3 i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" mouth of truth " and taking oath of his innocence, lest it should 

 really close on him as tradition says it does on the forsworn. The 

 ordeal by the mouthful of food is still popular in Southern Asia for its 

 practical effectiveness : the thief in the household, his mouth dry with 

 nervous terror, fails to masticate or swallow fairly the grains of rice. 

 So in old England, the culprit may have failed to swallow the con- 

 secrated cor-snsed, or trial-slice of bread or cheese ; it stuck in his 

 throat, as in Earl Godwin's in the story. To this day the formula, 

 "May this mouthful choke me if I am not speaking the truth !" keeps 

 up the memory of the official ordeal. Not less effective is the ordeal 

 by curse, still used in Russia to detect a thief. The babushka, or 

 local witch, stands with a vessel of water before her in the midst of 

 the assembled household, and makes bread-pills to drop in, saying to 

 each in order, " Ivan Ivanoff, if you are guilty, as this ball falls to the 

 bottom, so your soul will fall into hell." But this is more than any 

 common Russian will face, and the rule is that the culprit confesses at 

 sight. This is the best that can be said for ordeals. Under their 

 most favorable aspect, they are useful delusions or pious frauds. At 

 worst they are those wickedest of human deeds, crimes disguised 

 behind the mask of justice. Shall we wonder that the world, slowly 

 trying its institutions by the experience of ages, has at last come to 

 the stage of casting out the judicial ordeal ; or shall we rather won- 

 der at the constitution of the human mind, which for so many ages 

 has set up the creations of delusive fancy to hold sway over a world 

 of facts ? 



From the ordeal we pass to the oath. The oath, for purposes of 

 classification, may be best defined as an asseveration made under su- 

 perhuman penalty, such penalty being (as in the ordeal) either magi- 

 cal or religious in its nature, or both combined. Here, then, we dis- 

 tinguish the oath from the mere declaration, or promise, or covenant, 

 however formal. For example, the covenant by grasping hands is 

 not in itself an oath, nor is even that wide-spread ancient ceremony 

 of entering into a bond of brotherhood by the two parties mixing 

 drops of their blood, or tasting each other's. This latter rite, thoug'h 

 often called an oath, can under this definition be only reckoned as a 

 solemn compact. But when a Galla of Abyssinia sits down over a pit 

 covered over with a hide, imprecating that he may fall into a pit if 

 he breaks his word, or when in our police-courts we make a Chinaman 

 swear by taking an earthen saucer and breaking it on the rail in front 

 of the witness-box, signifying, as the interpreter then puts it in 

 words, " If you do not tell the truth, your 60ul will be cracked like 

 this saucer," we have here two full oaths, of which the penalty, magi- 

 cal or religious, is shown in pantomime before us. By-the-way, the 

 English judges who authorized this last sensational ceremony must 

 have believed that they were calling on a Chinaman to take a judi- 

 cial oath after the manner of his own country ; but they acted under 



