is only the spirit or finer essence of the sacrifice that
the god enjoys; the rest he leaves to men. And thus sacrifice is
generally accompanied by a meal. The offering is presented to the god
whole, but the worshippers help to eat it. The god gets the savour of
it which rises into the air towards him, while the more material part
is devoured below. Every sacrifice is also a festival.[1] If this be
the case it is unnecessary to spend much time in considering a number
of theories formerly regarded with favour as to the original meaning
and intention of sacrifice. The view that it is originally simply a
bribe to the deity to induce him to afford some needed help, receives
a good deal of countenance from primitive expressions. "_Do ut des_,"
"I give to thee that thou mayest give to me." "Here is butter, give
us cows!" "By gifts are the gods persuaded, by gifts great kings."
Was early sacrifice then simply a business transaction, in which man
bringing a prayer to the deity brought a gift too, as he was
accustomed to do to the great ones of the earth, in order that the
deity might be well disposed towards him and grant his petition? Even
if this was the case, if sacrifice were offered with the direct and
almost the avowed intention of getting good value for it, yet if it
takes the form of a meal, it is lifted above the most sordid form of
bribery. There is a difference between slipping money into a man's
hand and asking him to dinner, even if the object aimed at be in both
cases the same; and when the invitations are numerous and formal,
there must be a moral, not an immoral, relation between the two
parties. Where the sacrifice is a meal, intercourse is sought for; a
certain sympathy exists between worshipper and worshipped; they stand
to each other not only in the relation of briber and bribed, buyer
and seller, but in that of patron and client, or of father and son.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Tylor (_Prim. Cult._ vol. ii. p. 397) states that
"sacrifices to deities, from the lowest to the highest levels of
culture, consist, to the extent of nine-tenths or more, of gifts of
food and sacred banquets."]

But granting that early sacrifice was for the most part a meal, an
observance, with a social element in it, between the god and the
worshipper, what was the object of this meal, what was the motive for
holding it? In some cases it looks as if the intention had been to
strengthen the god, and to make him more vigorous, so that he mig