Chapter II · THE NATURE OF THE MORAL EMOTIONS (continued 2)

To sum up:—The fact that punishments for offences are frequently inflicted, or are supposed to be inflicted, by men or gods upon individuals who have not committed those offences, is explicable from circumstances which in no way clash with our thesis that moral indignation is, in its essence, directed towards the assumed cause of inflicted pain. In many cases the victim, in accordance with the doctrine of collective responsibility, is punished because he is considered to be involved in the guilt—even when he is really innocent—or because he is regarded as a fair representative of an offending community. In other cases, he is supposed to be polluted by a sin or a curse, owing to the contagious nature of sins and curses. The principle of social solidarity also accounts for the efficacy ascribed to vicarious expiatory sacrifices; but in many instances expiatory sacrifices only have the character of a ransom or bribe.

And whilst thus our thesis as to the true direction of moral indignation is not in the least invalidated by facts, apparently, but only apparently, contradictory, it is, on the other hand, strongly supported by the protest which the moral consciousness, when sufficiently guided by discrimination and sympathy, enters against the infliction of penal suffering upon the guiltless. Such a protest is heard from various quarters, both with reference to human justice and with reference to the resentment of gods.

Confucius taught that the vices of a father should not discredit a virtuous son.261 Plato lays down the rule that “the disgrace and punishment of the father is not to be visited on the children”; on the contrary, he says, if the children of a criminal who has been punished capitally avoid the wrongs of their father, they shall have glory, and honourable mention shall be made of them, “as having nobly and manfully escaped out of evil into good.”262 According to Roman law, “crimen vel poena paterna nullam maculam filio infligere potest.”263 “Nothing,” says Seneca, “is more unjust than that any one should inherit the quarrels of his father.”264 The Deuteronomist enjoins, “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”265 Lawgivers have been anxious to restrict the blood-feud to the actual culprit. The Koran forbids the avenger of blood to kill any other person than the manslayer himself.266 In England, according to a law of Edmund, the feud was not to be prosecuted against the kindred of the slayer, unless they made his misdeed their own by harbouring him.267 So, also, in Sweden, in the thirteenth century, the blood feud was limited by law to the guilty individual;268 and we meet with a similar restriction in Slavonic law-books.269

Passing to the vengeance of gods: according to the Atharva-Veda, Agni, who forgives sin committed through folly and averts Varuna’s wrath, also frees from the consequence of a sin committed by a man’s father or mother.270 Theognis asks, “How, O king of immortals, is it just that whoso is aloof from unrighteous deeds, holding no transgression, nor sinful oath, but being righteous, should suffer what is not just?”271 According to Bion, the deity, in punishing the children of the wicked for their fathers’ crimes, is more ridiculous than a doctor administering a potion to a son or grandson for a father’s or grandfather’s disease.272 The early Greek notion of an inherited curse was modified into the belief that the curse works through generations because the descendants each commit new acts of guilt.273 The persons who prohibited the sons of such as had been proscribed by Sylla, from standing candidates for their fathers’ honours, and from being admitted into the senate, were supposed to have been punished by the gods for this injustice:—“In process of time,” says Dionysius of Halicarnassus, “a blameless punishment, the avenger of their crimes, pursued them, by which they themselves were brought down from the greatest height of glory, to the lowest degree of obscurity; and none, even, of their race are now left, but women.”274 Among the Hebrews, Jeremiah and Ezekiel broke with the old notion of divine vengeance. The law of individual responsibility, which had already previously been laid down as a principle of human justice, was to be extended to the sphere of religion.275 “Every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.”276 “The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.”277