To sum up:--The fact that punishments for offences are frequently inflicted, or are supposed to be inflicted, by men or gods upon individuals who have not committed those offences, is explicable from circumstances which in no way clash with our thesis that moral indignation is, in its essence, directed towards the assumed cause of inflicted pain. In many cases the victim, in accordance with the doctrine of collective responsibility, is punished because he is considered to be involved in the guilt--even when he is really innocent--or because he is regarded as a fair {70} representative of an offending community. In other cases, he is supposed to be polluted by a sin or a curse, owing to the contagious nature of sins and curses. The principle of social solidarity also accounts for the efficacy ascribed to vicarious expiatory sacrifices; but in many instances expiatory sacrifices only have the character of a ransom or bribe. And whilst thus our thesis as to the true direction of moral indignation is not in the least invalidated by facts, apparently, but only apparently, contradictory, it is, on the other hand, strongly supported by the protest which the moral consciousness, when sufficiently guided by discrimination and sympathy, enters against the infliction of penal suffering upon the guiltless. Such a protest is heard from various quarters, both with reference to human justice and with reference to the resentment of gods. Confucius taught that the vices of a father should not discredit a virtuous son.[261] Plato lays down the rule that "the disgrace and punishment of the father is not to be visited on the children"; on the contrary, he says, if the children of a criminal who has been punished capitally avoid the wrongs of their father, they shall have glory, and honourable mention shall be made of them, "as having nobly and manfully escaped out of evil into good."[262] According to Roman law, "crimen vel poena paterna nullam maculam filio infligere potest."[263] "Nothing," says Seneca, "is more unjust than that any one should inherit the quarrels of his father."[264] The Deuteronomist enjoins, "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own {71} sin."[265] Lawgivers have been anxious to restrict the blood-feud to the actual culprit. The Koran forbids the avenger of blood to kill any other person than the manslayer himself.[266] In England, according to a law of Edmund, the feud was not to be prosecuted against the kindred of the slayer, unless they made his misdeed their own by harbouring him.[267] So, also, in Sweden, in the thirteenth century, the blood feud was limited by law to the guilty individual;[268] and we meet with a similar restriction in Slavonic law-books.[269] [Footnote 261: _Lun Yü_, vi. 4. _Cf._ _Thâi-Shang_ 4.]