Professor Hermann Collitz, of Bryn Mawr, has suggested, in this connection, that the very words, in Latin, for salt and blood, _sal_ and _sanguis_, are from the same root.[63] [63] Professor Collitz says, on this point: "The Early European word for salt, _sal_ (nominative _s[=a]l-d_, genitive _sal-n-és_ according to Joh. Schmidt) which probably goes back to the Indo-European period, may be derived from the same root to which the Sanskrit _ás-r-g_ (genitive _as-n-ás_) 'blood,' and Latin _s-an-gu-i-s_ (genitive _s-an-gu-in-is_) belong. The latter, as F. de Saussure (_Système primitif des voyelles Indo-Européennes_, Leipzig, 1897, p. 225) has shown, comes from a root _es_, which lost its initial vowel if the suffix was accented. If we connect the two groups of words, we should say that _sal_ is derived from this root _es_ by a suffix _al_, similar to the suffix _el_ in the word for 'sun' (Indo-European _s[=a]'v-el_, from root _s[=a]v_), or to the suffix _a-lo_ in Greek _meg-a-lo-s_ as compared with _meg-a-s_. The root _es_ is probably the same from which the word for 'to be' (Sanskrit _as-mi_, Latin _sum_) is derived, and the meaning of which seems to have been originally 'to live.'" Certainly salt is sometimes used as a substitute for blood in primitive covenanting; on the other hand, blood is used for salt among some primitive peoples as an essential accompaniment of food. These facts being noticed by the author of this volume first suggested to him the real meaning of the covenant of salt. VI SALT REPRESENTING LIFE As blood is synonymous with life in primitive thought and practice,[64] and as salt has been shown to represent blood in the primitive mind, so salt seems to stand for life in many a form of primitive speech and in the world's symbolism. When, indeed, we speak of salt as preserving flesh from corruption, we refer to the staying of the process of death by an added element of life; preserving by re-vivifying, rather than by embalming. [64] See _Blood Covenant_, passim. Plutarch says of the power of salt in this direction: "All flesh is dead and part of a lifeless carcass; but the virtue of salt being added to it, like a soul, gives it a pleasing relish and poignancy."[65] All life is from the one Source of Life, and in this sense it is that life is divine. Thus Plutarch calls attention to the fact that Homer[66] speaks of salt as "divine," and that "Plato delivers, that by man's laws salt is to be accounted most sacred."[67] No other material is thus reckoned from primitive days sacred and divine, unless it be blood, which is the synonym of life.[68] [65] Plutarch's _Symposiacs_ (Goodwin's ed.), Book IV., Quest. IV., § 3. [66] Homer's _Iliad_, IX., 214. [67] Plutarch's _Symposiacs_ (Goodwin's ed.), Book V., Quest. X., §§ 1, 2. [68] Lev. 17 : 11; Deut. 12 : 23. _Blood Covenant_, p. 38 f.