Rev. Dr. H. C. Trumbull, in his "Blood Covenant" (1893), while gathering testimony from all nations to illustrate his view of the universality of blood as representing _life_, and the _heart_ as the seat of life, as a part of the religious rite of a covenant, comes incidentally on this same idea of cannibalism as having a religious significance, or at least, as I have expressed above, as a corollary of witchcraft. This will explain why the African cannibal, in conquering his enemy, also eats him; why the heart is especially desired in such feasts; and why the body of any one of distinguished characteristics is prized for the cannibal feast. His strength or skill or bravery or power is to be absorbed along with his flesh. Trumbull[85] quotes from Réville, the representative comparative religionist of France: "Here you will recognize the idea so widely spread in the two Americas, and indeed almost everywhere amongst uncivilized people (nor is it limited to the uncivilized), that the heart is the epitome, so to speak, of the individual,--his soul in some sense,--so that to appropriate his heart is to appropriate his whole being." A constant charge against sorcerers in West African tribes is that they have made a person sick by stealing and eating the sick one's "heart," and that the invalid cannot recover till the "heart" is returned. Also, see Trumbull:[86] "The widespread popular superstition of the Vampire and of the ghoul seems to be an outgrowth of this universal belief that transfused blood is revivifying. The bloodless shades, leaving their graves at night, seek renewed life by drawing out the blood of those who sleep, taking the life of the living to supply temporary life to the dead.... An added force is given to all these illustrations of the universal belief that transferred blood has a vivifying power, by the conclusions of modern medical science concerning the possible benefits of blood-transfusion. The primitive belief seems to have had a sound basis in scientific fact." Histories of our American Indians are full of incidents showing how the heart of a captive who in dying had exhibited bravery in the endurance of torture, was promptly cut in pieces and eaten, to absorb his courage. "The Ashanti fetichmen of West Africa, apparently acting on a kindred thought, make a mixture of the hearts of enemies mingled with blood and consecrated herbs, for the vivifying of the conquerors." "In South Africa, among the Amampondo, one of the Kaffir tribes, it is customary for the chief, on his accession to authority, to be washed in the blood of a near relative, generally a brother, who is put to death on the occasion, and has his skull used as a receptacle for blood."[87] SECRET SOCIETIES.