+23+. Blood was known by observation in very early times to be intimately connected with life, acquired the mystery and sacredness that attached to life, and has played a great part in religious ceremonies.[25] As soul is life, a close relation between blood and soul appears in the thought of lower and higher peoples, though the relation is not always the same as that described above. The blood is sometimes said to be the soul,[26] sometimes the soul is supposed to be in the blood as it is in the hair or any other part of the body. Blood could not be regarded as the soul in the same sense in which the breath, for example, was the soul--if the breath departed the man's life departed, but one could lose much blood without injury to vital power. It is not to be expected that the relation between the two should be precisely defined in the early stages of society. If Homer at one time speaks of the soul passing away through a wound and at another time of the blood so passing (death being the result),[27] this variation must not be pressed into a statement of the exact identity of blood and soul. By the Californian Maidu the soul is spoken of as a 'heart', apparently by reason of the connection of the heart with the blood and the life.[28] There is to be recognized, then, a vague identification of 'soul' and 'blood'; but in common usage the two terms are somewhat differently employed--'soul' is the vital entity, the man's personality, 'blood' is the representative of life, especially on its social side (kinsmen are of "one blood," but not of "one soul")[29] and in offerings to the deity. Early man seems, in fact, to have distinguished between life and soul.[30]