Many other cannibal sacrifices are recorded in Mexico: in more than one of them it was customary for the priest to tear out the warm throbbing heart of the victim, and present it to the idol. Whether these sacrifices in each particular case were of the ordinary or of the mystic type it is not always quite easy to decide; probably the worshippers themselves did not accurately discriminate in every instance. But however that may be, we know at least this much: when human sacrifices had been rare, the priests reminded the kings that the gods “were starving with hunger”; war was then made on purpose to take prisoners, “because the gods had asked for something to eat,” and thousands of victims were thus slaughtered annually. The blood of the victims was separately offered; and I may add in this connexion that as a rule both ghosts and gods are rather thirsty than hungry. I take the explanation of this peculiar taste to be that blood and other liquids poured upon the ground of graves or at altar-stones soon sink in, and so seem to have been drunk or sucked up by the ghost or god; whereas meat and solid offerings are seen to be untouched by the deity to whom they are presented. A minor trait in this blood-loving habit of the gods is seen in the fact that the Mexicans also gave the god to drink fresh blood drawn from their own ears, and that the priests likewise drew blood from their legs, and daubed it on the temples. Similar mitigations of self-immolation {329}are seen elsewhere in the Attis-priest drawing blood from his arms for Attis, in the Hebrew Baal-priests “cutting themselves for Baal,” and in the familiar Hebrew rite of circumcision. Blood is constantly drawn by survivors or worshippers as an act of homage to the dead or to deities.