The origin and development of the moral ideasWestermarck, Edward
Philosophy
The origin and development of the moral ideas
Westermarck, Edward
Ethics; Ethics -- History; Prehistoric peoples
But though early custom and law may be anxious enough to trace an
event to its source, they easily fail to distinguish between external
and internal causes, to discover where there is guilt or not, and, in
case of carelessness, to determine the magnitude of the offender's
guilt. Ancient Teutonic law, as we have seen, distinguished between
_vili_ and _vadhi_. It punished the involuntary manslayer less heavily
than the voluntary one, but it punished him all the same; and whether
the unintended deed was combined with heedlessness or was purely
accidental was a question with which the law did not at all concern
itself.[15] According to the Laws of [Hv]ammurabi, "if the doctor has
treated a gentleman for a severe wound with a lancet of bronze, and
has caused the gentleman to die, or has opened an abscess of the eye
for a gentleman with the bronze lancet and has caused the loss of the
gentleman's eye, one shall cut off his hands."[16] In the Mosaic law
distinction was made between presence and absence of enmity in the
manslayer, but the difference between carelessness and misfortune was
not considered,[17] except when the instrument of death was a goring
ox.[18] However, in this, as in many other respects, great progress
was made by the later legislation of the Jews. The Rabbis took
considerable pains to distinguish between purely accidental homicide
and homicide due to carelessness; the former they exempted from all
punishment, whereas the latter incurred the punishment of confinement
to a city of refuge.[19] They even distinguished between cases in
which the death was exclusively due to the carelessness of the agent,
and cases in which the deceased contributed to it by some blamable act
of his own. A father or a teacher {308} who in punishing his son or
pupil unintentionally caused his death, and a person who by order of
the Sanhedrim inflicted corporal punishment on a culprit and in doing
so happened by mistake to kill him--such persons were not confined in
a city of refuge, but escaped punishment altogether.[20] Whatever else
may be said of these provisions, they certainly show remarkable
discernment in a point where legislators of a ruder type have been
very indiscriminate. In the oldest English records we see no attempt
to distinguish cases in which the dead man himself was reprehensible
from others in which no fault could be imputed to him, and we find
that many horses and boats bore the guilt which should have been
ascribed to beer.[21] When a drunken carter was crushed beneath the
wheel of his cart, the cart, the cask of wine which was in it, and the
oxen that were drawing it, were all deodand.[22] According to the
customary law of the Ossetes, if a stolen gun went off in the hands of
the thief who was carrying it away, and killed him, the thief's kin
had a just feud against the owner of the gun.[23]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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