that moral indignation is, in its essence, directed towards the assumed cause of inflicted pain. In many cases the victim, in accordance with the doctrine of collective responsibility, is punished because he is considered to be involved in the guilt—even when he is really innocent—or because he is regarded as a fair representative of an offending community. In other cases, he is supposed to be polluted by a sin or a curse, owing to the contagious nature of sins and curses. The principle of social solidarity also accounts for the efficacy ascribed to vicarious expiatory sacrifices; but in many instances expiatory sacrifices only have the character of a ransom or bribe.
And whilst thus our thesis as to the true direction of moral indignation is not in the least invalidated by facts, apparently, but only apparently, contradictory, it is, on the other hand, strongly supported by the protest which the moral consciousness, when sufficiently guided by discrimination and sympathy, enters against the infliction of penal suffering upon the guiltless. Such a protest is heard from various quarters, both with reference to human justice and with reference to the resentment of gods.
Confucius taught that the vices of a father should not discredit a virtuous son.261 Plato lays down the rule that “the disgrace and punishment of the father is not to be visited on the children”; on the contrary, he says, if the children of a criminal who has been punished capitally avoid the wrongs of their father, they shall have glory, and honourable mention shall be made of them, “as having nobly and manfully escaped out of evil into good.”262 According to Roman law, “crimen vel poena paterna nullam maculam filio infligere potest.”263 “Nothing,” says Seneca, “is more unjust than that any one should inherit the quarrels of his father.”264 The Deuteronomist enjoins, “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”265 Lawgivers have been anxious to restrict the blood-feud to the actual culprit. The Koran forbids the avenger of blood to kill any other person than the manslayer himself.266 In England, according to a law of Edmund, the feud was not to be prosecuted against the kindred of the slayer, unless they made his misdeed their own by harbouring him.267 So, also, in Sweden, in the thirteenth century, the blood feud was limited by law to the guilty individual;268 and we meet with a similar restriction in Slavonic law-books.269
261 Lun Yü, vi. 4. Cf. Thâi-Shang 4.
262 Plato, Leges, ix. 854 sqq. Plato makes an exception for those whose fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers have successively undergone the penalty of death: “Such persons the city shall send away with all their possessions to the city and country of their ancestors, retaining only and wholly their appointed lot” (ibid. ix. 856). But this enactment had no doubt a purely utilitarian foundation, the offspring of a thoroughly wicked family being considered a danger to the city.
263 Digesta, xlviii. 19. 26. Cf. ibid. xlviii. 19. 20.
264 Seneca, De ira, ii. 34. Cf. Cicero, De officiis, i. 25.
265 Deuteronomy, xxiv. 16. Cf. 2 Kings xiv. 6.
266 Koran, xvii. 35.
267 Laws of Edmund, ii. 1.
268 Nordström, Bidrag till den svenska samhälls-författningens