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Folkways, by William Graham Sumner
A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages,
Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals
CHAPTER VII
ABORTION, INFANTICIDE, KILLING THE OLD
The able-bodied and the burdens. — The advantages and disadvantages of the aged. Respect and contempt for them. — Abortion and infanticide. — Relation of parent and child. — Population policy. — The burden and benefit of children. — Individual and group interest in children. — Abortion in ethnography. — Abortion renounced. — Infanticide in ethnography. — Infanticide renounced. — Ethics of abortion and infanticide. — Christian mores as to abortion and infanticide. — Respect and contempt for the aged. — The aged in ethnography. — Killing the old. — Killing the old in ethnography. — Special exigencies of the civilized. — How the customs of infanticide and killing the old were changed.
314. The competent part of society; the burdens. The able-bodied and competent part of a society is the adults in the prime of life. These have to bear all the societal burdens, among which are the care of those too young and of those too old to care for themselves. It is certain that at a very early time in the history of human society the burden of bearing and rearing children, and the evils of overpopulation, were perceived as facts, and policies were instinctively adopted to protect the adults. The facts caused pain, and the acts resolved upon to avoid it were very summary, and were adopted with very little reasoning. Abortion and infanticide protected the society, unless its situation with respect to neighbors was such that war and pestilence kept down the numbers and made children valuable for war. The numbers present, therefore, in proportion to the demand for men, constituted one of the life conditions. It is a life condition which is subject to constant variation, and one in regard to which the sanctions of wise action are prompt and severe.
315. The advantages and disadvantages of the aged. Mores of respect and contempt. Those who survive to old age become depositaries of all the wisdom of the group, and they are generally the possessors of power and authority, but they lose physical 309power, skill, and efficiency in action. In time, they become burdens on the active members of the group. "As a man grows old and weak he loses the only claim to respect which savages understand; but superstitious fear then comes to his protection. He will die soon and then his ghost can take revenge."901 That is to say that the mores can interfere to inculcate duties of respect to the old which will avert from them the conclusion that they ought to die. In respect to the aged, therefore, we find two different sets of mores: (a) those in which the aged are treated with arbitrary and conventional respect; and (b) those in which the doctrine is that those who become burdens must be removed, by their own act or that of their relatives. In abortion, infanticide, and killing the old there is a large element of judgment as to what societal welfare requires, although they are executed generally from immediate personal selfishness. The custom of the group, by which the three classes of acts are approved as right and proper, must contain a judgment that they are conducive, and often necessary, to welfare.
316. Abortion and infanticide. Abortion and infanticide are two customs which have the same character and purpose. The former prevents child bearing; the latter child rearing. They are folkways which are aggregates of individual acts under individual motives, for an individual might so act without a custom in the group. The acts, however, when practiced by many, and through a long time, change their character. They are no longer individual acts of resistance to pain. They bear witness to uniform experiences, and to uniform reactions against the experiences, in the way of judgments as to what it is expedient to do, and motives of policy. They also suggest to, and teach, the rising generation. They react, in the course of time, on the welfare of the group. They affect its numbers and its quality, as we now believe, although we cannot find that any group has ever been forced by its experience to put these customs under taboo.902
317. Relation of parent and child. Children add to the weight of the struggle for existence of their parents. The relation of 310parent to child is one of sacrifice. The interests of children and parents are antagonistic. The fact that there are, or may be, compensations does not affect the primary relation between the two. It may well be believed that, if procreation had not been put under the dominion of a great passion, it would have been caused to cease by the burdens it entails. Abortion and infanticide are especially interesting because they show how early in the history of civilization the burden of children became so heavy that parents began to shirk it, and also because they show the rise of a population policy, which is one of the most important programmes of practical expediency which any society ever can adopt.
318. Population policy. At the present moment the most civilized states do not know whether to stimulate or restrict population; whether to encourage immigration or not; whether emigration is an evil or a blessing; whether to tax bachelors or married men. These questions are discussed as if absolute answers to them were possible, independently of differences in life conditions. In France the restriction of population has entered into the mores, and has been accomplished by the people, from motives which lie in the standard of living. In New England the same is true, perhaps to a greater extent. There are many protests against these mores, on the ground that they will produce societal weakness and decay, and ethical condemnation is freely expended upon them by various schools of religious and philosophical ethics. What is certain, however, is that in the popular ethics of the people who practice restriction it is regarded as belonging to elementary common sense. The motives are connected with economy and social ambition. The restriction on the number of children, in all modern civilized society, issues in an improvement of the quality of the children, so far as that can be improved by care, education, travel, and the expenditure of capital (sec. 320). Thus the problem of rearing children has pressed upon mankind from the earliest times until to-day. It is a problem of the last degree of simplicity and reality, — a problem of a task and the strength to perform it, of an expenditure and the means to meet it. For the 311group, also, population has always presented, as it now does, a problem of policy. That group interests are involved in it is unquestionable. It is one of the matters in regard to which it would be most proper to adopt a careful and well-digested programme of policy. A great many of the projects which are now urged upon society are really applications of population philosophy assumed to be wise without adequate knowledge, or they set population free from all restraints on behalf of certain beneficiaries, while a sound population policy, according to the best knowledge we have, would be the real solution of a number of the most serious evils (alcoholism, sex disease, imbecility, insanity, and infant mortality) which now exhaust the vigor of society.
319. Burden or benefit of children. Abortion and infanticide are, as already stated, the earliest efforts of men to ward off the burden of children and the evils of overpopulation by specific devices of an immediate and brutal character. The weight of the burden of children differs greatly with the life conditions of groups, and with the stage of the arts by which men cope with the struggle for existence. If a territory is underpopulated, an increase in numbers increases the output and the dividend per capita. If it is overpopulated, the food quest is difficult and children cause hardship to the parents. On the other hand, the demand for children will be great, if the group has strong neighbors and needs warriors. The demand may be greater for boys than for girls, or contrariwise. Girls may be needed in order that wives may be obtained in exchange for them, but the greater demand for girls is generally due to the mores which have been established. The demand may be so great as to offset the burden of rearing children and make it a group necessity that that burden shall be endured. From the standpoint of the individual father or mother this means that there are compensations for the toil and cost of rearing children. When girls bring a good bride price to the father, it is evident that he at least receives compensation. As to the mothers, if they receive no compensation, that accords with all the rest of their experience. It is a well-known fact that they often show 312resentment when a daughter is given (sold) in marriage. That fact has never been adequately explained, but it seems to be anything but strange if the husband sells the girl and takes the bride price, although the wife bore and reared the child. Amongst the Marathas of India, on the contrary, "even to the well-to-do, to have many daughters is a curse." The bride's father has to give a big dowry to the groom. If the fathers have rank, but are poor, the girls often have to marry men who are inferior in age or rank.903
320. Individual and group interest. It follows that, in all variations of the life conditions, in all forms of industrial organization, and at all stages of the arts, conjunctures arise in which the value of children fluctuates, and also the relative value of boys and girls turns in favor, now of one, now of the other. In the examination of any case of the customs of abortion and infanticide chief attention should be directed to these conjunctures. On the stage of pastoral-nomadic life, or wherever else horde life existed, it appears that numerous offspring were regarded as a blessing and child rearing, in the horde, was not felt as a burden. It was in the life of the narrower family, whatever its form, that children came to be felt as a burden, so that "progress" caused abortion and infanticide. Further progress has made children more and more expensive, down to our own times, when "neomalthusianism," although unavowed, exists in fact as a compromise between egoism and child rearing. All the folkways which go to make up a population policy seem to imply greater knowledge of the philosophy of population than can be ascribed to uncivilized men. The case is one, however, in which the knowledge is simple and the acts proceed from immediate interest, while the generalization is an unapprehended result. The mothers know the strain of child bearing and child rearing. They refuse to undergo it, for purely egoistic reasons. The consequent adjustment of the population to the food supply comes of itself. It was never foreseen or purposed by anybody. The women would not be allowed by the men to shirk motherhood if the group needed warriors, or if the men wanted daughters to sell 313as wives, so that the egoistic motive of mothers never could alone suffice to make folkways. It would need to be in accord with the interest of the group or the interest of the men. Abortion and infanticide are primary and violent acts of self-defense by the parents against famine, disease, and other calamities of overpopulation, which increase with the number which each man or woman has to provide for. In time, the customs get ghost sanction, but it does not appear that they are in any way directly due to goblinism or to the aleatory element. They become ritual acts and are made sacred whenever they are brought into connection with societal welfare, which implies some reflection. The customs begin in a primary response to pain and the strain of life. Doctrines of right and duty go with the customs and produce a code of conduct in connection with them. Sometimes, if a child lives a specified time, its life must be spared. Sometimes infanticide is practiced only on girls, of whom a smaller number suffices to keep up the tribe. Sometimes it is confined to the imperfect infants, in obedience to a great tribal interest to have able-bodied men, and to spend no strength or capital in rearing others. Sometimes infanticide is executed by exposure, which gives the infant a chance for its life if any one will rescue it. Sometimes the father must express by a ritual act (e.g. taking up the newborn infant from the ground) his decision whether it is to live or not. With these customs must be connected that of selling children into slavery, which, when social hardship is great, is an alternative to infanticide. The Jews abominated infanticide but might sell their children to Jews.904 Abortion by unmarried women is due to the penalties of husbandless mothers, and is only in form in the same class with abortion by the married. Cases are given below in which abortion is not due to misery, but to the egoistic motive only; also cases in which abortion and infanticide are actually carried to the degree of group suicide. Finally we may mention in this connection superstitious customs or ancient and senseless usages to prevent child bearing, since they bear witness to the dominion of the same ideas and wishes to which abortion and infanticide are due (see sec. 321).
314321. Illustrations from ethnography. The Papuans on Geelvink Bay, New Guinea, say that "children are a burden. We become tired of them. They destroy us." The women practice abortion to such an extent that the rate of increase of the population is very small and in some places there is a lack of women.905 Throughout Dutch New Guinea the women will not rear more than two or three children each.906 In fact, it is said of the whole island that the people love their children but fear that the food supply will be insufficient, or they seek ease and shirk the trouble of rearing children.907 In German Melanesia the custom is current. Although many Europeans live with native women, few crossbreeds are to be seen.908 Codrington909 gives as reasons: "If a woman did not want the trouble of bringing up a child, desired to appear young, was afraid her husband might think the birth before its time, or wished to spite her husband." Ling Roth910 quotes Low that the Dyaks never resort to wilful miscarriage, but this statement must be restricted to some of them. Perelaer911 says that even married women do it and employ harmful means. The Atchinese practice abortion both before marriage and in marriage. It is a matter of course.912 The women of Central Celebes will not bear children, and use abortion to avoid it, lest the perineum be torn, — "a thing which they consider the greatest shame for a woman."913 If an unmarried woman of the Djakun, on the peninsula of Malacca, used abortion, she lost all standing in the tribe. Women despised her; no man would marry her, and she might be degraded by a punishment inflicted by her parents. Married women practiced it sometimes to avoid the strain of bearing children, but, if detected, they might be beaten by the husbands, even to death. In the neighboring tribe of the Orang Laut no means of abortion was known. "Such an abomination was not regarded as possible."914 These tribes on Malacca are very low in grade of civilization. They are aborigines who have been displaced and depressed. The people of Nukuoro are all of good physique, large, and well formed. They have a food supply in excess of their wants and are well nourished. The population has decreased in recent years, by reason of the killing of children before or after birth.915 On the New Britain islands the women dislike to become mothers soon after marriage. Generally it is from two to four years before a child is born.916 On the New Hebrides the women employ abortion for egoistic reasons, and miscarriage is often produced by climbing trees and carrying heavy loads.917 The inhabitants of the New Hebrides 315are diminishing in number, especially on the coasts, because they flee inland before the whites. Ten years ago there were at Port Sandwich, on Mallicolo, six hundred souls. To-day there are only half so many. In the last years there have been five births and thirty deaths. Abortion is very common. If a malformed child is born, it and the mother are killed. The nations raid each other to get slaves or cannibal food.918 These citations seem to represent the general usage throughout the Pacific islands.
322. Oviedo said of the women "of the main land" of South America, when first discovered, that they practiced abortion in order not to spoil their bodies by child bearing.919 The Kadiveo of Paraguay are perishing largely through abortion by the women, who will not bear more than one child each.920 They are a subdivision of the Guykurus, who were reported sixty or seventy years ago to be decreasing in number from this cause. The women, "until they are thirty, procure abortion, to free themselves from the privations of pregnancy and the trouble of bringing up children."921 Martius922 gave as additional reasons, that the tribe lived largely on horseback, and the women did not want to be hindered by greater difficulties in this life, nor did they want to be left behind by their husbands. The Indians of the plains of North America were driven to similar limitations. "It has long been the custom that a woman should not have a second child until her first is ten years old."923 Infants interfere very seriously with their mode of life.
Neither abortion nor infanticide is customary in the Horn of Africa unless it be in time of famine.924 In South Africa abortion is a common custom.925 Abortion and infanticide are so nearly universal in savage life, either as egoistic policy or group policy, that exceptions to the practice of these vices are noteworthy phenomena.
323. Abortion renounced. In ancient India abortion came to be ranked with the murder of a Brahmin as the greatest crimes.926 Plato's idea of right was that men over fifty-five, and women over forty, ought not to procreate citizens. By either abortion or infanticide all offspring of such persons should be removed.927 Aristotle also thought that imperfect children should be put to death, and that the numbers should be limited. If parents exceeded the prescribed number, abortion should be employed.928 These two philosophers evidently constructed their ideals on the mores already established amongst the Greeks, and their ethical doctrines are only expressions of approval of the mores in which they lived. The Jews, 316on the other hand, regarded abortion and infanticide as heathen abominations. Both are forbidden in the "Two Ways," sec. 2. In the laws of the German nations the mother was treated as entitled to decide whether she would bear a child. Abortion produced on her by another was a crime, but not when she produced it on herself. Only in the law of the West Goths was abortion by the mother made criminal, because it was the view that the state was injured.929 In modern Hungary, at a marriage, the desire to have no children is expressed by a number of ancient and futile usages to prevent child bearing for years, or altogether. Abortion is practiced throughout Hungary by women of all the nationalities. Women rejoice to be barren, and it is not thought creditable to have an infant within two or three years of marriage.930 Nevertheless the birth rate is very high (thirty-nine per thousand).
324. Illustrations of infanticide. The Australians practiced infanticide almost universally. A woman could not carry two children. Therefore, if she had one who could not yet march, and bore another, the latter was killed. One or both twins were killed. The native men killed half-white children.931 Australian life was full of privations on account of limited supplies of food and water. The same conditions made wandering a necessity. If a woman had two infants, she could not accompany her husband.932 One reporter says that the fate of a child "depended much on the condition the country was in at the time (drought, etc.), and the prospect of the mother's rearing it satisfactorily."933 Sickly and imperfect children were killed because they would require very great care. The first one was also killed because they thought it immature and not worth preserving.934 Very generally it was eaten that the mother might recover the strength which she had given to it.935 If there was an older child, he ate of it, in the belief that he might gain strength. Very rarely were more than four children of one woman allowed to grow up.936 Curr937 says that before the whites came women bore, on an average, six children each, and that, as a rule, they reared two boys and a girl, the maximum being ten. All authorities agree that if children were spared at birth they were treated with great affection. On the Andaman Islands infanticide was unknown.938 It was not common on New Zealand. Boys were wanted as warriors, girls as breeders.939 A missionary reports a case in New Guinea where the parents of a sickly, peevish child, probably teething, calmly 317decided to kill it.940 In British New Guinea there is more or less infanticide, the father strangling the infant at birth to avoid care and trouble. Daughters are preserved by preference because of the bride price which the father will get for them.941 On Nukuoro the civil ruler decides long before a birth whether the child is to be allowed to live or not. If the decision is adverse, it is smothered at birth.942 On the Banks Islands girls are preferred, because the people have the mother family, and because of the marriageable value of girls.943 On the Murray Islands in Torres Straits all children beyond a prescribed number are put to death, "lest the food supply should become insufficient." "If the children were all of one sex, some were destroyed from shame, it being held proper to have an equal number of boys and girls."944 On some islands of the Solomon group infanticide is not practiced, except in cases of illegitimate births. On others the coast people kill their own children and buy grown-up children from the bush people of the interior, that being an easier way to get them.945 There is no infanticide on Samoa. The unmarried employ abortion.946 Throughout Polynesia infanticide was prevalent for social selection, all of mixed blood or caste being put to death. Only two boys in a family were allowed to live, but any number of girls.947 In Tahiti they killed girls, who were of no use for war, service of the god, fishing, or navigation.948 The Malagassans on Madagascar kill all children who are born on unlucky days.949
325. The women of the Pima (Arizona) practice infanticide, because, if their husbands die, they will be poor and will have to provide by their own exertions for such children as they have.950 All Hyperboreans practice infanticide on account of the difficulty of the food supply.951
326. The Bondei of West Africa strangle an infant at birth if any of the numerous portents and omens for which they watch are unfavorable. An infant is also killed if its upper teeth come first.952 Until very recently it was customary in parts of Ahanta for the tenth child born of the same mother to be buried alive.953 In Kabre (Togo) there is a large population and little food. The people often sell their own children, or kidnap others, which they sell in order to provide for their own.954 The Vadshagga put to death illegitimate children and those whose upper incisors come first. The latter, if allowed to live, would be parricides.955 On the Zanzibar coast weak and deformed children are exposed. The Catholic mission 318saved many, but the natives then exposed more to get rid of them.956 The Hottentots expose female twins.957 The Kabyls put to death all children who are illegitimate, incestuous, or adulterine. If the mother should spare the infant she would insure her own death.958 There is said to be no infanticide in Cambodia.959 "Widows among the Moghiahs [a criminal tribe of central India] are allowed to remarry. The murder of female infants has, therefore, never prevailed amongst them."960 The Chinese on Formosa practice female infanticide, "in cases of a succession of girls in a family." "The aborigines, both civilized and savage, looked with horror upon the Chinese for their inhumanity in this respect." They brought the custom from China, where in the overpopulated southeastern provinces it is current custom.961 The Khonds of India are a poor, isolated hill tribe, who put female infants to death because they regard marriage in the same tribe as incest.962 All tribes in their status who refuse to practice endogamy have a peculiar problem to deal with. Wilkins963 says that six sevenths of the population of India have for ages practiced female infanticide. Buddhism is declared to be inhuman and antisocial. It palliates everything which is done to limit population — polygamy and infanticide in China, concubinage in Japan, and prostitution in both. It started and developed in countries which had for generations suffered from overpopulation, with its regular consequences of famine, pestilence, and war.964
327. Revolt against infanticide. The ancient Egyptians revolted, in their mores, against infanticide and put an end to it.965 Strabo966 thought it a peculiarity of the Egyptians that every child must be reared. The Greeks regarded infanticide as the necessary and simply proper way to deal with a problem which could not be avoided. Dissent was not wanting. At Thebes infanticide was forbidden.967 Sutherland968 points out the effect of infanticide to bring the Greek and Latin races to an end. They neglected their own females and begot offspring with foreign and slave women, thus breeding out their own race blood. The Romans do not appear to have had any population policy until the time of the empire, when the social corruption and egoism so restricted reproduction that the policy was directed to the encouragement of marriage and parenthood. Therefore infanticide was disapproved by the jurists and moralists. Ovid, Seneca, Plutarch, Favorinus, and Juvenal speak of abortion as general and notorious, but as criminal.969 Tacitus praised the Germans because, as he erroneously 319asserted,970 they did not allow infanticide, and he knew that the Jews prohibited it.971 In the cases of Greece and Rome we have clear instances to prove the opposite tendencies of the mores, with their attendant philosophies and ethical principles, on the conjuncture of the conditions and interests. At Rome children were exposed either on account of poverty, which was the ancient cause, or on account of luxury, egoism, and vice. "Pagan and Christian authorities are united in speaking of infanticide as a crying vice of the empire."972 These protests show that the custom was not fully protected by the mores. Pliny thought it necessary.973 Seneca refers to the killing of defective children as a wise and unquestioned custom which he can use for illustration.974 For the masses, until the late days of the empire, infanticide was, at the worst, a venial crime. "What was demanded on this subject was not any clearer moral teaching, but rather a stronger enforcement of the condemnation long since passed upon infanticide, and an increased protection for exposed infants.... The church labored to deepen the sense of the enormity of the crime."975 Evidently infanticide was a tradition with serious approval from one state of things to another in which it was harmful and not needed in any view. In 331 A.D. Constantine gave title to those who rescued exposed children against the parents of the children.976 This was in favor of the children, since it increased the chances that they would be rescued, if we must assume that it was their interest that their lives should be spared, even if they were reared by men who speculated on their future value as slaves or prostitutes. As a corollary of the legislation against infanticide, institutions to care for foundlings came into existence. Such institutions rank as charitable and humanitarian. Their history is such as to make infanticide seem kind. In 374 infanticide was made a crime punishable by death. Justinian provided that foundlings should be free.977 Infanticide continued to be customary. The church worked against it by the introduction of the mystic religious element. The infants died unbaptized. As the religion took a more and more ritualistic character this fact affected the minds of the masses more than the suffering or death of the infants ever had. In a cold estimate of facts it was also questionable whether the infants suffered any great harm, and the popular estimate of the crime of extinguishing a life before any interests had clustered around it was very lenient. "The criminality of abortion was immeasurably aggravated when it was believed to involve not only the extinction of a transient life, but also the damnation of an immortal soul."978 The religious interest was thus brought to reënforce the love of children in the struggle against the old custom. The canon 320law also construed it as murder. Through the Middle Ages the sale of children was not common, but the custom of exposure continued.979 The primitive usages of the Teutons included exposure of infants. The father by taking the child up from the ground ordained that it should live. It was then bathed and named. Rulers exposed infants lest dependent persons should be multiplied. Evil dreams also caused exposure. When the Icelanders accepted Christianity a minority stipulated that they should still be allowed to eat horseflesh and to practice exposure of infants.980 In old German law infanticide was treated as the murder of a relative. The guilty mother was buried alive in a sack, the law prescribing, with the ingenious fiendishness of the age, that a dog, a cat, a rooster, and a viper should also be placed in the sack.981 In ancient Arabia the father might kill newborn daughters by burying them alive. The motive of the old custom was anxiety about provision for the child and shame at the disgrace of having become the father of a daughter.982 In the Koran it is forbidden to kill children for fear of starvation. In modern countries infanticide has been common or rare according to the penalties, in law or the mores, upon husbandless mothers. In the sixteenth century, in Spain, illegitimate births were very common. Infanticide was very uncommon, but abandonment (foundlings) took its place. The foundlings became vagabonds and rogues.983
328. Ethics of abortion and infanticide. Abortion and infanticide are at war with the attachment of parents to children, which is a sentiment common, but not universal, amongst animals while the offspring are dependent. It might seem that these customs have been abolished by speculative ethics. In fact, they have not been abolished. They have been modified and have been superseded by milder methods of accomplishing the same purpose. It is evidently a question at what point parental affection begins to attach to the child. We think that we have gained much over savage people in our notion of murder, but it appears that primitive men did not dare to take anything out of nature without giving an equivalent for it, and that they did not dare to kill anything without first sacrificing it to a god, or afterwards conciliating the spirit of the animal or of its species. If it is murder to prevent a life from coming into existence, it 321would be a question of casuistry at what point such a crime would ensue. It might be murder to remain unmarried.
329. Christian mores as to abortion and infanticide. The tradition against abortion and infanticide came down into our mores from the Jews. It never got strength in the mores of Christianity until each of those acts was regarded as a high religious crime because the child died unbaptized. The soul was held to belong to it from the moment of conception. In reality nothing has put an end to infanticide but the advance in the arts (increased economic power), by virtue of which parents can provide for children. Neomalthusianism is still practiced and holds the check by which the population is adjusted to the economic power. There is shame in it. No one dare avow it or openly defend it. A "two-child system" is currently referred to in French and German literature as an established family policy, and restriction is certainly a fact in the mores of all civilized people. It is certain that the masses of those people think it right and not wrong. They do not accept guidance from any speculative ethics, but from expediency. Their devotion to their children is greater than a similar virtue ever has been at any previous time, and they prove their willingness to make the utmost sacrifices for them. In fact, very many of them are unwilling to have more children because it would limit what they can do for those they have. In short, the customs and their motives have changed very little since the days of savagery.
330. Mores of respect or contempt for the aged. In the introductory paragraph to this chapter it was observed that there are two sets of mores as to the aged: (a) in one set of mores the teaching and usages inculcate conventional respect for the aged, who are therefore arbitrarily preserved for their wisdom and counsel, perhaps also sometimes out of affection and sympathy; (b) in the other set of mores the aged are regarded as societal burdens, which waste the strength of the society, already inadequate for its tasks. Therefore they are forced to die, either by their own hands or those of their relatives. It is very far from being true that the first of these policies is practiced by people 322higher up in civilization than those who practice the second. The people in lower civilization profit more by the wisdom and counsel of the aged than those in higher civilization, and are educated by this experience to respect and value the aged. "The introduction of the father-right won more respect for the aged man."984 In some cases we can see the two codes in strife. Amongst the ancient Teutons the father could expose or sell his children under age, and the adult son could kill his aged parents.985 There was no fixed duty of child to parent or of parent to child.
331. Ethnographical illustrations of respect to the aged. "The people of Madagascar pay high honor to age and to parents. The respect to age is even exaggerated." The Hovas always pay formal respect to greater age. If two slaves are carrying a load together, the younger of them will try to carry it all.986 In West Africa, "all the younger members of society are early trained to show the utmost deference to age. They must never come into the presence of aged persons or pass by their dwellings without taking off their hats and assuming a crouching gait. When seated in their presence it must always be at a 'respectful distance,' — a distance proportioned to the difference in their ages and position in society. If they come near enough to hand an aged man a lighted pipe or a glass of water, the bearer must always fall upon one knee."987 "Great among the Oromo is the veneration for the old. Failure in respect to age is considered an injury to the customs of the country. The aged always sit in the post of honor, have a voice in public councils, in discussions, and controversies which arise amongst citizens. The young and the women are taught to serve them on all occasions."988 The Hereros respect the old. Property belongs to an old man even after his son assumes the care of it. Milk pails and joints of meat are brought to him to be blessed.989 The old are well treated in Australia. Certain foods are reserved for them.990 Amongst the Lhoosai, on the Chittagong hills of southeastern India, "parents are reverenced and old age honored. When past work the father and mother are cared for by the children."991 The Nicobarese treat the old kindly and let them live as long as they can.992 The Andamanese also show great respect to the old and treat them with care and consideration.993 The tribes in central Australia have no such custom "as doing away with aged or 323infirm people; on the contrary, such are treated with especial kindness, receiving a share of the food which they are unable to procure for themselves."994 The Jekris, in the Niger Protectorate, "have great respect for their fathers, chiefs, and old age generally. Public opinion is very strong on these points."995 The Indians on the northwest coast of North America "have great respect for the aged, whose advice in most matters has great weight."996 "Great is the respect for the aged" amongst the Chavantes, a Ges tribe of Brazil.997 Cranz998 says that the Greenland Eskimo take care of their old parents. "The Ossetines [of the Caucasus] have the greatest love and respect for their parents, for old age in general, and for their ancestors. The authority of the head of the family, the grandfather, father, stepfather, uncle, or older brother is unconditionally recognized. The younger men will never sit down in the presence of elders, will not speak loudly, and will never contradict them."999 "A young Kalmuck never dares show himself before his father or mother when he is not sober. He does not sit down in the presence of old people, drawing his legs under him, which would be a gross familiarity, but he squats on his knees, supporting himself with his heels in the ground. He never shows himself before old people without his girdle. To be without a girdle is extreme negligé."1000 Maine1001 says: "A New Zealand chief, when asked as to the welfare of a fellow-tribesman, replied, 'He gave us so much good advice that we put him mercifully to death.'" This gives a good idea of the two views which barbarous men take of the aged. At first they are considered useless and burdensome, and fare accordingly; later a sense of their wisdom raises them to a place of high honor." It is evident that the statement here made, of the relation in time of the two ways of treating the old, is not correct. The cases above cited are nearly all those of savages and barbarians. The people of higher civilization will be found amongst those of the other mores to be cited below (see sec. 335).
332. "The position of the Roman father assured him respect and obedience as long as he lived. His unlimited power of making a will kept his fate in his own hands."1002 The power in his family which the law gave him was very great, but his sons never paid him affectionate respect. "It is remarkable that we do not hear so often of barbarous treatment of old women as of old men. Could love for mothers have been an effective 324sentiment? Under mother right the relation of child to parent was far stronger, and the relation to the maternal uncle was secondary and derivative with respect to that to the mother."1003
333. Killing the old. The custom of killing the old, especially one's parents, is very antipathetic to us. The cases will show that, for nomadic people, the custom is necessary. The old drop out by the way and die from exhaustion. To kill them is only equivalent, and perhaps kinder. If an enemy is pursuing, the necessity is more acute.1004 All this enters into the life conditions so primarily that the custom is a part of the life policy; it is so understood and acquiesced in. The old sometimes request it from life weariness, or from devotion to the welfare of the group.
334. Killing the old in ethnography. The "Gallinomero sometimes have two or three cords of wood neatly stacked in ricks about the wigwam. Even then, with the heartless cruelty of the race, they will dispatch an old man to the distant forest with an ax, whence he returns with his white head painfully bowed under a back-load of knaggy limbs, and his bare bronzed bowlegs moving on with that catlike softness and evenness of the Indian, but so slowly that he scarcely seems to get on at all."1005 An old squaw, who had been abandoned by her children because she was blind, was found wandering in the mountains of California.1006 "Filial piety cannot be said to be a distinguishing quality of the Wailakki, or any Indians. No matter how high may be their station, the aged and decrepit are counted a burden. The old man, hero of a hundred battles, when his skill with the bow and arrow is gone, is ignominiously compelled to accompany his sons into the forest, and bear home on his shoulders the game they have killed."1007 Catlin describes his leave-taking of an old Ponca chief who was being deserted by the tribe with a little food and water, a trifling fire, and a few sticks. The tribe were driven on by hunger. The old chief said: "My children, our nation is poor, and it is necessary that you should all go to the country where you can get meat. My eyes are dimmed and my strength is no more.... I am a burden to my children. I cannot go. Keep your hearts stout and think not of me. I am no longer good for anything."1008 This is the fullest statement we can quote, attributed to one of the abandoned old men, of the view of the proceeding which could make him acquiesce in it. The victims do not always take this view of the matter. This custom was 325common to all the tribes which roamed the prairies. Every one who lived to decrepitude knew that he must expect it. A more recent authority says that Poncas and Omahas never left the aged and infirm on the prairie. They were left at home, with adequate supplies, until the hunting party returned.1009 That shows that they had a settled home and their cornfields are mentioned in the context. The old watched the cornfields, so that they were of some use. By the law of the Incas the old, who were unfit for other work, drove birds from the fields, and they were kept at public cost, like the disabled.1010 The Hudson's Bay Eskimo strangle the old who are dependent on others for their food, or leave them to perish when the camp is moved. They move in order to get rid of burdensome old people without executing them.1011 The central Eskimo kill the old because all who die by violence go to the happy land; others have not such a happy future.1012 Nansen1013 says that "when people get so old that they cannot take care of themselves, especially women, they are often treated with little consideration" by the Eskimo. Many tribes in Brazil killed the old because they were a burden and because they could no longer enjoy war, hunting, and feasting. The Tupis sometimes killed a sick man and ate the corpse, if the shaman said that he could not get well.1014 The Tobas, a Guykuru tribe in Paraguay, bury the old alive. The old, from pain and decrepitude, often beg for death. Women execute the homicide.1015 An old woman of the Murray River people, Australia, broke her hip. She was left to die, "as the tribe did not want to be bothered with her." The helpless and infirm are customarily so treated.1016 In West Victoria the old are strangled by a relative deputed for the purpose and the body is burned. One reason given is that, in cases of attack by an enemy, the old would be captured and tortured to death. The victims often beg for delay, but always in vain.1017 The Melanesians buried alive the sick and old. "It is certain that, when this was done, there was generally a kindness intended." Even when the younger hastened the end, for selfish reasons, the sick and aged acquiesced. They often begged to be put out of their misery.1018 On the Easter Islands the aged were treated with little respect. The sick were not kindly treated, unless they were near relatives.1019 The Solomon Islanders are described as "a community where no respect whatever is shown by youth to age."1020 Holub1021 mentions a great cliff from which some South African tribes cast the old when tired of caring for them. Hottentots used to put decrepit old people on pack oxen and take them out into the desert, where they were 326left in a little hut prepared for the purpose with a little food. They now show great heartlessness towards helpless old people.1022 Bushmen abandon the aged with a little food and water.1023 In the Niger Protectorate the old and useless are killed. The bodies are smoked and pulverized and the powder is made into little balls with water and corn. The balls are dried and kept to be used as food.1024 The Somali exploit the old in work to the last point, and then cast them out to die of hunger.1025 The people of the Arctic regions generally put the aged to death on account of the hard life conditions. The aged of the Chuckches demand, as a right, to be put to death.1026 Life is so hard and food so scarce that they are indifferent to death, and the acquiescence of the victim is described as complete and willing.1027 A case is also described1028 of an old man of that tribe who was put to death at his own request by relatives, who thought that they performed a sacred obligation. The Yakuts formerly had a similar custom, the old man begging his children to dispatch him. They thrust him into a hole in the forest, where they left him with vessels, tools, and a little food. Sometimes a man and his wife were buried together. There was no such thing as respect for the aged or for aged relatives amongst the Yakuts. Younger men plundered, scolded, and abused the elder.1029
335. "The custom of putting a violent end to the aged and infirm survived from the primeval period into historic times not infrequently amongst the Indo-European peoples. It can be authenticated in Vedic antiquity, amongst the Iranians (Bactrians and Caspian peoples), and amongst the ancient Germans, Slavs, and Prussians."1030 The Bactrians cast the old and sick to the dogs.1031 The Massagetæ made a sacrifice of cattle and of an old man, and ate the whole. This was a happy end. Those who died of disease were buried and were thought less fortunate.1032 "As far as I know no mention is made among the Aryans of the putting to death of old people in general (we first meet with it in the migratory period), nor of the putting to death of parents by their children; but their casting out is mentioned."1033 The Greeks treated the old with neglect and disrespect.1034 Gomme1035 quotes a fifteenth-century MS. of a Parsifal episode in which the hero congratulates himself that he is not like the men of Wales, "where sons pull their fathers out of bed and kill them to save the disgrace of their dying in bed." He also cites mention of the "holy mawle which (they fancy) hung 327behind the church door, which, when the father was seventy, the son might fetch to knock his father on the head as effete and of no more use."1036 Once in Iceland, in time of famine, it was decided by solemn resolution that all the old and unproductive should be killed. That determination was part of a system of legislation by which, in that country, the society was protected against superfluous and dependent members.1037
336. Special exigencies of the civilized. Civilized men in certain cases find themselves face to face with the primitive circumstances, and experience the primeval necessity, which overrides the sentiments of civilization, whatever may be the strength of the latter. Colonel Fremont, in 1849, in a letter to his wife, tells how in crossing the plains he and his comrades left the weak and dying members of their party, one by one, to die in the snow, after lighting a little fire for him.1038 Many other such cases are known from oral narratives. The question is not one of more or less humanity. It is a question of the struggle for existence when at the limit of one of its conditions. Our civilization ordinarily veils from us the fact that we are rivals and enemies to each other in the competition of life. It is in such cases as the one just mentioned, or in shipwrecks, that this fact becomes the commanding one. The only alternative to the abandonment of one is the loss of all. Abortion, infanticide, and the killing of the old began at times when the competition of life was so direct and pitiless that it left no room for kindly sentiment. The latter is a product of civilization. It could be cultivated only by men for whom the struggle for existence was so easy, and the competition of life so moderate, that the severity was all taken out of them. Then there was a surplus and the conditions of life were easy. The alternative was not murder or suicide. Such a state of ease was reached by migration or by advance in the arts, — in short, by greater command of man over nature. The fundamental elements in the case were altered.
328337. How the mores were changed. Abortion, infanticide, and killing the old are primary folkways which respond to hard facts of life in the most direct and primitive manner. They are not blamed when they become ruling customs which everybody observes. They rise into mores more easily than other primitive usages because the superficial reasons for believing that they are conducive to welfare appear so simple and obvious. When a settled life took the place of a wandering life some immediate reasons for these customs were removed. When peace took the place of war with neighboring tribes other causes were set aside. The cases would then become less frequent, especially the cases of infanticide and killing the old. Then, if cases which seemed to call for reëmployment of old customs arose, they could be satisfied only against some repugnance. Men who were not hard pressed by the burden of life might then refrain from infanticide or killing the old. They yielded to the repugnance rather than to the dislike of hardship. Later, when greater power in the struggle for existence was won the infants and the old were spared, and the old customs were forgotten. Then they came to be regarded with horror, and the mores protected the infants and the old. The stories of the French peasantry which come to us nowadays show that the son is often fully ready in mind and will to kill his old father if the mores and the law did not restrain him.
901 Lippert, Kulturgesch., I, 229.
