4. On Scapegoats in General
THE FOREGOING survey of the custom of publicly expelling the
accumulated evils of a village or town or country suggests a few
general observations.
In the first place, it will not be disputed that what I have called
the immediate and the mediate expulsions of evil are identical in
intention; in other words, that whether the evils are conceived of
as invisible or as embodied in a material form, is a circumstance
entirely subordinate to the main object of the ceremony, which is
simply to effect a total clearance of all the ills that have been
infesting a people. If any link were wanting to connect the two
kinds of expulsion, it would be furnished by such a practice as that
of sending the evils away in a litter or a boat. For here, on the
one hand, the evils are invisible and intangible; and, on the other
hand, there is a visible and tangible vehicle to convey them away.
And a scapegoat is nothing more than such a vehicle.
In the second place, when a general clearance of evils is resorted
to periodically, the interval between the celebrations of the
ceremony is commonly a year, and the time of year when the ceremony
takes place usually coincides with some well-marked change of
season, such as the beginning or end of winter in the arctic and
temperate zones, and the beginning or end of the rainy season in the
tropics.
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