[Footnote 57: Michelet, _Origines du droit français_, pp. 76, 279 _sq._ Chambers, _op. cit._ i. 129.] [Footnote 58: Porphyry, _De abstinentia ab esu animalium_, iii. 6.] [Footnote 59: Benoît, quoted by d'Addosio, _op. cit._ p. 214.] [Footnote 60: Crell, _Ethica Christiana_, ii. 1, p. 65 _sq._:--"Hinc aliquid etiam virtuti et vitio simile, seu recte et prave factum: quorum illud est, cum bruta naturæ suæ ductum sequuntur, hoc cum a naturali via exorbitant. Unde tandem etiam aliquid **præmio aut p[oe]næ, et huic quidem maxime simile. Unde bestias etiam a Deo punitas, aut p[oe]nas certas lege illis constitutas, cernimus."] [Footnote 61: Ménabréa, _De l'origine de la forme et de l'esprit des jugements rendus au moyen-age contre les animaux_, p. 35.] At the earlier stages of civilisation even inanimate things are treated as if they were responsible agents. The Kukis take revenge not only on a murderous tiger, but on a murderous tree. "If a man should happen to be killed, by an accidental fall from a tree, all his relations assemble, and cut it down; and however large it may be, they reduce it to chips, which they scatter in the winds, for having, as they say, been the cause of the death of their brother."[62] Among the aborigines of Western Victoria, "when the spear or weapon of an enemy has killed a friend, it is always burnt by the relatives of the deceased; but those captured in battle are kept, and used by the conquerors."[63] The North American Redskins, when struck with an arrow in battle, "will tear it from the wound, break and bite it with their teeth, and dash it on the ground."[64] The British Guiana Indian, when hurt either by falling on a rock, or by the rock falling on him, "attributes the blame, by a line of argument still not uncommon in more civilised life, to the rock."[65] The gods of the Vedic age cursed the trees which had injured them.[66] Xerxes commanded {261} that the Hellespont should be stricken with three hundred lashes,[67] and Cyrus "wreaked his vengeance" on the river Gyndes by dispersing it through three hundred and sixty channels.[68] Pausanias relates that when Theagenes had died, one of his enemies went up to his statue every night, and whipped the brass. At last, however, "the statue checked his insolence by falling on him; but the sons of the deceased prosecuted the statue for murder. The Thasians sank the statue in the sea, herein following the view taken by Draco, who, in the laws touching homicide which he drew up for the Athenians, enacted that even lifeless things should be banished if they fell on anybody and killed him."[69] As Dr. Frazer remarks, the punishment of inanimate objects for having accidentally been the cause of death was probably much older than Draco.[70] At Athens there was a special tribunal for the purpose.[71] Demosthenes states that, if a stone or a piece of wood or iron or any such thing fell and struck a man, and the