ORDEALS AND OATHS. 317 



stratum of post-mundane oaths such as obtain among modern civilized 

 nations. Roughly, the development in the course of ages may be 

 expressed in the following two classifications : 



Mundane ) ( Curse. 



Mixed v Oaths, ] Conditional Favor. 



Post-Mundane ) ( Judgment. 



Though these two series only partly coincide in history, they so 

 far fit that the judicial oaths of the lower culture belong to the class 

 of mundane curse, while those of the higher culture in general belong 

 to that of post-mundane judgment. Anthropologically, this is the 

 most special new view I have here to bring forward. It forms part 

 of a wider generalization, belonging at once to the science of morals 

 and the science of religion. But, rather than open out the subject 

 into this too wide field, we may do well to fix it in our minds by 

 tracing a curious historical point in the legal customs of our own 

 country. Every one knows that the modes of administering a judi- 

 cial oath in Scotland and in England are not the same. In Scotland, 

 where the witness holds up his hand toward heaven, and swears to 

 tell the truth as he shall answer to God at the day of judgment, we 

 have before us the most explicit possible example of a post-mundane 

 oath framed on Christian lines. In contrasting this with the English 

 judicial oath, we first notice that our acted ceremony consists com- 

 monly in taking a New Testament in the hand and kissing it. Thus, 

 unlike the Scotch oath, the English oath is sworn on a halidome 

 (Anglo-Saxon, hdligdom ; German, heillgthum), a holy or sacred object. 

 Many writers have fallen into confusion about this word, mystifying 

 it into sacred judgment or " holy doom ; " but it is a perfectly 

 straightforward term for a sanctuary or relic, as " On tham haligdome 

 swerian " to swear by the relic. Now, this custom of swearing on 

 a halidome belongs to far pre-Christian antiquity, one famous exam- 

 ple being when Hannibal, then a lad of nine years old, was brought 

 by his father to the altar and made to swear, by touching the sacred 

 things {tactis sacris), that when he grew up he would be the enemy 

 of Rome. In classical antiquity the sacred objects were especially 

 the images and altars of the gods, as it is put in a scene in Plautus, 

 " Touch this altar of Venus ! " The man answers, " I touch it," and 

 then he is sworn. When this ancient rite came into use in early 

 Christian England, the object touched might be the altar itself, or a 

 relic-shrine like that which Harold is touching with his right fore- 

 finger in the famous scene in the Bayeux tapestry, or it might be a 

 missal, or a book of the gospels. In modern England a copy of the 

 New Testament has become the recognized halidome on which oaths 

 are taken, and the practice of kissing it has almost supplanted the 

 older and more general custom of touching it with the hand. 



Next, our attention must be called to the remarkable formula in 

 which (in England, not in Scotland) the invocation of the Deity is 



