ople
talked of it as an ordinary and indifferent thing. This indifference was
due to habit and familiarity." This case shows that the horror of
cannibalism is due to tradition in the mores. Diodorus says that the
ancient Egyptians, during a famine, ate each other rather than any
animal which they considered sacred.[1091]

+349. Cannibalism and ghost fear.+ Human sacrifice and cannibalism are
not necessarily conjoined. Often it seems as if they once were so, but
have been separated.[1092] Whatever men want ghosts want. If the former
are cannibals, the latter will be the same. Often the notion is that the
gods eat the souls. In this view, the men eat the flesh of sacrificed
beasts and sacrifice the blood, in which is the life or soul, to the
gods. This the Jews did. They also burned the kidneys, the fat of the
kidneys, and the liver, which they thought to be the seat of life. These
they might not eat.[1093] When men change, the gods do not. Hence the
rites of human sacrifice and cannibalism continue in religion long after
they disappear from the mores, in spite of loathing. Loathing is a part
of the sacrifice.[1094] The self-control and self-subjugation enter into
the sacrament. All who participate, in religion, in an act which gravely
affects the imagination as horrible and revolting enter into a
communion with each other. Every one who desires to participate in the
good to be obtained must share in the act. As we have seen above, all
must participate that none may be in a position to reproach the rest.
Under this view, the cannibal food is reduced to a crumb, or to a drop
of blood, which may be mixed with other food. Still later, the cannibal
food is only represented, e.g. by cakes in the human form, etc. In the
Middle Ages the popular imagination saw a human body in the host, and
conjured up operations on the host which were attributed to sorcerers
and Jews, which would only be applicable to a human body. Then the New
Testament language about the body and blood of Christ took on a
realistic sense which was cannibalistic.

+350. Cannibalism, sorcery, and human sacrifice.+ Among the West
African tribes sacrificial and ceremonial cannibalism in fetich
affairs is almost universal.[1095] Serpa Pinto[1096] mentions a
frequent feast of the chiefs of the Bihe, for which a man and
four women of specified occupations are required. The corpses are
both washed and boiled with the flesh of an ox. Everything at th