A good many Australian peoples, for example, have reached the stage of requiring the murderer to submit to a shower of spears or boomerangs at the hands of the aggrieved group, on the mutual understanding that the blood-revenge ends here.
Luckily, however, for the murderer, it often takes time to bring him to book; and angry passions are apt in the meanwhile to subside.

The ruder savages are not so bloodthirsty as we are apt to imagine.

War has evolved like everything else; and with it has evolved the man who likes fighting for its own sake.

So, in place of a life for a life, compensation--"pacation," as it is technically termed--comes to be recognized as a reasonable _quid pro quo_.

Constantly we find custom at the half-way stage.