The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1876-09-16
What We Swear BY.

Let US now examine some typical forms OF
oath. The rude natives of New Guinea swear by
the sun, or by a certain mountain, or by a weapon
that the sun may burn them, or the mountain
crush them, or the weapon wound them, if they
lie. The even ruder savages of the Brazilian
forests, to confirm their words, raise the hand
over the head, or thrust it into their hair, OF they
will touch the points of their weapons. These
two accounts of savage ceremony introduce US. to
customs well known TO nations of higher culture.
The raising of the hand toward the sky seems
to mean here what It does elsewhere. 1t is,sin
gesture, calling on the heaven-god to smite the
periurcr with hls thupderboit. The touching Of
the head, again, carries its meaning among these
Brazilians almost as plainly as in Africa, where
we find men swearing by their heads or limbs, in
the belief that they would wither if forsworn; or,
az when among the old Prusslans a man would
lay his right hand on his own neck, and his left
on the holy oak, saying, "May Perkun 1.-THE
thunder-godl destroy me- As to swearing BY
weapons, another graphic instance of lite original
meaning comes from Aracan, where the witness
swearing to speak the truth takes in his hand a
muske,, a sword, q spear, q tigers tusk, q Gro
eodile's tooth, and a thunderbolt (that is, Of
course, a stone celt.) The oath by the weapon
not only lasted on through classic ages, but re-
manned SO common in Christendom that it was
expressly forbidden by Il synod; even in the seven
teenth century, to swear on the sword (like Ham
let's friends in the ghost scene) was still a legal
oath in Holstein. AZ for the holding up OF the
hand to invoke the personal divine sky, the sue
cessor of this primitive gesture remains to this
day among the chief acts in the solemn oaths of
European nations. Ii could scarcely be shown
more clearly with what childlike imagination the
savage ~conceives that q symbolic action, such as
touching his head or his spear, will somehow pass
into reality. In connection with this group of
oaths, We can carry yet a step further the ~illustra-
ton Of the way mems minds work in this prim-
tive stage of association ofideas. One of the ac-
counts from New Guinea is that the swearer,
holding up an arrow, calls on heaven to punish
him if he lies; but. by turning the arrow the
other way the oath can be neutralized. This is
magic all over. What one symbol can do, the
reverse symbol can undo, True to the laws of
primitive magical reasoning, uncultured men
elsewhere still carry on the symbolic reversal of
their oaths. An Abyssinian chief, who had
sworn an oath he disliked, has been seen to
scrape it of his tongue and spit it out. There
are still places in Germany where the false witness
reckons to escape the spiritual consequences of
perjury by crooking one finger, to make it, l sup
pose, not a straight but a crooked oath, or he puts
his left hand to his side to neutralize what the
right hand is dong. Here is the idea Of our
'over the left, p" but so far as 1 know this has
come dow with us to mere school-boy'5 shuf-
fling.