r he was a very honest and plain-spoken
man.

Veracity is found to prevail most where there is least to tempt to
falsehood, and most to be feared from it. In a very rude state of
society, like that of which I have been speaking, the only shape in
which property is accumulated is in cattle; things are bartered for
each other without the use of a circulating medium, and one member of
a community has no means of concealing from the other the articles of
property he has. If they were to steal from each other, they would
not be able to conceal what they stole--to steal, therefore, would be
no advantage. In such societies every little community is left to
govern itself; to secure the rights, and enforce the duties, of all
its several members in their relations with each other; they are too
poor to pay taxes to keep up expensive establishments, and their
Governments seldom maintain among them any for the administration of
justice, or the protection of life, property, or character. All the
members of all such little communities will often unite in robbing
the members of another community of their flocks and herds, the only
kind of property they have, or in applauding those who most
distinguish themselves in such enterprises; but the well-being of the
community demands that each member should respect the property of the
others, and be punished by the odium of all if he does not.[1]

It is equally necessary to the well-being of the community that every
member should be able to rely upon the veracity of the other upon the
very few points where their rights, duties, and interests clash. In
the very rudest state of society, among the woods and hills of India,
the people have some deity whose power they dread, and whose name
they invoke when much is supposed to depend upon the truth of what
one man is about to declare. The 'pipal' tree (_Ficus religiosa_) is
everywhere sacred to the gods, who are supposed to sit among its
leaves and listen to the music of their rustling. The deponent takes
one of these leaves in his hand, and invokes the god who sits above
him to crush him, or those dear to him, as he crushes the leaf in his
hand, if he speak anything but the truth; he then plucks and crushes
the leaf, and states what he has to say.[2]

The large cotton-tree is, among the wild tribes of India, the
favourite seat of gods still more terrible,[3] because their
superintendence is confined exclusively to the neighbourhood; and
having