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VIII.] exception of the Yakut in the extreme north-east) southern Siberia and Tatary, between the Volga and the Yenisei; second, the south-eastern, including the Uigurs, Usbeks, Turkomans, etc., and ranging from the southern Caspian, eastward to the middle of the great plateau; third, the western, stretching through northern Persia, the Caucasus, the Crimea, and Asia Minor, to the Bosphorus, and scattered in patches amid the varied populations which fill the European dominions of the Sultan. This division, however, is rather geographical than linguistic: the nearer mutual relations of the different dialects are still, in great part, to be determined. They compose together a very distinct body of nearly kindred forms of speech, not differing from one another in anything like the same degree as the Ugrian languages. It is even claimed, although with questionable truth, that a Yakut of the Lena and a man of the lower orders at Constantinople could still make shift to communicate together.

The fourth branch of Scythian language is the Mongolian. The Mongols, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, ran a wonderful career of conquest, overwhelming nearly all the monarchies of Asia, and reducing even the eastern countries of Europe to subjection. The Mongol emperor Kublai Khan, reigning from the borders of Germany to the coasts of south-eastern Asia, with his capital in China, the most populous and at that time well-nigh the most enlightened country of the earth, governed such a realm as the world never saw, before or since. But the unwieldy mass fell in pieces almost as rapidly as it had been brought together. The horribly devastating wars by which Mongol dominion was established were neither attended nor followed by any compensating benefits: they were a tempest of barbarian fury, to be thought of only with a shudder, and with gratitude for its brevity. The Mongols themselves were but the leaders in the movement, which was in great part executed by hordes of Turkish descent. A Mongol dynasty held possession of the Chinese throne for a century, until expelled, about A.D. 1365, by a successful revolt of the native race. At present, the still powerful remains of this once so


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 and experience warns them against the trap of undue subjectivity. Such a judgment is now required from us, at all events, and would have been inescapable whichever way the question was answered. Nor do we lack guidance on it. A provision of the Zimbabwean Constitution which banned inhuman or degrading punishment was considered by their Supreme Court in Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe v Attorney-General, Zimbabwe, and Others 1993(4) SA 239 (ZSC). Gubbay CJ had this to say about it (at 247 I – 248 B):

"It is a provision that embodies broad and idealistic notions of dignity, humanity and decency. It guarantees that punishment … of the individual be exercised within the ambit of civilised standards. Any punishment … incompatible with the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society, or which involve the infliction of unnecessary suffering, is repulsive. What might not have been regarded as inhuman decades ago may be revolting to the new sensitivities which emerge as civilisation advances".

The same goes, I firmly believe, for our section 11(2). Gubbay CJ continued thus (at 248 B–C):

"(A)n application of this approach to whether a form of … punishment … is inhuman or degrading is dependent upon the exercise of a value judgment …; one that must not only take account of the emerging consensus of values in the civilised international community (of which this country is a part) …, but of contemporary norms operative in Zimbabwe and the sensitivities of its people".

I take that view here too, where such norms and sensitivities are demonstrated, above all else, by the altruistic and humanitarian philosophy which animates the Constitution enjoyed by us nowadays.

Capital punishment was discussed at length in Furman v State of Georgia (1972) 408 US 238, a case handled by the Supreme Court of the United States of America in which a comparably liberal philosophy was expounded by a number of the judges hearing it. Stewart J described that sentence (at 306) as—

… unique … in its absolute renunciation of all that is embodied in our concept of humanity.

Brennan J agreed, declaring in the same case (at 290 and 291) that:

Death is truly an awesome punishment. The calculated killing of a human being by the state involves, by its very nature, a denial of the executed person's humanity. The contrast with the plight of a person punished by imprisonment is evident. … A prisoner remains a member of the human family. … In comparison to all other punishments … the deliberate extinguishment of human life by the state is uniquely degrading to human dignity.

The distinctive features of the penalty were emphasised by Brennan J elsewhere in his judgment, when he wrote (at 287 and 288) that:

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312 people are living in quiet and insignificance, as dependents of the Chinese empire. Their territory is bounded in the south by the Tibetan frontier, and extends thence eastward to the border of China, northward to lake Dzaisang, north-eastward to beyond lake Baikal, and to the edge of Manchuria, including the upper waters of the Lena and the Amoor. Their scattered fragments, too, are left in almost every country westward to the Volga, and a considerable colony of them are to be found upon both sides of the Volga, to some distance above its mouth. The Khalkas, Kalmucks, and Buriats are the most notable of their tribes.

The fifth and last branch is called the Tungusic. It occupies a broad tract of north-eastern Asia, from the frontier of China on the north to the Arctic Ocean, and from the neighbourhood of the Yenisei almost to Kamchatka. Its most conspicuous dialect, the Manchu, belongs to tribes which have established a claim upon the attention of the world by their conquest of China a little more than two centuries ago (A.D. 1644). In wielding the forces of that mighty empire, they long displayed a consummate ability; but their administration, attacked at once by foreign encroachment and domestic revolt, has now for some time been marked with fatal weakness; Scythian power seems at present not less decadent in the extreme East than in the West. This is not the first time that Tungusian races have built up their power upon a Chinese foundation. The powerful dynasties of Khitan and Kin, from the beginning of the tenth century to near the middle of the thirteenth, held a great part of northern China in subjection, though not to the entire subversion of the empire: like the modern Manchus, they adopted and perpetuated the Chinese institutions and culture. The realm of the Kin was one of the many which went down before the Mongolian onset. The Manchus call by the name Orochon, 'reindeer-possessors,' all Tungusian tribes excepting their own; respecting their mutual relations little is known in detail: they are dependences partly of the Chinese empire, partly of the Russian.

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VIII.] is sufficient to set forth clearly the subordinate part they have played in human affairs. War and devastation have been the sphere in which their activity has chiefly manifested itself. Some of them have shown for a time no mean capacity in governing and managing their conquests. But they have had no aptitude for helping the advance of civilization, and but little, in general, even for appropriating the knowledge and culture of their subjects or their neighbours. The Manchus have written their language during some centuries past; but they have nothing which deserves the name of a national literature; their books are translations or servile imitations of Chinese works. The Mongol literature goes back to the thirteenth century, the period when the race rose to importance in history, but is almost equally scanty. The Mongol alphabet was the original of the present Manchu, and, in its turn, was derived from that of the Uigur Turks; the latter, again, goes back to the Syriac, having been brought into central Asia by Nestorian missionaries. The Uigurs, the easternmost members of the family of Turkish tribes, seem to have been the first among them to acquire and use the art of writing; their alphabet is said to be mentioned in Chinese annals of the fifth century, and their reputation for learning won them consideration and high employment even down to the era of the Mongolian outbreak; but they, their civilization, and their literature have since passed so nearly out of existence that it has even been possible to raise the question whether they were, in fact, of Turkish kindred and speech. Very scanty fragments of what are supposed to have been their literary productions, of uncertain age, are still preserved to us. The general conversion of the Turkish tribes to Mohammedanism led to the crowding out of their ancient alphabet by the Arabic. From the south-eastern division of the same branch, generally called the Jagataic, or Oriental Turkish, we have a literature of some value, dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but not continued later: its most important work is the autobiography of the emperor Baber, that extraordinary man who early in the sixteenth century conquered India, founding there the Mogul dynasty, the final


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 Death is today an unusually severe punishment, unusual in its pain, in its finality, and in its enormity. No other existing punishment is comparable to death in terms of physical and mental suffering. … Since the discontinuance of flogging as a constitutionally permissible punishment…, death remains the only punishment that may involve the conscious infliction of physical pain. In addition, we know that mental pain is an inseparable part of our practice of punishing criminals by death, for the prospect of pending execution exacts a frightful toll during the inevitable long wait between the imposition of sentence and the actual infliction of death. … The unusual severity of death is manifested most clearly in its finality and enormity. Death, in these respects, is in a class by itself.

In a Californian case, the one of The People v Anderson (1972) 493 P 2d 880, Wright CJ observed (at 894) that:

The cruelty of capital punishment lies not only in the execution itself and the pain incident thereto, but also in the dehumanising effects of the lengthy imprisonment prior to execution during which the judicial and administrative procedures essential to due process of law are carried out. Penologists and medical experts agree that the process of carrying out a verdict of death is often so degrading and brutalising to the human spirit as to constitute psychological torture.

Liacos J elaborated on that aspect of the matter in the judgment which he delivered when District Attorney for the Suffolk District v Watson and Others (1980) 381 Mass 648 was decided in Massachusetts. The passages that I shall quote (at 678 - 9, 681 and 683) are vivid. They went thus:

The ordeals of the condemned are inherent and inevitable in any system that informs the condemned person of his sentence and provides for a gap between sentence and execution. Whatever one believes about the cruelty of the death penalty itself, this violence done the prisoner's mind must afflict the conscience of enlightened government and give the civilised heart no rest. … The condemned must confront this primal terror directly, and in the most demeaning circumstances. A condemned man knows, subject to the possibility of successful appeal or commutation, the time and manner of his death. His thoughts about death must necessarily be focussed more precisely than other people's. He must wait for a specific death, not merely expect death in the abstract. Apart from cases of suicide or terminal illness, this certainty is unique to those who are sentenced to death. The state puts the question of death to the condemned person, and he must grapple with it without the consolation that he will die naturally or with his humanity intact. A condemned person experiences an extreme form of debasement. … The death sentence itself is a declaration that society deems the prisoner a nullity, less than human and unworthy to live. But that negation of his personality carries through the entire period between sentence and execution.

A similar account was furnished by Gubbay CJ in the Catholic Commission case when he said (at 268 E–H):

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314 extinction of which we have ourselves witnessed within the past few years. The westernmost Turkish race, the conquerors of Constantinople, usually known by the distinctive name of Osmanlis, or Ottomans (both words are corruptions of the name of their leader, Othman), have a very rich and abundant literature, covering the whole period from the rise of the race to power in the fourteenth century down to our own time. It is, however, of only secondary interest, as being founded on Persian and Arabic models, and containing little that is distinctively national in style and spirit. The learned dialect, too, in which it is written, is crowded full of Persian and Arabic words, often to the nearly total exclusion of native Turkish material. In the Finno-Hungarian branch of the family, finally, there is the same paucity of literary records. In Hungary, after its conversion to Roman Christianity (about A.D. 1000), Latin was for a long time the almost exclusive medium of learned communication and composition. The Reformation, in the sixteenth century, favoured the uprising of a national literature, in a vernacular tongue; but Austrian policy checked and thwarted its development; and a renewed start, taken about the beginning of the present century, was baffled when the remains of Hungarian liberty were trampled out in 1849. Finnish written literature is still more recent, but boasts at least one work of a high order of interest, of a wholly native and original stamp: the Kalevala, composed of half-mythical, half-legendary songs, which have been handed down by tradition, apparently for many centuries, from generation to generation of the Finnish people. No other Ugrian race possesses a literature.

It is claimed of late, however, by those who are engaged in constructing linguistic, ethnological, and political history out of the just disentombed records of Assyrian culture and art, that sufficient evidence is found to compel the belief that neither Indo-Europeans nor Semites, but some third race, were the first occupants and owners of the soil, and laid the foundation of the culture which was adopted and developed there by the other races, as they later, one after another, succeeded to the supremacy; and some maintain


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 From the moment he enters the condemned cell, the prisoner is enmeshed in a dehumanising environment of near hopelessness. He is in a place where the sole object is to preserve his life so that he may be executed. The condemned prisoner is the living dead. … He is kept only with other death sentence prisoners—with those whose appeals have been dismissed and who await death or reprieve; or those whose appeals are still to be heard or are pending judgment. While the right to an appeal may raise the prospect of being allowed to live, the intensity of the trauma is much increased by knowledge of its dismissal. The hope of a reprieve is all that is left. Throughout all this time the condemned prisoner constantly broods over his fate. The horrifying spectre of being hanged by the neck and the apprehension of being made to suffer a painful … death is … never far from mind.

The Constitutions of California and Massachusetts forbade cruel punishments. Sentences of death were held in each state to be contraventions of the prohibition which could not stand. The decision reached in the case of the District Attorney for Suffolk was announced by Hennessey CJ, who said (at 664 and 665):

(T)he death penalty is unacceptable under contemporary standards of decency in its unique and inherent capacity to inflict pain. The mental agony is, simply and beyond question, a horror. … We conclude … that the death penalty, with its full panoply of concomitant physical and mental tortures, is impermissibly cruel … when judged by contemporary standards of decency.

Executions were not outlawed altogether, on the other hand, in either Furman v State of Georgia or the case of the Catholic Commission, despite the castigation that they then underwent. The reason lay in the special provisions of the governing charters, the Constitutions of the United States and Zimbabwe, each of which impliedly authorised the punishment, or appeared at least to do so, by protecting the right to life in terms that specifically excluded deaths thus caused. So, while executions could be and were banned in the particular circumstances of the two cases, insufficient room was visible for the total embargo which Brennan J and Gubbay CJ would no doubt have preferred to impose on them. No such obstacle was presented by the Constitution of Massachusetts or found to be raised at that time by the Californian one. None of this detracts, however, from my purpose in repeating the harrowing descriptions given on all four occasions of the ordeal suffered by criminals awaiting and experiencing execution. I am unaware of any criticism ever levelled at those descriptions, which were not disputed before us when reliance was placed on them in argument, and I have no reason to believe that they may have been inaccurate or exaggerated in any material respect. They suffice on the whole to convince me that every sentence of death must be stamped, for the purposes of section 11(2), as an intrinsically cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

I pass to the question whether capital punishment is nevertheless allowed by section 33(1) for the crimes that concern us now. I am not sure that a sentence with a sequel of such cruelty, inhumanity and degradation can ever be rightly regarded in a civilised society as a reasonable or justifiable measure, let alone a necessary one. But I shall assume that the penalty is not innately incapable of meeting those requirements.

The most familiar argument advanced in support of capital punishment, and the main

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VIII.] further that the language of this race shows it to have been Scythian, a member of the westernmost, or Finno-Hungarian, branch of the family. By others the Scythian character of the dialect is explicitly denied. The discussion is at present in the hands of too few persons, and those too little versed in Scythian philology, to admit of a definite and satisfactory conclusion; and meanwhile we are justified in regarding with extreme incredulity any theory which puts Scythian races in the position of originators of an independent civilization, and teachers of Semites and Indo-Europeans. Such a position is wholly inconsistent with what is known of their history elsewhere, and would constitute a real anomaly in ethnology; while we are not authorized utterly to deny its possibility, we certainly have the right to demand full and unequivocal evidence before we yield it our belief. The fact—if fact it be—is of a revolutionary character, and must fight its way to acknowledgment.

The linguistic tie, now, which binds together the widely scattered branches of this great family, is a somewhat loose and feeble one, consisting less in the traceable correspondence of material and forms, the possession of the same roots and the same inflections, than in a correspondence of the style of structure, of the modes of apprehension and expression of grammatical relations. Each great branch forms by itself a group as distinct as is, for instance, the Germanic or the Slavonic in our own family; but there is no such palpable and unmistakable evidence of kinship between Ugrian, Turkish, Mongol, and Manchu, as between German, Russian, Greek, and Sanskrit. It is, to no small extent, those who know least in detail respecting the languages of the family who are most ready to assert and defend their historical connection: and, on the other hand, Castrén, himself a Finn, and whose long and devoted labours have taught us more respecting them than has been brought to light by any other man, ventures to assert with confidence only the demonstrable linguistic relationship of Ugrian, Samoyed, and Turkish, and regards the inclusion of Mongol and


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 contention we have to consider under the heading of its suggested permissibility, is that executions operate as a unique deterrent against the future commission of the crimes visited with them. That proposition, if sound indeed, deserves to be taken seriously. It then provides the strongest reason, in cases of murder at all events, for rating the sentence of death as an expedient which, though regrettable, passes constitutional muster. For section 9 protects likewise the lives of the innocent, the lives of potential victims. And that is a factor which must enter the reckoning, especially at present when the crimes of violence perpetrated here have become so prevalent and reached a level so appalling that acute anxiety is felt everywhere about the danger to life lurking around the corner. Such a time was said to be hardly propitious for, such a state of affairs to be scarcely conducive to, any relaxation in the rigour of the law. We dared not exacerbate the danger, we were warned, by reducing the force of deterrence in the combat with it. I agree that the nation cannot afford our doing so, and we would not wish it anyhow. Sight must never be lost, however, of this. The question is not whether capital punishment has a deterrent effect, but whether its deterrent effect happens to be significantly greater than that of the alternative sentence available, a suitably severe sentence of imprisonment which not only gets passed but may also be expected to run its course.

The debate surrounding that question, an old one both here and elsewhere, has often been marked by the production of statistical evidence tendered to show that the death penalty either does not or does serve a uniquely deterrent purpose, as the case may be. The rate of capital crimes committed in a state performing executions is compared with that of the selfsame crimes experienced contemporaneously in some place or another where none occurs. The records of countries that executed convicts formerly, but have ceased doing so, are also examined. Comparisons are then drawn between the rates of those crimes found there before the punishment was abandoned and the ones encountered afterwards. Such statistics, when analysed, have always turned out to be inconclusive in the end. The pictures that they purport to present differ in the first place. The clarity of the sketching is impaired, in the second, by all sorts of variable factors for which no allowance is or can be made. One thinks, for instance, of differences and fluctuations in moral codes and values, in the efficiency and success of police forces in preventing and investigating crimes, in the climate for the collaboration and assistance that they need to obtain from the public and the extent of it which they manage to gain, in the organisation and skills of criminal conspirators and, above all perhaps, in the social and economic conditions that have so profound a bearing everywhere on the incidence of crimes. It therefore did not surprise me to hear that no great store was set in argument by figures of that kind. Others were drawn to our attention, which related to South Africa alone. They recorded the number of alleged murders that were reported here during every year from 1988 until 1993, inclusive of both. A globular increase emerged, the rate of which over the whole period of six years amounted approximately to 35% and accordingly to an annual average of almost 6%, calculated for convenience by means of a straight division that inflates the rate slightly, to be sure, since it disregards the effect on the percentage of the change from year to year in the figure on which it ought actually to be based. Interesting to notice, however, is this. The number of alleged murders rose by a mere 1% or thereabouts during 1993, in contrast with the average rate of 6% postulated, and by 9% during the time from the beginning of 1992 until the end of 1993, which remained lower than the corresponding average of 12% for that period of two years. The significance of the arithmetic lies in the fact that the moratorium on executions was announced, formally and firmly, in March 1992. What the exercise appears to illustrate, if statistics prove anything

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316 within the same circle as still questionable. But even between the three former, the material evidence is but weak and scanty, as compared with that presented in the Indo-European idioms, of which specimens were given above, in the fifth lecture; no investigator has ever been able to draw up tables of pervading correspondences in the Scythian tongues, which should at once illustrate and prove their genetic unity. It is possible, of course, that the races who speak these tongues may have been separated longer than the Indo-European, enough longer for a more sweeping effacement of the evidence of their common descent; or, again, that the lack of those remains of dialects of great antiquity which so aid our researches into the history of our own family of speech is what prevents our recognition of the links that bind the Scythian languages into one. It may be, too, that these have possessed as much more variable and mobile a character than the Indo-European forms of speech as the latter than the Semitic: this, indeed, has been repeatedly assumed to be true, and even defended by theoretical and à priori arguments; but I am not aware that it has ever been established by proper linguistic evidence and reasoning, and it is strongly opposed by the coherence of the several branches, and the near accordance of the dialects composing them. And, were either or both of these possible explanations of the discordances of the Scythian tongues proved true, they would by no means settle the question in favour of the unity of the family; they would simply forbid us to maintain too dogmatically that the tongues were not and could not be related as members of one family; before consenting positively to regard them as thus related, we should still be entitled to demand tangible evidences; if not correspondences of material, then at least definite and distinctive correspondences of form. And, as already intimated, a morphological resemblance is the ground on which the claim of Scythian unity is chiefly founded; their fundamental common characteristic is that they follow what is styled an agglutinative type of structure. That is to say, the elements out of which their words are formed are loosely put together, instead of being closely compacted, or fused into one; they


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 in such an area, is the irrelevance of the announcement to the rate of murders alleged, which had grown steadily while executions were carried out and was not accelerated by the halt in hangings. The results of my analysis, for what they are worth, may be added to the cogent and stronger reasons which Chaskalson P has supplied in paragraphs [119] and [120]  for rejecting the contention addressed to us that the moratorium had contributed materially to the increase.

Without empirical proof of the extent to which capital punishment worked as a deterrent, neither side could present any argument on the point better than the appeal to common sense that tends to be lodged whenever the debate is conducted. That the extreme penalty must inevitably be more terrifying than anything else was said, on the one hand, to speak for itself. It spoke superficially, we were told on the other, and unrealistically too. What stood to reason was this instead. A very large proportion of murderers were in no mood or state of mind at the time to contemplate or care about the consequences of their killings which they might personally suffer. Those rational enough to take account of them gambled by and large on their escape from detection and arrest, where the odds in their favour were often rather high. The prospect of conviction and punishment was much less immediate and seldom entered their thinking. It was fanciful, should that happen on relatively rare occasions, to imagine their being daunted by the possibility of a journey to the gallows, a journey taken by only a small percentage of convicted murderers even at the height of executions in this country, but not by the probability of incarceration in a jail for many years and perhaps for the rest of their lives. The second school of thought is the one which gets to grips with the realities of the matter, in my opinion, appraising them with a lot more plausibility and persuasiveness than any that attaches to the stark proposition of the first school.

It is unnecessary, however, to go so far. The protagonists of capital punishment bear the burden of satisfying us that it is permissible under section 33(1). To the extent that their case depends upon the uniquely deterrent effect attributed to it, they must therefore convince us that it indeed serves such a purpose. Nothing less is expected from them in any event when human lives are at stake, lives which may not continue to be destroyed on the mere possibility that some good will come of it. In that task they have failed and, as far as one can see, could never have succeeded.

In his judgment Chaskalson P has discussed retribution as another goal of punishment, and the arbitrariness and inequality contaminating our processes that culminate in executions. His treatment of the first subject will be found in paragraphs [129] to [131]  and of the second one in paragraphs [48] to [54]. I share the view taken by him that retribution smacks too much of vengeance to be accepted, either on its own or in combination with other aims, as a worthy purpose of punishment in the enlightened society to which we South Africans have now committed ourselves, and that the expression of moral outrage which is its further and more defensible object can be communicated effectively by severe sentences of imprisonment. The inequality of which he has written may be curable in the long run, once it is not the result of the arbitrariness described by him. The same does not go, however, for the arbitrariness itself, a flaw in the edifice which Ackermann J has examined as well in paragraphs [158] to [165]. The problem of that is quite as intractable here as it has proved to be in the United States of America, where the courts

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 have wrestled with it constantly and by no means to their satisfaction. For such arbitrariness is largely inherent in the nature of the proceedings from start to finish. Similar trouble may be inescapable, to be sure, in cases that are not capital ones. But in those producing sentences of death the arbitrariness is intolerable because of the irreversibility of the punishment once that gets put into force and the consequent irremediability of mistakes discovered afterwards, mistakes which do occur now and then notwithstanding the myth to the contrary. The defect then militates forcefully, I believe, against the reasonableness and justifiability of capital punishment.

The conclusion to which I have thus come, echoing the one reached by Chaskalson P, is that the death penalty cannot survive our constitutional scrunityscrutiny [sic] of it. The line I have taken in arriving there differs in some parts from that preferred by him, occasionally approaching a topic from another angle and sometimes placing the emphasis elsewhere. It has also called for less elaboration in the light of his meticulous research into a mountain of material and his erudite exposition of the themes developed from that. In general, however, I agree with his judgment, a profound and monumental work with which I feel proud to associate myself.

I wish before ending this judgment to add my voice to that of Chaskalson P in dealing with a couple of points raised in argument on which he has commented already but which I have not yet mentioned.

Whether capital punishment ought to be abolished or retained amounted, so it was said, to a question of policy which Parliament should decide, representing as it did the citizens of the country and expressing their general will. The issue is also, however, a constitutional one. It has been put before us squarely and properly. We cannot delegate to Parliament the duty that we bear to determine it, or evade that duty otherwise, but must perform it ourselves. In doing so, we were counselled in the alternative, we had to pay great attention to public opinion, which was said to favour the retention of the death penalty. We have no means of ascertaining whether that is indeed so, but I shall assume it to be the case. One may also assume, with a fair measure of confidence, that most members of the public who support capital punishment do so primarily in the belief that, owing to its uniquely deterrent force, they and their families are safer with than without its protection. The feeling is quite understandable, given its basis. But it deserves no further homage if the premise underlying and accounting for it is fallacious or unfounded, as I consider that one to be. To allow ourselves to be influenced unduly by public opinion would, in any event, be wrong. Powell J disparaged such external pressures on constitutional adjudication when he said in Furman v State of Georgia (at 443):

(T)he weight of the evidence indicates that the public generally has not accepted either the morality or the social merit of the views so passionately advocated by the articulate spokesmen for abolition. But however one may assess (the) amorphous ebb and flow of public opinion generally on this volatile issue, this type of enquiry lies at the periphery—not the core—of the judicial process in constitutional cases. The assessment of popular opinion is essentially a legislative, not a judicial, function.

In similar vein were these remarks passed by Jackson J on the earlier occasion of West Virginia State Board of Education v Barnette and Others (1942) 319 U5 624 (at 638):

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  The very purpose of a bill of rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities … and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life … and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

The other point was not so much a contention as a complaint, one registered against the sympathy with murderers, and the lack of any felt for the victims and their families, which some proponents of capital punishment have seen as the motivation behind every attack on it. It is unnecessary, I hope, for this court to answer that canard. In rebuttal of the criticism, lest it be levelled at us all the same, one can do no better than to repeat the following excerpts from the judgment which Wright CJ wrote in The People v Anderson (at 896 and 899):

We are fully aware that many condemned prisoners have committed crimes of the utmost cruelty and depravity and that such persons are not entitled to the slightest sympathy from society in the administration of justice or otherwise. … Our conclusion that the death penalty may no longer be exacted in California … is not grounded in sympathy for those who would commit crimes of violence, but in concern for the society that diminishes itself whenever it takes the life of one of its members. Lord Chancellor Gardiner reminded the House of Lords, debating abolition of capital punishment in England: When we abolished the punishment for treason that you should be hanged, and then cut down while still alive, and then disembowelled while still alive, and then quartered, we did not abolish that punishment because we sympathised with traitors, but because we took the view that it was a punishment no longer consistent with our self-respect.

South Africa has experienced too much savagery. The wanton killing must stop before it makes a mockery of the civilised, humane and compassionate society to which the nation aspires and has constitutionally pledged itself. And the state must set the example by demonstrating the priceless value it places on the lives of all its subjects, even the worst.  KENTRIDGE AJ I agree with the order proposed by Chaskalson P and with the reasons for it contained in his judgment  and in  the judgment of Didcott J  In view of the importance of the issue and in deference to the forceful submissions of Mr von Lieres SC, the Attorney-General of the Witwatersrand, I add some remarks of my own.

Capital punishment is an issue on which many members of the public hold strong and conflicting views. To many of them it may seem strange that so difficult and important a public issue should be decided by the eleven appointed judges of this court. It must be understood that we undertake this task not because we claim a superior wisdom for ourselves but, as Chaskalson P has explained in his judgment, because the framers of the Constitution have imposed on us the inescapable duty of deciding whether the death penalty for murder is consistent with Chapter Three of the Constitution. It should not be overlooked that a decision holding the death penalty to be constitutional would have been just as far-reaching an exercise of judicial power as the decision to strike it down.

Some public commentators on the question before this court have supposed that any doubt

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 by L. P. Gilbert (Mem. cour. de l’Acad. de Bruxelles, 31, p. 1). Taking

we may write

Again, by a known formula,

Substituting this in (10), and inverting the order of integration, we get

Thus, if we take

The constant parts in (14), viz. , may be determined by direct integration of (12), or from the observation that by their constitution G and H vanish when u = ∞, coupled with the fact that C and S then assume the value.

Comparing the expressions for C, S in terms of M, N, and in terms of G, H, we find that

formulae which may be utilized for the calculation of G, H when u (or v) is small. For example, when u = 0, M = 0, N = 0, and consequently G = H =.

Descending series of the semi-convergent class, available for numerical calculation when u is moderately large, can be obtained from (12) by writing x = uy, and expanding the denominator in powers of y. The integration of the several terms may then be effected by the formula $\int_{0}^{\infty}e^{- y} y^{q- \frac{1}{2}}dy=\Gamma(q + \tfrac{1}{2})=(q - \tfrac{1}{2})(q - \tfrac{3}{2}) \ldots \tfrac{1}{2} \sqrt{} \pi;$|undefined and we get in terms of v

The corresponding values of C and S were originally derived by A. L. Cauchy, without the use of Gilbert’s integrals, by direct integration by parts.

From the series for G and H just obtained it is easy to verify that

We now proceed to consider more particularly the distribution of light upon a screen PBQ near the shadow of a straight edge A. At a point P within the geometrical shadow of the obstacle, the half of the wave to the right of C (fig. 18), the nearest point on the wave-front, is wholly intercepted, and on the left the integration is to be taken from s = CA to s = ∞. If V be the value of v corresponding to CA, viz.

we may write

or, according to our previous notation,

Now in the integrals represented by G and H every element diminishes as V increases from zero. Hence, as CA increases, viz. as the point P is more and more deeply immersed in the shadow, the illumination continuously decreases, and that without limit. It has long been known from observation that there are no bands on the interior side of the shadow of the edge.

The law of diminution when V is moderately large is easily expressed with the aid of the series (16), (17) for G, H. We have ultimately G = 0, H = (V)−1, so that 2＝1/2V2, or the illumination is inversely as the square of the distance from the shadow of the edge.

For a point Q outside the shadow the integration extends over more than half the primary wave. The intensity may be expressed by

and the maxima and minima occur when $(\tfrac{1}{2} + \mathrm{C}_{v})\frac{d\mathrm{C}}{d\mathrm{V}} + (\tfrac{1}{2} + \mathrm{S}_{v})\frac{d\mathrm{S}}{d\mathrm{V}}=0,$|undefined whence

When V = 0, viz. at the edge of the shadow, 2 = ; when V = ∞, I2 = 2, on the scale adopted. The latter is the intensity due to the uninterrupted wave. The quadrupling of the intensity in passing outwards from the edge of the shadow is, however, accompanied by fluctuations giving rise to bright and dark bands. The position of these bands determined by (23) may be very simply expressed when V is large, for then sensibly G = 0, and

n being an integer. In terms of, we have from (2)

The first maximum in fact occurs when =  −·0046, and the first minimum when  =  −·0016, the corrections being readily obtainable from a table of G by substitution of the approximate value of V.

The position of Q corresponding to a given value of V, that is, to a band of given order, is by (19)

By means of this expression we may trace the locus of a band of given order as b varies. With sufficient approximation we may regard BQ and b as rectangular co-ordinates of Q. Denoting them by x, y, so that AB is axis of y and a perpendicular through A the axis of x, and rationalizing (26), we have 2ax2 − V2y2 − V2ay＝0, which represents a hyperbola with vertices at O and A.

From (24), (26) we see that the width of the bands is of the order √{b(a + b)/a}. From this we may infer the limitation upon the width of the source of light, in order that the bands may be properly formed. If ω be the apparent magnitude of the source seen from A, ωb should be much smaller than the above quantity, or

If a be very great in relation to b, the condition becomes

so that if b is to be moderately great (1 metre), the apparent magnitude of the sun must be greatly reduced before it can be used as a source. The values of V for the maxima and minima of intensity, and the magnitudes of the latter, were calculated by Fresnel. An extract from his results is given in the accompanying table.

A very thorough investigation of this and other related questions, accompanied by fully worked-out tables of the functions concerned, will be found in a paper by E. Lommel (Abh. bayer. Akad. d. Wiss. II. CI., 15, Bd., iii. Abth., 1886).

When the functions C and S have once been calculated, the discussion of various diffraction problems is much facilitated by the idea, due to M. A. Cornu (Journ. de Phys., 1874, 3, p. 1; a similar suggestion was made independently by G. F. Fitzgerald), of exhibiting as a curve the relationship between C and S, considered as the rectangular co-ordinates (x, y) of a point. Such a curve is shown in fig. 19, where, according to the definition (5) of C, S,

The origin of co-ordinates O corresponds to v = 0; and the asymptotic points J, J′, round which the curve revolves in an ever-closing spiral, correspond to v = ±∞.

The intrinsic equation, expressing the relation between the arc (measured from O) and the inclination  of the tangent at any points to the axis of x, assumes a very simple form. For dx＝cos v2·dv,   dy＝sin v2·dv; so that

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 Accordingly,

and for the curvature,

Cornu remarks that this equation suffices to determine the general character of the curve. For the osculating circle at any point includes the whole of the curve which lies beyond; and the successive convolutions envelop one another without intersection.

The utility of the curve depends upon the fact that the elements of arc represent, in amplitude and phase, the component vibrations due to the corresponding portions of the primary wave-front. For by (30) d = dv, and by (2) dv is proportional to ds. Moreover by (2) and (31) the retardation of phase of the elementary vibration from PQ (fig. 17) is 2/, or. Hence, in accordance with the rule for compounding vector quantities, the resultant vibration at B, due to any finite part of the primary wave, is represented in amplitude and phase by the chord joining the extremities of the corresponding arc (2 − 1).

In applying the curve in special cases of diffraction to exhibit the effect at any point P (fig. 18) the centre of the curve O is to be considered to correspond to that point C of the primary wave-front which lies nearest to P. The operative part, or parts, of the curve are of course those which represent the unobstructed portions of the primary wave.

Let us reconsider, following Cornu, the diffraction of a screen unlimited on one side, and on the other terminated by a straight edge. On the illuminated side, at a distance from the shadow, the vibration is represented by JJ′. The co-ordinates of J, J′ being, (−, −), 2 is 2; and the phase is period in arrear of that of the element at O. As the point under contemplation is supposed to approach the shadow, the vibration is represented by the chord drawn from J to a point on the other half of the curve, which travels inwards from J′ towards O. The amplitude is thus subject to fluctuations, which increase as the shadow is approached. At the point O the intensity is one-quarter of that of the entire wave, and after this point is passed, that is, when we have entered the geometrical shadow, the intensity falls off gradually to zero, without fluctuations. The whole progress of the phenomenon is thus exhibited to the eye in a very instructive manner.

We will next suppose that the light is transmitted by a slit, and inquire what is the effect of varying the width of the slit upon the illumination at the projection of its centre. Under these circumstances the arc to be considered is bisected at O, and its length is proportional to the width of the slit. It is easy to see that the length of the chord (which passes in all cases through O) increases to a maximum near the place where the phase-retardation is of a period, then diminishes to a minimum when the retardation is about  of a period, and so on.

If the slit is of constant width and we require the illumination at various points on the screen behind it, we must regard the arc of the curve as of constant length. The intensity is then, as always, represented by the square of the length of the chord. If the slit be narrow, so that the arc is short, the intensity is constant over a wide range, and does not fall off to an important extent until the discrepancy of the extreme phases reaches about a quarter of a period.

We have hitherto supposed that the shadow of a diffracting obstacle is received upon a diffusing screen, or, which comes to nearly the same thing, is observed with an eye-piece. If the eye, provided if necessary with a perforated plate in order to reduce the aperture, be situated inside the shadow at a place where the illumination is still sensible, and be focused upon the diffracting edge, the light which it receives will appear to come from the neighbourhood of the edge, and will present the effect of a silver lining. This is doubtless the explanation of a “pretty optical phenomenon, seen in Switzerland, when the sun rises from behind distant trees standing on the summit of a mountain.”

 11. Dynamical Theory of Diffraction.—The explanation of diffraction phenomena given by Fresnel and his followers is independent of special views as to the nature of the aether, at least in its main features; for in the absence of a more complete foundation it is impossible to treat rigorously the mode of action of a solid obstacle such as a screen. But, without entering upon matters of this kind, we may inquire in what manner a primary wave may be resolved into elementary secondary waves, and in particular as to the law of intensity and polarization in a secondary wave as dependent upon its direction of propagation, and upon the character as regards polarization of the primary wave. This question was treated by Stokes in his “Dynamical Theory of Diffraction” (Camb. Phil. Trans., 1849) on the basis of the elastic solid theory.

Let x, y, z be the co-ordinates of any particle of the medium in its natural state, and χ,, the displacements of the same particle at the end of time t, measured in the directions of the three axes respectively. Then the first of the equations of motion may be put under the form $\frac{d^2\xi}{dt^2} = b^2 \left(\frac{d^2\xi}{dx^2} + \frac{d^2\xi}{dy^2} + \frac{d^2\xi}{dz^2}\right) + (a^2 - b^2)\frac{d}{dx}\left(\frac{d\xi}{dx} + \frac{d\eta}{dy} + \frac{d\zeta}{dz}\right),$ where a2 and b2 denote the two arbitrary constants. Put for shortness

and represent by ∇2 the quantity multiplied by b2. According to this notation, the three equations of motion are

It is to be observed that S denotes the dilatation of volume of the element situated at (x, y, z). In the limiting case in which the medium is regarded as absolutely incompressible δ vanishes; but, in order that equations (2) may preserve their generality, we must suppose a at the same time to become infinite, and replace a2δ by a new function of the co-ordinates.

These equations simplify very much in their application to plane waves. If the ray be parallel to OX, and the direction of vibration parallel to OZ, we have = 0,  = 0, while  is a function of x and t only. Equation (1) and the first pair of equations (2) are thus satisfied identically. The third equation gives

of which the solution is

where ƒ is an arbitrary function.

The question as to the law of the secondary waves is thus answered by Stokes. “Let = 0,  = 0,  = ƒ(bt − x) be the displacements corresponding to the incident light; let O1 be any point in the plane P (of the wave-front), dS an element of that plane adjacent to O1, and consider the disturbance due to that portion only of the incident disturbance which passes continually across dS. Let O be any point in the medium situated at a distance from the point O1 which is large in comparison with the length of a wave; let O1O = r, and let this line make an angle  with the direction of propagation of the incident light, or the axis of x, and  with the direction of vibration, or axis of z. Then the displacement at O will take place in a direction perpendicular to O1O, and lying in the plane ZO1O; and, if ′ be the displacement at O, reckoned positive in the direction nearest to that in which the incident vibrations are reckoned positive, $\zeta^{\prime} = \frac{d\mathrm{S}}{4\pi r}(1 + \cos \theta) \sin \phi f^{\prime}(bt - r).$|undefined In particular, if

we shall have

It is then verified that, after integration with respect to dS, (6) gives the same disturbance as if the primary wave had been supposed to pass on unbroken.

The occurrence of sin as a factor in (6) shows that the relative intensities of the primary light and of that diffracted in the direction  depend upon the condition of the former as regards polarization. If the direction of primary vibration be perpendicular to the plane of diffraction (containing both primary and secondary rays), sin = 1; but, if the primary vibration be in the plane of diffraction, sin  = cos. This result was employed by Stokes as a criterion of the direction of vibration; and his experiments, conducted with gratings, led him to the conclusion that the vibrations

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 of polarized light are executed in a direction perpendicular to the plane of polarization.

The factor (1 + cos ) shows in what manner the secondary disturbance depends upon the direction in which it is propagated with respect to the front of the primary wave.

If, as suffices for all practical purposes, we limit the application of the formulae to points in advance of the plane at which the wave is supposed to be broken up, we may use simpler methods of resolution than that above considered. It appears indeed that the purely mathematical question has no definite answer. In illustration of this the analogous problem for sound may be referred to. Imagine a flexible lamina to be introduced so as to coincide with the plane at which resolution is to be effected. The introduction of the lamina (supposed to be devoid of inertia) will make no difference to the propagation of plane parallel sonorous waves through the position which it occupies. At every point the motion of the lamina will be the same as would have occurred in its absence, the pressure of the waves impinging from behind being just what is required to generate the waves in front. Now it is evident that the aerial motion in front of the lamina is determined by what happens at the lamina without regard to the cause of the motion there existing. Whether the necessary forces are due to aerial pressures acting on the rear, or to forces directly impressed from without, is a matter of indifference. The conception of the lamina leads immediately to two schemes, according to which a primary wave may be supposed to be broken up. In the first of these the element dS, the effect of which is to be estimated, is supposed to execute its actual motion, while every other element of the plane lamina is maintained at rest. The resulting aerial motion in front is readily calculated (see Rayleigh, Theory of Sound, § 278); it is symmetrical with respect to the origin, i.e. independent of. When the secondary disturbance thus obtained is integrated with respect to dS over the entire plane of the lamina, the result is necessarily the same as would have been obtained had the primary wave been supposed to pass on without resolution, for this is precisely the motion generated when every element of the lamina vibrates with a common motion, equal to that attributed to dS. The only assumption here involved is the evidently legitimate one that, when two systems of variously distributed motion at the lamina are superposed, the corresponding motions in front are superposed also.

The method of resolution just described is the simplest, but it is only one of an indefinite number that might be proposed, and which are all equally legitimate, so long as the question is regarded as a merely mathematical one, without reference to the physical properties of actual screens. If, instead of supposing the motion at dS to be that of the primary wave, and to be zero elsewhere, we suppose the force operative over the element dS of the lamina to be that corresponding to the primary wave, and to vanish elsewhere, we obtain a secondary wave following quite a different law. In this case the motion in different directions varies as cos, vanishing at right angles to the direction of propagation of the primary wave. Here again, on integration over the entire lamina, the aggregate effect of the secondary waves is necessarily the same as that of the primary.

In order to apply these ideas to the investigation of the secondary wave of light, we require the solution of a problem, first treated by Stokes, viz. the determination of the motion in an infinitely extended elastic solid due to a locally applied periodic force. If we suppose that the force impressed upon the element of mass D dx dy dz is DZ dx dy dz, being everywhere parallel to the axis of Z, the only change required in our equations (1), (2) is the addition of the term Z to the second member of the third equation (2). In the forced vibration, now under consideration, Z, and the quantities expressing the resulting motion, are to be supposed proportional to eint, where i = √(-1), and n = 2/ being the periodic time. Under these circumstances the double differentiation with respect to t of any quantity is equivalent to multiplication by the factor -n2, and thus our equations take the form

It will now be convenient to introduce the quantities.1, 2, 3 which express the rotations of the elements of the medium round axes parallel to those of co-ordinates, in accordance with the equations

In terms of these we obtain from (7), by differentiation and subtraction, The first of equations (9) gives

For 1, we have

where r is the distance between the element dx dy dz and the point where 1 is estimated, and

λ being the wave-length.

(This solution may be verified in the same manner as Poisson’s theorem, in which k = 0.)

We will now introduce the supposition that the force Z acts only within a small space of volume T, situated at (x, y, z), and for simplicity suppose that it is at the origin of co-ordinates that the rotations are to be estimated. Integrating by parts in (11), we get $\int\frac{e^{- ikr}}{r}\frac{d\mathrm{Z}}{dy}dy = \left[ \mathrm{Z}\frac{e^{- ikr}}{r}\right] - \int \mathrm{Z}\frac{d}{dy}\left(\frac{e^{- ikr}}{r}\right) dy,$|undefined in which the integrated terms at the limits vanish, Z being finite only within the region T. Thus $\varpi_{1} = \frac{1}{4\pi b^2}\iiint\mathrm{Z}\frac{d}{dy}\left(\frac{e^{- ikr}}{r}\right) dx dy dz.$|undefined Since the dimensions of T are supposed to be very small in comparison with λ, the factor $$\frac{d}{dy}\left(\frac{e^{-ikr}}{r}\right)$$ is sensibly constant; so that, if Z stand for the mean value of Z over the volume T, we may write

In like manner we find

From (10), (13), (14) we see that, as might have been expected, the rotation at any point is about an axis perpendicular both to the direction of the force and to the line joining the point to the source of disturbance. If the resultant rotation be ω, we have $\varpi = \frac{\mathrm{TZ}}{4\pi b^2} \cdot \frac{\sqrt{} (x^2 + y^2)}{r} \cdot \frac{d}{dr}\left(\frac{e^{- ikr}}{r}\right) = \frac{\mathrm{TZ} \sin \phi}{4\pi b^2}\frac{d}{dr}\left(\frac{e^{- ikr}}{r}\right),$|undefined φ denoting the angle between r and z. In differentiating e−ikr/r with respect to r, we may neglect the term divided by r2 as altogether insensible, kr being an exceedingly great quantity at any moderate distance from the origin of disturbance. Thus

which completely determines the rotation at any point. For a disturbing force of given integral magnitude it is seen to be everywhere about an axis perpendicular to r and the direction of the force, and in magnitude dependent only upon the angle (φ) between these two directions and upon the distance (r).

The intensity of light is, however, more usually expressed in terms of the actual displacement in the plane of the wave. This displacement, which we may denote by ′, is in the plane containing z and r, and perpendicular to the latter. Its connexion with is expressed by  = d′/dr; so that

where the factor eint is restored.

Retaining only the real part of (16), we find, as the result of a local application of force equal to

the disturbance expressed by

The occurrence of sin φ shows that there is no disturbance radiated in the direction of the force, a feature which might have been anticipated from considerations of symmetry.

We will now apply (18) to the investigation of a law of secondary disturbance, when a primary wave

is supposed to be broken up in passing the plane x = 0. The first step is to calculate the force which represents the reaction between the parts of the medium separated by x = 0. The force operative upon the positive half is parallel to OZ, and of amount per unit of area equal to −b2D d/dx＝b2kD cos nt; and to this force acting over the whole of the plane the actual motion on the positive side may be conceived to be due. The

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Author:Sydney Kentridge

Works

 * Concurring judgment in S v Makwanyane and Another

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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Bullingham, Nicholas


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Rh Warsaw and enlisted as a scholar in the college of the Imperial Ballet at St. Petersburg.

A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian has given a neat précis of that famous system to which is owing so much of the supremacy of the Russian Imperial Ballet. "To-day," he writes, "the ballet is a vast State organisation with an annual budget of over a million roubles. The members of the ballet troups are Government servants, with the attendant rights and privileges of this class. Most of the corps du ballet are of quite humble origin, and are generally the daughters of small clerks, of the theatre attendants, who have naturally numerous facilities for advancing their children, and of former ballet-dancers. The training of a dancer is long and severe. After having passed through a process of selection and of physical

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Portal:Film/Comedy

 * B
 * Bride and Gloom
 * D
 * Daydreams
 * F
 * Feline Follies
 * H
 * Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

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 Rh, girls are taken into the Government ballet schools from the age of eight to ten. At school they remain, on an average, about seven years. Then, after passing the final examination, they are enrolled as members of the corps du ballet. The step from corps dancer to première danseuse depends entirely on the dancer's own ability and talent. Sometimes, as in the case of Anna Pavlova"—and, he might have added, of Nijinsky—"promotion comes almost immediately, and usually it is easy to recognise the future ballerina before she has reached her twentieth year. Practice, however, is essential, and even to the end of her career the most talented ballerina must practise three or four hours a day." Such is the course of training which in recent years has produced more than one dancing star of the first magnitude—a training whose principles are bound up

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 * S
 * Sintel
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 * The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

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Rh with a tradition of art unequalled for strength and self-consistency. Never, indeed, has genius been more happy in its education than Nijinsky's. Never has it come upon the scene at a moment more opportune for its fruition. Only the very briefest résumé of the history of the ballet in Russia will be enough to make this clear.

Just as the beginnings of the modern literary movement in Russia are traceable, through Pouchkine, to the European and particularly to the French culture of the eighteenth century, so the art of the dance was originally borrowed by Russia from Italy, its first authentic home. Russian Ballet, then, is essentially one with a main trend of European expression, and, although certainly modified by the national character, is, by its very antecedents, perfectly fitted to take its place among the arts of a

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 * G
 * Gumbasia

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 * Le Voyage dans la Lune

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HIS CAREER cosmopolitan as distinct from a merely native art.

The love of dancing is no doubt spontaneous among the Russian peasantry, and always has been. But the development of this natural impulse into art dates, for all practical purposes, from the patronage of the Empress Anna Ivanovna, who, in the year 1735, appointed a Neapolitan composer and a French ballet-master to preside over her newly instituted Dramatic School. Catherine II worthily carried on the work. A second theatre was established in Moscow, and the whole organisation was placed on a firm basis of relation with the bureaucratic régime. Throughout the eighteenth century the Russian Imperial Ballet must have maintained and, little by little, strengthened its position; although it was France, with dancers like Noverre and the great 13

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Rh family of Vestris, that took unquestionably the lead. The Russian traveller and romantic, Karamzine, has actually recorded his impression of French dancing as he saw it in Paris in 1790, and later on in the same year at Lyon. "There is no one like Vestris!" he ejaculates, and leaves us in no possible doubt that he had never witnessed anything half so wonderful in the theatres of his own country.

Not, indeed, until well on in the nineteenth century did the Imperial Ballet at St. Petersburg begin to compete at all seriously with the art as practised in Paris or in Milan. But then advance was rapid, though the principal performers were still largely imported from Italy and the ballet-masters from France. Nor is it until the middle of the century that we come to a period of distinctively Russian control, with the advent of

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HIS CAREER the first native director of real eminence, that Marius Petipa, to whose work in the 'fifties and 'sixties so much of the present supremacy of the Russian Ballet is undoubtedly due. The ballets produced by Petipa still conformed to the traditional type—three or four acts, and lasting a whole evening. But Petipa did work of enormous importance by assisting the emergence of a national feeling and by encouraging native talent to take its place in the highest grades of the ballet.

It was under his rule, at any rate, that Russian dancing began to achieve self-sufficiency, and to realise itself as equal, nay, superior, to the dancing of any other country in Europe.

Heir to this period of artistic expansiveness, Nijinsky began his career as a student in the Imperial School. A little senior to him was a whole galaxy of

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Rh

One day Gerasim betook himself to a friend from his village, who lived at the extreme outer edge of Moscow, near Sokolnik. The man was coachman to a merchant by the name of Sharov, in whose service he had been for many years. He had ingratiated himself with his master, so that Sharov trusted him absolutely and gave every sign of holding him in high favour. It was the man's glib tongue, chiefly, that had gained him his master's confidence. He told on all the servants, and Sharov valued him for it.

Gerasim approached and greeted him. The coachman gave his guest a proper reception, served him with tea and something to eat, and asked him how he was doing.

"Very badly, Yegor Danilych," said Gerasim. "I've been without a job for weeks."

"Didn't you ask your old employer to take you back?"

"I did."

"He wouldn't take you again?"

"The position was filled already."

"That's it. That's the way you young fellows are. You serve your employers so-so, and when you leave your jobs, you usually have muddied up the way back to them. You ought to serve your masters so that they will think a lot of you, and when you come again, they will not refuse you, but rather dismiss the man who has taken your place."

"How can a man do that? In these days there aren't any employers like that, and we aren't exactly angels, either."

"What's the use of wasting words? I just want to tell you about myself. If for some reason or other I should ever have to leave this place and go home, not only would Mr. Sharov, if I came back, take me on again without a word, but he would be glad to, too."

Gerasim sat there downcast. He saw his friend was boasting, and it occurred to him to gratify him.

"I know it," he said. "But it's hard to find men like you, Yegor Danilych. If you were a poor worker, your master would not have kept you twelve years."

Yegor smiled. He liked the praise.


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 genius, which included such famous names as those of Mme. Karsarvina, Anna Pavlova, Mordkin, and Adolf Bolm. The scene was already crowded; but by his eighteenth year Nijinsky had successfully asserted his claim to a place beside these others in the very front rank of Russian dancers. And this rapidity of advancement was not due simply to the fact that Nijinsky could leap into the air a little higher than any of his fellow-students, nor yet that he was more proficient than all of them in the time-honoured tricks of entrechat and pirouette. From the first there had been evident in his dancing that promise of genius which no technical skill can simulate, but which through technical skill alone can blossom into its finest flower.

Now, in addition to the growing fame of Nijinsky, the first decade of the present century witnessed the rise of several novel

title: Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/36


text:
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Rh tendencies which were all of obvious and capital importance in the development of the art of the ballet. Now artistic impulses were coming to life all over Europe, and most of them had a definite relation with the art of the theatre in one or other of its numerous forms. The full history of these fresh developments, and of the resulting cleavage between the old ballet and the new, has yet to be written. Here we must be content to trace that cleavage in part to the influence of a new school of music which had risen to power within Russia itself, in part also to the more extraneous influences which came, via Moscow, from Prof. Reinhardt the German, and from Gordon Craig the Englishman. Nor must we forget the liberating force which sprang from the art of Isadora Duncan, whose heroic practice has done far more than any precept of philosophy 17

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Rh to widen our ideas as to the intellectual and spiritual possibilities of the dance.

Such were a few of the influences which all appeared to be steadily converging upon the city of St. Petersburg. That something a little startling was bound to happen seemed certain. For on the one hand, you had the unique instrument of the Russian Ballet, an instrument quietly perfected through centuries of care and accumulating tradition; on the other hand, a whole new range of ideas and feelings, only waiting, it seemed, for a spark, to flame up into a new and wonderful life. Something however still was wanting—a tertium quid—and this was found presently in the person of M. Serge de Diaghilew.

It was in 1908 that M. Diaghilew first turned his attention to the Russian Ballet. Previously he had been engaged

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Rh in producing Russian Opera—the masterpieces of Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, etc.—outside Russia itself and in a manner before undreamed of, save perhaps in the Imperial opera-houses of St. Petersburg and Moscow. He now conceived the idea that there was a future also for Russian Ballet, if only it could be produced at all adequately in the trying circumstances of a European tour. The difficulties in organising such a scheme were vast, and they were difficulties insurmountable by an artist pure and simple. But M. Diaghilew, above all things, is a business man, and before very long he was successful in arranging his great plan of a limited series of productions in Rome, Paris, Berlin, and finally England, with a company drawn from regular performers at the Imperial theatres, and including some of the finest dancers of

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Rh the Imperial Ballet. Several entirely new ballets were soon added to the existing repertoire, and from the start a definite note of modernity was sounded which proclaimed the Diaghilew ballet as an exponent of the new revolution in the art of the dance. In accordance with this purpose the services of the most advanced producers and designers were secured—men like Michel Fokine, Benois, and Léon Bakst. While at the same time, with the instinct of a born impressario, M. Diaghilew also acquired the services of the young Nijinsky, at that time in the first hey-day of success at the Imperial Ballet. M. Diaghilew must have speedily realised that if he could only retain the exclusive services of the wonderful young dancer, he would also have gone far towards making his organisation a permanent one and altogether

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Rh safe from the possibility of awkward competition. In a sense, indeed, Nijinsky was the key to the position.

From his own standpoint, on the other hand, Nijinsky himself was scarcely less clear-sighted in his view of the trend of affairs. The conservatism of the Imperial Ballet was becoming a byword among the more advanced spirits of the period, and having once tasted the joyous freedom of service with M. Diaghilew, he was not likely to remain content with the rules and regulations of an organisation which, in his view, was lamentably incapable of marching with the times. The result was that after one or two excursions with the Diaghilew ballet, Nijinsky's relations with the Imperialists became awkwardly strained. In the early part of 1911 the strain became intolerable, and on an unimportant pretext of costume 21

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Rh Nijinsky received, and accepted, his dismissal at the hands of the Imperial authorities.

From that time onwards Nijinsky has thrown himself heart and soul into the new enterprise. As the leading male dancer in M. Diaghilew's ballet, he has naturally been obliged to undertake roles of every kind; but it would be hard to say in which of them all he has been most admired. There is a wide gulf between the sweet conventional charm of Armide's slave and the austere and subtle beauty of the Faune; but Nijinsky's art is as many-sided as a circle, and though no doubt he allows himself the luxury of having favourites, a mere spectator could scarcely guess which of all his many roles he liked the best.

During the last year or so the career of Nijinsky has developed suddenly in a 22

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Rh new, but not altogether unforeseen, direction. He has enlarged his sphere of activity beyond the actual boards of the theatre, and has, in some sense, assumed the mantle of M. Fokine, who had previously been responsible for the choreographic arrangement of most of the ballets. Already Nijinsky has designed the dancing of three new ballets: the Prélude à l'Après-Midi d'un Faune, Jeux, and Le Sacre du Printemps; and in so doing has taken definitely his place among the great master-ballet-dancers of history.

title: Page:The Art of Nijinsky.djvu/45


text: The Art of Nijinsky/The Career of Nijinsky


text:
Page:Poems, Volume 2, Coates, 1916.djvu/22

E came to us with dreams to sell—

Ah, long ago it seems!

From regions where enchantments dwell,

He came to us with dreams to sell,

And we had need of dreams.

Our thought had planned with artful care,

Our patient toil had wrought,

The roomy treasure-houses where

Were heaped the costly and the rare,—

But dreams we had not bought:

Nay; we had felt no need of these,

Until with dulcet strain,

Alluring as the melodies

That mock the lonely on the seas,

He made all else seem vain:

Bringing an aching sense of dearth,

A troubled, vague unrest,

A fear that we, whose care on Earth

Had been to garner things of worth,

Had somehow missed the best.


text:
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Rh Then, as had been our wont before,—

Unused in vain to sigh,—

We turned our treasure o'er and o'er,

But found in all our vaunted store

No coin that dreams would buy.

We stood with empty hands: but gay

As though upborne on wings,

He left us; and at set of day

We heard him singing, far away,

The joy of simple things!

He left us, and with apathy

We gazed upon our gold;

But to the world's ascendancy

Submissive, soon we came to be

Much as we were of old.

Yet sometimes when the fragrant dawn

In early splendor beams,

And sometimes when, the twilight gone,

The moon o'er-silvers wood and lawn,

An echo of his dreams

Brings to the heart a swift regret

That is not wholly pain,


text:
Page:Poems, Volume 2, Coates, 1916.djvu/24

8 And, grieving, we would not forget

The vision, hallowed to us yet,—

The hope that seemed so vain.

And then we envy not the throng

That careless passes by,

With no remembrance of the song,—

Though we must listen still, and long

To hear it till we die!


text: Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume II/The Singer


text: Portal:Film/by type

title: Portal:Film/by type


text:
Portal:Film/Cartoon

 * B
 * Bride and Gloom
 * F
 * Feline Follies
 * H
 * Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

title: Portal:Film/Cartoon


text:
Portal:Film/Clay animation

 * G
 * Gumbasia

title: Portal:Film/Clay animation


text:
Portal:Film/Silent film

 * D
 * Daydreams
 * H
 * Humorous Phases of Funny Faces
 * L
 * Le Voyage dans la Lune
 * S
 * Sherlock Holmes Baffled
 * W
 * The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

title: Portal:Film/Silent film


text:
The Singer (Coates)

 * Coates, Florence Earle (1906), "The Singer" in The Century Magazine (April 1906).
 * Coates, Florence Earle (1909), as "A Traveller from Altruria" in Lyrics of Life (1909).
 * Coates, Florence Earle (1916), "The Singer" in Poems II.

title: The Singer (Coates)


text:
Page:Poems, Volume 2, Coates, 1916.djvu/26

HAT miracle is here—

What vision of forgotten things and dear?

The grass—how green it lies in coverts deep!

The pussy-willows—sentinels of the wood—

How slim, how fair, each 'neath its downy snood,

They stand, new-waked from sleep!

And the enchantment cold

That seemed as death? Could it no longer hold

Against the glow that warmed the breast of Earth?

Hearken! what myriad little lives once more

Come knocking, knocking at the Mother's door,

Importunate for birth!

The trees, that look so bare,

Are conscious that the tender leaves are there—

Folded, yet faintly stirring in the bud;

And upward from each buried rootlet runs,

The golden ichor, gift of vernal suns,

On-swelling to the flood.


text:
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Rh And, oh! thrice loved of yore—

Whence comes that note? It was not here before!

The white-throat! By what blest magician's art—

Flung out of silence, comes that clear appeal,

To make the jaded and insensate feel

New yearnings of the heart?

A something in the song

Shall hardly to a later strain belong—

A tremulous and naïve ecstasy

That moves the soul; which, eager then to live,

Petitions life: "Ah, stay awhile, and give

A little heed to me!

"I, also, feel the Spring!

I, also, long to spread my wings and sing,

Unvexed by cares that canker and consume:

To hope, to dream,—ere winter come, to capture

The fleeting thrill, the fragrance and the rapture

Of beauty in its bloom!"


text: Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume II/Vita Nuova


text: Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

title: Humorous Phases of Funny Faces


text:
Portal:Film/1906 in film

 * This page lists all films from 1906 in the English Wikisource.

 * H
 * Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

title: Portal:Film/1906 in film


text:
Vita Nuova (Coates)

 * Coates, Florence Earle (1904), "Vita Nuova" from Mine and Thine (1904)
 * Coates, Florence Earle (1916), "Vita Nuova" from Poems Vol. II (1916)

title: Vita Nuova (Coates)


text:
Portal:Film/Mystery

 * S
 * Sherlock Holmes Baffled

title: Portal:Film/Mystery


text:
Page:Poems, Volume 2, Coates, 1916.djvu/35

HE wild bird's first exultant strain

Says,—"Winter is over—over!"

And spring returns to the world again,

With breath as of lilac and clover.

With a certain soft, appealing grace

(Surely some sorrow hath kissed her!)

She gives to our vision her girlish face,

And we know how we've missed her—missed her!

For on a day she went away,

Long ere the leaves were falling,

And came no more for the whitethroat's lay,

Or the pewee's plaintive calling.

In tender tints on her broidered shoon

Blossomed the leaves of the myrtle,

And silky buds of the darling June

Were gathered up in her kirtle;


text:
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20 And fair, fair, fair, in her sunlit hair

Were violets intertwining,

That seemed more fresh and unfading there

Than with dewdrops on them shining!

She hid them all in her dim retreat;

But, heart! a truce to sighing;

She's here—incomparably sweet,

Unchanging and undying!

We see her brow, and we rejoice,

Her cheek, as it pales and flushes,

We hear once more in her thrilling voice

The note of the woodland thrushes;

And through her lashes, tear-empearled,

A mystic light is breaking,

And all the love of the whole wide world

Seems in her eyes awaking!


text: Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume II/Persephone


text: Lambda: The Ultimate Imperative/Continuations


text:
Persephone (Coates)

 * Coates, Florence Earle (1901),"Persephone" from Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (April 1901)
 * Coates, Florence Earle (1904), "Persephone" in Mine and Thine (1904).
 * Coates, Florence Earle (1916), "Persephone" in Poems II.

title: Persephone (Coates)


text:
User:Griffinofwales/vector.js

mw.loader.load('https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Griffinofwales/global.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript');

title: User:Griffinofwales/vector.js


text:
Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1879.djvu/11

Rh River to the Sioux agencies recently established in Southern Dakota was intrusted to the Indians themselves. The department furnished wagons and harness and the Indians their ponies as draft animals. A shout of derision all along the Upper Missouri greeted the experiment. A disastrous failure was confidently predicted by those interested in the freighting business and many others. But not only did the Sioux succeed in keeping their agencies supplied during an uncommonly hard winter, taking their wagons over desolate plains without roads, a distance of 90 and 193 miles respectively from the river, but they have proved the most efficient, honest, and reliable freighters the Indian service ever had. Not a pound of freight was lost; although the Indian freighters, occasionally delayed by accidents or extraordinary difficulties on their weary way, were sometimes without provisions, not a cracker box nor a pork barrel was broken open. In the course of the year Indian freighting has been introduced at a large majority of the agencies this side of the Rocky Mountains which are at a distance from railroad depots and steamboat landings, and uniformly with the same success. There are now 1,356 wagons run by Indian teamsters in that occupation, and the overland freighting is done better, more faithfully, and far more economically by them than it ever was done for this department by white contractors. But for the difiiculties connected with the giving of bonds we should now be in a condition to have the Indians make bids for freighting contracts for other branches of the public service. The introduction of freighting among them has not only been a great success in itself, but has given a powerful impulse to the desire to work and to earn money among all the Indian tribes that have been so employed. It will be introduced at all the agencies where it is practicable.

The employment of Indians in the mills and workshops on the agencies has been tried with equal success. In some of our grist and sawmills Indians act as engineers. In the blacksmith shops, saddler shops and carpenter shops at the agencies 185 young Indians are instructed as apprentices and their number is being constantly increased. Some of the shops are successfully controlled by Indians as foremen and the employment of Indians as laborers in a variety of other ways has been generally introduced. On Indian reservations where suitable clay is at hand the establishment of brick yards to be worked by Indians is contemplated and will be begun next spring. On the Sioux reservations in Southern Dakota Indians are engaged in putting up telegraph lines. The building of houses for Indians by white contractors has been abandoned, and Indians are now constructing their houses themselves, window sash, shingles, and planks, the latter sawed in the mills on the reserves, being furnished to them. The old Indian prejudice that it is improper for men to do anything else than hunt and fight, and that squaws only should work, is being rapidly and very generally overcome. The progress made in this direction is indeed unequal on different reservations, but progress has been made almost everywhere and at many


text:
Stories of King Arthur and His Knights

Contents

 * Title page
 * List of illustrations
 * Introduction
 * Chapter I. Of the Birth of King Arthur
 * Chapter II. Uther's Son, Rightwise King of All England
 * Chapter III. How Arthur Gat His Sword Excalibur
 * Chapter IV. Balin and Balan
 * Chapter V. The Noble Order of the Round Table
 * Chapter VI. The Ladies' Knight
 * Chapter VII. Wise Merlin's Foolishness
 * Chapter VIII. A Stag-Hunt and What Came of It
 * Chapter IX. The Treachery of Morgan le Fay
 * Chapter X. Sir Launcelot of the Lake
 * Chapter XI. A Night-Time Adventure of Sir Launcelot
 * Chapter XII. How Sir Launcelot Came Into the Chapel Perilous
 * Chapter XIII. The Knight, the Lady, and the Falcon
 * Chapter XIV. How a Kitchen-Page Came to Honour
 * Chapter XV. How Sir Gareth Fought for the Lady of Castle Perilous
 * Chapter XVI. How Sir Gareth Returned to the Court of King Arthur
 * Chapter XVII. How Young Tristram Saved the Life of the Queen of Lyonesse
 * Chapter XVIII. Sir Tristram's First Battle
 * Chapter XIX. Sir Tristram and the Fair Isoud
 * Chapter XX. How Sir Tristram Demanded the Fair Isoud for King Mark, and How Sir Tristram and Isoud Drank the Love Potion
 * Chapter XXI. How Sir Tristram Departed from Tintagil, and was Long in the Forest
 * Chapter XXII. How King Mark was Sorry for the Good Renown of Sir Tristram
 * Chapter XXIII. How Sir Percivale of Galis Sought and Found Sir Launcelot
 * Chapter XXIV. Of the Coming of Sir Galahad
 * Chapter XXV. How the Quest of the Holy Grail was Begun
 * Chapter XXVI. How Galahad Gat Him a Shield
 * Chapter XXVII. Sir Galahad at the Castle of Maidens
 * Chapter XXVIII. Sir Launcelot's Repentance
 * Chapter XXIX. Sir Percivale's Temptation
 * Chapter XXX. The Victory of Sir Bors Over Himself
 * Chapter XXXI. How Sir Launcelot Found the Holy Grail
 * Chapter XXXII. The End of the Quest
 * Chapter XXXIII. Sir Launcelot and the Fair Maid of Astolat
 * Chapter XXXIV. Of the Great Tournament on Candlemas Day
 * Chapter XXXV. Queen Guenever's May-Day Ride and What Came of It
 * Chapter XXXVI. Of the Plot Against Sir Launcelot
 * Chapter XXXVII. How Sir Launcelot Departed from the King and from Joyous Gard
 * Chapter XXXVIII. How King Arthur and Sir Gawaine Invaded Sir Launcelot's Realm
 * Chapter XXXIX. Of Sir Mordred's Treason
 * Chapter XL. Of Arthur's Last Great Battle in the West
 * Chapter XLI. Of the Passing of King Arthur
 * Chapter XLII. Of the End of This Book

title: Stories of King Arthur and His Knights


text: The Harvard Classics

title: The Harvard Classics


text:
Stories of King Arthur and His Knights/Title Page

STORIES OF

KING ARTHUR

AND HIS KNIGHTS

RETOLD FROM MALORY'S "MORTE DARTHUR"

BY

U. WALDO CUTLER

The goodliest fellowship of famous knights Whereof this world holds record. — Tennyson

GEORGE G. HARRAP & CO. LTD.

LONDON —— BOMBAY — SYDNEY

First published January 1905

by GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY

39-41 Parker Street, Kingsway, London, W.C.,

Reprinted: December 1905; July 1906; May 1907;

January 1909; September 1909; July 1910; July 1911;

October 1912; October 1913; March 1915; February

1917; August 1917; May 1918; October 1919;

June 1920; October 1921; October 1922;

June 1923; January 1925; April 1936;

September 1927; October 1928;

January 1930; January 1931;

April 1932


text: Stories of King Arthur and His Knights/Illustrations


text: Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/1


text: Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/2


text: Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/3


text: Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/4


text: Alice in Wonderland (1903 film)

title: Alice in Wonderland (1903 film)


text:
Page:U.S. Department of the Interior Annual Report 1880.djvu/5

 REPORT OF THE

,

Washington, November 1, 1880.

 * In submitting to you my last annual report on the operations of this department, with such suggestions as, in my judgment, it would be profitable to the public interest to adopt, I beg leave to pass in rapid review the policies followed in some of the most important branches of the public service under my supervision during the period of the present administration.

INDIAN AFFAIRS.

When I took charge of this department the opinion seemed to be generally prevailing that it were best for the Indians to be gathered together, upon a few large reservations where they could be kept out of contact with the white population, and where their peaceful and orderly conduct might be enforced by a few strong military posts. It was, perhaps, natural that, with limited knowledge of the character and needs of the Indians, and no experience in their management, I should at first accept that opinion, for the very reason that it was entertained by many who might have been regarded as competent authorities upon the subject. This view had already been acted upon to some extent before this administration came into office. It involved the removal of Indian tribes and bands from the lands they occupied, with their consent freely or reluctantly and doubtfully given, and in some cases the breaking up of beginnings of civilized occupations in their old homes. It was believed that this policy would be apt to keep the Indians out of hostile collision with their white neighbors, and in exclusive and congenial contact with their own kind, and thus prevent disturbances on the part of the Indians themselves and encroachments by the whites. Some measures of this nature had been carried out, and others were, indeed, not initiated, but executed during the early part of this administration. I refer especially to the removal to the Indian Territory of the Pawnees, of the Northern Cheyennes, and the Poncas, which I have found good reason very much to regret.