The theory of sympathetic magic may perhaps afford the solution of Plutarch's problem (97), why they that would live chaste were forbidden to eat pulse. Plutarch suggests that as far as beans are concerned the reason may be that the Pythagoreans abominated them. This "symbol" of the Pythagoreans is well-known. Milton was inspired by it to put the case—
"If all the world
Should in a fit of temp'rance feed on pulse,"
and, according to Neanthes, quoted by Iamblichus in his life of Pythagoras, the prohibition extended even to treading down the growing bean; for, he informs us, Pythagoras inculcated the virtue of chastity so successfully that when ten of his disciples, being attacked, might have escaped by crossing a bean-field, they died to a man rather than tread down the beans: and when another disciple, who was shortly afterwards captured and brought before Dionysius, was bidden by that tyrant to explain the strange conduct of his fellows, he replied, "They suffered themselves to be put to death rather than tread beans under foot; and I will rather tread beans under foot than reveal the reason."
This is sufficiently mysterious; and the Pythagorean symbol can scarcely be said to explain the Italian prohibition. But though Plutarch has committed the error of defining ignotum per ignotius, he has nevertheless been led by a sound instinct, in comparing the two things together. Mr. Frazer (in Folk-Lore, i. 145 ff.) has abundantly shown that many of the symbols of Pythagoras are but maxims of folk-lore which have gathered round the name of that mysterious philosopher. It would be nothing strange, then, if a piece of Italian folklore should be fathered on Pythagoras, for Magna Graecia was the home of Pythagoreanism.
Now the folk has at all times been fond of discovering resemblances between plants and other objects, as the common names of flowers, &c., sufficiently show. Further, according to popular notions, these resemblances do not exist for nothing: between the plant and the object it resembles there exists an occult but potent relation. The "Doctrine of Signatures" was a quasi-scientific organisation of this branch of folk-lore. "Turmeric has a brilliant yellow colour, which indicates that it has the power of curing jaundice; for the same reason, poppies must relieve diseases of the head," to take a couple of instances from the Pharmacologia of Dr. Paris (p. 43). The ancient Romans who substituted an offering of poppy-heads for a sacrifice of human beings were not practising a childish cheat on the gods: on all sound principles of folk-lore they were offering a perfectly valid equivalent.
When then we find Porphyry, in his life of Pythagoras (§ 43), saying that Pythagoras bade his followers "abstain from beans as from human flesh," we may reasonably infer that beans were regarded, in the folk-lore of the day, as resembling some part of the human body, and as having a mysterious affinity with it. This conjecture receives some support from the fact that, whereas Porphyry explains all the other "symbols" as allegorical statements of various moral and civic duties, he explains this by a piece of folk-lore of the same kind as the modern popular belief that a hair kept in water will turn into an eel. The exact part of the body to which beans were supposed to bear a resemblance may be difficult at this distance of time to determine. The passage in Porphyry gives some hints.[[95]]
A more interesting fact is that, according to Herodotus, ii. 37, the Egyptians had the same aversion to eating beans, and that Egyptian priests might not even look at a bean, so unclean was it considered. From this passage it is usually inferred that Pythagoras obtained this piece of his doctrine from the Egyptians; and V. D. Link (Die Urwelt, 225) sought to support the inference by the suggestion that the prohibition originally had reference to the sacred Egyptian bean, and was subsequently extended to the common bean (faba vulgaris). Pursuing this line of thought, we are at once struck by the fact that the sacred Egyptian bean (nelumbium speciosum) is a lotus; and the lotus, both as a plant and as a symbol,[[96]] carries our thoughts to India. We thus seem to see a piece of folk-lore migrating, along with the plant to which it was attached, from India to Egypt, from Egypt to Europe.
But when did this interesting migration take place? The prohibition was known pretty early in Sicily, for it makes its appearance in the fragments of Empedocles, who was born at Agrigentum, B.C. 490. We can, however, trace it back much earlier in Italy. There it dates from pre-historic times, for it was one of the taboos laid upon the flamen Dialis. And the idea that beans were human flesh is implied in the part which they played in the funeral ceremonies of the primitive Italians. That part is remarkably interesting. Plutarch tells us that "the solemne suppers and bankets at funerals for the dead were usually served with pulse above all other viands." This is a strange contrast to the aversion shown otherwise for eating beans, and it cries aloud for explanation.
Mr. E. S. Hartland, in Folk Lore, III. ii., has put forward the theory that the practice of sin-eating is the transformed survival of a savage custom of eating deceased kinsmen. Even those who dissent from his conclusion will not be able to deny that the custom does exist among savages, and that the object of cannibalism is to secure to the eater the courage, cunning, strength, &c., of the person eaten; nor will it be denied that on the first movement from savagery a tendency would manifest itself to substitute for the corpse anything which, according to the canons of savage logic, might be regarded as an equivalent substitute. The Italians, regarding beans as human flesh, might, we may conjecture, substitute beans; as the Bavarian peasant substitutes Leichen-nudeln. Before, however, we can regard this as anything more than a guess, we want proof that the Italians did really look upon the beans which they ate at funeral feasts as representative of the deceased. That proof is forthcoming, I submit, in the belief mentioned by Pliny (N. H., xviii. 30. 2) that "the spirit of the deceased was in the bean" (mortuorum animæ sint in ea, i.e., in the faba). And inasmuch as the law forbade them that would be chaste to eat pulse, it seems probable that the object of eating beans at funeral banquets was to convey the propagating powers of the deceased to his kinsmen.