s races, as among
most of the existing savage tribes whose habits are known to us, there
comes a time, usually at the period when their weapons are growing too
deadly, when this vengeance suddenly halts before a singular custom,
known as the "blood-tribute," or the "composition for murder;" which
allows the homicide to escape the reprisals of the victim's friends and
relations by payment to them of an indemnity, that, from being
arbitrary at the start, soon becomes strictly graduated.

In the whole history of these infant races, in whom impulse and heroism
were the predominant factors, there is nothing stranger, nothing more
astounding, than this almost universal custom, which for all its
ingenuity would seem almost too long-suffering and mercantile. May we
attribute it to the foresight of the chiefs? We find it in races among
whom authority might almost be said to be entirely lacking. Did it
originate among the old men, the thinkers, the sages, of the primitive
groups? That is not more probable. For underlying this custom there
is a thought which is at the same time higher and lower than could be
the thought of an isolated prophet or genius of those barbarous days.
The sage, the prophet, the genius--above all, the untrained genius--is
rather inclined to carry to extremes the generous and heroic tendencies
of the clan or epoch to which he belongs. He would have recoiled in
disgust from this timid, cunning evasion of a natural and sacred
revenge, from this odious traffic in friendship, fidelity, and love.
Nor is it conceivable, on the other hand, that he should have attained
sufficient loftiness of spirit to be able to let his gaze travel beyond
the noblest and most incontestable duties of the moment, and to behold
only the superior interest of the tribe or the race: that mysterious
desire for life, which the wisest of the wise among us to-day are
generally unable to perceive or to justify until they have wrought
grave and painful conquest over their isolated reason and their heart.

No, it was not the thought of man which found the solution. On the
contrary, it was the unconsciousness of the mass, compelled to act in
self-defence against thoughts too intrinsically, individually human
to satisfy the irreducible exigencies of life on this earth. The
species is extremely patient, extremely long-suffering. It will bear
as long as it can and carry as far as it can the burden which reason,
the desire for improveme