by the evidence of Plularch, who speaks of the ceremony as "the greatest of purifications."
THE PRACTICE of killing a god has now been traced amongst peoples
who have reached the agricultural stage of society. We have seen
that the spirit of the corn, or of other cultivated plants, is
commonly represented either in human or in animal form, and that in
some places a custom has prevailed of killing annually either the
human or the animal representative of the god. One reason for thus
killing the corn-spirit in the person of his representative has been
given implicitly in an earlier part of this work: we may suppose
that the intention was to guard him or her (for the corn-spirit is
often feminine) from the enfeeblement of old age by transferring the
spirit, while still hale and hearty, to the person of a youthful and
vigorous successor. Apart from the desirability of renewing his
divine energies, the death of the corn-spirit may have been deemed
inevitable under the sickles or the knives of the reapers, and his
worshippers may accordingly have felt bound to acquiesce in the sad
necessity. But, further, we have found a widespread custom of eating
the god sacramentally, either in the shape of the man or animal who
represents the god, or in the shape of bread made in human or animal
form. The reasons for thus partaking of the body of the god are,
from the primitive standpoint, simple enough. The savage commonly
believes that by eating the flesh of any animal
