3 6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ingot of gold," a sword, then bread and wine for the commmunion, 

 then a purse of gold, followed by a prayer " to receive these oblations." 



Looked at without bias, the evidence coming from all parts of the 

 world thus proves that oblations are at first literally presents. Animals 

 are given to kings, slain on graves, sacrificed in temples; cooked food 

 is furnished to chiefs, laid on tombs, placed on altars ; first-fruits are 

 presented alike to living rulers, to dead rulers, to gods ; here beer, here 

 wine, here chica, is sent to a visible potentate and poured out as liba- 

 tion to an invisible deity ; incense, in some places burned before distin- 

 guished persons, is burned before gods in various places ; and, besides 

 such consumable things, valuables of every kind, given to secure good- 

 will, are accumulated in the treasures of kings and in the temples of 

 gods. 



There is one further remark of moment. We saw that the present 

 to the visible ruler was at first propitiatory because of its intrinsic 

 worth, but came afterward to have an extrinsic propitiatory effect 

 as implying loyalty. Similarly, the presents to the invisible ruler, 

 primarily considered as directly useful, secondarily come to signify obe- 

 dience ; and their secondary meaning gives that ceremonial character 

 to sacrifice which still survives. 



And now we come upon a remakable sequence. As the present to 

 the ruler eventually develops into political revenue, so the present to 

 the god eventually develops into ecclesiastical revenue. 



Let us set out with that earliest stage in which no definite organi- 

 zation, either political or ecclesiastical-, exists, and in which the last is 

 represented by the medicine-man, whose function is more that of ex- 

 pelling malicious ghosts than propitiating ghosts regarded as placable. 

 At this stage the present to the supernatural being is often shared 

 between him and those who propitiate him : the supposition, commonly 

 vague and unsettled, being either that the supernatural being takes a 

 substantial part of the food offered, or else that he feeds on its supposed 

 spiritual essence while the votaries consume the material shell. The 

 meaning of this, already indicated in the case of some other early usages, 

 is that while the supernatural being is propitiated by the present of 

 food, there is, by eating together, established between him and his pro- 

 pitiators a bond of union : implying protection on the one side and al- 

 legiance on the other. The primitive notion that the nature of a thing, 

 inhering in all its parts, is acquired by those who consume it, and that 

 therefore those who consume two parts of one thing acquire from it 

 some nature in common which binds them together that same notion 

 which initiates the practice of forming a brotherhood by partaking of 

 one another's blood, which instigates the funeral rite of blood-offering, 

 which suggests the practices of the sorcerer, and which gives strength 

 to the claims established by joining in the same meal, originates this 

 prevalent usage of consuming part of the present of food made to the 



