The Evolution of Human Government

70:10.1Nat­u­ral jus­tice is a man-made the­ory; it is not a re­al­ity. In na­ture, jus­tice is purely the­o­retic, wholly a fic­tion. Na­ture pro­vides but one kind of jus­tice—in­ev­i­ta­ble con­for­mity of re­sults to causes.

70:10.2Jus­tice, as con­ceived by man, means get­ting one’s rights and has, there­fore, been a mat­ter of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion. The con­cept of jus­tice may well be con­sti­tu­tive in a spirit-en­dowed mind, but it does not spring full-fledgedly into ex­is­tence on the worlds of space.

70:10.3Prim­i­tive man as­signed all phe­nom­ena to a per­son. In case of death the sav­age asked, not what killed him, but who? Ac­ci­den­tal mur­der was not there­fore rec­og­nized, and in the pun­ish­ment of crime the mo­tive of the crim­i­nal was wholly dis­re­garded; judg­ment was ren­dered in ac­cor­dance with the in­jury done.

70:10.4In the ear­li­est prim­i­tive so­ci­ety pub­lic opin­ion op­er­ated di­rectly; of­fi­cers of law were not needed. There was no pri­vacy in prim­i­tive life. A man’s neigh­bors were re­spon­si­ble for his con­duct; there­fore their right to pry into his per­sonal af­fairs. So­ci­ety was reg­u­lated on the the­ory that the group mem­ber­ship should have an in­ter­est in, and some de­gree of con­trol over, the be­hav­ior of each in­di­vid­ual.

70:10.5It was very early be­lieved that ghosts ad­min­is­tered jus­tice through the med­i­cine men and priests; this con­sti­tuted these or­ders the first crime de­tec­tors and of­fi­cers of the law. Their early meth­ods of de­tect­ing crime con­sisted in con­duct­ing or­deals of poi­son, fire, and pain. These sav­age or­deals were noth­ing more than crude tech­niques of ar­bi­tra­tion; they did not nec­es­sar­ily set­tle a dis­pute justly. For ex­am­ple: When poi­son was ad­min­is­tered, if the ac­cused vom­ited, he was in­no­cent.

70:10.6The Old Tes­ta­ment re­cords one of these or­deals, a mar­i­tal guilt test: If a man sus­pected his wife of be­ing un­true to him, he took her to the priest and stated his sus­pi­cions, af­ter which the priest would pre­pare a con­coc­tion con­sist­ing of holy wa­ter and sweep­ings from the tem­ple floor. Af­ter due cer­e­mony, in­clud­ing threat­en­ing curses, the ac­cused wife was made to drink the nasty po­tion. If she was guilty, “the wa­ter that causes the curse shall en­ter into her and be­come bit­ter, and her belly shall swell, and her thighs shall rot, and the woman shall be ac­cursed among her peo­ple.” If, by any chance, any woman could quaff this filthy draught and not show symp­toms of phys­i­cal ill­ness, she was ac­quit­ted of the charges made by her jeal­ous hus­band.

70:10.7These atro­cious meth­ods of crime de­tec­tion were prac­ticed by al­most all the evolv­ing tribes at one time or an­other. Du­el­ing is a mod­ern sur­vival of the trial by or­deal.

70:10.8It is not to be won­dered that the He­brews and other semi­civ­i­lized tribes prac­ticed such prim­i­tive tech­niques of jus­tice ad­min­is­tra­tion three thou­sand years ago, but it is most amaz­ing that think­ing men would sub­se­quently re­tain such a relic of bar­barism within the pages of a col­lec­tion of sa­cred writ­ings. Re­flec­tive think­ing should make it clear that no di­vine be­ing ever gave mor­tal man such un­fair in­struc­tions re­gard­ing the de­tec­tion and ad­ju­di­ca­tion of sus­pected mar­i­tal un­faith­ful­ness.

70:10.9So­ci­ety early adopted the pay­ing-back at­ti­tude of re­tal­i­a­tion: an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The evolv­ing tribes all rec­og­nized this right of blood vengeance. Vengeance be­came the aim of prim­i­tive life, but re­li­gion has since greatly mod­i­fied these early tribal prac­tices. The teach­ers of re­vealed re­li­gion have al­ways pro­claimed, “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord.” Vengeance killing in early times was not al­to­gether un­like pres­ent-day mur­ders un­der the pre­tense of the un­writ­ten law.

70:10.10Sui­cide was a com­mon mode of re­tal­i­a­tion. If one were un­able to avenge him­self in life, he died en­ter­tain­ing the be­lief that, as a ghost, he could re­turn and visit wrath upon his en­emy. And since this be­lief was very gen­eral, the threat of sui­cide on an en­emy’s doorstep was usu­ally suf­fi­cient to bring him to terms. Prim­i­tive man did not hold life very dear; sui­cide over tri­fles was com­mon, but the teach­ings of the Dala­ma­tians greatly less­ened this cus­tom, while in more re­cent times leisure, com­forts, re­li­gion, and phi­los­o­phy have united to make life sweeter and more de­sir­able. Hunger strikes are, how­ever, a mod­ern ana­logue of this old-time method of re­tal­i­a­tion.

70:10.11One of the ear­li­est for­mu­la­tions of ad­vanced tribal law had to do with the tak­ing over of the blood feud as a tribal af­fair. But strange to re­late, even then a man could kill his wife with­out pun­ish­ment pro­vided he had fully paid for her. The Es­ki­mos of to­day, how­ever, still leave the penalty for a crime, even for mur­der, to be de­creed and ad­min­is­tered by the fam­ily wronged.

70:10.12An­other ad­vance was the im­po­si­tion of fines for taboo vi­o­la­tions, the pro­vi­sion of penal­ties. These fines con­sti­tuted the first pub­lic rev­enue. The prac­tice of pay­ing “blood money” also came into vogue as a sub­sti­tute for blood vengeance. Such dam­ages were usu­ally paid in women or cat­tle; it was a long time be­fore ac­tual fines, mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion, were as­sessed as pun­ish­ment for crime. And since the idea of pun­ish­ment was es­sen­tially com­pen­sa­tion, ev­ery­thing, in­clud­ing hu­man life, even­tu­ally came to have a price which could be paid as dam­ages. The He­brews were the first to abol­ish the prac­tice of pay­ing blood money. Moses taught that they should “take no sat­is­fac­tion for the life of a mur­derer, who is guilty of death; he shall surely be put to death.”

70:10.13Jus­tice was thus first meted out by the fam­ily, then by the clan, and later on by the tribe. The ad­min­is­tra­tion of true jus­tice dates from the tak­ing of re­venge from pri­vate and kin groups and lodg­ing it in the hands of the so­cial group, the state.

70:10.14Pun­ish­ment by burn­ing alive was once a com­mon prac­tice. It was rec­og­nized by many an­cient rulers, in­clud­ing Ham­murabi and Moses, the lat­ter di­rect­ing that many crimes, par­tic­u­larly those of a grave sex na­ture, should be pun­ished by burn­ing at the stake. If “the daugh­ter of a priest” or other lead­ing cit­i­zen turned to pub­lic pros­ti­tu­tion, it was the He­brew cus­tom to “burn her with fire.”

70:10.15Trea­son—the “sell­ing out” or be­trayal of one’s tribal as­so­ciates—was the first cap­i­tal crime. Cat­tle steal­ing was uni­ver­sally pun­ished by sum­mary death, and even re­cently horse steal­ing has been sim­i­larly pun­ished. But as time passed, it was learned that the sever­ity of the pun­ish­ment was not so valu­able a de­ter­rent to crime as was its cer­tainty and swift­ness.

70:10.16When so­ci­ety fails to pun­ish crimes, group re­sent­ment usu­ally as­serts it­self as lynch law; the pro­vi­sion of sanc­tu­ary was a means of es­cap­ing this sud­den group anger. Lynch­ing and du­el­ing rep­re­sent the un­will­ing­ness of the in­di­vid­ual to sur­ren­der pri­vate re­dress to the state.