19U9] on Influence of Superstition on Growth of Institutions. 459 



the culprits can save their lives, which otherwise must have beeu 

 destroyed by their unchastity. 



These examples may serve to show that among many races sexual 

 immorality, whether in tlie form of adultery, fornication, or incest, is 

 believed in itself to entail, without the intervention of society, most 

 serious consequences, not only on the culprits themselves, but on the 

 community, often indeed to menace the very existence of the whole 

 people by destroying the food supply. Wherever this superstition 

 (for, of course, it is a pure superstition) has existed, it must have 

 served as a powerful motive to deter men from adultery, fornication 

 and incest. If that is so, then I think that I have proved my third 

 proposition, which is, that among certain races and at certain times 

 superstition has strengthened the respect for marriage, and has 

 thereby contributed to a stricter observance of the rules of sexual 

 morality, both among the married and the unmarried. 



IV. I pass now to my fourth and last proposition, which is, that 

 among certain races and at certain times superstition has strengthened 

 the respect for human life, and has thereby contributed to the 

 security of its enjoyment. 



The particular superstition which has had this salutary effect is 

 the fear of ghosts, especially the ghosts of the murdered. The fear 

 of ghosts is widespread, perhaps universal, among savages : it is 

 hardly extinct even among ourselves. If it were extinct, some 

 learned societies might put up their shutters. Dead or alive, the 

 fear has certainly not been an unmixed blessing. Indeed it might 

 with some show of reason be maintained that no belief has done so- 

 much to retard the economic and thereby the social progress of man- 

 kind as the belief in the immortality of the soul ; for this belief has 

 led race after race, and generation after generation, to sacrifice the 

 real wants of the living to the imaginary wants of the dead. The 

 waste and destruction of life and property which this creed has 

 entailed arc enormous and incalculable. But I am not here con- 

 cerned with the many disastrous and deplorable consequences which 

 have flowed in practice from the theory of a future life : my business 

 at present is with the more cheerful aspect of a gloomy subject— I 

 mean with the wholesome, though groundless, terror which ghosts, 

 apparitions, and spectres strike into the breasts of hardened ruffians 

 and desperadoes. So far as such persons reflect at all, and regulate 

 their passions by the dictates of prudence, it seems plain that a fear 

 of ghostly retribution, of the angry spirit of their victim, must act 

 as a salutary restraint upon their disorderly impulses : it must rein- 

 force the dread of purely secular punishment, and supply the choleric 

 and the mahcious with a fresh motive for pausing before they imbrue 

 their hands in blood. This is so obvious, and the fear of ghosts is 

 so notorious, that both might perhaps be taken for granted, especially 

 at this late hour of the evening. But for the sake of completeness 

 I will give a few illustrations. 



