The idea that the heart is in itself life, and that it can even live apart from the body, is found all the world over. References to it in ancient Egypt, in India, and in primitive America, have already been pointed out (pages 100-110, _supra_). It shows itself, likewise, in the folk-lore of the Arctic regions, and of South Africa, as well as of the Norseland. In a Samoyed tale, “seven brothers are in the habit of taking out their hearts and sleeping without them. A captive damsel, whose mother they have killed, receives the extracted hearts, and hangs them on the tent-pole, where they remain till the following morning. One night her brother contrives to get the hearts into his possession. Next morning, he takes them into the tent, where he finds the brothers at the point of death. In vain do they beg for their hearts, which he flings on the floor. ‘And as he flings down the hearts, the brothers die.’”[679] According to a Hottentot story, “the heart of a girl, whom a lion has killed and eaten, is extracted from the lion, and placed in a calabash filled with milk [the ‘heart’ and ‘milk’; or blood and bread, life and its nourishment (See pages 10-12, 261 f., _supra_)]. ‘The calabash increased in size; and, in proportion to this, the girl grew again inside [of] it.’”[680] “In a Norse story, a giant’s heart lies in an egg, inside a duck, which swims in a well, in a church, on an island;”[681] and this story is found in variations in other lands.[682] So, again, in a “Russian story, a prince is grievously tormented by a witch who has got hold of his heart, and keeps it perpetually seething in a magic cauldron.”[683] This same idea is found in the nomenclature of the Bible, and in the every day speech of the civilized world of the present age. In more than nine hundred instances, in our common English Bible, the Hebrew or the Greek word for “heart,” as a physical organ, is applied to man’s personality; as if it were, in a sense, synonymous with his life, his self, his soul, his nature. In every phase of man’s character, of man’s needs, or of man’s experiences, “heart” is employed by us as significant of his innermost and realest self. He is “hard-hearted,” “tender-hearted,” “warm-hearted,” “cold-hearted,” “hearty,” or “heartless.” His words and his conduct are “heart-touching,” “heart-cheering,” “heart-searching,” “heart-piercing,” “heart-thrilling,” “heart-soothing,” or “heart-rending;” and they are a cause, in others, of “heart-burning,” “heart-aching,” “heart-easing,” or “heart-expanding.” At times, his “heart is set upon” an object of longing, or again “his heart is in his mouth” because of his excited anxiety. It may be, that he shows that “his heart is in the right place,” or that “his heart is at rest” at all times. The truest union of two young lives, is where “the heart goes with the hand” in the marriage covenant.