ORDEALS AND OATHS. 315 



of the perjurer. It is with the same personification, the same fear of 

 impending chastisement from the outraged deity, that savage and 

 barbaric men have sworn by sky or sun. Thus the Huron Indian 

 would say iu making solemn promise, " Heaven hears what we do 

 this day ! " and the Tunguz, brandishing a knife before the sun, would 

 say, " If I lie, may the sun plunge sickness into my entrails like this 

 knife." We have but to rise one stage higher in religious ideas to 

 reach the type of the famous Roman oaths by Jupiter, the heaven- 

 god. He who swore held in his hand a stone, praying that, if he 

 knowingly deceived, others might be safe in their countries and laws, 

 their holy places and their tombs, but he alone might be cast out, as 

 this stone now and he flung it from him. Even more impressive 

 was the great treaty-oath, where the pater patratus, holding the sa- 

 cred flint that symbolized the thunderbolt, called. on Jove that if by 

 public counsel or wicked fraud the Romans should break the treaty 

 first " In that day, O Jove, smite thou the Roman people as I here 

 to-day shall smite this swine, and smite the heavier as thou art the 

 stronger ! " So saying, he slew the victim with the sacred stone. 



These various examples may be taken as showing the nature and 

 meaning of such oaths as belong to the lower stages of civilization. 

 Their binding power is that of curses, that the perjurer may be vis- 

 ited by mishap, disease, death. But at a higher stage of culture, 

 where the gods are ceasing to be divine natural objects like the Tiber 

 or Ganges, or the sun or sky, but are passing into the glorified human 

 or heroic stage, like Apollo or Venus, there comes into view a milder 

 kind of oath, where the man enters into fealty with the god, whom 

 he asks to favor or preserve him on condition of his keeping troth. 

 Thus, while the proceeding is still an oath with a penalty, this pen- 

 alty now lies in the perjurer's forfeiting the divine favor. To this 

 milder form, which we may conveniently call the " oath of condi- 

 tional favor," belong such' classic phrases as "So may the gods love 

 me ! " {Ita me Dil ament /), " As I wish the gods to be propitious to 

 me ! " {Ita mihi Deos velim propitios). I call attention to this class 

 of oaths, of which we shall presently meet with a remarkable exam- 

 ple nearer home. We have now to take into consideration a move- 

 ment of far larger scope. 



Returning to the great first-mentioned class of savage and barbaric 

 oaths, sworn by gestures or weapons, or by invocation of divine 

 beasts, or rivers, or greater Nature-deities the question now to be 

 asked is, What is the nature of the penalties ? It is, that the per- 

 jurer may be withered by disease, wounded, drowned, smitten by the 

 thunderbolt, etc., all these being temporal, visible punishments. The 

 state of belief to which the whole class belong is that explicitly de- 

 scribed amongj the natives of the Ton^a Islands, where oaths were 

 received on the declared ground that the gods would punish the false- 

 swearer here on earth. A name is wanted to denote this class of 



