ruler is sure of popularity if he shows rigor and ferocity. His act
will be regarded as just. It is now the popular temper, when any one
commits a crime which is regarded as very horrible, to think and say
what frightful punishment he deserves. It is a primary outpouring of
savage vengeance. When precedents have been established for frightful
punishments, the rulers apply the same in cases of disobedience against
themselves or their authority. Now torture and ferocious penalties have
reached another stage. They were invented by the masses, or in order to
appeal to the masses. They have now become the means of authority and
discipline. The history of torture is a long development of knowledge of
pain, and of devices to cause it. Then it becomes a means which is at
the disposal of those who have the power. The Dominican Izarn, in a
chant of triumph over the Albigenses, represents himself as arguing with
one of them to whom he says, "Believe as we do or thou shalt be
burned."[506] This is the voice of a victorious party. It is the
enforcement of uniformity against dissent. Systematic and legal torture
then becomes an engine of uniformity and it acts selectively as it
crushes out originality and independent suggestion. It is at the
disposal of any party in power. Like every other system of policy it
loses its effect on the imagination by familiarity, and that effect can
be regained only by intensifying it. Therefore where torture has been
long applied we find that it is developed to grades of incredible
horror.

+234. Execution by burning.+ In the ancient world execution by burning
was applied only when some religious abomination was included in the
crime, or when it seemed politically outrageous. In the laws of
Hammurabi an hierodule who opened a dramshop or entered one to get a
drink was to be burned.[507] One who committed incest with his mother
was to meet the same punishment,[508] also one who married a mother and
her daughter at the same time.[509] In Levit. xx. 14 if a man marries a
mother and her daughter together, all are to be burned, and in Levit.
xxi. 9 the daughter of a priest, if she becomes a harlot, is to be
burned. At the end of the seventh century b.c. some priestly families
connected with the temple of Amon at Napata, Egypt, by way of reform,
introduced the custom of eating the meat of sacrifices uncooked. They
were burned for heresy.[510] In the year 5 B.C., upon a rumor of the
death of Herod I, some Je