VI
SALT REPRESENTING LIFE
As blood is synonymous with life in primitive thought and practice,[64] and as salt has been shown to represent blood in the primitive mind, so salt seems to stand for life in many a form of primitive speech and in the world's symbolism. When, indeed, we speak of salt as preserving flesh from corruption, we refer to the staying of the process of death by an added element of life; preserving by re-vivifying, rather than by embalming.
Plutarch says of the power of salt in this direction: "All flesh is dead and part of a lifeless carcass; but the virtue of salt being added to it, like a soul, gives it a pleasing relish and poignancy."[65] All life is from the one Source of Life, and in this sense it is that life is divine. Thus Plutarch calls attention to the fact that Homer[66] speaks of salt as "divine," and that "Plato delivers, that by man's laws salt is to be accounted most sacred."[67] No other material is thus reckoned from primitive days sacred and divine, unless it be blood, which is the synonym of life.[68]
An Oriental form of oath sometimes substitutes "salt" for "life;" as where the prime minister of Persia in a conference with James Morier, secretary of the English embassy, at Teheran, early in this century, swore "by the salt of Fatti Ali Shah"—the then reigning Shah of Persia.[69] Indeed, to swear "by the salt" is a common form of asseveration among Arabs; as to swear by the life, one's own or another's, is a well-known oath in the East.[70]
Where we would say of one who is foremost in inspiriting and enlivening a social gathering, "He was the life of the party," the Arabs say, "He was the salt of the party."
The "salt of youth" is synonymous with the virility and vigor of life, that show themselves in the age of strong passion. Thus Justice Shallow says to Master Page: "Though we are justices and doctors and churchmen, Master Page, we have some salt of our youth in us."[71] Iago refers to young gallants in their passion, "as salt as wolves in pride."[72] And Menecrates refers to "salt Cleopatra" in her loves with Antony.[73] Mrs. Browning seems to have a similar idea as to the significance of salt, when she says in "A Vision of Poets:"
"And poor, proud Byron,—sad as grave
And salt as life; forlornly brave,
And quivering with the dart he drave."
Even in Plutarch's day this truth was recognized by the Greeks as possibly having influenced the ancient Egyptians to forbid salt to their priests, who must be pure and chaste, because salt "by its heat is provocative and apt to raise lust."[74] It would seem, however, that the prohibition of salt as food to Egyptian priests is easier to be accounted for by the fact that it was recognized as the equivalent of blood and life. Therefore those priests were not to partake of salt, "no, not so much as in their bread."[75]