to the sun, and then threw at the feet of the idol. Taking it up, he again offered it to the god, and afterwards burned it; preserving the ashes with great care and veneration. Sometimes the heart was placed in the mouth [of the idol] with a golden spoon. It was customary also to anoint the lips of the image, and the cornices of the door with the victim's blood."1 3 Of the method among the Maya nations, south of the Gulf of Mexico, a Spanish historian says: "The bleeding and quivering heart was held up to the sun, and then thrown into a bowl prepared for its reception. An assistant priest sucked the blood from the gash in the chest, through a hollow cane; the end of which he elevated towards the sun, and then discharged its contents into a plume-bordered cup held by the captor of the prisoner just slain. This cup was carried around to all the idols in the temples and chapels, before whom another blood-filled tube was held up, as if to give them a taste of the contents. This ceremony performed, the cup was left at the palace." Yet another record stands: "The guardian of the temple opened the left breast of the victim, 1 Clavigero's Anc. Hist. of Mex., II., 45–49, cited in Bancroft's Native Races, II., 307. 2 The proper centre of the Maya nations lay in Yucatan (Réville's Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, p. 18). 3 Gomara, cited in Bancroft's Native Races, II., 310 f. THE HEART OF BRUCE. 107 tore out the heart, and handed it to the high priest, who placed it in a small embroidered purse which he carried. The four [assisting] priests received the blood of the victim in four jicaras or bowls, made from the shell of a certain fruit; and descending, one after the other, to the court yard, [they] sprinkled the blood with their right hand in the direction of the cardinal points [of the compass]. If any blood remained over, they returned it to the high priest, who placed it, with the purse containing the heart, in the body of the victim, through the wound that had been made; and the body was interred in the temple."1 Commenting on these customs in Central America, Réville-the representative comparative-religionist of France says: "Here you will recognize that idea, so widely spread in the two Americas, and indeed almost everywhere amongst uncivilized peoples [nor is it limited to the uncivilized], that the heart is the epitome, so to speak, of the individual-his soul in some sense-so that to appropriate his heart is to appropriate his whole being." What else than this. gave rise to the thought of preserving the heart of a hero, or of a loved one, as a symbol of the living presence of the dead? It was by his heart, that King Robert 1 Herrera, cited in Bancroft's Native Races, II., 706 f. Native Religions of Mexico and Peru (Hibbert Lectures, 1884), p. 43 f. See, also, pp. 45, 46, 82, 99. Bruce was to lead his army to the Holy Land; and how many times, in history, have men bequeathed their hearts to those dear to them, as the poet Shelley's heart was preserved by his friends, and by them given to Mrs. Shelley. In the Greek and Roman sacrifices, it was the blood of the victim, which, as the life of the victim, was poured out unto the gods, as unto the Author of life. Moreover, there is reason for supposing that the heart was always given the chief place, as representing the very life itself, in the examination and in the tasting of the "entrails" (háyyva, splangkhna) in connection with the sacrifices of those classic peoples. An indication of this truth is found in a statement by Cicero, concerning the sacrifices at the time of the inauguration of Cæsar: "When he [Cæsar] was sacrificing on that day in which he first sat in the golden chair, and made procession in the purple garment, there was no heart among the entrails of the sacrificial ox. (Do you think, therefore, that any animal which has blood can exist without a heart?) Yet he [Cæsar] was not terrified by the phenomenal nature of the event, although Spurinna declared, that 1See Pindar's Olympian Odes, Ode 1, line 146; Sophocles Trachiniæ, line 766; Virgil's Eneid, Bk. XI., line 81 f. Homer's Odyssey, Bk. III., lines 11, 12, 461–463; Iliad, Bk. II., lines 427, 428. BLOOD LIBATIONS. 109 it was to be feared that both mind [literally counsel'] and life were about to fail him [Cæsar]; for both of these [mind and life] do issue from the heart." 1 Similarly it has been, and to the present day it is, with primitive peoples everywhere. Blood libations were made a prominent feature in the offerings in ancient Phoenicia, as in Egypt. In India, the Brahmans have a saying, in illustration of the claim that Vishnu and Siva are of one and the same nature: "The heart of Vishnu is Sivâ, and the heart of Siva is Vishnu; and those who think they differ, err."3 The Hindoo legends represent the victim's heart as being torn out and given to the one whom in life he has wronged. In China, at the great Temple of Heaven, in Peking, where the emperors of China are supposed to have conducted worship without material change in its main features for now nearly three thousand years, the blood of the animal sacrifice is buried in the earth while the body of the sacrificial victim is offered as a whole burnt offering.7 1 Cicero's De Divinatione, Bk. I., chap. 52, 119. 2 See Sanchoniathon's' references to blood libations, in Cory's Ancient Fragments, pp. 7, 11, 16. See "The Hindu Pantheon," in Birdwood's Indian Arts, p. 96. 5 Williams's Middle Kingdom, I., 194. The blood is the life; the heart as the fountain of blood is the fountain of life; both blood and heart are sacred to the Author of life. The possession, or the gift, of the heart or of the blood, is the possession, or the gift, of the very nature of its primal owner. That has been the world's thought in all the ages. 2. VIVIFYING POWER OF BLOOD. The belief seems to have been universal, not only that the blood is the life of the organism in which it originally flows, but that in its transfer from one organism to another the blood retains its life, and so carries with it a vivifying power. There are traces of this belief in the earliest legends of the Old World, and of the New; in classic story; and in medical practices as well, all the world over, from time immemorial until the present day. For example, in an inscription from the Egyptian monuments, the original of which dates back to the early days of Moses, there is a reference to a then ancient legend of the rebellion of mankind against the gods; of an edict of destruction against the human. race; and of a divine interposition for the rescue of the doomed peoples. In that legend, a prominent 1 The inscription was first found, in 1875, in the tomb of Setee I., the father of Rameses II., the Pharaoh of the oppression. A translation of it appeared in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Arch |