But the worshipper might not only eat with the god, he might more rarely, and under special circumstances, even eat _him_. A more intimate union was thus effected. When the altar imparted its sanctity to the victim laid upon it, the holy food distributed to the worshipper had some kind of divine presence in it, and virtue passed through the meat into the eater. The late Prof. Robertson Smith, in his famous lectures on "the Religion of the Semites," endeavoured to show that sacrifice originally consisted in slaying the animal of the totem-group, of which members of the totem-kin partook so that they received into their own persons the divine power incarnated in the totem animal. Further research has failed to confirm this view; but a similar conception has been illustrated from another side. The agricultural usages of which Dr. Frazer has collected so many examples, show how out of the last sheaf, which had become the home of the corn-spirit, the grain was baked in human form as its embodiment, and solemnly eaten. In the East Indian archipelago, on {147} the island of Buro, the approaching rice-harvest was welcomed by a tribal meeting when each man brought some first-fruits from the fields, and the meal of inauguration was known as "eating the soul of the rice." Twice a year was the great Mexican deity Huitzilopochtli presented in the form of dough images to his worshippers, and with elaborate ceremonies was consumed. Tezcatlipoca, in like manner, chief god of the Aztecs, represented by a handsome and noble captive wearing the divine emblems, was slain on the great altar; the body of the victim was respectfully carried down into the court below, divided into small pieces, and distributed among priests and nobles as blessed food. It is strange to find such savagery associated with prayers of exalted fervour and devotion. But ecstasy is roused by various means, and is not affronted at the most brutal rites. There were incidents in the Orphic cult of the Thracian Dionysus grouped under the name of the "Omophagy" (literally "raw-eating") of like character. In frenzied excitement the devotees flung themselves on bull or goat, rent it asunder, and devoured the bleeding flesh. Such was the condition of securing the actual entry of the god into the believer's person, so that he became _entheos_, "with the god inside him." Words have strange histories, and few now remember, when they describe the welcome of a monarch by acclaiming crowds, or the excitement roused by a {148} great orator, what was the earlier meaning of "enthusiasm."