Volume 1

The Jewish encyclopedia : a descriptive record of the history, religion, literature, and customs of the Jewish people from the earliest times to the present day / prepared ... under the direction of ... Cyrus Adler [and others] Isidore Singer ... managing editor.

Date:
1901-1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Jewish encyclopedia : a descriptive record of the history, religion, literature, and customs of the Jewish people from the earliest times to the present day / prepared ... under the direction of ... Cyrus Adler [and others] Isidore Singer ... managing editor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    207/752 (page 159)
    Accident ACCESSORIES : In English and American law an accessory is a person who, without committing a criminal act with his own hands, or without even being present, aiding and abetting the criminal, nevertheless shares in the guilt of the act, in one of two ways: either by counseling, advising, or pro- curing the act to be done, in which case he is called “ an accessory before the fact, ” and is considered fully as guilty as the principal offender, Definition, or by shielding such offender from punishment, after the act is com- mitted, when the person so shielding becomes an accessory after the fact, whose degree of guilt is lower than that of the principal. The Bible treats very fully of Accessories to one offense, that of idol- atry. An individual who advises another to wor- ship false gods is guilty of a substantive offense, and is known as n'DD=seducer (Dent. xiii. 7-12; see Abetment). Such seducer is to be put to death by stoning, because “ he has sought to mislead thee ” (Deut. xiii. 10, Heh. 11). It is, therefore, not neces- sary that any one should have been actually mis- led, as the very attempt at seduction is punishable with death. The verses Deut. xiii. 13-19 begin by assuming that a few worthless men may mislead the inhabitants of a city into idol-worship and command that the city be destroyed, but say nothing about any special punishment for the instigators. Hence, neither the first nor the second passage deals with the case of a true “ accessory before the fact ”; that is, with the one who is punished, because he has counseled the commission of a crime which has been committed by others. The Mishnah (Sauh. vii. 10) defines the offense of a private person (not a prophet) who seduces indi- viduals (not a whole city) and sets forth the manner of procedure against him. In Deut. xiii. 8, Heh. 9, the person sought to be seduced is commanded; Neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal liim.” Here, then, is a law declaring that to shield Biblical this class of offenders from puuish- and ment is sinful. But one who thus Talmudic becomes an accessory after the fact to View. the offense of .shielding cannot be punished; for the Torah proceeds in the next verse to lay upon the person sought to be seduced the duty of bringing the tempter to justice; and according to the established rule (3Iak. iii. 4) wherever a prohibition in the Torah is followed by the command to do an opposite act, the prohibition carries no punishment with it. For Accessories be- fore the fact to other offenses than idolatry the written law pronounces no penalty; nor does it anywhere say in set terms: Do not counsel or pro- cure forbidden acts to be done by others. Hence, the Scriptural punishment of death, or of forty stripes save one, can not be adjudged even against him who employs a murderer to take a man’s life; for it is the foremost principle of the Talmudic criminal law that sentence of death or stripes must not be awarded for any offense not expressly denounced in the writ- ten law, but derived from it only by construction or by “searching.” How this and some other principles unduly favoring the accused would, if faithfully followed in practise, lead to the immunity of the guilty, and how the rabbis of Mishnaic and Tal- mudic times were compelled to contrive a new sys- tem of procedure and of punishment by the side of that Avhich they taught as the tndy Scriptural system, are shown under Criminal Law and Cri.m- iNAL Procedure. However, in a discussion on the law of agency we find a saying of the old sages (Kid. 43rt): “ Where one says to bis agent: Go and kill such a person, the slayer is punishable and he who sends him goes free; but Shamraai taught under a tradition from Haggiii, the prophet, thathe who sends him is punishable: lor in II Sam. xli. 9 iHeh.] David is told: ‘ It is thou who hast killed him, by the sword of the children of Ammon.’ ” It is admitted by all that he who directs a mur- der is punishable in the sight of God; but the dis- tinction between Shammai and the other sages is that Shammai would inflict the heavy punishment of death, and the others a lighter one, though this is not named. L. N. D. ACCHO (called also Acco, Acre, Ptolemais, St. Jean d’Acre). See Acre. ACCIDENT : Term used in philosophy to ex press a characteristic of an object or notion which does not necessarily follow from its nature and is not essential to its concept, but is connected with the object as an unessential, seemingly, by chance or Accident. The opposite notion is that of the essential, that is, a neces- sarily contained characteristic, without which the ob- ject would lose its identity. That a Philo- human being is mortal or a biped is sophic pecessarily contained in the notion** hu- Notion. man being,” but to be white is only the chance or accidental characteri.stic of any particular human being, for negroes are also human beings. Among the Arabic and .Tewish philosophers the doctrine of accidents = momriD or D''C’nn, also D'''^pD, assumes special importance, particularly as a proof of the existence of God (comiiare IMunk, “Guide des fegares,” i. 38r), 398, 424; Kaufmann, “Gesch. der Attributcnlehre,” p. 281). Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke substitute for the term “Acci- dent,” which had been universally used in the Dlid- dleAges, the term ** modus” (=: temporary condition), and tills change was adopted by Spinoza (** Etliics,’’ part i., definition 5). The logical relation is that of subject and predicate, the metaiihy.sieal relation that of substance and Accident (mp6l DVJ) in Arabic- .lewish philosophic phraseology). The relation of Accident, as a chance quality, to attribute, as a ]iermanent characteristic of the substance n'J?3t0n) has been clearly ex jilained by Dlaimonides, ** MorehNebukim,” ii. 19. 3Iaimonides distinguishes between separable and inseparable accidents, mpD “nSJ and D''p mpD- Bibliography : Maimonides, Moreh, i. 73, ii. 19; idem, Yesode /m-I’ortf/i, iv. 8; idem, ATiltot /ia-Hi(/yajy(j/i, § 9; Selimiedel, in Monatssehrift, xiii. 186. g In Daw : In daily life. Accident means unfore- seen harm that comes to persons or things, presuma- bly through lack of care. ‘When the contributor to an Accident is another than the person injured, oris the owner of the things destroyed or depreciated, there is room for litigation, which, in every system of jurisprudence, is governed by special laws. The Torah treats of the law of negligence in Ex. xxi. 28-36 and xxii. 4, 5, the leading cases being those of an ox goring a man or beast; an open, un- protected pit; fire spreading to a neighbor’s prop- erty ; also, to a certain extent, trespassing cattle. For the rules of Ex. xxii. 6-14, concerning the liability of a person lawfully possessed of another’s goods for loss or destruction, see Bailments. In the language of the Mishnah the chief instances given in the Torah for a more broadly applicable law, such as those relating to the Goring Ox or those relating to any animal that inflicts unusual harm, or to the open pit or any similar inanimate thing, are called (** fathers ”); other instances derived from these are known as nn^in (“ descendants ”). The latter may be called “derivatives.”