Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/335

Rh a mistake, for in fact the Chinese use no oaths at all in their law-courts. Now, we have to distinguish these real oaths from mere asseverations, in which emphatic terms, or descriptive gestures, are introduced merely for the purpose of showing the strength of resolve in the declarer's mind. Where, then, does the difference lie between the two? It is to be found in the incurring of supernatural penalty. There would be no difficulty at all in clearing up the question, were it not that theologians have set up a distinction between oaths of imprecation and oaths of witness. Such subtilties, however, looked at from a practical point of view, are seen to be casuistic cobwebs which a touch of the rough broom of common-sense will sweep away. The practical question is this: does the swearer mean that by going through the ceremony he brings on himself, if he breaks faith, some special magic harm, or divine displeasure and punishment? If so, the oath is practically imprecatory; if not, it is futile, wanting the very sanction which gives it legal value. It does not matter whether the imprecation is stated or only implied. When a Bedouin picks up a straw, and swears by him who made it grow and wither, there is no need to accompany this with a homily on the fate of the perjured. This reticence is so usual in the world, that as often as not we have to go outside the actual formula and ceremony to learn what their full intention is.

Let us now examine some typical forms of oath. The rude natives of New Guinea swear by the sun, or by a certain mountain, or by a weapon, that the sun may burn them, or the mountain crush them, or the weapon wound them, if they lie. The even ruder savages of the Brazilian forests, to confirm their words, raise the hand over the head or thrust it into their hair, or they will touch the points of their weapons. These two accounts of savage ceremony introduce us to customs well known to nations of higher culture. The raising of the hand toward the sky seems to mean here what it does elsewhere. It is in gesture calling on the heaven-god to smite the perjurer with his thunderbolt. The touching of the head, again, carries its meaning among these Brazilians almost as plainly as in Africa, where we find men swearing by their heads or limbs, in the belief that they would wither if forsworn; or, as when among the Old Prussians a man would lay his right hand on his own neck, and his left on the holy oak, saying, "May Perkun (the thunder-god) destroy me!" As to swearing by weapons, another graphic instance of its original meaning comes from Aracan, where the witness swearing to speak the truth takes in his hand a musket, a sword, a spear, a tiger's tusk, a crocodile's tooth, and a thunderbolt (that is, of course, a stone celt). The oath by the weapon not only lasted on through classic ages, but remained so common in Christendom that it was expressly forbidden by a synod; even in the seventeenth century, to swear on the sword (like Hamlet's friends in the ghost-scene) was still a legal oath in Holstein. As for