Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/788

768 revenge, private as well as public, becomes a duty, is well shown at the present time among the Montenegrins a people who have been at war with the Turks for centuries. "Dans le Montenegro," says Boné, "on dira d'un homme d'une natrie [clan] ayant tué un individu d'une autre: Cette natrie nous doit une tête, et il faut que cette dette soit acquitté, car qui ne se venge pas ne ce sancitie pas."

Where activity in destroying enemies is chronic, destruction will become a source of pleasure; where success in subduing fellow-men is above all things honored, there will arise delight in the forcible exercise of mastery; and, with pride in spoiling the vanquished, will go disregard for the rights of property at large. As it is incredible that men should be courageous in face of foes and cowardly in face of friends, so it is incredible that the other feelings fostered by perpetual conflicts abroad should not come into play at home. We have just seen that, with the pursuit of vengeance outside the society, there goes the pursuit of vengeance inside the society; and whatever other habits of thought and action constant war necessitates must show their effects in the social life at large. Facts from various places and times prove that in militant societies the claims of life, liberty, and property are little regarded. The Dahomans, warlike to the extent that both sexes are warriors, and by whom slave-hunting invasions are, or were, annually undertaken "to furnish funds for the royal exchequer," show their blood-thirstiness by their annual "customs," at which multitudinous victims are publicly slaughtered for the popular gratification. The Feejeeans, again, highly militant in their activities and type of organization, who display their recklessness of life not only by killing their own people for cannibal feasts, but by destroying immense numbers of their infants and by sacrificing victims on trivial occasions, such as launching a new canoe, so much applaud ferocity that to commit a murder is a glory. Early records of Asiatics and Europeans show us the like relation. What accounts there are of the primitive Mongols, who, when united, massacred Western peoples wholesale, show us a chronic reign of violence, both within and without their tribes; while domestic assassinations, which from the beginning have characterized the militant Turks, continue to characterize them down to our own day! In proof that it was so with the Greek and Latin races, it suffices to instance the slaughter of the two thousand Helots by the Spartans, whose brutality was habitual, and the murder of large numbers of suspected citizens by jealous Roman emperors, who also, like their subjects, manifested their love of bloodshed in their arenas. That where life is little regarded there can be but little regard for liberty, follows necessarily: those who do not hesitate to end another's activities by killing him will still less hesitate to restrain his activities by holding him in bondage. Militant savages, whose captives, when not eaten, are enslaved, habitually show us this absence of regard for fellow-men's freedom, which characterizes the members