The goat being bought has to be killed. Now, to people in this stage of civilisation, to people in _any_ stage of civilisation, the taking of life is very attractive, it is an awe and wonder-inspiring act. These people are so poor they can seldom afford such a sight, and therefore it must be made the most of. You may note exactly the same passion in bull fights, the execution of martyrs, in public executions of all countries. What greater treat can you offer a boy than to see a pig killed? So the death of the goat is compassed with much show and in a peculiarly impressive way. That done the meat is divided as already arranged, and everyone is pleased. They have got their food and their sensation. The priest, too, is pleased, and makes his little scientific theology to explain and apologise for this peculiar emotion. It has the further result of making him powerful and revered. For he alone can see and tell the coolies the inwardness of it all; and he can further claim the tit-bits as representative of the Deity. So arose sacrifice out of some inward hidden emotion of men's hearts. Do not say this emotion is purely savage. It is allied often to the purest pity, to awe, to strange searchings of the heart. To some it may be hardening, but to most it is not so. How do I know? I know by two ways, because I have watched the faces of this and many crowds to see how they felt, and that is what I saw. I have seen death inflicted so often, on animals and on man, that I know and have felt what the emotion is. I cannot explain the emotion--who can explain any emotion?--but I know it is there. And I know that, if not witnessed too often or in wrong circumstances, the sight of suffering and death, rightfully inflicted, is not brutalising, but very much the reverse. Who are the most kind-hearted, even soft-hearted, of men? They are soldiers and doctors. The sights they have seen, the suffering and even death they may themselves have inflicted of necessity, have never hardened them. They have but made their sympathies the deeper and stronger. Look at the contemporary history of any war, of that in Burma fifteen years ago, of that in the Transvaal to-day. Who are they who call out for stringent measures, for much shooting, for plenty of hanging? Never the soldiers. Never those who know what these things are. It is the civilians and journalists who know not what death is. Who wrote "The Drums of the Fore and Aft," "La Debacle," "The Red Badge of Courage," with their delight in blood? Not men who had seen war. Nor is it they who read such books with pleasure. Men who have seen death and watched it could never make the telling an hour's diversion. It is those who have never seen the reality, who seek in art that stimulus which they know they require.