Among all primitive peoples, the blood has been deemed the
representative of life. The giving of blood has been counted the
giving of life. The receiving of blood has been counted the receiving
of life. The sharing of blood has been counted the sharing of life.
Hence, the blood has always been counted the chief thing in any
sacrificial victim proffered to the gods; and whatever was sought
through sacrifice, was to be obtained by means of the blood of the
offering. Even though no specific reference to the blood be found in
the preserved descriptions of one of the earlier sacrifices,--as, for
example, the Akkadian sacrifice of the first-born (page 166, _supra_),
the very fact that the offering made was of a _life_, and that _blood_
was recognized as life, is in itself the proof that it was the blood
which gave the offering its value.
Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, who was thoroughly familiar with both Egyptian
and biblical antiquities, was impressed by the “striking resemblance”
of many of the religious rites of the Jews to those of Egypt,
“particularly the manner in which the sacrifices were performed;”[674]
and he points out the Egyptian method of so slaying the sacrificial
ox, that its blood should be fully discharged from the body; a point
which was deemed of such importance in the Jewish ritual.[675] Of
the illustration of this ceremony given by Wilkinson from an ancient
Egyptian painting,[676] the Speaker’s Commentary says: “There is no
reason to doubt that this picture accurately represents the mode
pursued in the court of the [Jewish] Tabernacle.”[677]
Almost as universal as the recognition of the life in the blood,
has been the identification of the heart as the blood-centre and
the blood-fountain, and so as the epitome of the life itself. Says
Pierret,[678] the French Egyptologist, concerning the preeminence
given to the heart, by the ancient Egyptians: “The heart was embalmed
separately in a vase placed under the guardianship of the genius
Duaoumautew [rather, Tuau-mut-ef, or, Reverencer of his Mother. ‘My
heart was my mother.’ See page 99, _supra_] without doubt because this
organ, indispensable to the resurrection, could not be replaced in the
body of a man, until it had been weighed in the scale of the balance
of the Osirian judgment (_Todtenbuch_, cxxv.); where representing the
acts of the dead, it ought to make equilibrium with the statue of the
goddess Truth [Maat]. (See the framed papyri in the funereal hall
of the Museum of the Louvre.) Indeed the favorable sentence is thus
formulated: ‘It is permitted that his heart be in its place.’ It is
said to Setee I., in the temple of Abydos: ‘I bring thee thy heart to
thy breast; I put it in its place.’ The heart, principle of existence
and of regeneration, was symbolized by the scarabæus: it is for this
reason that the texts relative to the heart were inscribed upon the
funereal scarabæuses, which at a certain epoch were introduced into the
body of the mummy itself, to replace the absent organ.”
The idea that the heart is in itself life, and that it can even live
apart from the body, is found all the world over. References to it in
ancient Egypt, in India, and in primitive America, have already been
pointed out (pages 100-110, _supra_). It shows itself, likewise, in the
folk-lore of the Arctic regions, and of South Africa, as well as of
the Norseland. In a Samoyed tale, “seven brothers are in the habit of
taking out their hearts and sleeping without them. A captive damsel,
whose mother they have killed, receives the extracted hearts, and hangs
them on the tent-pole, where they remain till the following morning.
One night her brother contrives to get the hearts into his possession.
Next morning, he takes them into the tent, where he finds the brothers
at the point of death. In vain do they beg for their hearts, which he
flings on the floor. ‘And as he flings down the hearts, the brothers
die.’”[679] According to a Hottentot story, “the heart of a girl, whom
a lion has killed and eaten, is extracted from the lion, and placed
in a calabash filled with milk [the ‘heart’ and ‘milk’; or blood and
bread, life and its nourishment (See pages 10-12, 261 f., _supra_)].
‘The calabash increased in size; and, in proportion to this, the girl
grew again inside [of] it.’”[680] “In a Norse story, a giant’s heart
lies in an egg, inside a duck, which swims in a well, in a church,
on an island;”[681] and this story is found in variations in other
lands.[682] So, again, in a “Russian story, a prince is grievously
tormented by a witch who has got hold of his heart, and keeps it
perpetually seething in a magic cauldron.”[683]
This same idea is found in the nomenclature of the Bible, and in the
every day speech of the civilized world of the present age. In more
than nine hundred instances, in our common English Bible, the Hebrew or
the Greek word for “heart,” as a physical organ, is applied to man’s
personality; as if it were, in a sense, synonymous with his life, his
self, his soul, his nature. In every phase of man’s character, of
man’s needs, or of man’s experiences, “heart” is employed by us as
significant of his innermost and realest self. He is “hard-hearted,”
“tender-hearted,” “warm-hearted,” “cold-hearted,” “hearty,” or
“heartless.” His words and his conduct are “heart-touching,”
“heart-cheering,” “heart-searching,” “heart-piercing,”
“heart-thrilling,” “heart-soothing,” or “heart-rending;” and they are a
cause, in others, of “heart-burning,” “heart-aching,” “heart-easing,”
or “heart-expanding.” At times, his “heart is set upon” an object of
longing, or again “his heart is in his mouth” because of his excited
anxiety. It may be, that he shows that “his heart is in the right
place,” or that “his heart is at rest” at all times. The truest union
of two young lives, is where “the heart goes with the hand” in the
marriage covenant.
And so, all the world over, from the beginning, primitive man, in the
lowest state of savagery and in the highest stage of civilization,
has been accustomed to recognize the truth, and to employ the
symbolisms of speech, which are in accordance with the latest advances
of physiological and psychological science, and with the highest
spiritual conceptions of biblical truth, in our nineteenth Christian
century, concerning the mental, the moral, and the religious needs and
possibilities of the human race. Man as he is needs a “new heart,” a
new nature, a new life; and that need can be supplied by the Author
of life, through that regeneration which is indicated, and which, in
a sense, is realized in new blood which is pure at the start, and
which purifies by its purging inflow. The recognition of this truth,
and the outreaching of man in its direction, are at the basis of all
forms of sacrifice in all the ages. And this wonderful attainment of
primitive man everywhere, we are asked to accept as man’s mere natural
inheritance from the sensory quiverings of his ancestral tadpole!
“The knowledge of the ancients on the subject [of blood as the synonym
of life] may, indeed, have been based on the mere observation that an
animal loses its life when it loses its blood,” says the Speaker’s
Commentary. But it does seem a little strange, that none of the
ancients ever observed that man is very liable to lose his life when
he loses his _brains_, and that few animals are actively efficient for
practical service without a _head_; whereas both men and the lower
animals do lose _blood_ freely without death resulting.
It is true that in many parts of the world the _liver_ was made
prominent as seemingly a synonym of life; but this was obviously
because of the popular belief that the liver was itself a mass of
coagulated blood. The idea seems to have been that as the heart was
the blood-fountain, the liver was the blood-cistern; and that, as the
source of life (or of blood, which life is,) was at the heart; so,
the great receptacle of life, or of blood, was the liver. Thus, in
the classic myth of Prometheus, the avenging eagle of Jupiter is not
permitted to gnaw upon the life-giving heart itself of the tortured
victim, but upon the compacted body of life in the captive’s liver; the
fountain of life is not to be destroyed, but the cistern of life is
to be emptied daily of all that it had received from the out-flowing
heart during the preceding night. And in the symbolism of these two
organs, the ancients seem to have been agreed, that “The heart is the
seat of the soul [thumos (θυμός) the nobler passions]; the liver [is
the seat] of desire;”[684] or, as again it is phrased, “The seat of
the soul is unquestionably the heart, even as the liver is the seat of
emotion.”[685]
Burton has called attention to the fact that among the Arabs, “the
liver and the spleen are both supposed to be ‘congealed blood,’” and
that the Bed´ween of the Hejaz justify their eating of locusts, which
belong to an “unclean” class of animals, and of liver which represents
forbidden blood, by this couplet:
“We are allowed two carrions, and two bloods,
The fish and locust, the liver and the spleen.”[686]
He has also noted that the American Indian partakes of the liver, as
well as of the heart of a fallen enemy, in order to the assimilating of
the enemy’s life;[687] and he finds many correspondences between the
desert dwellers of America and of Arabia. “The [American] ‘brave,’” he
says, “stamps a red hand upon his mouth to show that he has drunk the
blood of a foe. Of the Utaybah ‘Harami,’ it is similarly related, that
after mortal combat, he tastes the dead man’s gore.”[688]
Even in modern English, the word “liver” has been thought by many to
represent “life” or “blood.” Thus, in one of our dictionaries we are
told that the word is derived from the Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian
verb “to live,” “because [the liver is] of so great importance to
_life_, or animal vitality.”[689] In another, its derivation is
ascribed to _lopper_, and _lapper_, “to coagulate,” “from its
resemblance to a mass of clotted blood.”[690]
Among the aborigines of America the prominence given to the blood
and to the heart was as great, and as distinctly marked, as among
the peoples of ancient Egypt, or any other portion of the far East.
This truth has been brought out most fully by the valuable personal
researches of Mr. Frank H. Cushing, of the Smithsonian Institution,
into the mythology and sociology of the Zuñis of New Mexico. From his
reports it would appear that, according to the priests of that people,
“all true fetiches [or, material symbols of spiritual existences] are
either actual petrifactions of the animals they represent, or were such
originally”--according as the present form of the fetish is natural,
or is mechanically fashioned. These rude stone images of the animals
of prey, “which are of course mere concretions or strangely eroded
rock forms,” are supposed to be the shriveled and distorted remains of
beings which were long ago turned to stone. Within these fetishes the
_heart_ of the original animal still exists; (“his heart still lives,
even though his person be changed to stone”;) and it needs for its
sustenance the blood, or the “life fluid,” of the game which was, from
the beginning, the ordinary prey of that animal. Hence each fetish is
pleased to hear the prayers and to give success to the hunting of its
present possessor, in order to the obtaining of the life fluid which is
essential to its nourishing.
These prey fetishes of the Zuñis belong to the Prey-God Brotherhood,
and when not in use they are guarded by the “Keeper of the Medicine
of the Deer.” Before they are employed in a hunt, there is an
assembly for their worship; and, after ceremonial prayer to them for
their assistance, they are taken out for service by members of the
Brotherhood to which they belong. “The fetich is then placed in a
little crescent-shaped bag of buckskin which the hunter wears suspended
over the left breast (or, heart) by a buckskin thong, which is tied
above the right shoulder.” When the trail of the animal hunted is
discovered by the hunter, he finds a place where the animal has lain
down, and there he makes an oblation by depositing his offering “in
exactly the spot over which the heart of the animal is supposed to have
rested.” Then he brings out his fetish and with certain ceremonies and
invocations he puts it on the track of the prey.
“As soon as the animal is dead, he [the hunter] lays open its viscera,
cuts through the diaphragm, and makes an incision in the aorta, or in
the sac which incloses the heart. He then takes out [of its bag] the
prey fetich, breathes on it, and addresses it thus: ... ‘Si! My father,
this day of the blood [literally of the ‘life fluid’] of a game-being,
thou shalt drink, ([shalt] water thyself). With it thou shalt enlarge
(add unto) thy heart.’ He then dips the fetich into the blood which the
sac still contains, continuing meanwhile the prayer, as follows: ...
‘Likewise, I, a “done” being [a living human being], with the blood
[the “life-fluid,” which is] the flesh of a raw being (game animal),
shall enlarge (add unto) my heart.’ Which [prayer] finished, he scoops
up, with his hand, some of the blood and sips it; then tearing forth
the _liver_, ravenously devours a part of it [as the blood-flesh, or,
the blood which is the flesh], and exclaims, ‘_É-lah-kwá!_’ (Thanks).”
After all this, he deposits a portion of the clot of blood from within
the heart, commingled with various articles, in a grave digged on the
spot where the animal has died; repeating, as he does this, a prayer
which seems to show his belief that the slain animal still lives in
this buried heart-blood. Again, when the game is at the hunter’s home,
the women “lay on either side of its body, next to the heart, an ear
of corn (significant of renewed life), and say prayers” over it.
Finally “the fetich is returned to the Keeper of the Deer Medicine,
with thanksgiving and a prayer, not unlike that uttered on taking it
forth.”[691]
In these ceremonies, it is evident that the Zuñis, like the Orientals,
recognize the blood as the life, the heart as the epitome of life, the
liver as a congealed mass of blood, and the transference of blood as
the transference of life. Moreover, there is here a trace of that idea
of the revivifying, by blood-bathing, of a being that had turned into
stone; which is found in the legends of Arabia, and of the Norseland
(See page 119 f., _supra_). Is there not, indeed, a reference to this
world-wide figure of the living stone, in the Apostle’s suggestion,
that those who were counted as worthless stones by an ignorant world
are vivified by the renewing blood of Christ, and so are shown to be
a holy people? “As new born babes [renewed by the blood of Christ],
long for the spiritual milk [the means of sacred nourishment] which
is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation; if ye
have tasted that the Lord is gracious [if, indeed, ye have been made
alive by the touch of his blood]: unto whom coming, [unto Him who is]
a Living Stone rejected indeed of men, but with God [who knows the
possibilities of that Stone], precious,--ye also, as living stones [as
new blood-vivified petrifactions], are built up a spiritual house, to
be a holy priesthood, to offer up holy sacrifices, acceptable to God
through Jesus Christ.”[692]
There is another gleam of this idea of the stones vivified by blood,
in a custom reported from among the Indians of British Columbia, in
a private letter written by a careful observer of Indian habits and
ceremonies. When the Indian girls arrived at the years of womanhood
they were accustomed, there as in many other parts of the world, to
pass through a formal initiation into a new stage of existence. Going
apart by themselves, at some distance from their settlements, they
would lacerate their bodies, in order that blood might flow freely;
and, laying a series of stones in a row, they would walk over them,
allowing their blood to fall upon them. The young woman who could cover
the largest number of stones with her blood, had the fairest prospect
in life, in the line of a woman’s peculiar mission. This certainly
would be a not unnatural thought as an outgrowth of the belief that
stones anointed with freely surrendered blood, can be made to have
life in themselves.
It is much the same in war as in the hunt, among the Zuñis. “As with
the hunter, so with the warrior; the fetich is fed on the life-blood
of the slain.”[693] And here, again, is a link of connection between
cannibalism and religious worship. Another illustration of the
preeminence given to the heart, as the epitome of the very being
itself, is the fact that the animals pictured on the pottery of these
people, and of neighboring peoples, commonly had the rude conventional
figure of a heart represented in its place on each animal; as if to
show that the animal was living, and that it had a living soul.[694]
At the other side of the world, as it were, in Borneo, there is given
similar preeminence, as among the Zuñis, to the blood as the life,
to the liver as a representative of blood, and to the heart as the
epitome of the life. “The principal sacrifice of the Sakarang Dayaks,”
says Mr. St. John, “is killing a pig and examining its _heart_, which
is supposed to foretell events with the utmost certainty.” This
custom seems to have grown out of the idea that the heart of any God
devoted organism, as the embodiment of its life is closely linked
with the Author of all life; who is the Disposer of all events. A
human heart is naturally deemed preferable to a pig’s; but the latter
is the common substitute for the former. Yet, “not many years ago,”
one of the Sakarang chiefs put to death a lad “of his own race,”
remarking, as he did so: “It has been our custom heretofore to examine
the heart of a pig, but now we will examine a human one.”[695] The
Kayans, again, examine “the _heart_ and _liver_,” as preliminary to
covenant-making.[696] Among the Dayaks, the blood of a fowl sacrificed
by one who is supposed to be in favor with the gods, has peculiar
potency when sprinkled upon “the lintels of the doors.”[697] And a
house will be deserted by its Dayak inhabitants, “if a drop of blood be
seen sprinkled on the floor, unless they can prove whence it came.”[698]
An incidental connection of this recognition of the blood as the
life, with the primitive rite of blood covenanting, is seen in one
form of the marriage rite among the Dayaks.[699]--In the rite of
blood-covenanting itself, as consummated between Mr. St. John and
Siñgauding, a cigarette stained with the blood of the covenanting
parties was smoked by them mutually (See page 51, _supra_). In the
marriage covenant, a cigar and betel leaf prepared with the areca nut
are put first into the mouth of the bride by the bridegroom, and then
into the mouth of the bridegroom by the bride; while two fowls are
waved over their heads by a priest, and then killed; their blood being
“caught in two cups” for examination, instead of for drinking.[700]
So, whether it be the heart as the primal fountain of blood, or
the liver as the great receptacle of blood, or the blood itself in
its supposed outflowing from the heart through the liver, that is
made prominent in the rites and teachings of primitive peoples, the
root-idea is still the same,--that “as to the life of all flesh, the
blood thereof is all one with the life thereof;”[701] and that as a
man is in his blood, so he is in his nature; that his “good blood” or
“his bad blood,” his “hot blood” or his “cold blood,” will be evidenced
in his daily walk; for that which shows out in his outer life is “in
the blood” which is his inner life; and that in order to a change of
his nature there must in some way be a change of his blood. Hence, the
universal outreaching of the race after new blood which is new life.
Hence, the provisions of God for new life through that blood which is
the Life.