There is, however, another explanation of the application of the bloody knife, the wiping, and the laughing, which Mannhardt proposed, not without some modest hesitation, in his posthumous work[1417]. In his view these were symbolic or quasi-dramatic acts, signifying death and renewed life. The youths were never actually killed, but they were the figures in a kind of acted parable. The smearing with blood denoted that they partook of the death of the victim[1418]; the wiping with milky wool signified the revival to a new life, for milk is the source of life. The laughing is the outward sign of such revival: the dead are silent, cannot laugh[1419]. And the meaning of all this was the death and the revival of the Vegetation-spirit. I have already more than once profited by Mannhardt’s researches into this type of European custom, and they are now familiar to Englishmen in the works of Mr. Frazer, Mr. Farnell, and others. Undoubtedly there are many bits of grotesque custom which can best be explained if we suppose them to mean the death of the Power of growth at harvest-time, or its resuscitation in the spring, perhaps after the death of the powers of winter and darkness. But whether the Lupercalia is one of these I cannot be so sure. These rites do not seem to have any obvious reference to _crops_, but rather to have come down from the pastoral stage of society: and it is not in this case the _fields_ which are lustrated by the runners, but the _urbs_ and its women[1420]. And the earlier parts of the ritual bear the marks of a _piaculum_ so distinctly that it seems unnecessary and confusing to introduce into it a different set of ideas. There is a similar divergence of opinion in explaining the next feature, the wearing of the skins of the victims[1421]. Dr. Mannhardt believed that this was one of the innumerable instances in which, at certain times of the year, animals are personated by human beings, e. g. at Christmas, at the beginning of Lent (Carnival), and at harvest. These he explained as representations of the Vegetation-spirit, which was conceived to be dead in winter, to come to life in spring, and at harvest to die again, and which was believed to assume all kinds of animal forms. This has been generally accepted as explaining several curious rites both in Greece and Italy, e. g. that of the Hirpi Sorani at Soracte not far from Rome[1422]. But it is a question whether it will equally well explain the Luperci and their goat-skins. In this case Mannhardt is driven to somewhat far-fetched hypotheses; he derives Lupercus from _lupus-hircus_[1423] (p. 90), and suggests that the two collegia represented respectively wolves and goats, according to the view of the Vegetation-spirit taken by the two communities of Palatine and Quirinal[1424]. But this solution, the result of a bias in favour of his favourite Vegetation-spirit, does not strike us as happy, and Dr. Mannhardt himself does not seem well pleased with it[1425].