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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ...transference of sin into the body of the man or the animal that is then driven away into the wilderness and not necessarily put to death. Of vicarious sacrifice proper there are two piacular types: one that is wholly non-moral, in which the life offered is that of an alien or of a little-valued animal, and such a rite seems to rest ultimately on the savage idea that the offended deity demands blood and is indifferent as to the quality of the blood that he receives; the other is the higher type that alone concerns us here, in which, when the people have sinned, a valued life is offered for an atonement which may be efficacious in the eyes of a morally vindictive deity, because the life is closely akin to the life of the community, so that according to the communal view all die and atone through the death of their representative kinsman. This is the inward meaning of the Greek legends concerning the voluntary self-immolation of the king's son or daughter, a noble youth or noble maiden; the nobler the kindred of the victim, the stronger is the tie that links it to the community and the more potent is the efficacy of this communal atonement--most potent when the victim offers himself or herself of free-will. Or if the victim be an animal, it may be possible by a fiction to identify the animal with the life of the community: thus, in the legend of the piacular sacrifice to Artemis of Brauron in Attica, the father offered a goat but called it his daughter. 1 Herod., 7. 134. 2 This does not appear to be realised with sufficient clearness in Dr Frazer's long and interesting record of such ceremonies, Golden Bough? vol. iii. pp. 93-134. This higher type of vicarious sacrifice is a heritage bequeathed to the higher religions from the older stage of...

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