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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 (Ovμós) the nobler passions]; the liver [is the seat], of desire;' 9 1 or, as again it is phrased, "The seat of the soul is unquestionably the heart, even as the liver is the seat of emotion." 2

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." 3

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; and he finds many correspondences between the desert dwellers of America and of Arabia. "The [American] 'brave,' " he says,

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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." 5

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."6 In another, its derivation is ascribed 1 Timæus of Locri, cited in Liddell and Scott's Greek Eng. Lex., s. V. "Hepar." See also page 108 f., supra.

2 Pollux's Onomasticon, II., 4, 226.

Pilgrim. to Mec. and Med., p. 376.

4 See page 128, supra.

5 Pilgrim, to Mec. and Med., p. 378. See also page 129 f., supra.

• Richardson's Eng. Dict., s. v. "Liver."

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to lopper, and lapper, "to coagulate," "from its resemblance to a mass of clotted blood." 1

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.

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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. 1 Annandale's Ogilvie's Imperial Dict., s. v. "Liver."

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." 1

In these ceremonies, it is evident that the Zuñis, like the Orientals,

1 See Cushing's paper on "Zuñi Fetiches," in Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, PP. 3-43.

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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 [i, 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] elect, 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 spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."1

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 remain for three days and nights, while they rubbed their naked bodies with loose stones until the blood came, and then laid the bloodstained stones in a double row as a memorial. She 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

11 Peter 2: 2-5.

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." And here, again, is a link of connection between cannibalism and religious worship. Another illustration of the pre-eminence 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. 2

At the other side of the world, as it were, in Borneo, there is given similar pre-eminence, 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. "6 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.' 13 The Kayans, again, examine "the heart and liver," as preliminary to covenant-making. Among the Dayaks, the blood of a fowl sacrificed by one who is supposed to be in

1 Cushing's" Zuñi Fetiches," p. 43.

2 See "Illustrated Catalogue of Collections from Indians of New Mexico and Arizona," 1879, in Second Annual Report of Bureau of Ethnology, Figures 361387; 421-430.

3 St. John's Life in Far East, I., 74 f.

4 Ibid., I., 115 f.

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