48 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



strange to us, we shall understand better on remembering 

 that even in early stages of civilized nations, the family- 

 groups which formed the units of the national group, were 

 in large measure independent communities, standing to 

 one another on terms much like those on which the nation 

 stood to other nations. They had their small blood-feuds 

 as the nation had its great blood-feuds. Each family-group 

 was responsible to other family-groups for the acts of 

 its members, as each nation to other nations for the acts of 

 its citizens. Vengeance was taken on innocent members 

 of a sinning family, as vengeance was taken on innocent 

 citizens of a sinning nation. And thus in various ways the 

 inter-family aggressor (answering to the modern criminal), 

 stood in a like relative position with the inter-national 

 aggressor. Hence the naturalness of the fact that 



he was similarly treated. Already we have seen how, in 

 medieval days, the heads of destroyed family-enemies (mur 

 derers of its members or stealers of its property) were ex 

 hibited as trophies. And since Strabo, writing of the Gauls 

 and other northern peoples, says that the heads of foes slain 

 in battle were brought back and sometimes nailed to the 

 chief door of the house, while, up to the time of the Salic 

 law, the heads of slain private foes were fixed on stakes in 

 front of it ; we have evidence that identification of the pub 

 lic and the private foe was associated with the practice of 

 taking trophies from them both. A kindred alliance is 

 traceable in the usages of the Jews. Along with the slain 

 ISTicanor s head, Judas orders that his hand be cut off; and 

 he brings both with him to Jerusalem as trophies: the hand 

 being that which he had stretched out in blasphemous 

 boasts. And this treatment of the transgressor who is an 

 alien, is paralleled in the treatment of non-alien transgress 

 ors by David, who, besides hanging up the corpses of the 

 men who had slain Ishbosheth, &quot; cut off their hands and 

 their feet.&quot; 



It may, then, be reasonably inferred that display of 



