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.
TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS.
A belief in the transmigration of souls, from man to the lower animals, and vice versâ, has been found among various peoples, in all the historic ages. The origin of this belief has been a puzzling question to rationalistic myth-students. Starting out, as do most of these students, with the rigid theory that man worked himself slowly upward from the lowest savagery, without any external revelation, they are confronted with primitive customs on every side which go to show a popular belief in soul-transmigration, and which they must try to account for within the limits of their unproven theory. The result is, that they first presuppose some conception in the primitive man’s mind of spiritual things, and then they conveniently refer all confusing facts to that presupposed conception. “Animism” is one of the pet names for this resolvent of grave difficulties. And when “Animism” is supplemented by “Fetishism,” “Zoolatry,” and “Totemism,” the requisite number of changes is secured for the meeting of any number of perplexing facts in the religious belief of primitive man everywhere.
As a matter of simple fact, man’s conception of spiritual existences is not accounted for by the “scientists.” And the claim that such a conception was innate in primitive man, or that it was a natural growth in man’s unaided progress, is at the best but an unproved theory. In the early part of this century, there were thousands of deaf-mutes in the United States, who had never been educated by the system which is now so effective for that class in the community. This gave a rare opportunity of learning the normal spiritual attainments of unsophisticated man; of man uninfluenced by external revelation or traditions. Nor was this opportunity unimproved for a good purpose. When the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet (himself a philosophical scientist) introduced the system of deaf-mute instruction into this country, he made a careful examination into the intelligence of all the deaf mutes brought under his care, on this point of spiritual conceptions. His declaration was, that he never found a person who, prior to specific instruction, had any conception of the nature or the existence of God. A single illustration of Mr. Gallaudet’s experiences in this line will suffice for the entire series of them. A young girl of sixteen years of age, or so, who proved to be of far more than ordinary intelligence and mental capacity, had been brought up in a New England Christian home. She had been accustomed to bow her head when grace was said at the daily meals, to kneel in family prayer, and to attend church regularly, from early childhood; yet she had no idea of God, no thought of spiritual existences of any sort whatsoever, until she was instructed in those things, in the line of her new education.[702] A writer on this subject, who differed with Mr. Gallaudet in his conclusions from these facts, added: “This testimony is confirmed by that of all the teachers of the deaf and dumb, and the fact must be admitted.”[703] Until some human being can be found with a conception of spiritual existences, without his having received instruction on that point from those who went before him, the claim—in the face of such facts as these—that primitive man ever obtained his spiritual knowledge or his spiritual conceptions from within himself alone, or without an external revelation to him, is an unscientific assumption, in the investigation of the origin of religions in the world.
But, with man’s conception of spiritual things, already existing[704] (however he came by it), and with the existing belief that the blood is the life, or the soul, or the nature, of an organism, the idea of the transmigration of souls as identical with the transference of blood, is a very natural corollary. The blood being the life, or the soul, of man and of beast, if the blood of man passes into the body of a beast, or the blood of a beast passes into the body of a man, why should it not be inferred that the soul of the man, or of the beast, transmigrated accordingly? If the Hindoo, believing that the blood of man is the soul of man, sees the blood of a man drunk up by a tiger, is it strange that he should look upon that tiger as having within him the soul of the Hindoo, which has been thus appropriated? If the South African supposes that, by his drinking the blood or eating the heart of a lion, he appropriates the lion’s courage,[705] is it to be wondered at that when he sees a lion licking the blood and eating the heart of a South African, he should infer that the lion is thereby the possessor of whatever was distinctive in the Zulu, or the Hottentot, personality?
Indeed, as has been already stated, in the body of this work, there is still a question among physiologists, how far the transference of blood from one organism to another carries a transmigration of soul (of the psyche, not of the pneuma).[706] However this may be, the popular belief in such transmigration is fully accounted for, by the recognized conviction that the blood is the soul.