the Carnivora are decidedly more cruel and less gentle than the
Herbivora.

To return to the rites of Dionysus, Gilbert Murray, speaking of
Orphism--a great wave of religious reform which swept over Greece and
South Italy in the sixth century B.C.--says: (1) "A curious relic of
primitive superstition and cruelty remained firmly imbedded in Orphism,
a doctrine irrational and unintelligible, and for that very reason
wrapped in the deepest and most sacred mystery: a belief in the
SACRIFICE OF DIONYSUS HIMSELF, AND THE PURIFICATION OF MAN BY HIS
BLOOD. It seems possible that the savage Thracians, in the fury of their
worship on the mountains, when they were possessed by the god and became
'wild beasts,' actually tore with their teeth and hands any hares,
goats, fawns or the like that they came across.... The Orphic
congregations of later times, in their most holy gatherings, solemnly
partook of the blood of a bull, which was by a mystery the blood of
Dionysus-Zagreus himself, the Bull of God, slain in sacrifice for the
purification of man." (2)

(1) See Notes to his translation of the Bacch[ae] of Euripides.

(2) For a description of this orgy see Theocritus, Idyll xxvi;
also for explanations of it, Lang's Myth, Ritual and Religion, vol. ii,
pp, 241-260, on Dionysus. The Encyclop[ae]dia Brit., article "Orpheus,"
says:--"Orpheus, in the manner of his death, was considered to personate
the god Dionysus, and was thus representative of the god torn to pieces
every year--a ceremony enacted by the Bacchae in the earliest times with
a human victim, and afterwards with a bull, to represent the bull-formed
god. A distinct feature of this ritual was [gr wmofagia] (eating the
flesh of the victim raw), whereby the communicants imagined that they
consumed and assimilated the god represented by the victim, and thus
became filled with the divine ecstasy." Compare also the Hindu doctrine
of Praj[pati, the dismembered Lord of Creation.

Such instances of early communal feasts, which fulfilled the double part
of confirming on the one hand the solidarity of the tribe, and on the
other of bringing the tribe, by the shedding of the blood of a divine
Victim into close relationship with the very source of its life,
are plentiful to find. "The sacramental rite," says Professor
Robertson-Smith, (1) "is also an atoning rite, which brings the
community again into harmony with its alienated god--atonement being
simply an act of communion desi