Scapegoat

“ These things which I now say to you, I said first to myself, sitting in my cell, or watching the endless gray-blue files shuffle past me on their way to and from meals. It was of small help or significance that I claimed innocence of the particular offense that happened to be charged against me; I was as indistinguishable from these men in heart as I was in outward garb and rating. And I had manhood enough to feel glad that, since they had to be here, I was here with them. The burden of the scapegoat has its compensations. ”

“ People must be responsible for their own actions, although it is always easier to blame, to utilize a scapegoat. It is virtual music to the ears to hear someone in this age admit that he has made a mistake or has done a grave disservice to humankind. ”

“ The scapegoat upon whom the sins of the people are periodically laid, may also be a human being. ”

“ In every case where any one is to be used as a scapegoat these two qualities must meet—he must be a really, not fictitiously, representative person, and he must be free from all other claims upon his life. ”

“ It may be suspected that the custom of employing a divine man or animal as a public scapegoat is much more widely diffused than appears from the examples cited. ”

“ The scapegoat is described as bearing away the sins of the people into the wilderness in which it was left to die.16 With a tendency of the sacri26ficial system towards the belief in vicarious punishment, and clear evidence in one instance of its recognition, we may safely assume that it entered to some extent into the feelings of the people when they sacrificed. ”

“ This ceremony was supposed to rid the people of the evils by which they were beset, or according to a somewhat different interpretation it redeemed them by paying the debt they owed to the sea-god. As practised by the Greeks of Asia Minor in the sixth century before our era, the custom of the scapegoat was as follows. When a city suffered from plague, famine, or other public calamity, an ugly or deformed person was chosen to take upon himself all the evils which afflicted the community. ”

“ He is assisted by a priest. Finally the scapegoat, hotly pursued by men and women beating gongs and tom-toms, is driven with great haste out of the town or village.532 A Hindu cure for the murrain is to hire a man of the Chamár caste, turn his face away from the village, brand him with a red-hot sickle, and let him go out into the jungle, taking the murrain with him. He must not look back.533
[pg 192] The mediate expulsion of evils by means of a scapegoat or other material vehicle, like the immediate expulsion of them in invisible form, tends to become periodic, and for a like reason. ”

“ For, first, who can flatter himself with not being among the number of the persecutors of truth, under the description of scandals? I even speak not of those disorderly souls who have erected the standard of guilt and licentiousness, and who pay little, if indeed any, attention to the public opinion: the most notorious scandals are not always those which are most to be dreaded; and avowed debauchery, when carried to a certain degree, occasions, in general, more censures upon our conduct than imitations of our excesses. ”

“ So alone did that good-for-naught prove of the slightest use, in that to future generations he was held up as the butt of scorn and loathing in the family, as the one man who in a few years had wrecked what it had taken an illustrious ancestry many centuries to accumulate.
The first token of the course the scapegrace is going to take is when he begins to fell the stately trees that have been growing in his park about his estate for over a hundred years. ”

“ By the help of this magic, we may extract the sting of guilt from every known sin; and, if we have but wit enough, may be as wicked as we please with a safe conscience. 239
If the features of this corrupt casuistry have not been overcharged; or, indeed, if there be any such thing in the world as a corrupt casuistry, it may concern us to reflect, that this pest of society could not have arisen but from a contempt of the Apostle’s rule, of being simple concerning evil. ”

“ Does gossip, as it grows, disclose the hidden sin? Is it a reflex of the past, or does it invent evil and give it existence? Does it set its accursed seal upon an existent fault, or merely breed that which was yet not, and furnish the occasion for wrong? Should we call the slanderer infamous or severe? the accomplice or the divulger? the public avenger or the tempter? Does he arrest or precipitate our fall? wound through taste or duty? and when he condemns, is it from justice or from spite? Perhaps both, Don Julian. ”

“ Nothing at times so startles us as our own words. As the girl uttered the word "scandal," she rose frightened as though it faced her and began to walk excitedly backward and forward. Scandal had never touched her life. She had never talked scandal; had never thought scandal. Dwelling under the same roof with it as the master passion of a life and forced to encounter it in so many repulsive ways, she had needed little virtue to regard it with abhorrence. ”

“ It seems to lighten the task a little, if some unfortunate fellow can be branded as ‘the scape-goat’ to bear the blame of the mistake, for we all are of kin to that dear lady we read about, who tried to make a scape-goat of the devil; and to the unmanly man, who had the honor to be her husband, and tried699 to make a scape-goat of his wife. ”

“ And as there always recur cases in which exculpation is impossible just in proportion as the party accused is possessed of honourable feeling, and where silent acceptance of doom is the result not of convicted guilt, but of the very triumph of self-sacrifice, we must beware of over-suspicion and injustice. There is nothing in which we are more frequently mistaken than in our suspicions and harsh judgments of others. ”

“ When in the affliction of my heart I suffer a groan to escape me, I have the appearance of a man who complains without reason, and the authors of my ruin have the inconceivable art of rendering the public, unknown to itself, or without its perceiving the effects of it, accomplice in their conspiracy. ”

“ For mine enemies it will profit nothing if soul alone Thou shalt have delivered; that they have done something, that they have accomplished something, they will believe. “What profit is there in my blood, while I go down into corruption?” [75] Therefore “give heed to my soul, and redeem her,” which Thou alone knowest: secondly also, “because of mine enemies deliver me,” that my flesh may not see corruption.
22. “Thou knowest my reproach, and my confusion, and my shame” (ver. 19) . What is reproach? What is confusion? What shame? Reproach is that which the enemy casteth in the teeth. ”

“ Now, a conscious corruption, the vindictive termagant to her own debasement, she did not hesitate, but, having hurriedly veiled herself, went off to the assignation demanded. She repudiated all responsibility for what was to follow. She had done all that was humanly possible to warn a madman away from the certain consequences of his rashness, and, as he would not be warned, she had no choice but to fulfil her own destiny as a contributor to those consequences. She let herself go as the devil listed. ”

“ Scandals are around us every day, but we pay no heed till the spasm of outraged virtue takes us. Then we pick out some one by mere caprice, hiss him, cut him—make him a whipping-boy to be lashed from our doors. ”

“ In the confessional every thing is corruption of the lowest grade. There, the girl's thoughts, lips, hearts and souls are forever polluted. Do I need to prove you this? No! for though you have given up, long since auricular confession, as below the dignity of man, you have not forgotten the lessons of corruption which you have received from it. Those lessons have remained on your souls as the scars left by the red hot iron upon the brow of the slave to be a perpetual witness of his shame and servitude. ”

“ Those irregularities of conduct which are smiled at, and taken for granted, in a man made after the normal, comely fashion, become a scandal in the case of a poor, unhappy devil like me, at which good people hold up their hands in horror. ”

“ They may, they generally do, exaggerate our faults, but the exaggeration gives them a relief and depth of colouring which may enable the accusation to force its way through the dimness and heavy-sightedness of our self-deception. Examine yourself, then, with respect to those accusations which others bring against you in moments of anger and excitement; place yourself in the situation of the injured party, and ask yourself whether you would not attach tho blame of selfishness to similar conduct in another person. ”

“ The Accusation of Sin produced its necessary fruit, hatred of all that was abundant, extravagant, exuberant, of all that sets a sail for shipwreck, and flattery of the commonplace emotions and conventional ideals of the mob, the chief Paymaster of accusation. ”

“ YORK.
Base dunghill villain and mechanical,
I’ll have thy head for this thy traitor’s speech!—
I do beseech your royal majesty,
Let him have all the rigour of the law.
HORNER.
Alas, my lord, hang me if ever I spake the words. My accuser is my prentice; and when I did correct him for his fault the other day, he did vow upon his knees he would be even with me. I have good witness of this, therefore I beseech your majesty, do not cast away an honest man for a villain’s accusation. ”

“ To hear of a scandal, to be convinced of it is as nothing to seeing it. That comes like an exposure, an indecency, a slap in the face. The Ambassador was furious with disgust. He stormed into the room: "Can I believe my eyes? Are you both lost to common sense? Is this your discretion, Mrs. Enslee? Do you realize where you are?"
Persis toppled out of Forbes' relaxed embrace, and spoke from a daze: "No—I forgot—I must be out of my mind."
Forbes came to her defense: "You mustn't blame her. ”

“ How does that man feel who meets another whom he has cruelly robbed, or whose home he has basely dishonoured? But, for all this, I confess with shame that I am overflowing with faults. My imagination is too vivid, and my temper is choleric when suddenly thwarted and opposed in ridiculously small matters: a false accusation or a false suspicion drives me mad. ”

“ Can't you avoid them? Let their Vengeance light
On others' Heads, no matter whose, if you
Are but secure, and have the Cain in Hand:
For they're indiff'rent where they take Revenge,
Whether on him that cheated, or his Friend,
Or on a Stranger whom they never saw,
Perhaps an honest Peasant, who ne'er dreamt [Pg 122]
Of Fraud or Villainy in all his life;
Such let them murder, if they will a Score,
The Guilt is theirs, while we secure the Gain,
Nor shall we feel the bleeding Victims Pain. ”

“ For their own guilt made them more eagerly embrace an opportunity by which they might overwhelm others with a groundless accusation, and by thus finding occupation for the tongues of men, which screen their own misdeeds from investigation. ”

“ Beneath the scourge, what is there that cannot be wrung from the lips of the sufferer? His agony is over-whelming, and he seeks to escape by speaking falsely. The officials profit by the opportunity, and cause him to say what will best confirm his guilt. ”

“ If there be punishment after death, surely, the creator and disseminator of scandal will come to know the anger and contempt of a righteous God. The good and the bad are all of a kind to them. Their putrid minds see something vile in every action, and they leave the drippings of their evil tongues wherever they go. ”

“ Not only He Himself calls not in question, but if another does so, He stops his mouth, though the accuser be one of good repute. Let us return! How long do we stand afar off? Let us perceive our dishonor, let us be sensible of our vileness. ”

“ There's some scandal about everybody. We're all sinners—if you want to call it sin to follow your most sacred instincts.
"Why should you be afraid of a little gossip or a few jokes or a little abuse from a few hypocrites? They're all sinners—worse than you, too, most of them, if the truth were known. ”

“ The gradual debasement of a word into a term of reproach is sometimes a species of scandal. It is wilfully perverted in the course of years, and made to tell a different tale,—a false tale, probably,—which generations receive as true. ”

“ Or, how this evil can be borne, Which breeds at once both hate and scorn. Bare innocence is no support, When you are tried in Scandal's court. Stand high in honour, wealth, or wit; All others, who inferior sit, Conceive themselves in conscience bound To join, and drag you to the ground. Your altitude offends the eyes Of those who want the power to rise. ”

“ The scandals of all ages, down to the present day and even to the end of the world—every species of error, deception, mad fanaticism, obstinacy and malice—were displayed before his eyes, and he beheld, as it were floating before him, all the apostates, heresiarchs, and pretended reformers, who deceive men by an appearance of sanctity. ”

“ Those who were able, protected themselves best by contempt both of the false and true accusations, and by brilliant and joyous display. More sensitive natures sank into utter despair when they found themselves deeply involved in guilt, and still more deeply in slander. ”

“ His handsome face—his radiant smiles, only rekindle the citizens' enthusiasm. They think of the bright young scapegrace whom they all knew years ago. They think of his very faults—which were virtues in the eyes of the populace. ”

“ If this is really accomplished and some positive fact is established in the self-accusation, the question becomes one of finding the value seen by the confessor in blaming himself together with his fellow. Revenge, hatred, jealousy, envy, anger, suspicion, and other passions will be the forces in which this value will be found. One man brings his ancient comrade into jeopardy in revenge for the latter’s injustice in the division of the booty, or in deliberate anger at the commission of some dangerous stupidity in a burglary. ”