D. C., Sept. 29, 1888.)

De Gubernatis speaks of “the superstitious Hindoo custom of purifying one’s self by means of the excrement of a cow. The same custom passed into Persia; and the Kharda Avesta has preserved the formula to be recited by the devotee while he holds in his hand the urine of an ox or cow, preparatory to washing his face with it: ‘Destroyed, destroyed, be the Demon Ahriman, whose actions and works are cursed.’”—(“Zoölogical Mythology,” De Gubernatis, pp. 99-100, vol. i.) “We must complete the explanation of another myth, that of the excrement of the cow considered as purifying. The moon, as aurora, yields ambrosia. It is considered to be a cow; the urine of this cow is ambrosia or holy water; he who drinks this water purifies himself, as the ambrosia which rains from the lunar ray and the aurora purifies and makes clear the path of the sky, which the shadows of night darken and contaminate. “The same virtue is attributed, moreover, to cow’s dung, a conception also derived from the cow, and given to the moon as well as to the morning aurora. These two cows are considered as making the earth fruitful by means of their ambrosial excrements; these excrements being also luminous, both those of the moon and those of the aurora are considered as purifiers. The ashes of these cows which their friend the heroine preserves are not ashes, but golden powder or golden flour (the golden cake again occurs in that flour or powder of gold which the witch demands from the hero in Russian stories) which, mixed with excrement, brings good fortune to the cunning robber-hero. “The ashes of the sacrificed, pregnant cow (i. e., the cow which dies after having given birth to a calf) were religiously preserved by the Romans in the Temple of Vesta with bean-stalks, which are used to fatten the earth sown with corn, as a means of expiation. Ovid mentions this rite. (Fasti, iv. 721.) The ashes of a cow are preserved both as a symbol of resurrection and as a means of purification.”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, vol. i. pp. 275-277.) The learned author overlooks in his argument that cows were sacrificed and worshipped in India before they were transferred to the Zodiac and to the symbolism of the elements.[35] “Religion, at its base, is the product of imagination working on early man’s wants and fears, and is in no sense supernatural or the result of any preconceived and deliberate thought or desire to work out a system of morals. It arose in each case from what appeared to be the pressing needs of the day or season on the man or his tribe. The codification and expansion of faiths would then be merely the slow outcome of the cogitations and teachings of reflective minds, working usually with a refining tendency on the aforesaid primitive Nature-worship, and in elucidation of its ideas, symbolism, and legends. Early rude worshippers could not grasp abstractions, nor follow sermons even if they had been preached, and certainly not recondite theories on what the West designates ‘Solar,’ and other theories.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. i. p. 36.) “In the Shapast la Shayast (Sacred Books of the East, vol. v. part I.) much stress is laid on bull’s urine as a purifier.”—(Personal letter from Professor R. A. Oakes, Watertown, New York, April 20, 1888.) “During the last few years we have been treated to a great deal of foolish gush about the beauty and nobility of Eastern religions. I don’t deny that there are many commendable features about them, and that they often get near to the heart of true religion, as we understand it. But in their practical results they cannot be compared with Christianity. Take a concrete instance:— “The Rev. T. W. Jex-Blake has this to say about Benares, with its three thousand Hindu temples: ‘Step into the city,’ he says; ‘one temple swarms with fœtid apes; another is stercorous with cows. The stench in the passages leading to the temples is frightful; the filth beneath your feet is such that the keenest traveller would hardly care to face it twice. Everywhere, in the temples, in the little shrines in the street, the emblem of the Creator is phallic. Round one most picturesque temple, built apparently long since British occupation began, probably since the battle of Waterloo, runs an external frieze, about ten feet from the ground, too gross for the pen to describe,—scenes of vice, natural and unnatural, visible to all the world all day long, worse than anything in the Lupanar in Pompeii. Nothing that I saw in India roused me more to a sense of the need of religious renovation by the Gospel of Christ than what met the eye openly, right and left, at Benares.” (“Tribune,” New York, Nov. 11, 1888.) “Forty years ago, during a stay of three months in Bombay, I saw frequently cows wandering in the streets, and Hindu devotees bowing, and lifting up the tails of the cows, rubbing the wombs of the aforesaid with the right hand, and afterwards rubbing their own faces with it.”—(Personal letter from Captain Henri Jouan, French Navy, dated Cherbourg, France, July 29, 1888.) Almost identical information was communicated by General J. J. Dana, U. S. Army, who, in the neighborhood of Calcutta, over forty years ago, had seen Hindu devotees besmeared from head to foot with human excrement. Among the superstitious practices of the Greeks, Plutarch mentions “rolling themselves in dung-hills.” (“Morals,” Goodwin’s trans., Boston, 1870, vol. i. p. 171, art. “Superstitions.”) Plutarch also mentions “foul expiations,” “vile methods of purgation,” “bemirings at the temple,” and speaks of “penitents wrapped up in foul and nasty rags,” or “rolling naked in the mire,” “vile and abject adorations,”—(pp. 171-180.) This veneration for the excrement of the cow is to be found among other races. The Hottentots “besmear their bodies with fat and other greasy substances over which they rub cow-dung, fat and similar substances.”—(Thurnberg’s “Account of the Cape of Good Hope,” in Pinkerton, vol. xvi. pp. 25, 73, 139.) “Every idea and thought of the Dinka is how to acquire and maintain cattle; a certain kind of reverence would seem to be paid them; even their offal is considered of high importance. The dung, which is burnt to ashes for sleeping in and for smearing their persons, and the urine, which is used for washing and as a substitute for salt, are their daily requisites.”—(Schweinfurth, “Heart of Africa,” vol. i. p. 58.) In the religious ceremonies of the Calmuck Lamas, “Les pauvres jettent au commencement de l’office, qui dure toute la journée, un peu d’encens sur de la bouse de vache allumée et portée par un petit trépied de fer.”—(“Voy. de Pallas,” vol. i. p. 563.) XVIII. ORDURE ALLEGED TO HAVE BEEN USED IN FOOD BY THE ISRAELITES. Among the Banians of India, proselytes are obliged by the Brahmans to eat cow-dung for six months. They begin with one pound daily, and diminish from day to day. A subtle commentator, says Picart, might institute a comparison between the nourishment of these fanatics and the dung of cows which the Lord ordered the prophet Ezekiel to mingle with his food.[36] This was the opinion held by Voltaire on this subject. Speaking of the prophet Ezekiel, he said: “He is to eat bread of barley, wheat, beans, lentils, and millet, and to cover it with human excrement.”[37] It is thus, he says, that the “children of Israel shall eat their bread defiled among the nations among which they shall be banished.” But “after having eaten this bread of affliction, God permits him to cover it with the excrement of cattle simply.” The view entertained by some biblical commentators is that the excrement was used for baking the bread; but if this be true, why should human fæces be used for such a purpose? (Consult Lange’s Commentaries, article “Ezekiel,” and McClintock and Strong’s Cyclopædia, article “Dung.”) “For mere filth, what can be fouler than 2 Kings xviii. 27, Isaiah xxxvi. 12, and Ezekiel iv. 12-15 (where the Lord changes human ordure into ‘cow chips’)? ‘Ce qui excuse Dieu,’ said Henri Bayle, ‘ce qu’il n’existe pas.’ I add, as man has made him.”—(Richard F. Burton, “Terminal Essay” to his edition of the “Arabian Nights,” vol. x. p. 181, foot-note, London, 1886.) Bayle does not allude to the baking of bread with ordure in his brief article upon the prophet Ezekiel; neither does Prof. J. Stuart Blaikie in his more comprehensive dissertation in the Encyclopædia Britannica, article “Ezekiel.” “The use of dung by the ancient Israelites is collected incidentally from the passage in which the prophet Ezekiel, being commanded, as a symbolic action, to bake his bread with dung, excuses himself from the use of an unclean thing, and is permitted to employ cow’s dung instead.”—(Strong and McClintock’s “Cyclopædia of Biblical and Classical Literature,” New York, 1868, vol. ii. article “Dung.”) “I fear that Voltaire cannot be taken as an authority on Hebrew matters. I believe that the passage from Ezekiel is correctly rendered in the revised edition, where at verse 15 ‘thereon’ is substituted for ‘therewith’ of the old version. The use of dried cow’s-dung as fuel is common among the poorer classes in the East; and in a siege, fuel, always scarce, would be so scarce that a man’s dung might have to be used. I do not think that one need look further for the explanation of verses 15-17; the words of verse 15 are not ambiguous, and that used for dung is the same as the Arabs still apply to the dried cakes of cow’s dung used for fuel. Voltaire and Picart both seem to have used the Vulgate, in which verse 12 is wrongly rendered.”—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith, Cambridge, England.) “Les nombreux exemples qui précèdent rendent moins intéressante la question de savoir an Ezéchias stercus comederit; ce ne serait qu’un mangeur de plus. Pourtant on peut voir dans la Bible le verset 12 du chap. iv. de ce prophète: ‘et quasi sub cinericium hordaceum comedes illud et stercore quod egreditur de homine operies illud in oculis eorum;’ et les diverses interprétations données par les différents traducteurs et commentateurs.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pp. 93-96.) Schurig consacre un paragraphe à discuter an Ezechias stercus comederit.—(Idem, p. 39.) Just exactly what Schurig thought on this subject may be stated in his own words. Although not positive, he inclines to the opinion that Ezekiel did eat excrement:— “Denique, mandato divino, Propheta Ezechiel, cap. iv. ver. 12, placentam hordeaceam cum stercore humano parasse atque comedisse primo intuitu videtur, juxta versionem Lutheri.... Juxta Junium et Tremellium allegata verba sic sonant: Comedes cibum ut placentam hordeaceam, et ad orbes excrementi humani parabis placentam istam in oculis illorum. Juxta Sebastianum Schmidium: Sicut placentam hordeorum comedes eum; quod ad ipsum tamen, cum stercore fimi hominis facies in oculis eorum. Bene etiam hunc locum explicat Textus Gallicus meæ editionis: Tu mangeras de fouaces d’orge, et les cuiras avec la fiente qui sort hors de l’homme eux le voyans.”—(“Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, pp. 782, 783.) “Ezekiel says that his God told him to lie for three hundred and ninety days on his left side, and then forty days on his right side, when ‘he would lay hands on him and turn him from one side to another;’ also that during all this period he was only to eat barley bread baked in too disgusting a manner to be described.”—(“Rivers of Life,” Forlong, vol. ii. p. 597.) “This last command was, however, so strongly resented that his Deity somewhat relaxed it.”—(Idem.) The most rational explanation of this much-disputed and ambiguous passage must necessarily be such as can be deduced from a consideration of Ezekiel’s environment. Giving due weight to every doubt, there remains this feature: the prophet unquestionably was influenced and actuated by the ideas of his day and generation, which looked upon the humiliations to which he subjected himself as the outward manifestations of an inward spirituality. Psychologically speaking, there is no great difference between the consumption of human excrement and the act of lying on one’s side for three hundred and ninety days; both are indications of the same perverted cerebration, mistaken with such frequency for piety and holiness. “Isaiah had periods of indecent maniacal outbursts; for we are told that he once went about stark naked for three years, because so commanded by the Lord.”—(“Rivers of Life,” vol. ii. p. 537, quoting Isaiah xx. 2, 3.) THE SACRED COW’S EXCRETA A SUBSTITUTE FOR HUMAN SACRIFICE. The foregoing testimony, which could readily be swelled in volume, proves the sacred character of these excreta, which may be looked upon as substitutes for a more perfect sacrifice. In the early life of the Hindus it is more than likely that the cow or the heifer was slaughtered by the knife or burnt; as population increased in density, domestic cattle became too costly to be offered as a frequent oblation, and on the principle that the part represents the whole, hair, milk, butter, urine, and ordure superseded the slain carcass, while the incinerated excrement was made to do duty as a burnt sacrifice.[38] It was hardly probable that such practices, or an explanation of the causes which led to their adoption and perpetuation, should have escaped the keen criticism of E. B. Tylor. “For the means of some of his multifarious lustrations, the Hindu has recourse to the sacred cow.... The Parsi religion prescribes a system of lustration which well shows its common origin with that of Hinduism by its similar use of cow’s urine and water.... Applications of _nirang_, washed off with water, form part of the daily religious rites, as well as of such special ceremonies as the naming of the new-born child, the putting on of the sacred cord, the purification of the mother after childbirth, and the purification of him who has touched a corpse.”—(E. B. Tylor, “Primitive Culture,” London, 1871, vol. ii. pp. 396, 397.) “It will help us to realize how the sacrifice of an animal may atone for a human life, if we notice in South Africa how a Zulu will redeem a lost child from the finder by a bullock, or a Kimbunda will expiate the blood of a slave by the offering of an ox, whose blood will wash away the other. For instances of the animal substituted for man in sacrifice, the following may serve: Among the Khonds of Orissa, where Colonel MacPherson was engaged in putting down the sacrifice of human victims by the sect of the Earth-goddess, they at once began to discuss the plan of sacrificing cattle by way of substitutes. Now, there is some reason to think that this same course of ceremonial change may account for the following sacrificial practice in the other Khond sect. It appears that those who worship the Light-god hold a festival in his honor, when they slaughter a buffalo in commemoration of the time when, as they say, the Earth-goddess was prevailing on men to offer human sacrifices to her, but the Light-god sent a tribe-deity who crushed the bloody-minded Earth-goddess under a mountain and dragged a buffalo out of the jungle, saying, ‘Liberate the man, and sacrifice the buffalo.’ It looks as though this legend, divested of its mythic garb, may really record a historical substitution of animal for human sacrifice. In Ceylon, the exorcist will demand the name of the demon possessing a demoniac, and the patient in frenzy answers, giving the demon’s name, ‘I am So-and-so; I demand a human sacrifice, and I will not go without.’ The victim is promised, the patient comes to from the fit, and a few weeks later the sacrifice is made; but instead of a man they offer a fowl. Classic examples of a substitution of this sort may be found in the sacrifice of a doe for a virgin to Artemis in Laodicæa, a goat for a boy to Dionysos at Potniæ. “There appears to be a Semitic connection here, as there clearly is in the story of the Æolians of Tenedos sacrificing to Melikertes (Melkarth) instead of a new-born child a new-born calf, shoeing it with buskins and tending the mother cow as if a human mother.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 366; or in New York edition, 1879, vol. ii. pp. 403, 404.) “O Maker of the material world, thou Holy One! which is the urine wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies? Is it of sheep or of oxen? Is it of man or of woman? “Ahura Mazda answered: It is of sheep or of oxen, not of man nor of woman, except these two, the nearest kinsman (of the dead) or his nearest kinswoman. The worshippers of Mazda shall therefore procure the urine wherewith the corpse-bearers shall wash their hair and their bodies.”—(Fargard vii., Avendidad, Zendavesta, Oxford, 1890, p. 96.) “A prince may sacrifice his enemy, having first invoked the axe with holy texts, by substituting a buffalo or goat, calling the victim by the name of the enemy throughout the whole ceremony.”—(“The Sanguinary Chapter,” translated from the “Calica Purana,” in vol. 5, “Transactions Asiatic Society,” 4th edition, London, 1807, p. 386.) “An interesting chapter of the Aitareya-brahmanam, on the sacrifice of animals, shows us how, next to man, the horse was the supreme sacrifice offered to the gods; how the cow afterwards took the place of the horse, the sheep of the cow, the goat of the sheep; and at last vegetable products were substituted for animals,—a substitution or cheating of the gods in the sacrifice, which perhaps explains even more the fraud of which, in popular stories, the simpleton is always the victim; the simpleton hero being the god himself, and the cheater man, who changes, under a sacred pretext, the noblest and most valued animals for common and less valued ones, and finally for vegetables apparently of no value whatever. In Hindu codes of law we have the same fraudulent substitution of animals under a legal pretext. ‘The killer of a cow,’ says the code attributed to Yagnavalkyas, ‘must stay a month in penitence, drinking the panchakaryam’ (that is, the five good productions of the cow, which, according to Manus, are milk, curds, butter, urine, and dung), sleeping in a stable, and following the cows.’”—(“Zoöl. Mythol.,” De Gubernatis, vol. i. pp. 44, 45.) “The sacred books of the Hindus contain the most formal and detailed instructions about human sacrifices, and on what occasions and with what ceremonies they are to be offered; sometimes on an enormous scale,—as many as one hundred and fifty human victims at one sacrifice.”—(Ragozin, “Assyria,” New York, 1887, pp. 127-128.) Continuing, Ragozin says: “When bloody sacrifices, even of animals, were in great part abolished, and offerings of cakes of rice and wheat were substituted, the humane change was authorized by a parable which told how the sacrificial virtue had left the highest and most valuable victim, man, and descended into the horse, from the horse into the steer, from the steer into the goat, from the goat into the sheep, and from that at last passed into the earth, where it was found abiding in the grains of rice and wheat laid in it for seed. “This was an ingenious way of intimating that henceforth harmless offerings of rice and wheat cakes would be as acceptable to the deity as the living victims, human and animal, formerly were.”—(Idem, p. 128.) As the animal victim became more and more valuable, we have seen that its excreta were offered in its place. The Celtic stock, it is now generally admitted, represents a very early migration from India. Exactly when this migration began and was completed we have no means of determining; but we may safely say, judging from the prominence in Celtic folk-lore of the chicken-dung, that it did not occur until the cultus of India was beginning to cast about for some suitable substitute for human sacrifice.[39] Inman takes the ground that the very same substitution occurred among the Hebrews. Commenting upon 1 Kings xix. 18, he says: “In the Vulgate the passage is thus rendered: ‘They say to these, Sacrifice the men who adore the calves;’ while the Septuagint renders the words, ‘Sacrifice men, for the calves have come to an end,’ indicating a reversion to human sacrifice.”—(Inman, “Ancient Faiths Embodied in Ancient Names,” London, 1878, article “Hosea.”) “He that killeth an ox as if he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb as if he cut off a dog’s neck; he that offereth an oblation as if he offered swine’s blood; he that burneth incense as if he blessed an idol.”—(Isaiah lxvi. 3. Reference given to the above by Prof. W. Robertson Smith.) “In the earliest period the horse seems to have been the favorite animal for sacrifice.”—(“Teutonic Mythology,” Jacob Grimm, vol. i. p. 47.) “The Brahmans show how, in Hindostan, the lower animals became vicarious substitutes for man in sacrifice.”—(“Myth, Ritual, and Religion,” Andrew Lang, vol. ii. p. 40, footnote.) If the cow have displaced a human victim, may it not be within the limits of probability that the ordure and urine of the sacred bovine are substitutes, not only for the complete carcass, but that they symbolize a former use of human excreta?[40] The existence of ur-orgies has been indicated in Siberia, where the religion partakes of many of the characteristics of Buddhism.[41] The minatory phraseology of the Brahminical inhibition of the use of the fungi which enter into these orgies has been given _verbatim_; so that, even did no better evidence exist, enough has been presented to open up a wide range of discussion as to the former area of distribution of loathsome and disgusting ceremonials, which are now happily restricted to small and constantly diminishing zones. HUMAN ORDURE AND URINE STILL USED IN INDIA. It is well to remember, however, that in India the more generally recognized efficacy of cow urine and cow dung has not blinded the fanatical devotee to the necessity of occasionally having recourse to the human product. “At about ten leagues to the southward of Seringapatam there is a village called Nan-ja-na-gud, in which there is a temple famous all over the Mysore. Amongst the number of votaries of every caste who resort to it, a great proportion consists of barren women, who bring offerings to the god of the place, and pray for the gift of fruitfulness in return. But the object is not to be accomplished by the offerings and prayers alone, the disgusting part of the ceremony being still to follow. On retiring from the temple, the woman and her husband repair to the common sewer to which all the pilgrims resort in obedience to the calls of nature. There the husband and wife collect, with their hands, a quantity of the ordure, which they set apart, with a mark upon it, that it may not be touched by any one else; and with their fingers in this condition, they take the water of the sewer in the hollow of their hands and drink it. Then they perform ablution and retire. In two or three days they return to the place of filth to visit the mass of ordure which they left. They turn it over with their hands, break it, and examine it in every possible way; and, if they find that any insects or vermin are engendered in it, they consider it a favorable prognostic for the woman.”—(Abbé Dubois, “People of India,” London, 1817, p. 411.)[42] XIX. EXCREMENT GODS OF ROMANS AND EGYPTIANS. The Romans and Egyptians went farther than this; they had gods of excrement, whose special function was the care of latrines and those who frequented them. Torquemada, a Spanish author of high repute, expresses this in very plain language:— “I assert that they used _to adore_ (as St. Clement writes to St. James the Less) stinking and filthy privies and water-closets; and, what is viler and yet more abominable, and an occasion for our tears and not to be borne with or so much as mentioned by name, they adored the noise and wind of the stomach when it expels from itself any cold or flatulence; and other things of the same kind, which, according to the same saint, it would be a shame to name or describe.”[43] In the preceding lines Torquemada refers to the Egyptians only, but, as will be seen by examining the Spanish notes below, his language is almost the same when speaking of the Romans.[44] The Roman goddess was called Cloacina. She was one of the first of the Roman deities, and is believed to have been named by Romulus himself. Under her charge were the various cloacæ, sewers, privies, etc., of the Eternal City.[45] “Les anciens avaient fait plusieurs divinités du Stercus; 1. Stercus ou Sterces, père de Picus, inventeur de la méthode de fumer les terres (S. August. De Civ. Dei, lib. xviii. cap. 15). 2. Sterculius (Macrob., Saturn., lib. i. cap. 7); 3. Stercutius (Lactant. de fal. reb.), Stercutus, Sterquilinus, Sterquiline, divinités qui présidaient aux engrais. Quelques personnes croient que c’était un surnom de Saturne comme inventeur de l’agriculture; d’autres y reconnaissent la terre elle-même. Pline dit que ce dieu était fils du dieu Faune et petit-fils de Picus, roi des Latins.—(Pline, lib. xvii. cap. 9, num. 40; Persius, sat. i. ver. 3.) “On honore aussi Faunus avec les deux derniers surnoms.”—(Pline, loc. cit. Bib. Scat.) “Consultez sur cette déesse en l’honneur de laquelle on a frappé des médailles, Lactant. Instit. lib. i. cap. 20, p. 11; St. Cyp. Van. d. id. cap. 2, par. 6; Minutius Felix, Oct. cap. 25; Pline, Hist. Nat. lib. xiv. cap. 29; Tite Live, 3, 48; Banier, Myth. tome i. 348; iv. 329, 338.”—(Bib. Scat. p. 43, footnote.) As far as possible, the above citations were verified; the edition of St. Augustine consulted was that of the Reverend Maurice Dods, Edinburgh, 1871. “Tatius both discovered and worshipped Cloacina.”—(Minutius Felix, “Octavius,” cap. xxv., edition of Edinburgh, 1869.) “Colatina, alias Clocina, was goddess of the stools, the jakes, and the privy, to whom, as to every of the rest, there was a peculiar temple edified.”—(Reginald Scot, “Discovery of Witchcraft,”? lib. 16, cap. 22, giving a list of the Roman gods.) The following epigram is taken from Harington’s “Ajax,” p. xviii.: “The Romans, ever counted superstitious, Adored with high titles of divinity, Dame Cloacina and the Lord Stercutius,— Two persons, in their state, of great affinity.” For further references to Cloacina, see p. 264. “Stercus, Dieu particulier qui présidait à la garde-robe. Ce dernier nous rappelle qu’à l’art. Scopetarius, num. 111, nous avons dit quelques mots de Cloacine, déesse des égouts. “On trouve encore dans Arnobe un dieu Latrinus duquel il dit: ‘Quis Latrinus præsidem latrinis?’”—(Adv. Gent. lib. 4.) “Horace et tous les poëtes du temps d’Auguste, parlent de Stercus et ses circonstances et dépendances en cent endroits de leurs ouvrages. Martial, Catulle, Pétrone, Macrobe, Lucrèce, en saupoudrent leurs poésies; Homère, Pline, Lampride en parlent à ciel et à cœurs couverts; Saint Jérome et Saint Augustin ne dédaignent pas d’en entretenir leurs lecteurs.”—(Bibliotheca Scatalogica, pp. 1, 2.) “Dans Plautus, Aristophane fait dire par Carion que le dieu Esculape aime et mange la merde: il est merdivore, comme écrit le traducteur latin; Prave dieu, comme Sganarelle, qui a dit ce mot sacramentel et profond,—‘La matière est-elle louable?’ Il trouve dans les excréments le secret des souffrances humaines. Son trépied prophétique et médical, c’est une chaise percée.—(Idem, p. 66.) “Sterculius. (Myth.) surnom donné à Saturne, parcequ’il fut le premier qui apprit aux hommes à fumer les terres pour les rendre fertiles.”—(“Encyc. Raisonnée des Sciences,” etc., Neufchatel, 1765, tome quinzième, art. “Sterculius.”) The Romans “had a god of ordure named Stercutius; one for other conveniences, Crepitus; a goddess for the common sewers, Cloacina.”—(Banier, “Mythology,” vol. i. p. 199.) “Sterculius was one of the surnames given to Saturn because he was the first that had laid dung upon lands to make them fertile.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 540.) THE ASSYRIAN VENUS HAD OFFERINGS OF DUNG PLACED UPON HER ALTARS. Another authority states that “the zealous adorers of Siva rub the forehead, breast, and shoulders with ashes of cow-dung,” and, further, he adds: “It is very remarkable that the Assyrian Venus, according to Lucian, had also offerings of dung placed upon her altars.”—(Maurice, “Indian Antiquities,” London, 1800, vol. i. pp. 172, 173.)[46] THE MEXICAN GODDESS SUCHIQUECAL EATS ORDURE. The Mexicans had a goddess, of whom we read the following:—Father Fabreya says, in his commentary on the Codex Borgianus, that the mother of the human race is there represented in a state of humiliation, eating _cuitlatl_ (_kopros_, Greek). The vessel in the left hand of Suchiquecal contains “_mierda_,” according to the interpreter of these paintings.—(See note to p. 120, Kingsborough’s “Mexican Antiquities,” vol. iv.) The Spanish _mierda_, like the Greek _kopros_, means _ordure_. Besides Suchiquecal, the mother of the gods, who has been represented as eating excrement in token of humiliation, the Mexicans had other deities whose functions were more or less clearly complicated with alvine dejections. The most prominent of these was Ixcuina called, also, Tlaçolteotl, of whom Brasseur de Bourbourg speaks in these terms: The goddess of ordure, or Tlaçolquani, the _eater of ordure_, because she presided over loves and carnal pleasures.[47] Mendieta mentions her as masculine, and in these terms: The god of vices and dirtinesses, whom they called Tlazulteotl.[48] Bancroft speaks of “the Mexican goddess of carnal love, called Tlazoltecotl, Ixcuina, Tlacloquani,” etc., and says that she “had in her service a crowd of dwarfs, buffoons, and hunchbacks, who diverted her with their songs and dances and acted as messengers to such gods as she took a fancy to. The last name of this goddess means “eater of filthy things,” referring, it is said, to her function of hearing and pardoning the confessions of men and women guilty of unclean and carnal crimes.—(Bancroft, H. H. “Native Races of the Pacific Slope,” vol. iii. p. 380.) In the manuscript explaining the Codex Telleriano, given in Kingsborough’s “Mexican Antiquities,” vol. v. p. 131, occurs the name of the goddess Ochpaniztli, whose feast fell on the 12th of September of our calendar. She was described as “the one who sinned by eating the fruit of the tree.” The Spanish monks styled her, as well as another goddess, Tlaçolteotl,—“La diosa de basura ó pecado.” But “basura” is not the alternative of sin (pecado); it means “dung, manure, ordure, excrement.”[49] It is possible that, in their zeal to discover analogies between the Aztec and Christian religions, the early missionaries passed over a number of points now left to conjecture. In the same volume of Kingsborough, p. 136, there is an allusion to the offerings or sacrifices made Tepeololtec, “que, en romance, quiere decir sacrificios de mierda,” which, “in plain language, signifies sacrifices of excrement.” Nothing further can be adduced upon the subject, although a note at the foot of this page, in Kingsborough, says that here several pages of the Codex Talleriano had been obliterated or mutilated, probably by some over-zealous expurgator. Deities, created in the ignorance or superstitious fears of devotees, are essentially man-like in their attributes; where they are depicted as cruel and sanguinary toward their enemies, the nation adoring them, no matter how pacific to-day, was once cruel and sanguinary likewise. Anthropophagous gods are worshipped only by the descendants of cannibals, and excrement-eaters only by the progeny of those who were not unacquainted with human ordure as an article of food. ISRAELITISH DUNG GODS. Dulaure quotes from a number of authorities to show that the Israelites and Moabites had the same ridiculous and disgusting ceremonial in their worship of Bel-phegor. The devotee presented his naked posterior before the altar and relieved his entrails, making an offering to the idol of the foul emanations.[50] Dung gods are also mentioned as having been known to the chosen people during the time of their idolatry.[51] Mr. John Frazer, LL.D., describing the ceremony of initiation, known to the Australians as the “Bora,” and which he defines to be “certain ceremonies of initiation through which a youth passes when he reaches the age of puberty to qualify him for a place among the men of the tribe and for the privileges of manhood. By these ceremonies he is made acquainted with his father’s gods, the mythical lore of the tribe and the duties required of him as a man.... The whole is under the tutelage of a high spirit called ‘Dharamoolun.’ ... But, present at these ceremonies, although having no share in them, is an evil spirit called ‘Gunungdhukhya,’ ‘eater of excrement,’ whom the blacks greatly dread.” Compare this word “Gunungdhukhya,” with the Sanskrit root-word “Gu,” “excrement;” “Dhuk” is the Australian “to eat.”—(Personal letter from John Frazer, Esq., LL.D., dated Sydney, New South Wales, Dec. 24, 1889. Continuing his remarks upon the subject of the evil spirit “Gunungdhukhya,” he says: “This being is certainly supposed to eat ordure; and such is the meaning of his name.”) King James gravely informs us that “Witches ofttimes confesse that in their worship of the Devil.... Their form of adoration to be the kissing of his hinder parts.”—(“Dæmonologie,” London, 1616, p. 113.) This book appeared with a commendatory preface from Hinton, one of the bishops of the English Church. “Witches paid homage to the devil who was present, usually in the form of a goat, dog, or ape. To him they offered themselves, body and soul, and kissed him under the tail, holding a lighted candle.”—(“History of the Inquisition,” Henry C. Lea, New York, 1888, vol. iii., p. 500.) Knowing of the existence of “dung gods” among Romans, Egyptians, Hebrews, and Moabites, it is not unreasonable to insist, in the present case, upon a rigid adherence to the text, and to assert that, where it speaks of a sacrifice as a sacrifice of excrement and designates a deity as an eater of excrement, it means what it says, and should not be distorted, under the plea of symbolism, into a perversion of facts and ideas. Some writers made out the name of the god “Belzebul” to be identical with “Beelzebub,” and to mean “Lord of Dung,” but this interpretation is disputed by Schaff-Herzog.—(“Encyclopædia of Religious Knowledge,” New York, article “Beelzebub.”) XX. LATRINES. The mention of the Roman goddess Cloacina suggests an inquiry into the general history of latrines and urinals. Their introduction cannot be ascribed to purely hygienic considerations, since many nations of comparatively high development have managed to get along without them; while, on the other hand, tribes in low stages of culture have resorted to them. In the chapter treating upon witchcraft and incantation enough testimony has been accumulated to convince the most sceptical that the belief was once widely diffused of the power possessed by sorcerers, _et id omne genus_, over the unfortunate wretches whose excreta, solid or liquid, fell into their hands; terror may, therefore, have been the impelling motive for scattering, secreting, or preserving in suitable receptacles the alvine dejections of a community. Afterwards, as experience taught men that in these egestæ were valuable fertilizers for the fields and vineyards, or fluids for bleaching and tanning, the political authorities made their preservation a matter of legal obligation. The Trojans defecated in the full light of day, if we can credit the statement made to that effect in the “Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” p. 8, in which it is shown that a French author (name not given) wrote a facetious but erudite treatise upon this subject. Captain Cook tells us that the New Zealanders had privies to every three or four of their houses; he also takes occasion to say that there were no privies in Madrid until 1760; that the determination of the king to introduce them and sewers, and to prohibit the throwing of human ordure out of windows after nightfall, as had been the custom, nearly precipitated a revolution.—(See in Hawkesworth’s “Voyages,” London, 1773, vol. ii. p. 314.) “These were more cleanly than most savages about excrements. Every house had a concealed (if possible) privy near, and in large ‘Pas’ a pole was run out over the cliff to sit on sailor-fashion.”—(“The Maoris of New Zealand,” E. Tregear, in “Journal of the Anthropological Institute,” London, November, 1889.) Marquesas Islands. “They are peculiarly cleanly in regard to the egestæ. At the Society Islands the wanderer’s eyes and nose are offended every morning in the midst of a path with the natural effects of a sound digestion; but the natives of the Marquesas are accustomed, after the manner of our cats, to bury the offensive objects in the earth. At Taheite, indeed, they depend on the friendly assistance of rats, who greedily devour these odoriferous dainties; nay, they seem to be convinced that their custom is the most proper in the world; for their witty countryman, Tupaya, found fault with our want of delicacy when he saw a small building appropriated to the rites of Cloacina, in every house at Batavia.”—(Forster, “Voyage round the World,” London, 1777, vol. ii. p. 28.) Forster speaks of the traffic between the English sailors and the women of Tahiti, in which the latter parted with their personal favors in return for red feathers and fresh pork; in consequence of a too free indulgence in this heavy food, the ladies suffered from indigestion. “The goodness of their appetites and digestion, exposed them, however, to inconveniences of restlessness, and often disturbed those who wished to sleep after the fatigues of the day. On certain urgent occasions they always required the attendance of their lovers; but, as they were frequently refused, the decks were made to resemble the paths in the islands.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 83.) In ancient Rome there were public latrines, but no privies attached to houses. There were basins and tubs, which were emptied daily by servants detailed for the purpose. No closet-paper was in use, as may be imagined, none having yet been invented or introduced in Europe, but in each public latrine, there was a bucket filled with salt water, and a stick having a sponge tied to one end, with which the passer-by cleansed his person, and then replaced the stick in the tub.[52] Seneca, in his Epistle No. 70, describes the suicide of a German slave who rammed one of these sticks down his throat. The warning “Commit no nuisance,” or in French “Il est défendu de faire ici des ordures,” is traceable back to the time of the Romans, who devoted to the wrath of the twelve great gods, “and of Jupiter and Diana as well, all who did any indecency in the neighborhood of the temples or monuments.” “On nous saura gré de rapporter ici une inscription qui se lisait autrefois sur les thermes de Titus; ‘Duodecim Dios et Dianam et Jovem Optimum Maximum habeat iratos quisquis hic minxerit aut cacarit.’” In Genoa, excommunication was threatened against all who infringed upon this same prohibition. Privies were ordered for each house in Paris in 1513, whence we may infer that some house-builders had previously of their own impulse added such conveniences; as early as 1372, and again in 1395, there were royal ordinances forbidding the throwing of ordures out of the windows in Paris, which gives us the right to conclude that the custom must have been general and offensive; the same dispositions were taken for the city of Bordeaux in 1585. Obscene poetry was known in latrines in Rome as in our own day, and some of the compositions have come down to us.—(See “Bibliotheca Scatalogica,” pp. 13-17.) The Romans protected their walls “against such as commit nuisances ... by consecrating the walls so exposed with the picture of a deity or some other hallowed emblem, and by denouncing the wrath of heaven against those who should be impious enough to pollute what it was their duty to reverence. The figure of a snake, it appears, was sometimes employed for this purpose.... The snake, it is well known, was reckoned among the gods of the heathens.”—(“Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs,” Rev. John James Blunt, London, 1823, p. 43.) Herodotus informs his readers that the Egyptians “ease themselves in their houses, but eat out of doors, alleging that whatever is indecent, though necessary, ought to be done in private, but what is not indecent openly.”—(“Euterpe,” p. 35.) Herodotus also speaks of the Egyptian king Amasis having made an idol out of a gold foot-pan, “in which the Egyptians formerly vomited, made water, and washed their feet” (“Euterpe”). Minutius Felix, in his “Octavius,” refers to this, and takes umbrage that heathen idols made of such foul materials should be adored (see his chapter xxv.). Tournefort mentions latrines in Marseilles. “They make advantage of the very excrements of the Gally-Slaves by placing at one end of the Gallies proper vessels for receiving a manure so necessary to the country.”—(“A Voyage to the Levant,” edition of London, 1718, vol. i. pp. 13-14.) There must have been latrines in Scotland, because James I. of that kingdom was killed in one in the Monastery of the Black Friars, in Perth, in A.D. 1437; yet for many years later pedestrians in the streets of Edinburgh, after night-fall, took their own risks of the filthy deluge which house-maids were wont to pour down from the windows of the lofty houses. “As in modern Edinburgh so in ancient Rome, night was the time observed by the careful housekeeper for throwing her slops from the upper windows into the open drain that ran through the street beneath.”—(Footnote to page 146 of Edward Walford’s (M.A. of Baliol, Oxford) ed. of Juvenal, in “Ancient Classics for English Readers,” Philadelphia, 1872, quoting from Juvenal the line, “Clattering the storm descends from heights unknown,” Satire III., line 274.) “’Tis want of sense to sup abroad too late Unless thou first hast settled thy estate; As many fates attend thy steps to meet As there are waking windows in the street: Bless the good gods and think thy chance is rare To have a piss-pot only for thy share.” (Dryden’s translation of the Third Satire of Juvenal.) “And behold, there is nurra goaks in the whole kingdom (Scotland), nor anything for pore servants, but a barrel with a pair of tongs thrown across, and all the chairs of the family are emptied into this here barrel once a day; and at ten o’clock at night the whole cargo is flung out of a back windere that looks into some street or lane, and the maid calls, ‘Gardy loo!’ to the passengers, which signifies, ‘Lord have mercy upon you!’ and this is done every night in every house in Hadinborough.”—(“Humphrey Clinker,” Tobias Smollett, edition of London, 1872, p. 542.) The above seems to have been a French expression,—“Gare de l’eau.” “The cry of all the South was that the public offices, the army, the navy, were filled with high-cheeked Drummonds and Erskines and McGillvrays.... All the old jokes on hills without trees, girls without stockings, men eating the food of horses, pails emptied from the fourteenth story, were pointed against these lucky adventurers.”—(T. B. Macaulay, “The Earl of Chatham,” American edition, Appleton and Co., New York, 1874, p. 720.) The addition of privies to the homes of the gentry would appear to have been an innovation in the time of Queen Elizabeth, else there would not have been so much comment made upon the action of Sir John Harington, her distant cousin, who erected one as a fitting convenience to his new house, near Bath, and published a very Rabelaisian volume upon the subject in London in 1596. The title of the book, being quite long,—“A Discourse on a Stale Subject, called the Metamorphosis of Ajax,”—will in subsequent citations be given simply as Harington’s “Ajax.” From the description of the latrine in question there is no doubt that Harington anticipated nearly all the mechanism of modern days. Richard III. is represented as having been seated in a latrine, “sitting on a draught,” when he was “devising with Terril how to have his nephews privily murdered.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 46.) There is little reason to doubt that all houses in England, and all Continental Europe as well, were provided with receptacles for urine in the bed-chambers, even if no regular latrines existed outside of the monasteries and other community-houses. Dr. Robert Fletcher, U. S. Army, who has contributed the following, is of the opinion that these conveniences were provided for ladies only, and submits the following passages in support of his conclusions:— “Hamjo, in the ‘Wanderer,’ part 2, by Sir Thomas Killigrew, describing to Senilia the probable manners of a rude husband, says that, on retiring to bed, ‘the gyant stretches himself, yawns, and sighs a belch or two, stales in your pot, farts as loud as a musket for a jest,’” etc. In Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakspeare” is a curious print of a bishop blessing a newly married pair in the bridal bed; on the lady’s side a chamber-pot is ostentatiously displayed. Douce quotes the following from a rare “Morality,” entitled, “Le Condemnation des Banquets:” “Pause pour pisser le fol. Il prengt un coffinet en lieu de orinal et pisse dedans et tout coule par bas.” Hobbs, the Tanner of Tamworth, introduced by Heywood in his play of “King Edward the Fourth,” the hero of the old ballad, furnished his rooms with urinals suited to his trade. He says to his guests, the King and Sellinger: “Come, take away, and let’s to bed. Ye shall have clean sheets, Ned; but they be coarse, good strong hemp, of my daughter’s own spinning. And I tell thee your chamber-pot must be a fair horn, a badge of our occupation; for we buy no bending pewter nor breaking earth.”—(“1 King Edward the Fourth,” iii. 2, Heywood, 1600.) Additional references of the same tenor are to be found in the “Pilgrims,” Beaumont and Fletcher, ii. 1: “The Scourge of Villanie,” Marston, 1599, satire 2; and in the following, which does not accord with Dr. Fletcher’s opinion that such utensils were provided solely for the female members of the household. “_Host._ Hostlers, you knaves and commanders, take the horses of the knights and competitors; your honorable hulks have put into harbor; they’ll take in fresh water here, and I have provided clean chamber-pots.”—(“The Merry Devil of Edmonton,” 1608.) Such vessels were in use in Ireland, where they were called “omar-fuail,” from _omar_, a vessel, and _fuail_, urine. They must have been employed from the earliest centuries. “And they (the Sybarites) were the first people who introduced the custom of bringing chamber-pots into entertainments” (Athenaus, book xii. cap. 17). It is not easy to detect any essential difference between the manners of the people of Iceland, as described by Bleekmans on another page, and those of the more polished Romans. Bed-pans were used in France in the earliest days of the fifteenth century. They are noted in “The Farce of Master Pathelin” (A.D. 1480).—(See “Le Moyen Age Médical,” Dupouy, Paris, 1888, p. 280 _et seq._, and the translation of the same by Minor, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1890, p. 82.) “Maids need no more their silver pisse-pots scour, ... Presumptuous pisse-pot, how did’st thou offend? Compelling females on their hams to bend? To kings and queens we humbly bend the knee, But queens themselves are forced to stoop to thee.” (“On Melting down the Plate, or the Piss-Pot’s Farewell,” State Poems, vol. i. part 2, p. 215, A.D. 1697.) “What need hath Nature of silver dishes or gold chamber-pots?” (“The Staple of News,” Ben Jonson, iii. 2; London, 1628.) “In the ‘Chronicle of London,’ written in the fifteenth century, a curious anecdote is related, to the effect that in A.D. 1258-60, a Jew, on Saturday, fell into a ‘privy’ at Tewksbury, but out of reverence for his Sabbath, would not allow himself to be drawn out. The next day being Sunday, the Earl of Gloucester would not let any one draw him out;” and so, says the Chronicle, “the Jew died in the privy.”—(“A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483,” London, 1827, p. 20, quoted by Buckle in “Commonplace Book,” p. 507, in vol. ii. of his Works, London, 1872.) “Heliogabalus’ body was thrown into a jakes, as writeth Suetonius.”—(Harington’s “Ajax,” p. 46.) Heliogabalus was killed in one (latrine); Arius, the great heresiarch, and Pope Leo, his antagonist, had the same fate. Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany and Spain, was born in one in the palace of Ghent, of Jeanne of Aragon, in 1500; hence, they must have been introduced in the localities named.—(See Biblioth. Scatal. p. 17.) “Urinary reservoirs were erected in the streets of Rome, either for the purpose of public cleanliness, or for the use of the fullers, who were accustomed to purchase their contents of the Roman government during the reign of Vespasian, and perhaps other emperors, at a certain annual impost, and which, prior to the invention or general use of soap, was the substance employed principally in their mills for cleansing cloths and stuffs previous to their being dyed.”—(John Mason Good, translation of Lucretius’ “De Natura Rerum,” London, 1805, vol. ii. p. 154, footnote.) “Vases, called Gastra, for the relief of passengers, were placed by the Romans upon the edges of roads and streets.”—(Fosbroke, “Encyc. of Ant.,” London, vol. i. p. 526, article “Urine.”) “Les Chinois semblent manquer d’engrais, car on trouve de tous côtés des lieux d’aisance pour les besoins des voyageurs.”—(“Voyage à Pékin,” De Guignes, Paris, 1808, vol. i. p. 284; and again, vol. iii. p. 322.) “Large vases of stone-ware are sunk in the ground at convenient places for the use of passing travellers.”—(“Chinese Repository,” Canton, 1835, vol. iii. p. 134.) “A traveller who lately returned from Pekin asserts that there is plenty to smell in that city, but very little to see.... The houses are all very low and mean, the streets are wholly unpaved, and are always very muddy and very dusty, and as there are no sewers or cess-pools, the filthiness of the town is indescribable.”—(“Chicago News,” copied in the “Press,” Philadelphia, Penn., May 14, 1889.) “By the Mahometan law, the body becomes unclean after each evacuation ... both greater and smaller ... requires an ablution, according to circumstances.... If a drop of urine touches the clothes, they must be washed.” For fear that their garments have been so defiled, “the Bokhariots frequently repeat their prayers stark naked.” ... The matter of cleaning the body after an evacuation of any kind is defined by religious ritual. “The law commands ‘Istindjah’ (removal), ‘istinkah’ (ablution), and ‘istibra’ (drying,)”—i. e., a small clod of earth is first used for the local cleansing, then water at least twice, and finally a piece of linen a yard in length.... In Turkey, Arabia, and Persia all are necessary, and pious men carry several clods of earth for the purpose in their turbans. “These acts of purification are also carried on quite publicly in the bazaars, from a desire to make a parade of their consistent piety.” Vambéry saw “a teacher give to his pupils, boys and girls, instruction in the handling of the clod of earth, and so forth, by way of experiment.”—(“Sketches of Central Asia,” Arminius Vambéry, London, 1868, pp. 190, 191.) Moslems urinate sitting down on their heels; “for a spray of urine would make hair and clothes ceremonially impure.... After urining, the Moslem wipes the os penis with one to three bits of stone, clay, or a handful of earth, and he must perform Wuzu before he can pray.” Tournefort (“Voyage au Levant,” vol. iii. p. 355) tells a pleasant story about certain Christians at Constantinople who powdered with poivre d’Inde the stones in a wall where the Moslems were in the habit of rubbing the os penis by way of wiping.—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. ii. p. 326. Again, in footnote to p. 229, vol. iii., he says, “Scrupulous Moslems scratch the ground in front of their feet with a stick, to prevent spraying and consequent defilement.”) Marco Polo, in speaking of the Brahmins, says, “They ease themselves in the sands, and then disperse it, hither and thither, lest it should breed worms, which might die for want of food.”—(“Travels,” in Pinkerton, vol. vii. pp. 164, 165.) Speaking of the Mahometans, Tournefort says, “When they make water, they squat down like women, for fear some drops of urine should fall into their breeches. To prevent this evil, they squeeze the part very carefully, and rub the head of it against the wall; and one may see the stones worn in several places by this custom. To make themselves sport, the Christians smear the stones sometimes with Indian pepper and the root called ‘Calf’s-Foot,’ or some other hot plants, which frequently causes an inflammation in such as happen to use the Stone. As the pain is very smart, the poor Turks commonly run for a cure to those very Christian surgeons who were the authors of all the mischief. They never fail to tell them it is a very dangerous case, and that they should be obliged, perhaps, to make an amputation. The Turks, on the contrary, protest and swear that they have had no communication with any sort of woman that could be suspected. In short, they wrap up the suffering part in a Linen dipped in Oxicrat tinctured with a little Bole-Armenic; and this they sell them as a great specifick for this kind of Mischief.”—(Tournefort, “A Voyage to the Levant,” London, 1718, vol. ii. p. 49.) “Some of their doctors believe Circumcision was not taken from the Jews, but only for the better observing the Precept of Cleanness, by which they are forbidden to let any Urine fall upon their flesh. And it is certain that some drops are always apt to hang upon the Præputium, especially among the Arabians, with whom that skin is naturally much longer than in other men.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 46.) The Mahometans have “Two ablutions, the great and small.... The first is of the whole body, but this is enjoined only to” those “who have let some urine drop upon their flesh when they have made water.” This he enumerates among “The Three great Defilements of the Mussulmans.”—(Idem, vol. ii. p. 48.) John Leo says of those “Arabians which inhabit in Barborie, or upon the Coast of the Mediterranean Sea.... Their churches they frequent very diligently, to the end they may repeat certain prescript and formall Praiers, most sperstitiously perswading themselves that the same day wherein they make their praiers, it is not lawfull for them to wash certaine of their members, when, as at other times, they will wash their whole bodies.”—(“Observations of Africa,” in Purchas’s “Pilgrims,” vol. ii. p. 766.) “Les lieux destinés à la décharge de la nature ... sont toujours propres.... Les Turcs ne sont point assis comme nous quand ils sont en ces lieux-là, mais ils s’accroupissent sur le trou qui n’est relevé de terre que d’un demy-pied ou d’un peu plus.... Les Turcs et tous les Mahométans en général ne se servent point de papier à de vils usages, et quand ils vont à ces sortes de lieux ils portent un pot plein d’eau pour se laver.”—(J. B. Tavernier, “Relation de l’intérieur du Sérail du Grand Seigneur,” Paris, 1675, p. 194.) “Nunquam Turcas seu papyro pro anistergio uti, sed pro magno ipsis delicti habere, et quidem ideo, quia fortasse Nomen Dei ipsi inscriptum sit vel inscribi possit, refert Thevenot, Itinerar. Orient. lib. 1, cap. 33, p. m. 60. Et juxta A. Bubeqv., Ep. 3, p. m. 184, Turcæ alvum excrementis non exonerant quin aquam secum portant, qua partes obscenas lavent.”—(Schurig, “Chylologia,” Dresden, 1725, p. 796.) Rabelais has written a characteristic chapter on the expedients to which men resorted before the general introduction of paper for use in latrines; see his chapter xiii., “Anisterges.” “Nothing could be more filthy than the state of the palace and all the lanes leading up to it. It was well, perhaps, that we were never expected to go there; for without stilts and respirators it would have been impracticable, such is the filthy nature of the people. The king’s cows even are kept in his palace enclosure, the calves actually entering the hut, where, like a farmer, Kamresi walks among them, up to his ankles in filth, and inspecting them, issues his orders concerning them.”—(Speke, “Nile,” London, 1863, vol. ii. p. 526, describing the palace of King Kamresi, at the head of the Nile.) “Shortly afterwards, a disturbance arose between some of my people and the natives, owing to one of my men who retired into a patch of cultivated ground having been discovered there by the owner. He demanded compensation for his land having been defiled, and had to be appeased by a present of cloth. If they were only half as particular about their dwellings as their fields, it would be a good thing, for their villages are filthy in the extreme, and would be even worse but for the presence of large numbers of pigs which act as scavengers.”—(“Across Africa,” Cameron, London, 1877, vol. ii. p. 200.) “I was disgusted with the custom which prevailed in the houses like that in which I was lodged, of using the terrace as a sort of closet; and I had great difficulty in preventing my guide, Amer el Walati, who still stayed with me and made the terrace his usual residence, from indulging in the filthy practice.”—(Dr. Henry Barth, “Travels in North and Central Africa,” Philadelphia, 1859, p. 429, description of Timbuctoo.) “They (the Tartars) hold it not good to abide long in one place, for they will say when they will curse any of their children, ‘I would thou mightest tarry so long in one place that thou mightest smell thine own dung as the Christians do;’ and this is the greatest curse they have.”—(“Notes of Richard Johnson, servant to Master Richard Chancellor,” in Pinkerton, vol. i. p. 62. “Voyages of Sir Hugh Willoughby and others to the Northern parts of Siberia and Russia.”) The Tungouses of Siberia told Sauer that “they knew no greater curse than to live in one place like a Russian or Yakut, where filth accumulates and fills the inhabitants with stench and disease.”—(Sauer, “Expedition to the North parts of Russia,” London, 1802, p. 49.) “It is a common obloquy that the Turks (who still keep the order of Deuteronomy for their ordure) do object to Christians that they are poisoned with their own dung.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 115.) “The aspect of the village itself is very neat, the ground being often swept before the chief houses; but very bad odors abound, owing to there being under each house a stinking mud-hole, formed by all waste liquids and refuse matter poured down through the floor above. In most other things, Malays are tolerably clean—in some scrupulously so—and this peculiar and nasty custom, which is almost universal, arises, I have little doubt, from their having been originally a water-loving and maritime people, who built their houses on posts in the water, and only migrated gradually inland, first up the rivers and streams, and then into the dry interior. “Habits which were once so convenient and cleanly, and which had been so long practised as to become a part of the domestic life of the nation, were of course continued when the first settlers built their houses inland; and, without a regular system of drainage, the arrangement of the villages is such that any other system would be very inconvenient.”—(“The Malay Archipelago,” Alfred Russell Wallace, London, 1869, vol. i. p. 126.) Forster speaks of “an intolerable stench which arises from the many tanks dispersed in the different quarters of the town, whose waters and borders are appropriated to the common use of the inhabitants” (“Sketch of the Mythology of the Hindoos,” George Forster, London, 1785, p. 7); but, he adds, “The filth alone which is indiscriminately thrown into the street.” “There are some Guai, which ... dawbe ouer their houses with Oxe-dung.... They touch not their meat with the left hand, but use that hand only to wipe and other unclean offices.”—(Marco Polo, in Purchas, vol. i. p. 105.) “Having list at any time to ease themselves, the filthy lousels had not the manners to withdraw themselves further from us than a Beane can be cast. Yea, like vile slouens, they would lay their tails in our presence, while they were yet talking with us.”—(Friar William de Rubruquis, the Franciscan, sent by Saint Louis, of France (King Louis IX.), as ambassador to the Grand Khan of Tartary in A.D. 1235,—in Purchas, vol. i. p. 11.) “A great magnifico of Venice, being ambassador in France, and hearing a noble person was come to speak with him, made him stay till he had untied his points; and when he was new set upon his stool, sent for the nobleman to come to him at that time, as a very special favor.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” p. 30.) “The French courtesy I spake of before came from the Romans; since in Martial’s time, they shunned not one another’s company at Monsieur Ajax.” (“Ajax” as used by Harington, is a play upon the words “a Jakes.”)—(See Harington, “Ajax,” p. 38.) Carl Lumholtz stated to the author that the Australians urinate in the presence of strangers, and while talking to them. “Il n’est fonction physiologique ou besoin naturel qu’ils aient gêne à satisfaire en public. ‘Une coutume n’a rien d’indécent quand elle est universelle,’ remarque philosophiquement un de nos voyageurs.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, p. 71,—“Les Inoits Occidentaux,” quoting Dall.) Padre Gumilla says that the Indians on the Orinoco have the same custom as the Jews and Turks have of digging holes with a hoe and covering up their evacuations. (See “Orinoco,” Madrid, 1741, p. 109.) No such cleanliness can be attributed to the Indians of the Plains of North America or the nomadic tribes of the Southwest. “And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee. “For the Lord, thy God, walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy; that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.”—(Deuteronomy xxiii.) Speaking of the Essenes, Josephus informs us: “On the seventh day ... they will not even remove any vessel out of its place, nor perform the most pressing necessities of nature. Nay, on other days they dig a small pit, a foot deep, with a paddle (which kind of hatchet is given them when they first are admitted among them), and, covering themselves round with their garment, that they may not affront the divine rays of light, they ease themselves into that pit. After which they put the earth that was dug out again into that pit. “And even this they do only in the most lonesome places, which they choose for this purpose. And it is a rule with them to wash themselves afterwards, as if it were a defilement.”—(“Wars of the Jews,” edition of New York, 1821, p. 241.) “The Rabbinical Jews believed that every privy was the abode of an unclean spirit of this kind” (i. e., an excrement-eating god), “which could be inhaled with the breath, and descending into the lower parts of the body, lodge there, and thus like the Bhutas of India, bring suffering and disease.” (Personal letter from John Frazer, Esq., LL.D., Sydney, New South Wales, Dec. 24, 1889.) In descriptions of Jerusalem, we read of the “Dung Gate,” by or through which, all the fecal matter of the city had to be carried.—(See Harington, “Ajax,” p. 87.) “When an aborigine obeys a call of nature, he always carries a pointed instrument with which to turn up the ground, so that his fecal excreta may be hidden from the keen vision of the vagabond Bangals.” (“Bangals” are the native witches or their parallels.)—(“Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina,” A. Brough-Smith, vol. i. p. 165.) The same custom has been ascribed to the Dyaks of Borneo. It is by no means certain that this custom had its origin in any suggestion of cleanliness; on the contrary, it is fully as probable that the idea was to avert the maleficence of witchcraft by putting out of sight material the possession of which would give witches so much power over the former owner. Mr. John F. Mann confirms from personal observation that the natives of Australia observed the injunction given to the Hebrews in Deuteronomy. “From personal observation, I can state that the natives, all over the country, as a rule, are particular in this matter, but it was many years before I ascertained the reasons for this care. Sorcery and witchcraft exist in every tribe; each tribe has its ‘Kooradgee’ or medicine-man; the natives imagine that any death, accident, or pain, is caused by the evil influence of some enemy. These ‘Kooradgees’ have the power not only of inflicting pain, but of causing all kinds of trouble. They are particular to always carry about with them, in a net bag, a ‘charm’ which is most ordinarily made of rock crystal, human excrement, and kidney fat. If one of these medicine-men can obtain possession of some of the excrement of his intended victim, or some of his hair, in fact anything belonging to his person, it is the most easy thing in the world to bewitch him.”—(Personal letter from John F. Mann, Esq., Neutral Bay, New South Wales.) “The disposal of excreta is not so much for the sake of cleanliness as to prevent any human substance from falling into the hands of an enemy.”—(Idem.) Schurig devotes a long paragraph to an exposition of the views entertained by learned physicians in regard to the effects to be expected from the deposition of the fecal matter upon plants that were either noxious or beneficial to the human organism; in the former case, the worst results were to be dreaded from sympathy; in the latter, only the most salutary. Rustics, in his opinion, enjoyed better health than the inhabitants of cities for the very peculiar reason that the latter evacuated in latrines and in the act were compelled to inhale the deleterious gases emanating from the foul deposits already accumulated; whereas the countryman could go out to a comfortable place in the fields and evacuate without the danger and inconvenience to which the urban population were subject. But he takes occasion to warn his readers that they must be careful not to defecate upon certain malignant herbs which might be the cause of virulent dysentery. “Præterea cavendum est ne feces supra herbas malignas exulcerantes sive violenter purgantes deponamus hinc enim causa latente dysenteria periculosa inducitur quæ vix nisi herbis prorsus putrefactis ullis medicamentis cedit.”—(“Chylologia,” p. 792, paragraph 66.) Colonel Garrick Mallery, United States Army, reports having met with people of respectability and intelligence in the mountainous parts of Virginia who hold the same views upon the subject of latrines. “Ye great ones, why will ye disdain To pay your tribute on the plain? Why will you place in lazy pride? When from the homeliest earthenware Are sent up offerings more sincere Than where the haughty Duchess locks Her silver vase in cedar box.” (Dean Swift.) “Si une bhikshuni jette des excréments sur l’herbe croissante, c’est un pacittiya, etc.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Paris, 1884. Soc. Asiatique.) These bhikshuni are the nuns of Thibet, and the word “pacittiya” means a sin. The following beastly practices are related of the Capuchins: “Tunica replicata, absque impedimento cacat et mingit, anum fune abstergit.”—(Fosbroke, “British Monachism,” quoting “Specimen Monchologiæ.”) There are no latrines of any kind in Angola, West Africa; the negroes believe that it is very vile to frequent the same place for such purposes. They do not cover up their excrements, but deposit them out in the bushes. Sometimes it happens that a man will defecate inside the house, in which case he will be laughed at all the rest of his life, and be called “D’Kombe,” which is a kind of leopard.—(“Muhongo,” an African boy, translation by Rev. Mr. Chatelain.) The following is the epigram of Martial “ad Furium”:— “A te sudor abest, abest saliva, Mucusque et pituita mala nasi, Hunc ad munditiem adde mundiorem, Quod culus tibi purior salillo est, Nec toto decies cacas in anno; Atque id durius est faba et lapillis, Quod tu si manibus teras fricesque, Non unquam digitum inquinare possis.” The Hon. John F. Finerty called public attention to the fact that in the city of Mexico, ten years ago, beggars of the vilest caste invariably made a practice of defecating upon the marble steps of the main entrance to the grand cathedral. Dr. J. H. Porter states that in some parts of the Mexican republic the women come out in front of their doors to urinate; the author has seen them doing this, and also defecating in the streets of Tucson, at that time the capital of Arizona; he has seen the same practice in several of the smaller hamlets of that territory and Sonora and New Mexico, but always at night. The Mexicans living on our side of the border never constructed privies for their dwellings, a custom perhaps derived from Spain, where we have seen that even in Madrid the construction of such conveniences was unknown until after the middle of the last century. POSTURE IN URINATION. The Apache men in micturating always squat down, while the women, on the contrary, always stand up. Giraldus Cambrensis says of the Irish: “Præterea, viri in hac gente sedendo, mulieres stando, urinas emittunt.”—(“Opera,” edited by James Dimock, and published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, London, 1867, vol. v. p. 172.) The author has seen an Italian woman of the lower class urinating in this manner in the street near San Pietro in Vinculis, Rome, in open daylight, in 1883. French women were to be seen in the streets of Paris urinating while standing over gutters.—(Mr. W. W. Rockhill.) “Among the Turks, it is an heresy, to p—s standing.”—(Harington, “Ajax,” in the chapter “Ulysses upon Ajax,” p. 43.) The Egyptian “women stand up when they make water, but the men sit down.”—(Herodotus, “Euterpe,” p. 35.) Mr. Carl Lumholtz (author of “Among Cannibals,” New York, 1889) also stated that the Australian men squatted while urinating; the women generally stood erect, but upon this point he was not quite sure. “Mantegazza, in his ‘Gli amori degli uomini,’ describing the operation of splitting the male urethra, practised among Australian tribes, remarks: ‘To urinate, they squat down like our women, lifting the penis slightly. It appears that, on the contrary, Australian women urinate standing.’ (He is apparently quoting from Michluchs-Maclay.) Among the Kaffirs, etc., at the Cape, the usual practice, I understand, does not differ from ours.”—(Personal letter from Havelock Ellis, Esq., editor of the Contemporary Science series, dated Red Hill, Surrey, Oct. 8, 1889. From this gentleman there was also received much matter of a most valuable character, from the early English dramatists, travellers, and others, which has been already quoted from these sources direct.) “Behold the strutting Amazonian whore! She stands in guard, with her right foot before: Her coat tucked up, and all her motions just, She stamps, and then cries, ‘Hah!’ at every thrust. But laugh to see her, tired from many a bout, Call for the pot, and like a man piss out.” (Juvenal, Satire VI., Dryden’s translation.) The Thibetan nuns are forbidden to adopt certain postures, as are the monks. “110, 111. Ne pas se soulager debout, n’étant pas malade, est une règle qu’on doit apprendre.”—(“Pratimoksha Sutra,” translated by W. W. Rockhill, Paris, 1884, Soc. Asiatique.) “Æsop, that great man, saw his master make water as he walked. ‘What!’ said he; ‘must we, then, dung as we walk?’”—(Planudus, quoted by Montaigne, “Essays,” Hazlitt’s translation, New York, 1859, vol. iii. p. 467.) The lazzaroni of Naples are more filthy in all these respects than the wildest Maori, Bedouin, or Apache Indian, as the author can assert from disagreeable personal observation. “It can be justly said that the inhabitants of Cadiack, if we except the women during their monthly periods and their lying-in, have not the least sense of cleanliness. They will not go a step out of the way for the most necessary purposes of nature; and vessels are placed at their very doors for the reception of the urinous fluid, which are resorted to alike by both sexes.”—(Lisiansky, “Voyages,” p. 214, quoted also in Bancroft’s “Native Races of the Pacific Slope,” vol. i. p. 81.) “Par suite des ordures et du manque d’air, l’intérieur des huttes répand une puanteur presque insupportable.”—(“Les Primitifs,” Elie Réclus, Paris, 1885, “Les Inoits Orientaux.”) Old women in Switzerland urinate standing, especially in cold weather.—(Rev. Mr. Chatelain, himself a native of Switzerland, and now a Protestant missionary in Angola, Western Africa.) The men of Angola, Africa, urinate standing; the women of the same tribes urinate standing, as a general thing, although there are some exceptions. It should be remembered that the Jesuits have had missions in that region for two hundred years, and some effect upon the ideas of the people, due to these ministrations as well as to the occupancy of the country by the Portuguese, should be perceptible. Gómara says of the Indians of Nicaragua: “Mean todos do les toma la gana—ellos en cuclillas y ellas en pie.”—(“Historia de las Indias,” p. 283.) The Mojaves of the Rio Colorado follow the same rule as the Apaches. In Ounalashka, the houses are divided by partitions. “Each partition has a particular wooden reservoir for the urine, which is used both for dyeing the grass and for washing the hands, but after cleansing the latter in this manner, they rince them in pure water.”—(Sarytschew, in “Phillip’s Voyages,” London, 1807, vol. vi. p. 72.) Dr. Porter communicates the information that he has often heard the Arctic explorer Dr. Hayes speak of the propensity of the Eskimo of the east coast of Greenland to use the trench to the hut as a latrine. He tried in vain to prevent this practice among his Eskimo attendants, but believed that they had a pride among themselves in leaving conspicuous traces of their presence. For urinals among the Eskimo, see also notes from Egede, Egede Saabye, and Richardson, under “Industries,” in this volume. “Neither is it lawfull for any one to rise from the table to make water; but for this purpose the daughter of the house, or another maid or woman, attendeth always at the table, watchfull if any one beckon to them; to him that beckoneth shee gives the chamber-pott under the table with her owne hands; the rest in the meanwhile grunt like swine least any noise bee heard. The water being poured out, hee washeth the bason, and offereth his services to him that is willing; and he is accounteth uncivill who abhorreth this fashion.”—(Dittmar Bleecken’s “Voyage to Iceland and Greenland,” A.D. 1565, in Purchas, vol. i. pp. 636-647.) Steller’s account shows that in his time the people of Kamtchatka had no regular water-closets. “The dogs steal food whenever they can, and even eat their straps. In their presence no one is able to ease nature without the protection of a club for the purpose of keeping them at a distance. As soon as he leaves, the dogs rush to the spot, and under much snarling and snapping each seeks to grasp the deposit.”—(Steller, translated by Bunnemeyer.) In the Eskimo myths there is the story of the Eskimo boy, an orphan, who was abused by being made to carry out of the hut the large urine vessel. This would indicate a certain antiquity for the employment of these vessels.—(See “The Central Eskimo,” Franz Boas, in “Sixth Annual Report,” Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, D. C., 1888, p. 631.) In the city of Bogota, Colombia, South America, the lower classes urinate openly in the streets; in the city of Mexico, the same practice prevailed until recently. In “The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona,” the author had something to say touching the practice of the Moquis, Zuñis, and others of the Pueblo tribes, of collecting urine in vessels of earthenware; this was for the purpose of saving the fluid for use in dyeing the wool of which their blankets and other garments were to be made. It was noticed, however, that a particular place was assigned for such emergencies as might arise when the ordinary receptacles might not be within reach. Thus, in the town of Hualpi (on the eastern mesa in the northeast corner of the Territory of Arizona), one of the corners had been in such constant use, and for so long a time that the stream percolating down from the wall had eroded a channel for itself in the friable sandstone flooring, which would serve to demonstrate that the place had been so dedicated for a very extended number of years. Latrines of some sort would seem to have been in use among the natives of Australia, if we are to interpret literally the expression employed by A. Brough Smyth, which see under “Myths” in this volume. The Tonga Islanders, in the mortuary ceremonies of their great chiefs, are stated to have had them (see under “Mortuary Ceremonies” in this volume). Carl Lumholtz did not observe latrines of any kind among such of the Australians as he visited. Among the Chinese “it is usual for the princes, and even the people, to make water standing. Persons of dignity, as well as the vice-kings, and the principal officers, have gilded canes, a cubit long, which are bored through, and these they use as often as they make water, standing upright all the time; and by this means the tube carries the water to a good distance from them.[53] They are of opinion that all pains in the kidneys, the strangury, and even the stone, are caused by making water in a sitting posture; and that the reins cannot free themselves absolutely of these humors but by standing to evacuate; and that thus this posture contributes exceedingly to the preservation of health.”—(“The Travels of Two Mahometans through India and China,” in Pinkerton, vol. vii. p. 215.) The Persian “must not pray before an overhanging wall, or in a room where there is a pot de chambre.”—(Benjamin, “Persia,” London, 1887, p. 444, quoting from the Shahr.) In the Hawaiian Islands, if a man’s shadow fall on a chief, the man is put to death.—(See “The Golden Bough,” Frazer, vol. i. p. 190.) “These natives (East Siberia) always preserve for use in their domesticity the urine of the whole family; it is preserved in a large tub or half-barrel, procured from the whale-ships or found in the drift that comes upon their shores. They use the warm water from their bodies for cleansing their bodies; the rim that gathers round the high-water mark of their cess-pool is used for smearing their bodies to kill the vermin.... The habits of these people are beastly in the extreme.... They seemed to have no aversion whatever to close contact with the feces of men or animals.”—(Personal letter of Chief Engineer Melville, U. S. Navy, to Captain Bourke.) Van Stralenberg says of the “Koræiki” (Koraks): “For their necessary occasions they make use of a tub, which they have with them in the hut, and when full they carry it out, and make use of the same tub to bring in water for other occasions.”—(“Histori-Geographical Description of the North and East Parts of Europe and Asia,” p. 397.) By referring to page 390 of this volume, it will be seen that the Lapps, upon breaking camp, made it a point to burn the dung of their reindeer in cases where any of these animals had died of disease; while it is also related that immigrants to California from the States of Missouri and Arkansas, for some reason not understood, had the singular custom of burning their own excrement in the camp-fire. “When they ease themselves, they commonly go in the morning unto the Towne’s end, where there is a place purposely made for them, that they may not bee seene, so also because men passing by should not be molested with the smell thereof. They also esteeme it a bad thing that men should ease themselves upon the ground, and therefore they make houses which are borne up above the ground, wherein they ease themselves upon the ground, and every time they do it they wipe; or else they goe to the water’s side to ease themselves in the sand; and when the Priuie houses are full, they set fire to them, and let them burn to ashes; they pisse by jobs as dogs doe, and not all at one time.”—(Master Richard Jobson, A.D. 1620, “Gold Coast of Africa,” in Purchas, vol. ii. p. 932.) XXI. AN INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF THE RITES CONNECTED WITH THE WORSHIP OF BEL-PHEGOR. Precisely what ceremonial observances the ritual of Bel-Phegor demanded of the suppliant at his shrine is not likely ever to be known. It would be worse than useless to attempt in a treatise of this kind to affirm or deny the existence of the obscene usages alleged to have formed part of his worship; sufficient, at this moment, to lay before reflecting minds testimony on both sides of the question, with reasons for the belief that flatulence could be presented as an oblation, with examples of quaint customs which may partake of the nature of “survivals” from religious ceremonies of a nature not far removed from those supposed to have been associated with the rites of Bel-Phegor. Well has an old author remarked: “Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones and clouts make martyrs; and since the religion of one seems madness to another, to afford an account or rational of old rites requires no rigid reader.”—(Sir Thomas Browne, “Religio Medici,” edition of Boston, 1868, p. 329, article “Urn-Burial.”) “Le Pet était une divinité des anciens Égyptiens; elle était la personnification d’une fonction naturelle. On la figurait par un enfant accroupi qui semble faire effort, et on peut en voir la représentation dans les ouvrages d’antiquité. Le poême Calotin, intitulé le Conseil de Momus (voyez aux Polygraphes) donne, contre la page 19, deux figures de ce dieu. L’une était en cornaline de trois couleurs; l’autre en terre cuite, se trouvait dans le cabinet du Marquis de Cospy, et la figure en a été donnée dans le Museum Cospianum. L’auteur de la Dissertation sur un ancien Usage (voyez le numéro 18) conteste que ces figurines se rapportent au Crepitus, et croit qu’elles ont été inventées dans un but plus solide. “C’est de Minutius Felix que nous vient la reconnaissance du Crepitus, qui, lors même qu’il aurait été célébré réellement en Égypte, n’était peut-être qu’une caricature imaginée par les plaisants du jour. Ménage cependant affirme que les Pélusiens adoraient le Pet; il dit que Baudelot en a donné la preuve dans les éditions de son premier vol., et qu’il en possédait une figure. (Voy. Menagiana, 1693, no. 397. St. Jerome dit la même chose sur Isaie, xiii. 46. Voy. encore Klotz, act. littér. t. v., première partie, 1, Elmenhorst sur l’Octavius de Minutius Felix; Mythol. de Banier, t. 1; Montfaucon, ‘l’Antiquité expliquée,’ t. iii. part 2, p. 336.) “Quelques antiquaires ont cru pouvoir identifier le dieu Crepitus des Romains avec Bel-Phegor, Baal-Phegor ou Baal-Peor, dieu Syrien,—Phegor, assure-t-on, ayant ce sens en Hebreu. (Origen contra Celsus; Minutius Felix.) Mais, sur cette dernière divinité les savants sont fort peu d’accord. “Origène, St. Jerome, Salomon Ben Jarchi, lui donnent une signification qui la rendrait tout à fait indigne de figurer dans notre catalogue; mais Maimonide (Moge Nevoch, cap. 46) et Salom. Ben Jarchi (Comment. 3, sur Nomb. ch. 25) prétendent que son culte était plus sale que obscène, et les traducteurs de ces rabbins pour exprimer le principal détail des cérémonies célébrées en l’honneur du dieu de Syrie, disent: ‘Distendere coram eo foramen podicis et stercus offere.’ “Ajoutez que les pets étaient de bon augure chez les Grecs, de mauvais augure chez les Romains.”—(Voy. Scaliger, Auson.) “No one now supposes that the Rabbins had anything but their imaginations to go on in what they say about Baal-Peor; they invented the story as a fanciful etymology of the name.”[54]—(Personal letter from Prof. W. Robertson Smith to Captain Bourke.) Citations have already been made from the Bibliotheca Scatalogica, a curious collection of learning, no name and no place of publication of which can be found, but which seems to have been printed by Giraudet et Jouaust, 315 Rue Saint Honoré, Paris, granting that this title be not fictitious. In that work are to be seen the titles of no less than one hundred and thirty-three treatises upon Flatulence, some grotesque, some coarse, one or two of quaint erudition. No. 88, entitled “Éloge du Pet, dissertation historique, anatomique et philosophique sur son origine, son antiquité, ses vertus, sa figure, les honneurs qu’on lui a rendus chez les peuples anciens, etc.; avec une figure représentant le dieu Pet, et cette inscription: Crepitui ventris conservatori deo propitio (p. 38),” the stupendous work of Sclopetarius, No. 111, of the Bibliotheca (Frankfort, 1628) seems to have been a monumental labor upon a subject not generally dissected. The same remark may be applied to “Physiologia crepitus ventris” of Rod. Goclenius, Frankfort and Leipsic, 1607, No. 123 of the Bibliotheca. The earliest known work upon this curious topic is “Le plaisant deuis du Pet,” Paris, 1540. “Origen saith the name Baal-Peor signifieth filthiness, but what filthiness he knew not; Salomon Ben Jarchi writeth they offered to him ordure, placing before his mouth the likeness of that place which Nature hath made for egestion.”—(Purchas, vol. v. p. 85.) A reference to the work of Bel-Phegor is to be found in the following couplet from a book entitled “Conseil de Momus:”— “La deuxième moitié du premier chant est consacrée ‘A certains vents coulis Jadis adorés à Memphis.’”—(Bib. Scat., p. 7.) “The antient Pelusiéns, a people of lower Egypt, did (amongst other whimsical, chimerical objects of veneration and worship) venerate a Fart, which they worshipped under the symbol of a swelled paunch.”—(“A View of the Levant,” Charles Perry, M. D., sm. fol., London, 1743, p. 419.) “Time has preserved to us a figure of this ridiculous Divinity, which represents a very young child in the posture of that indecent action whence this god has his name.”—(Abbé Banier, “Mythology,” English translation, 1740, vol. ii. pp. 52 _et seq._)[55] “Their Beetle-gods out of their privies; yea, their Privies and Farts had their unsavorie canonization and went for Egyptian deities.... So, Hierome derideth their dreadfull deitie, the Onion, and a stinking Fart, Crepitus ventris inflati que Pelusiaco religio est, which they worshipped at Pelusium.”—(Purchas, vol. v. p. 641.) It may be well to bear in mind that the heathen idea of the power of a god was entirely different from our own. The deities of the heathen were restricted in their powers and functions; they were assigned to the care of certain countries, districts, valleys, rivers, fountains, etc. Not only that, they were capable of aiding only certain trades, professions, etc. They were not able to cure all diseases, only particular kinds, each god being a specialist; consequently, each was supposed to take charge of a section of the human body. This was the case with the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and others. In mediæval times the same rule obtained, only in place of gods, we find saints assigned to these functions. Brand, Pop. Antiq. vol. i. p. 356, _et seq._, gives a list of the saints, and the functions ascribed to each. On page 366 of the work just cited, it will be seen that Saint Erasmus was in charge of “the belly, with the entrayles.” Keeping this in view, we can better understand the peculiar ceremonies connected with the worship of Bel-Phegor; he was, no doubt, the deity to whom the devotee resorted for the alleviation of ailments connected with the rectum and belly, much as he would, at a later date in the history of religion, have invoked Saint Phiacre to relieve him “of the phy or emeroids, of those especially which grow in the fundament.” (See in Brand, loc. cit. p. 362.) On the same principle that the worshipper was wont to hang up in the temples of Esculapius wax and earthen representations of the sore arms, legs, and other members which gave him pain, the worshipper of Bel-Phegor would offer him the sacrifice of the flatulence and excrement, testimonies of the good health for which gratitude was due to the older deity. “The Egyptians divided the human body into thirty-six parts, each of which they believed to be under the particular government of one of the decans or aerial demons who presided over the triple divisions of the twelve signs; and we have the authority of Origen for saying that when any part of the body was diseased, a cure was effected by invoking the demon to whose province it belonged.”—(“Medical Superstitions,” Pettigrew, Philadelphia, 1844, p. 47.) The ascription of particular signs of the Zodiac to the care of different members of the human anatomy is in line with the same religious idea; because the signs of the Zodiac, especially the Animal signs, were once Animal Gods. Hone, in his “Every-Day Book,” has a therapeutical hagiology, too long to be here repeated. “Melton says, ‘The saints of the Romanists have usurped the place of the Zodiacal constellations in their governance of the parts of man’s body,’ and that ‘for every limb they have a saint.’” Thus Saint “Erasmus rules the belly with the entrayles in the place of Libra and Scorpius.”—(“Medical Superstitions,” Pettigrew, Philadelphia, 1844, p. 54.) Next follows a long list of saints, with the particular functions assigned to each, beginning first with the list to be found in Hone, which Pettigrew extends.—(“Saint Giles and Saint Hyacinth against Sterility,” idem, pp. 55, 56.) “In later times, according to Herodotus, a particular and minute division of labor characterized the Egyptians; the science of medicine was distributed into different parts; every physician was for one disease, not more; so that every place was full of physicians, for some were doctors for the eyes, others for the head; some for the teeth, others for the belly; and some for occult disorders. There were also physicians for female disorders. The sons followed the professions of their fathers, so that their numbers must necessarily have been very great.”—(Idem, p. 44.) As the Egyptian priests were the doctors of that country, it is perfectly in accord with the eternal fitness of things that we should find them, even after they had been differentiated into different professions, restricted to the treatment of special diseases, much as the gods whom the priests once represented had been restricted.[56] “The art of medicine is thus divided among them (Egyptians). Each physician applies himself to one disease only and not more. All places abound in physicians; some physicians are for the eyes, others for the teeth, others for the parts about the belly, and others for internal disorders.”—(Herodotus, “Euterpe,” p. 82.) Hone shows that every joint of the fingers was dedicated to some saint.—(See his “Every-Day Book,” vol. ii. p. 48.) “But, under the venerated name of Hermes, were issued books of astronomical forecasts of diseases, setting forth the evil influence of malignant stars upon the unborn; telling how the right eye is under the sun, the left under the moon, the hearing under Saturn, the brain under Jupiter, the tongue and throat under Mercury, smelling and tasting under Venus, the parts that have blood under Mars.... The early centuries next after the Christian era produced a rank crop of literary forgeries.”—(See “Saxon Leechdoms,” vol. iii. pp. 11, 12.) “The New Zealanders gave a separate deity to each part of the body.”—(“Folk-Medicine,” Black, p. 11.) The interview between Moses and Jehovah, where the latter refused to allow the prophet to see the glory of his face, but made him content himself with a view of his posterior, indicates that the sacred writers of the earlier periods were living in an atmosphere of thought which accepted all such ideas as those surrounding the Bel-Phegorian ceremonials. The Hebrews believed that Jehovah should be propitiated with sweet savors:[57] “Offer up a sweet savor unto the Lord.” Bel-Phegor and other deities of the gentiles, who were the gods of particular parts of the human body, would, in all probability, be pleased with oblations coming especially from that particular part; thus, the god of Hunting had offerings of game; the gods of the Seas had sacrifices of fish; babies were offered to the deities of Childbirth; therefore the gods of the fundament should, naturally, be regaled with excrement and flatulence. Harington calls attention to David’s prophecy in the 77th Psalm: “Percussit inimicos suos in posteriores, opprobrium sempiternum dedit illis.” “He smote his enemies in the hinder parts and put them to a perpetual shame.”—(“Ajax,” p. 25.) The absence of unity is the characteristic of all primitive forms of religious thought; hence, the various differentiations mentioned above occur as a matter of religious necessity. Among the practices prohibited by the Taoist religion: “A man must not sing and dance on the last day of the moon.... Must not weep, spit, or be guilty of other indecency towards the North.”—(Legge, “Religions of China,” p. 187.) The Parsis have a curious idea suggestive of the Hebrew antagonism to the worship of Bel-Phegor: “14. The rule is that when one retains a prayer inwardly and wind shall come from below, or wind shall come from the mouth, it is all one.” (Shayast la Shayast, Max Müller’s edition, Oxford, 1880, cp. x. verse 14, p. 221. A footnote explains: “Literally, ‘both are one,’ that is, in either case the spell of the vag or prayer is broken.”) “The Bedawi, who eructates as a matter of civility, has a mortal hatred to a crepitus ventris; and were a by-stander to laugh at its accidental occurrence, he would be at once cut down as a ‘pundonor.’ The same is the custom among the Highlanders of Afghanistan. And its artificial nature suggests direct derivation; for the two regions are separated by a host of tribes, Persians and Beloch, who utterly ignore the pundoner and behave like Europeans. The raids of the pre-Ishmaelitish Arabs over the lands lying to the northeast of them are almost forgotten; still, there are traces, and this may be one of them.”—(Burton, “Arabian Nights,” vol. v. p. 137.) According to Niebuhr, the voiding of wind is considered to be the gravest indecency among the Arabs; some tribes make a perpetual butt of the offender once guilty of such an infraction of decorum; the Belludjages, upon the frontiers of Persia, expel the culprit from the tribe. Yet Niebuhr himself relates that a sheik of the tribe “Montesids” once had a contest of this kind among his henchmen, “avoit autorisé un défi dans ce genre entre ses domestiques et couronné le vainqueur.” (Niebuhr, “Description de l’Arabie,” Amsterdam, 1774, p. 27.) Snoring and Flatulence would seem to have been considered equally offensive by the Tartars. See Marco Polo’s reference to the mode of selecting wives for the Grand Khan (in Purchas, vol. i. p. 82). He says that the Grand Khan puts those deemed to be eligible under the care of “his Barons’ wives,” “to see if they snore not in their sleepe, if in smell or behaviour they bee not offensive.” “Yet it is holden a shame with them to let a fart, at which they wondered in the Hollanders, esteeming it a contempt.”—(“Negroes of Guinea,” Purchas, vol. v. p. 718.) On the Gold Coast of Africa, the negroes “are very careful not to let a fart, if anybody be by them; they wonder at our Netherlanders that use it so commonly, for they cannot abide that a man should fart before them, esteeming it to be a great shame and contempt done unto them.”—(Master Richard Jobson, A.D. 1620, in Purchas, vol. ii. p. 936.) In the Russian sect of dissenters called the “Bezpopovtsi,” “during the service of Holy Thursday, certain of them, known as ‘gapers’ or ‘yawners,’ sit for hours with their mouths wide open, waiting for ministering angels to quench their spiritual thirst from invisible chalices.”—(Heard, “Russian Church and Russian Dissent,” pp. 200, 201.) Bastian, in “Allerlei aus Volks- und Menschenkunde” (vol. i. p. 9), quotes from Kubary, “Religion of the Pelew Islands,” to the effect that in cases of death, the vagina, urethra, rectum, nostrils, and all other orifices of the body are tightly closed with the fibres of certain roots or sponge, to prevent the escape of any of the liquids of the body, which seem to be of some use to the spirit of the deceased.—(Contributed in a Personal letter from Dr. Gatchett of the Bureau of Ethnology, Washington,