EVOLUTION OF CEREMONIAL GOVERNMENT. 553 



within it : the enemy and the felon are undistinguished. This con- 

 fusion, now seeming strange to us, we shall understand better on 

 remembering that, even in early stages of civilized nations, the family- 

 groups which formed the units of the national group were in large 

 measure independent communities, standing to one another on terms 

 much like those on which the nation stood to other nations ; that they 

 had their small blood-feuds as the nation had its great blood-feuds; 

 that each family-group was responsible to other family-groups for 

 the acts of its members, as each nation to other nations for the acts 

 of its citizens ; that vengeance was taken on innocent members of a 

 sinning family, as vengeance was taken on innocent citizens of a 

 sinning nation ; and that so the inter-family aggressor (answering to 

 the modern criminal) stood in a like relative position with the inter- 

 national aggressor. Hence the naturalness of the fact that he was 

 similarly treated. Already we have seen how, in mediaeval days, the 

 heads of slain family-enemies (murderers of its members or stealers 

 of its property) were exhibited as trophies. And from the Salic law 

 we also learn " that there was beside each dwelling a forked gibbet, 

 as there was beside the public tribunals." Since, at the same time, 

 the heads of foes slain in battle were brought back and displayed 

 since it is alleged by Lehuerou, on the authority of Strabo, that 

 sometimes such heads were nailed up to the chief door of the house 

 along with those of private foes we have evidence that identification 

 of the public and the private foe was associated with the practice of 

 taking trophies from them both. A kindred alliance is traceable in 

 the usages of the Jews. Along with the slain Nicanor's head, Judas 

 orders that his hand be cut off; and he brings both with him to Jeru- 

 salem as trophies: the hand being that which he had stretched out in 

 blasphemous boasts. And this treatment of the transgressor who is 

 an alien is paralleled by the treatment of non-alien transgressors by 

 David, who, besides hanging up the corpses of the men who had slain 

 Ishbosheth, "cut off their hands and their feet." 



It may, then, be reasonably inferred that the display of executed 

 felons on gibbets, or their heads on spikes, originates from the bring- 

 ing back of trophies taken from slain enemies. Though usually a 

 part only of the slain enemy is fixed up, yet sometimes the whole 

 body is, as when the dead Saul, minus his head, was fastened by the 

 Philistines to the wall of Bethshan ; and that fixing up the whole 

 body of the felon is more frequent, probably arises from the fact that 

 it has not to be brought from a great distance, as would usually have 

 to be the body of an enemy. 



Though no direct connection exists between trophy-taking and 

 ceremonial government, the foregoing facts reveal such indirect con- 

 nections as make it needful to note the custom. It enters as a factor 

 into the three forms of control social, political, and religious. 



