Furthermore, in regard to Japan, we must not overlook certain facts which show that Japan has made gradual progress in the development of the humane feelings and in the legal suppression of cruelty.  The Nihon Shoki records that, on the death of Yamato Hiko no Mikoto, his immediate retainers were buried alive in a standing position around the grave, presumably with the heads alone projecting above the surface of the ground.  The Emperor Suijin Tenno, on hearing the continuous wailing day after day of the slowly dying retainers, was touched with pity and said that it was a dreadful custom to bury with the master those who had been most faithful to him when alive.  And he added that an evil custom, even though ancient, should not be followed, and ordered it to be abandoned.  A later record informs us that from this time arose the custom of burying images in the place of servants.  According to the ordinary Japanese chronology, this took place in the year corresponding to 1 B.C.  The laws of Ieyasu (1610 A.D.) likewise condemn this custom as unreasonable, together with the custom in accordance with which the retainers committed suicide upon the master’s death.  These same laws also refer to the proverb on revenge, given in the third paragraph of this chapter, and add that whoever undertakes thus to avenge himself or his father or mother or lord or elder brother must first give notice to the proper office of the fact and of the time within which he will carry out his intention; without such a notice, the avenger will be considered a common murderer.  This provision was clearly a limitation of the law of revenge.  These laws of Ieyasu also describe the old methods of punishing criminals, and then add:  “Criminals are to be punished by branding, or beating, or tying up, and, in capital cases, by spearing or decapitation; but the old punishments of tearing to pieces and boiling to death are not to be used.”  Torture was finally legally abolished in Japan only as late as 1877.

It has already become quite clear that the prevalence of cruelty or of humanity depends largely upon the social order that prevails.  It is not at all strange that cruelty, or, at least, lack of sympathy for suffering in man or beast, should be characteristic of an order based on constant hand-to-hand conflict.  Still more may we expect to find a great indifference to human suffering wherever the value of man as man is slighted.  Not until the idea of the brotherhood of man has taken full possession of one’s heart and thought does true sympathy spring up; then, for the first time, comes the power of putting one’s self in a brother’s place.  The apparently cruel customs of primitive times, in their treatment of the sick, and particularly of those suffering from contagious diseases, is the natural, not to say necessary, result of superstitious ignorance.  Furthermore, it was often the only ready means to prevent the spread of contagious or epidemic diseases.