294 Science Keltgion and 'Reality 



The ark is a specially interesting example of the material sacred. 

 It stirred an awed sense of the holy which made the touching of it 

 sacrilege ; and yet part of its contents could be destroyed when it 

 became itself an object of worship. It represented a value which 

 was above life and killed the profane person who would steady 

 it as though it were a mere box, yet the natural life alongside of it 

 was also becoming sacred and that through the religion embodied 

 in the ark. 



This singular connection between sacredness and life, so that 

 to be above life in value is the measure of sacredness, while at the 

 same time life itself becomes sacred, is only a material form of the 

 singular relation to our own souls which goes with every valuation as 

 sacred. This also could only be conceived materially as the life. 

 Yet it is, in its way, a manifestation of the claim of the sacred by a 

 worth within us which belongs to us, and which we only win by 

 being ready to lose it. And even life was at first too immaterial an 

 idea. Wherefore, the blood was taken to be the life, and was 

 esteemed sacred. Other things, and above all the peculiar physical 

 impression made by blood, and especially on primitive minds, went 

 to intensify the experience, but that does not hinder the fact that 

 in its sacredness was felt something of higher meaning and value 

 than can be explained by mere blood, something which is the real 

 explanation of the blood-sacrifice, the whole impression and valua- 

 tion of which is not explicable by rational arguments about totem- 

 animals or feasting with the god, or even upon the reasoned idea 

 that life is the noblest gift of the gods and must be offered them 

 again. None of these explanations suffice for a sacredness which 

 is raised above all comparison. Above all a sacredness felt in the 

 blood, and not the mere blood, is needed to explain human sacrifice, 

 which confers sacredness on human life as well as sacrifices it to 

 the god. 



Later, man conceived this sacred nature in himself in the 

 form of a soul, a half-material, vaguer, swifter, smaller image of 

 himself. This again was necessary because of the inability to 

 think without material association ; but again, though there was 

 more of argument and inference here, such reasoning does not 

 account for the peculiar feelings about the soul or for the value set 

 upon it, a value which, in its rudimenatry way, is of the same quality 

 as the estimate that it would not profit to gain the whole world and 

 lose one's soul. 



