ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 127 



Slander is punished the same as the crime alleged in the slander, 

 and slander may be pleaded as a justifying cause for murder and 

 maiming ; slander may also be compounded. 



In primitive society by far the largest body of crimes is included 

 under the practice of witchcraft, and this is terribly punished. 

 Abnormal conditions of body, aberrations of mind, and infelicities 

 of temper are all interpreted as evidences that the possessors thereof 

 are uncanny people, and to a large extent deafness and blindness 

 before old age from causes that cannot be readily understood, and 

 all loathsome or strange diseases, are likely to be attributed to 

 sorcery, so that the practice of witchcraft is everywhere believed in, 

 and witches and wizards are multiplied. Witchcraft is punished by 

 death, but after conviction in the court, appeal to supernatural 

 decision is always permitted, and thus we have the origin of trial 

 by ordeal. 



Criminal law in the higher stages of society need not be charac- 

 terized, but certain lines of evolution may be pointed out. The 

 groups in which marriage is prohibited, giving rise to the crime of 

 incest, change from artificial groups to groups constituted by degrees 

 of consanguineal kinship, male and female. Thus classifications 

 by artificial and analogic characteristics give place to classifica- 

 tions by essential and homologic characteristics. Gradually too, 

 in the progress of society from the earliest to the latest stages, the 

 motive of the murderer is considered, and accidental killing and 

 maiming are differentiated from willful murder and other personal 

 injuries, and in the higher stages of society, such willful injuries, 

 being essential crimes, are not compounded nor atoned for by sub- 

 stitution. 



In the crimes which come from the unlawful acquisition of prop- 

 erty the punishment by multiple restitution found, in the lower 

 states, is superseded by fines which go to the state and by imprison- 

 ment. In the lower stages of society property crimes are thefts ; 

 in the higher stages, property crimes are thefts and frauds. 



In the lower stages of society a large body of the crime is witch- 



