nment familiarized men
with the idea of tribute--so sacrifice came to be regarded as a gift and
the victim was wholly burnt (holocaust); the same result was reached
when the feeling arose that the victim was too sacred to be eaten--it
must be otherwise disposed of (piaculum). The piacula he refers to times
of special distress, when recourse was had to the sacrifice of ancient
sacred animals, old totems (Hebrew: "unclean" animals), supposed to have
special potency.[1890] It is true that in the course of time certain old
conceptions grew dim, but this does not set aside the fact that
expiatory power was supposed to attach to animal sacrifices in which
there was no communal eating; though some of these were late, they
doubtless retained the old idea of the nature of the efficacy of
sacrifice.

+1046+. In Smith's theory there is confusion between the two ideas of
communion and expiation or placation. All the facts adduced by him go to
show only that the earliest form of animal sacrifice took the form of
communal eating; and in such repasts, as in the savage feasts on the
bodies of warriors and others, the prominent consideration seems to have
been the assimilation of the qualities of the thing consumed--in this
case a divine animal. There is not a word of proof of the view that the
placation of the deity was due to his assimilation of kindred flesh and
blood. Such a view is not expressed in any ancient document or
tradition, and, on the other hand, placation by gifts of food (animal or
vegetable) and other things appears in all accounts of early ritual.
Even in the sacramental meals of later times, Eleusinian, Christian, and
Mithraic, there is no trace of the theory under consideration. In the
"Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (ix f.) the conception of the
eucharistic meal is simply symbolical. The origin of the Australian
custom[1891] (in which the food brought in by a clan is not eaten till
the old men have first tasted it) is obscure; but there is no hint that
the food was supposed to be shared by a supernatural being.[1892]
Piacula arose under the influence of a deep sense of individual relation
to the deity, and sometimes in connection with voluntary associations in
which a special sanctity was held to accrue to the initiates through the
medium of a cult in which special sacrifices were prominent It was
natural that peculiarly solemn or dreadful offerings should be made to
the deity in times of great distress; the plac