01 - Human Sacrifice by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

In this intriguing essay, Lord Acton responds to the exchange of letters between Sir Robert Peel and Lord Macaulay, aiming to challenge the widely held belief that human sacrifice was solely the practice of barbaric and uncivilized societies. Acton argues that in some instances, such rituals may stem from sophisticated theological developments. At the urging of Lord Stanhope, Acton‚s thought-provoking piece was published in the Home and Foreign Review in 1863. Summary by Jeff Allen.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Part one of Human Sacrifice. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
by Jeff Allen. Human Sacrifice by John Emeirich Edward Dalber,

(00:23):
Part one. In the recent volumes of his Miscellanies, Lord
Stanhope had published a correspondence between himself, Sir Robert Peel,
and Lord McCully on human sacrifice among the Romans. The
letters had for some time been privately circulated and had
attracted much attention to this singular phenomenon in the history

(00:47):
of humanity. But the most remarkable fact about them is
that two of the writers regard human sacrifice as so
conclusive a sign of a barbarous society, that, in defiance
of the strongest and most abundant evidence, they endeavor to
prove that it had no existence among the civilized Romans.
That Sir Robert Peel and Lord maclay were in error

(01:08):
in this strange opinion will hardly be questioned by any
student of antiquity, and our object therefore in this paper
is not so much to refute their arguments as to
trace in different ages, different countries, and different systems, the
religious idea and the varying forms of the right which
was the subject of their discussion. Human sacrifice is an

(01:30):
institution which may be the outward sign of contrary religious
ideas and of opposite extremes of civilization and barbarism. But
instead of distinguishing its local causes and circumstances, the different
writers on the subject have tried to generalize all the
instances of it into a single law, advocating each is
one view of the meaning of the right, and consequently

(01:54):
given contradictory explanations. But in reality, different nations have approached
it by different paths, and it is therefore a symptom
sometimes of one, sometimes of another, phase of cultivation, reacting
in different ways on the national character. By human sacrifice.
We do not understand every act of putting a man
to death with religious forms or in obedience to a

(02:16):
religious idea. When a nation of fanatics wages a war
of extermination against those who do not worship its gods,
impiles up pyramids of bodies, the idea of honoring the
divinity does but dimly tinge the savage thirst for blood.
When a traveler cast on an inhospitable shore like that
of Tarise, is murdered by the inhabitants to appease the

(02:38):
gods whose lands his foot has defiled. It is the
act of barbarians who imagine that their gods, like themselves,
look on every stranger as a foe. Sacrifici genus ist
seek institute priories at vina virgenio, say sus foot, and
say cadet. Or when an unware a wanderer trespasses on

(03:01):
the consecrated grove or witnesses the secrets of an unnatural warship,
his murder, even at the altar, is rather the punishment
of sacrilege than a real sacrifice. In the German armies,
the priests alone could inflict punishment. Quote nay verbare uidem
nisi sacradotibus ermesim non quase in ponem nec ducs Jusu

(03:26):
said vela deo imperente. In Iceland, the judgment seat was
close to the altar, where the condemned were slain. Here,
the gods were avenged by the punishment of the criminal,
and civil justice received a religious sanction. When the wife
or slave was burnt or buried with the chief, it

(03:46):
was to console the departed spirit, and when slaves or
prisoners were slaughtered at his tomb, it was an homage
to him, not to honour the gods.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
So on our day wretches are wantonly put to death
on the slave coast to celebrate some great occasion. The
arrival of a distinguished traveler must be notified to the
departed spirits, but the victim who carries the news is
not properly sacrificed. In Russia there are great pits black
with smoke and the charred bones of men. But the

(04:16):
sect whose votaries have perished there never dreams of offering
men and sacrifice to God, but believes that death is
better than life, and suicide and atonement for guilt and
the crown of a well spent life again. Gannibals who
believe that their gods delight in human flesh, or savages
who slay all their prisoners will set apart a portion

(04:38):
of their victims for the share of the gods. Where
those who instead of killing, reserve the prisoner as a
chattel of no more value than so many sheep or oxen,
will sacrifice men, not as things different in kind from cattle,
but is representing a certain amount of property. The pious
owner will immolate so many sheep, or so many bullocks,

(05:00):
or so many slaves, according to the solemnity of the
occasion or the convenience of his establishment, not through the
idea that the slave, as being like his master, is
different from the beasts offered with him. No distinct religious
significance is attributed to the nature of the victim. The
cannibal offers human flesh to his cannibal god, and in

(05:23):
this the celebrated author Wolf imagined that he had discovered
the origin of all human sacrifices. The savage slave owner
sacrifices the slave with other animals without a thought of
his humanity, without a scruple about killing, torturing, or defiling him,
because he is taught that the slave has no moral

(05:43):
existence and can have no moral value in the sight
of the gods when he has no rights among men.
Such acts, though like sacrifice in externals, must rather be
classed under the heads of religious intolerance, fullsale, massacre, military execution,
criminal law sanctioned by religion, the penalty of sacrilege, the

(06:06):
funeral rights of a people whose hades is only a
continuation of this life and the effects of cannibalism and slavery.
They are all compatible with the disavow or even the
abhorrence of human sacrifice, and yet as acts of immolation
tinged with superstition, they indicate habits on which the institution

(06:27):
could be grafted and with which it could easily coalesce.
Yet there is an essential distinction to be made between
the cases in which a religious idea has been superadded
to a barbarous custom, giving it an outward hypocritical varnish,
and those in which the inhuman right can be directly
traced to a theological idea. Without this distinction, the subject

(06:50):
will remain obscure, and its discussion will only lead into
profitless generalities. In the one case, the sufferer is a
victim of the ignorance and ferocity of savages, who, in
degrading their gods to their own level and looking on
their captives as no better than beasts, betray the most
material conception of divinity. The practice grows up in some

(07:13):
of the deepest stages of degeneracy, intends still further to
debase man and corrupt the idea of God. It is
not consistent with a thoughtful theology or an advanced culture,
and therefore disappears with the progress of civilization and is
unable to coexist or combine with the rights, which, though

(07:34):
perhaps equally sanguinary, proceed from the most subtle and logical
developments of pagan belief. Thus, the same act, which in
the one case displays the ferocity of the savage, his vindictiveness,
and his godless ignorance of divine things, may in the
other case exhibit the ripest fruits of genteel theology and morality,

(07:55):
speculation and worship, and the most lofty protest against the
cowardice and selfishness with which men elude the legitimate consequences
of their own convictions. Sacrifices either propitiatory to add strength
and perfection to prayer for amen or race descion if

(08:16):
helioke monone sine ede matathasion m si hilogi, or expiatory
to atone for sin. The former is the most natural,
and the classical writers agree that the original sacrifices were
of that kind, and there is no trace of expiatory
sacrifice in scripture previous to the Mosaic law. Yet even

(08:40):
propitiatory sacrifice admits of human victims, the best or first
of its kind was chosen for the altar, and then,
as need pressed more sorely and the true idea of
God waxed dim the child, as the most prized possession,
was given up. Sacrifice was a bargain in which the

(09:00):
thing prayed for were purchased, and the disposition of the
sacrificer became less and less an element, till at last
the intrinsic value of the thing offered was the only
measure of the efficacy of the sacrifice. Thus would arise
the notion of sacrificing the child for the slave as
the most valuable and therefore most acceptable of gifts for

(09:24):
omnium semonem optimum as genus humanum. But before this step
could be taken, idolatry must have prevailed and extirpated the
memory of the curse of atom in the idea of
the hereditary sinfulness of mankind for the belief in original sin,
for the remission of which, as Saint Gregory and Saint

(09:44):
Thomas say, the patriarchal sacrifices were. The provision seems inconsistent
with what probably was the original form of human sacrifice.
The immolation of infants. Human sacrifice, however, is more properly expiatory.
In the Jewish law, the offerings for sin of ignorance,

(10:05):
which included ceremonial mistakes and unconscious defilements, involved the idea
that satisfaction had to be made even for acts in
which the will had no part, while for conscious transgressions,
not only repentance, but an atoning offering was exacted. Among
the heathen, the same feeling may have grown up till

(10:26):
the accumulated sense of guilt drove them to seek a
means of expiating it. A new idea was introduced into
the sacrificial rights, and a victim was sought whose death
might have an atoning power to satisfy the justice, which
was the sovereign attribute of the gods that ruled the world.
There was no ministry of grace and mercy in pagan mythology,

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nothing to teach mankind that the sorrow and amendment of
the offender might gain the remission of the penalty of
his sin. This idea of a penalty inexorably exacted without
respect for repentance and conversion is the basis of a
system of Christian theology. For Christianity, says lasaul As, the

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universal religion comprehends all that was true in earlier systems,
and there are few truths explicitly proclaimed in it which
are not in substance to be discovered in the pre
Christian world. The famous argument of the curdaeis Homo of
Saint Anselom is founded on this theory of satisfaction. The

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dishonor which sin does to God is not made good
by repentance alone. We owe him something more than the
return to virtue, but we have nothing to give but
what is previously due to him. Yet his honor must
be avenged and his justice vindicated, and this expiation cannot
be made by anything else than the death of the

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god Man without a knowing the eternal justice of God.
Yet even then, at Saint Thomas, he cannot forego inflicting
the temp pooral punishment due to sins, so that even
when we have returned to the state of grace, a
penalty still remains due. The Catholic doctrine of indulgences is
generally based upon that theory of satisfaction, which was philosophically

(12:15):
systematized by Saint Anseloin. The same truth was vaguely present
to the heath and conscience. It is expressed by the
Aichian aphorism hathimtos quote nothing suffer, nothing learn unquote, and
still more strongly in the lines Mimni the Mimnandos and

(12:36):
thron Othios pathindon er sunda is miona god quote. While
Zeus sits on his throne, the law that the doer
shall suffer must stand unquote. The honor of the gods
was engaged. Mankind would cease to believe in them ereton

(12:57):
deya if they allowed sin to go unpunish or accepted
unseen contrition as a substitute for the visible penalty. It
was not merely a speculative or symbolical, but a juridical
truth that quote, the wages of sin was death unquote.
There was no other expiation, and human sacrifice, the last

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and remotest growth of propitiation, was the first and most
natural step in expiation. No ordinary sacrifice can redeem the
forfeited life of the sinner or stay the vengeance which
his crime may have called down in his family, his city,
or his country. His own death will not do it,
for his life has become worthless. He in the community

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whom his guilt has involved must be ransomed by a
victim more pure than he would be be innocent, must
die for the guilty in order that society may escape
the just anger of the offended gods. Hence, expiation could
not be originally made with less than a human victim,
for whom animals or even mere symbols and tokens were

(14:04):
subsequently substituted. The victim most naturally selected to ransom the
guilt of the individual is the child. In the East,
the child is also the oldest victim known within the
historical period who had to expiate the guilt contracted by
the state. Infant sacrifice was a later introduction into Europe.

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The idea that children have to bear their parents guilt
and that the punishment, which does not overtake the sinner
falls on his descendants was unknown to Homer. In Greece,
It first found expression in Solon. The value of children
as victims was that while they justly suffered for their parent,
it was considered that their innocence could at the same

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time atone for him. If the criminal was to escape,
it could only be at the expense of his descendants.
To ensure his escape, he must forestall his own punishment
by substituting them for himself. Either he or they must
suffer for his sins. The myth of the Phoenician Moloch
shows that the original cause of the national infant sacrifice

(15:10):
was not the guilt of the individual, but the consequent
danger to the state. It is chiefly in this aspect
that it is found in Greece, where it never became usual,
but was only employed to avert some public calamity or
expiate some private crime, the guilt of which had rendered
the whole city odious to the gods. Here as the

(15:31):
guilt of one was imputed to all, so might the
sacrifice of one atone for all. This was only the
European idea hunum pro multis debatur capit The Asiatic idea
was not one for many, but one for one. In
other words of Macrobius, quote receptim ist ut pro capitibus

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capitibus supplicarator ad k aliquandiu observatum lud pro familiarum sospitate
poiree mactantur. As in the family, the child atoned for
the father, so in the monarchical state, the king or
his daughter was the victim who had to die for

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the people. Early mythical history is full of such sacrifices.
Later on, in republics, a youth or maid was chosen
to die for the rest. Thus, in very early times,
the more civilized Pagans had instituted a sacrifice, which, like
that of Isaac, was the profoundest sign of the need

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of a redeemer, and the most solemn and earnest effort which,
in default of better knowledge mankind could make to satisfy
that need. Satisfaction was necessary. Death was the just punishment
of sin, and the only satisfaction man could make. Yet
a life already forfeited could not be given in ransom.

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Crushed by the sense of actual guilt and ignorant of
original sin, men substituted the most innocent child for their
own guilty selves. Thus, the deepest ideas of religion possible
to the ages of pagan ignorance gave birth to a right,
the more tremendous and apparently efficacious character of which made
even the Jews crave after it, in spite of the

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elements of better knowledge which their law contained. All that
we have said on the moral elevation of the practicers
of human sacrifice must be understood only of those Heathens
who still retained a belief in a personal and supreme God.
Wherever polytheism had corrupted that belief into pantheism, the right
necessarily had another significance. Where God is identified with the

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animating spirit of the universe, dispersed through infinite space the macrocosm,
and where man is supposed to be a concentrated portion
of the same spirit the microcosm, surpassing the infinite and
intensity of mental power, but inferior to it in force
and pervasiveness, The idea of prayer and sacrifice, of propitiation

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and expiation necessarily becomes changed. Instead of a moral end,
its aim becomes cosmical instead of religious. It becomes magical.
Instead of perfecting prayer, it supersedes prayer. It becomes compulsory
and imperative instead of propitiatory and impetrative. It is the

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blacker charm, which compels when the spell of prayer has failed.
Instead of expiatory. It becomes medicinal and restorative, like the
liver of the murdered child used by Kndia to revive
the quenched fires of age. It is the craft whereby man,
wiser but weaker than the brute powers of matter, compels

(18:45):
them to serve him, compels the moon to shed its vigor,
giving influence, the earth to bring forth its fruits, the
winds and weather to moderate themselves, and all things to
cooperate to human uses. The belief in the sovereigning creative
power of sacrifice to influence the powers of the universe
reacted on the doctrine of creation and caused it to

(19:07):
be mythically represented as a sacrifice. The cosmogonical doctrine of
many races was that the world owed its origin to
the sacrifice of a primitive, living creature generally represented as human,
the different parts of whose body were fashioned by the
sacrificing powers into the corresponding portions of the universe. Thus,

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in the Edda, the three sons of bor slew Ymir
dragged his body into the midst of the Abyss, and
of it formed the world. His blood became the waters,
his flesh, the land, his bones, the mountains, and his
skull the heavens. In the Vedas, the Rishis formed the

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world in the same way out of the divided part
of Perusia the primeval man. In Verosis, the woman of
Moerica served the same purpose. The same belief is found
in races which have no connection with the Aryan stock.
In Mexico, the primitive man, who was himself formed from

(20:08):
a bone sprinkled with the blood of the heroes, threw
himself into a fire and became the sun. The moon
was afterwards formed in the same way. The mysteries of Greece, Egypt,
and Asia represented the cosmogony, or at least the restoration
of the world in spring, as the mutilation and new
birth of Zagarus, Osiris, Adonis, and Attius. The Persians derived

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the world from the mutilation of the primitive ox A buddhad,
The Finns and the Japanese represent the creation as the
breaking of an egg out of the various portions of
which the universes formed. The New Zealanders have a myth
about the creation arising from the forcible and painful separation
of heaven and Earth, which is not unlike the Hesoidic

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myth of the mutilation of Uranus. All these myths expressed
the belief that the right of sacrifice had a demi
urgic force over the mundane elements which were compelled by
it to serve the needs of man. Now that the
victim in this sacrifice was originally man, we have the
strongest proof. In two places of the rig Veda, there

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are hymns which assert not only the cosmogonical character of
the original human sacrifice, but the derivation of all other
Vedandic sacrifices from this and their mere representative and substitutive character.
They describe the sacrifice of Perusha, the primeval man who
is identified with the world by the Rishis. From this

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sacrifice comes Soma, the curdled milk, the butter, the animals,
and the Vedandic hymns. That is to say, the materials
and rituals of the Vedantic sacrifice are derived from and
substituted for, the materials and rituals of the Perusha sacrifice.
From the parts into which the body of Perusia was

(22:02):
divided sprang the four castes, that is to say, the
political organization of the Brahmins. Also from the same division
came the different portions of the universe, the moon from
his heart, the sun from his eyes, fire from his mouth,
the wind from his breath, the heaven from his skull

(22:22):
the earth from his feet. Quote, thus did Rishi form
the world? Quote Such concludes one of the hymns, where
the primitive rites the ricis made great by this ceremony
established the heavens unquote. The other concludes thus, quote by

(22:42):
that sacrifice, sages and men are formed. Viewing with observant
minds this oblation which primeval saints offered, I venerate them
the seven inspired Sages i e. The seventh priests of
the Vedandic ritual, with prayers and thanksgivings, follow the path
of these prime evil saints and wisely practice sacrificing as

(23:06):
charioteers use reins. That is to say, the same thing
that was done by the legendary Rishis when they formed
the worlds by the prime evil. Human sacrifice is done
by the seven Vedantic priests in their sacrifice of soma,
milk and butter, which are the substitutes for the ancient
human victim, and not, as Laysan supposes, the oldest offerings

(23:30):
of the Vedantic religion, the horse sacrifice, the mystic power
attributed to which is known to English readers by Southeast
Kahema had the same cosmogonical significance. In the last chapter
of the Black jayjar Vita, it is said that the
divided members of the horse are the parts of time
and of the universe. The horse sacrifices, thus, as Lassen says,

(23:55):
a representation of the self sacrifice of Naragena to Vraj,
which is merely another form of the perusia myth. Substitution
of one victim for another is the fundamental idea of
expiatory and of medicinal or restorative sacrifice. After substituting the
sufferings of the innocent child for those of the guilty father,

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or of the pure maiden for the defiled community, it
was only another step to find substitutes for the child
or the maiden. Such substitutes were either animals, living vegetables,
or intoxicating liquids soma, which were supposed to partake of
the same life which man enjoyed, or portions of his
life as contained in his blood, or the foods on

(24:41):
which his life were supported cakes, oil, butter, milk, hooked meat, salt,
and the like. Or finally, models and symbols of the
victim dolls, wax figures and tablets, or scraps of paper
with diagrams on them the earth. The earliest, most consistent

(25:02):
and most enduring form of human sacrifice concerning which we
have definite history is that which was offered to the
Assyrian bell and the Phoenician Moloch. The same nation which
led the civilization of Asia and invented the alphabet, was
the first to reach the phase of religious thought through which,
at some period of its progress, all other paganisms passed.

(25:25):
One of the fathers ascribed to Chaldea the invention of
heathen sacrifices, and Dollinger considers Babylon to be the real
birthplace and ancient metropolis of paganism and idolatry. There. However,
the sacrifice of maiden purity had already been substituted in
the time of Herododus for the bloodier right. Among the Canonites.

(25:48):
Infant sacrifice was prevalent before the period of the Exodus,
and is stated to be the reason why God destroyed
them and gave their land to his people. It was
the characteristic of the Syrian cultis most fleet in populous
bos gondided Avina, Dido post Carrie Kede Deus Venaeum at

(26:11):
Flegrabentius Eiris infandomdictu parvos imponeri netos, And it was the
purest form of vicarious expiation which nature could suggest. The
sinner offers his own flesh and blood, a life of
his own life, but unlike his own, still innocent, and

(26:31):
therefore meet to atone for him. The innocence of the
victim was the chief requisite, and its healthiness as the
token of innocence, was more indispensable than its blood relationship
to him on whose behalf it was offered. The childless
might buy children of the poor to sacrifice, but the
victims must be sound, puris et incorruptes. An adult victim

(26:56):
could not perfectly correspond to these requirements. To the mythological
purpose of commemorating the act of Cronus Malak, the ancient
king and then god of the country, No, in a
moment of public danger, immolated his only son. His worshipers
could do no less, nor, as Bunsen says, could quote

(27:18):
Malik accept less than this, for he had done the
same thing himself, deliberately and solemnly unquote. A thoughtful Swiss
writer has pointed out the real significance of the right quote.

Speaker 3 (27:32):
Listen freisacrifiluis de la fon calomfon sol a relative mori
olu d'ur isimo sol pucusi do lam de saveeze do
undo asiofund pocriton de la fonci paul de nouvu pucci

(27:57):
giex general dinuvelle victim.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Accordingly, the regular victims were children only. When Gello made
it a condition of peace with the Carthaginians that they
should cease to sacrifice their children, he clearly understood these
to be the only human victims offered. In the rare
cases where men were sacrificed to the Punic gods, the
mode of slaughter seems to have been entirely different from

(28:23):
that of the children who were burnt alive in the
Blowing Idol, as described by the Jewish commentators, He who
felt the intense significance of the Eastern rite puene suos
solidi dis sacravicai puelos, must have felt how inadequate was
the slaughter of an enemy or a stranger, or a

(28:43):
worthless slave, or to express his craving to give his
first born for his transgression, the fruit of his body
for the sin of his soul, Among the Greeks, human
sacrifice was gradually extinguished by the advance of civilization. Among
the Fenitions, it extended with the progress of enlightenment. Sango

(29:04):
Niathan knows of it only on great occasions, such as
that which led to its institution, and only among the
royal family. Afterwards, the rite became annual, and on great
occasions it was performed on a vast scale. At Tire,
it had been abolished in very early times, and a
proposal to restore it was rejected, even when the Mole

(29:26):
of Alexander threatened the city with destruction. But at Carthage
the custom was never abandoned. And when the victorious army
of a Gothocles stood before its walls and it was
found that many families had secretly brought other children to
sacrifice instead of their own, two hundred children of the
best houses were immolated at once to expiate the neglect.

(29:49):
But it was necessary that the sacrifice should seem voluntary,
as in Sardinia, the captives and old men sacrificed to
ball were compelled to meet their fate with smiles. The
famous Sardonic grin, so that the terror of Molok's infant victims,
was soothed by caresses, its cries drowned with music, and
its mother forbidden to weep unless she wished to lose

(30:12):
the benefit of the sacrifice. Milton forgot this when he
wrote first Moloch bored king besmeared with blood of human sacrifice,
and parents tears through the whole noise of drums and
timbrels loud, the children's cries unheard, that passed through fire
to his grim idol. It was a great point in

(30:34):
such sacrifices.

Speaker 1 (30:36):
Domatos kare proo vi la cancataskime prong goone araon ekis.

Speaker 2 (30:44):
The voluntary meekness of the victim, going as a lamb
to the slaughter was so essential that such self devotion
rendered even adults fit victims. There is a story of
three hundred Carthaginians offering themselves to expiate a crime and
board off a great danger. And it is perhaps from
such instances, not being very uncommon, that Justin was able

(31:06):
to say quote homines blude victimous immoliban et impuiberis. The
fiery worship of Moloch was carried by the Phoenicians and
their colonists to nearly all the coasts of the Mediterranean,
but it lost its significance everywhere except at Carthage, where
alone the race remained independent. It could only flourish where

(31:28):
astrolatry was supreme, and where the Sun was worshiped as
the life giver and the life destroyer. The god who
renewed the earth and sprang burnt it up in summer,
and himself suffered in winter to be restored and to
restore the world in spring. These two powers of production
and destruction were gathered up in a Stari, the goddess

(31:50):
of fertility, and Kronos, the devourer of his offspring. Two
modes of sacrifice correspond to these ideas, and wherever the
Phoenician ince extended, they may be traced in holocausts of
human beings, in the systematic violation of female virtue, and
of Part one