_Lex talionis_ is the oldest kind of law and the most deeply rooted in human nature. To the primitive man and the savage, tit for tat is an ethical axiom, which it would be thought immoral as well as cowardly not to put into practice. No principle is held more firmly or acted upon more universally than that of literal and exact retributions in man’s dealings with his fellows--the iron rule of doing unto others the wrongs which others have done unto you. Hebrew legislation demanded “life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” An old Anglo-Saxon law made this retaliatory principle of _membrum pro membro_ the penalty of all crimes of personal violence, including rape; even a lascivious eye was to be plucked out, in accordance with the doctrine that “whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” [“Corruptor puniatur in eo in quo deliquat: oculos igitur amittat, propter aspectum decoris, quo virginem concupivit; amittat et testiculos, qui calorem stupri induxerunt.” Cf. Bracton, 147_b_; Reeves, I. 481.] This was believed to be God’s method of punishment, smiting with disease or miraculously destroying the bodily organs, which were the instruments of sin. Thus Stengelius (_De Judiciis Divinis_, II. 26, 27) records how a thunderbolt was hurled by the divine hand in such a manner as to castrate a lascivious priest: _impurus et saltator sacerdos fulmine castratus_. The same sort of retributive justice was recognized by the Institutes of Manu, which punished a thief by the amputation or mutilation of his fingers.