CRIMINAL FESTIVALS. 765 



foundations of a palace, but only when great public edifices are 

 a-building ; and the inhabitants of Sumatra, gentle enough in 

 their ordinary customs, solemnly eat their old men, in the belief 

 that they are thereby observing the most sacred of their duties as 

 sons. 



There is a still more curious side in this strange phenomenon. 

 Everything old and superannuated — usages, customs, laws, etc. — 

 is the object of an extreme veneration, especially among primitive 

 peoples. The Tupis believed that if they should depart from the 

 customs of their ancestors they would be destroyed ; in some 

 clans of the Malagasy innovation and evil are inseparable ideas ; 

 the Araucanians have many very ancient usages which they hold 

 sacred and observe without any constraint ; the Hottentot-Kora- 

 mas are entirely free in their actions, except when ancient usages 

 are involved. Since these criminal festivals survive long after 

 crime has begun to be a morbid exception, they end by becoming 

 sacred, profiting by the veneration attached to all ancient things ; 

 to abolish them or neglect them would be for these peoples a 

 failure in the holiest duties. Consequently, the deed, which ap- 

 pears horrible and worthy of punishment when it is done by a 

 single man, is regarded as honorable when it is performed by the 

 whole tribe or the whole people in these festivals ; the crime of 

 the individual becomes the duty of the mass. 



These sanguinary festivals have been able, by the effect of an- 

 other cause, to endure long, even among superior peoples, like 

 the Greeks and Romans. Unfortunately, crime, especially mur- 

 der and crimes of blood, is not an action of which man has an in- 

 nate horror ; horror of crime, when it exists, is only the effect of 

 a long training, of a painful education of civilization. Murder, 

 M. Taine writes, introduces two extraordinary emotions into the 

 moral and animal machine of man, which overturn it : on the one 

 hand, the sense of all-power exercised without control, obstacle, 

 or danger, on human life and on sensible flesh ; and, on the other 

 hand, the sense of bleeding death with its always novel accom- 

 paniment of contortions and shrieks. That is why all those who 

 can dispose at their caprice, without any danger, of the existence 

 of other men — kings, princes, and mobs — are usually inclined to 

 cruelty. This tendency to the sanguinary pleasures of murder 

 would be more lively among half -civilized peoples, who have been 

 only a little while accustomed to respect for human life; and 

 therefore criminal festivals, although contradictory to the state 

 of individual manners, would be a choice amusement for them ; 

 for all the ferocious instincts which usually slumber in the man 

 could give themselves free course in them. It explains to us, too, 

 why men have tried to preserve these festivals by ameliorating 

 them, when civilization would not tolerate their primitive feroci- 



