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.

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]

An Oriental form of oath sometimes substitutes "salt" for "life;" as where the prime minister of Persia in a conference with James Morier, secretary of the English embassy, at Teheran, early in this century, swore "by the salt of Fatti Ali Shah"—the then reigning Shah of Persia.[69] Indeed, to swear "by the salt" is a common form of asseveration among Arabs; as to swear by the life, one's own or another's, is a well-known oath in the East.[70]

Where we would say of one who is foremost in inspiriting and enlivening a social gathering, "He was the life of the party," the Arabs say, "He was the salt of the party."

The "salt of youth" is synonymous with the virility and vigor of life, that show themselves in the age of strong passion. Thus Justice Shallow says to Master Page: "Though we are justices and doctors and churchmen, Master Page, we have some salt of our youth in us."[71] Iago refers to young gallants in their passion, "as salt as wolves in pride."[72] And Menecrates refers to "salt Cleopatra" in her loves with Antony.[73] Mrs. Browning seems to have a similar idea as to the significance of salt, when she says in "A Vision of Poets:"

Even in Plutarch's day this truth was recognized by the Greeks as possibly having influenced the ancient Egyptians to forbid salt to their priests, who must be pure and chaste, because salt "by its heat is provocative and apt to raise lust."[74] It would seem, however, that the prohibition of salt as food to Egyptian priests is easier to be accounted for by the fact that it was recognized as the equivalent of blood and life. Therefore those priests were not to partake of salt, "no, not so much as in their bread."[75]

In this line of thought Florus says of salt: "Consider farther whether its power of preserving a long time dead bodies from rotting be not a divine property, and opposite to death; since it preserves part, and will not suffer that which is mortal wholly to be destroyed. But as the soul, which is our diviner part, connects the limbs of animals, and keeps the composure from dissolution; thus salt applied to dead bodies, and imitating the work of the soul, stops those parts that were falling to corruption, binds and confines them, and so makes them keep their union and agreement with one another."[76]

Philinus goes a step farther when he asks: "Do you not think that that which is generative is to be esteemed divine, seeing God is the principle of all things?"[77] And Plutarch adds suggestively that salt is by some supposed to be a means of life, not only exciting desire for generation, but actually causing procreation; "the females (among the lower animals), as some imagine, conceiving without the help of the males, only by licking salt. But [as he thinks] it is most probable that the salt raiseth an itching in animals, and so makes them salacious and eager to couple. And perhaps for the same reason they call a surprising and bewitching beauty, such as is apt to move and entice, halmuron kai drimu, 'saltish.' And I think the poets had a respect to this generative power of salt in their fable of Venus springing from the sea."[78]

In Central and South America it was deemed necessary to abstain from salt while praying and sacrificing, with a desire to obtain children. So far it was among the Maya nations of the New World as among the priests of Ancient Egypt.[79]

An Oriental proverb says: "If thou takest the salt [the life, or soul] from the flesh [the body] then thou mayest throw it [the flesh] to the dogs." This has been explained by the rabbis, as considering "salt" here synonymous with the soul, or life, of man, which comes from God, in distinction from man's body, which comes from his parents. "God gives the spirit [the breath], the soul, the features, the hearing, the organs of speech, the gait, the perceptions, the reason, and the intuition. When now the time comes for man to depart out of the world, God takes his part, and the part which comes from the parents [the body] he lays before them."[80]

When Elisha, the prophet of Israel, was met by the men of Jericho, as he came from the scene of Elijah's translation to enter upon his mission as the successor of Elijah and was told of the death-dealing power of the waters of the city, his words and action seemed to emphasize the correspondence of salt with life. "He said, Bring me a new cruse, and put salt therein. And they brought it to him. And he went forth unto the spring of the waters, and cast salt therein, and said, Thus saith the Lord, I have healed these waters; there shall not be from thence any more death or miscarrying [of the land]. So the waters were healed [were restored to life] unto this day, according to the word of Elisha which he spake."[81]

A spring of water is in itself so important to a primitive people that it is not to be wondered at that water is called the Gift of God, and that a living spring is looked at as in a sense divine, and that it has even been worshiped as a god among primitive peoples.[82] When, therefore, salt, as the synonym of life or of blood, is found in a spring of living water, it is natural to recognize the spot as peculiarly favored of God, or of the gods. Thus "among inland peoples a salt spring was regarded as a special gift of the gods. The Chaonians in Epirus had one which flowed into a stream where there were [as in the Dead Sea] no fish; and the legend was that Heracles had allowed their forefathers to have salt instead of fish (Aristotle). The Germans waged war for saline streams, and believed that the presence of salt invested a district with peculiar sanctity, and made it a place where prayers were most readily heard (Tacitus, Ann., XIII., 57)."[83]

There is said to be a salt lake in the mountain region of Koordistan, which was changed from fresh water to salt, by St. Peter, when he first came thither preaching Christianity. He wrought this change so that he could influence the people to accept his teaching through sharing his life by partaking of the salt. To this day the tradition remains, that, if the natives will bathe in that lake, they will renew their faith. Aside from the question of any basis of truth in the legend, it remains as a survival of the primitive idea of a real connection of shared salt with shared life.

It is customary among some primitive peoples to anoint or smear a new-born babe with blood, as a means of giving him more and fuller life.[84] Thus among the ancient Caribs, of South America, "as soon as a male child was brought into the world, he was sprinkled with some drops of his father's blood;" the father "fondly believing that the same degree of courage which he had himself displayed, was by these means transmitted to his son."[85] In one of the Kaffir tribes of South Africa, when a new chief assumes authority, it was customary to wash him in the blood of a near relative, generally a brother, who was put to death on the occasion. In order to give more life and character to the freshly elevated representative of the ruling family, the family life was drawn from the veins of one near him, in order that it might be absorbed by him who could use it more imposingly.[86]

The Bheels are a brave and warlike race of mountaineers of Hindostan. They claim to have been, formerly, the rulers of all their region, but either by defeat in war or by voluntary concession to have yielded their power to other peoples, whom they now authorize to rule in their old domain. When, therefore, a new rajput, or chief ruler, comes into power in any of the surrounding countries, this right to rule is conceded, or ratified, by an anointing of blood drawn from the toe or thumb of a Bheel. The right of giving this blood, or new life, is claimed by particular Bheel families; and the belief that the individual from whose veins the blood is drawn never lives beyond a twelvemonth, in no degree operates to repress the desire of the Bheels to furnish the blood of anointing.[87]

Salt is similarly used to-day, in the East and elsewhere.[88] A new-born child is at once washed and salted. If an Oriental seems lacking in life or wisdom, or is, as we would say, exceptionally "fresh," it is said of him, "He wasn't salted when he was born." This idea would seem to be included in the prophet's reproach of Jerusalem: "Neither wast thou washed in water to cleanse thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all."[89]

As at birth, so at death, salt seems to stand in primitive thought for blood, or life, in washing or anointing, in the hope of supplying the special lack or need of the individual. Among the cannibals of Borneo, on the death of a rajah or chief, the desire seems to be to restore him to life if it be possible. His body is rubbed or bathed with salt. He is then dressed in his best apparel, and placed in a sitting posture. In his hands are placed his shield and mandau. If this application of new life and this special appeal to action fail to arouse him, he is counted as hopelessly dead; the arms are taken from him, the body is undressed, and wrapped in a piece of cloth, and placed in the ground.[90]

A traveler in Asia Minor speaks of the practice among the Toorkomans of the mother's dipping a child two or three times into a skin of salt water, at the time of his naming. This would seem to be a primitive rite, and not a Christian one. The father of the child meanwhile eats honeyed cake, and drinks thickened milk.[91]

Milk is sometimes accepted by the Arabs as a substitute for salt, as the essential factor in the covenant of salt (the milha).[92] Milk is nature's life food, it stands for liquid life; two "milk brothers" are somewhat as blood brothers, brothers by a common life.[93] "There seem to be indications," says W. Robertson Smith,[94] "that many primitive peoples regard milk as a kind of equivalent for blood as containing a sacred life. Thus to eat a kid seethed in its mother's milk might be taken as an equivalent to eating 'with the blood,' and be forbidden to the Hebrews[95] along with the bloody sacraments of the heathen."

Milk has been employed instead of blood, and again of salt, for transfusion in case of declining life from hemorrhage.[96] This would seem to justify the belief that milk and blood alike represent life in popular thought.

A favorite experiment among young folks is to bring life to dead flies by covering them with salt. When flies are drowned purposely, or by accident, if one is taken from the water apparently dead, and laid on the table, or on a plate, and covered with common salt, in a few seconds the fly will creep out from under the salt, and soon fly away as if unharmed. Other flies in the same condition, not treated with salt, remain as dead. This has been tried by succeeding generations of young folks, and it is one of the folk-lore facts in support of the idea that salt is life.

It may, of course, be that the absorbent power of salt clears the trachea of the fly, and thus permits the restoration of the natural breathing. Of course, there is some explanation of the phenomenon; but the fact remains that the common mind has been affected by such things in the direction of the belief that salt is life in a peculiar sense.

After the foregoing pages were already in type, it was cabled as news from London that an English mechanic claimed to have discovered a method of resuscitating persons who have been drowned. He proposed to cover the entire body of the person taken from the water with dry salt, which is supposed to absorb the moisture, and thus draw the water from the lungs and permit the air again to circulate freely. He claimed to have revived a recently drowned cat, after letting it remain under salt for thirty minutes; and that a drowned dog was thus restored in two hours.

This is simply the folk-lore idea of bringing the dead to life by the application of salt as life. Like many another folk-lore idea, it is deserving of attention because of some possible basis of truth below the idea, apart from the question of fact in connection with the claim.

In "The Barber's Story of his Fifth Brother," in "The Arabian Nights," is an account of the hero's being beaten and slashed until he was supposed to be dead from loss of blood, and his other injuries. Then a slave-girl, named El-Meleehah, the "salt-bearer," came and stuffed salt into his gaping wounds, after which his supposed corpse was thrown into a subterranean vault among the dead. Yet by means of this application of salt he was saved to life, and regained his pristine vigor.[97]

The references of Jesus to salt would seem to have fuller meaning, if "salt" be understood as equivalent to "life." Where he says to his disciples: "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men,"[98] he would seem to remind them that they are the life of the world, if, indeed, they retain life in themselves. And where he says, "Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace one with another,"[99] he would call them to have life in themselves, and to join with others who have it, in making their life to be felt among their fellows.

A supposed utterance of Jesus, which has been a puzzle to critics and commentators, possibly has light thrown on it in this view of salt as corresponding with life. Discoursing on life, and the wisdom of striving to attain or to enter into life, even at a loss of much that man might value here on earth, Jesus, according to some manuscripts, said, "For every one shall be salted with fire."[100] This sentence is disputed by some, not being found in all the more ancient MSS., and its meaning does not seem to be clear to any.[101] It is obvious that whatever else "salted" here means, it does not mean "salted." To salt is to mingle, or to accompany, with salt. Clearly, fire does not do that. The Greek is as vague, or as ambiguous, as the English. There must be a conventional or popular, a figurative or symbolical, meaning in which "salt" is here used. What can this be?

"Fire" is here spoken of as the synonym, or equivalent, or parallel, of "salt." In this figure, fire is to accomplish what salt performs; the work of salt is to be done by fire. In what sense can this be true? Fire does consume and destroy the perishable;[102] it does bring out and refine that which is permanent and precious;[103] it does try and test and reveal the measure of real value in that which is submitted to it.[104] In the testing time, "each man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself shall prove each man's work, of what sort it is. If any man's work shall abide which he built thereon [on the one Foundation], he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned he shall suffer loss: but he himself [who has builded] shall be saved; yet as through fire."[105]

The whole context of the passage in Mark's Gospel indicates that Jesus is speaking of life. He is showing the way to attain to life. He points to the final testing of life by fire. As salt is shown to correspond with life, and as this seems to have been understood by his hearers, would they not have seen that Jesus was pointing out that the measure of life, or salt, the reminder of God's covenant with his people, in every one of them, would be revealed in the testing of fire?

It is, indeed, because salt represents life, that salt was to accompany every sacrifice under the Jewish dispensation. Not death, but life, was an acceptable offering to God, according to the teachings of the Bible, both in the Old Testament and the New.[106] God wants "not yours, but you."[107] This was emphasized by priest and prophet in the history of the Jewish people, earlier and later. Paul re-echoed this primal thought when he appealed to Christians: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies [yourselves] a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service."[108] Without salt, without the symbol of life, no sacrifice was to be counted a fitting or acceptable offering at God's altar.

Salt is taken, in the world's thought, as an equivalent of wit, or lively wisdom, in speech. Thus Paul counsels the Colossian Christians: "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer each one."[109] Because the Athenians were noted for their life and wit in speech, "Attic salt" was a synonym of truest life in conversation. Cicero says of Scipio: "Scipio omnes sale superbat" ("Scipio surpassed all in salt," or "wit").

Pliny after describing the properties and uses of salt, says: "We may conclude then, by Hercules! that the higher enjoyments of life could not exist without the use of salt: indeed, so highly necessary is this substance to mankind, that the pleasures of the mind, even, can be expressed by no better term than the word 'salt,' such being the name given to all effusions of wit. All the amenities, in fact, of life, supreme liberty, and relaxation from toil [in a word, 'life,'] can find no word in our language to characterize them better than this."[110]

Pliny also calls attention to the fact that "salarium," from which we derive our word "salary," was the "salt money," bestowed as a reward or honorarium on successful generals and military tribunes.[111] The idea of a "living," or a support of life, is in the word "salary." And so when we say that a man is "not worth his salt," we mean that he is not worth his living.

Salt has been employed as money at various times and in various lands, and thus has been the means of supporting life. It has been so in Tibet and in India, and in the heart of Africa along from the sixth to the nineteenth centuries of our era. Thus even in lands where gold is abundant but less valued than salt.[112]

It is said of the people of a province in Tibet, that, while they reckon the value of gold by weight, the nearest approach to coined money which they have is in molded and stamped cakes of salt. "On this money ... the Prince's mark is printed; and no one is allowed to make it except the royal officers.... Merchants take this currency and go to those tribes that dwell among the mountains; ... and there they get a saggio of gold for sixty, or fifty, or forty pieces of this salt money; ... for in such positions they cannot dispose at pleasure of their gold and other things, such as musk and the like; ... and so they give them cheap." "This exchange of salt-cakes for gold, forms a curious parallel to the like exchange in the heart of Africa, narrated by Cosmas in the sixth century, and by Aloisio Cadamosto in the fifteenth."[113]

Victor Hehn calls attention to the fact that "the German copper-coin heller (haller or hÄller), the smallest coin still in use in Austria, referred to in the German saying, 'to have not a red heller,' derives its name from the salt (hal), and the place where it was obtained."[114]

Pythagoras, speaking as usual in figurative terms, described salt as a preserver of all things, as continuing life and as staying corruption, or death. He directed the keeping of a vessel of salt on every table, as a reminder of its essential qualities.[115]

Pliny says, moreover, that there are mountains of salt in different countries in India, from which great blocks are cut as from a quarry; and that from this source a larger revenue is secured by the rulers than from all their gold and pearls.[116]

In many countries of the world salt is a matter of government control, its manufacture and disposition being guarded as if life and death were involved in it. It is a common saying in Italy that a man must not dip up a bucket of water from the Mediterranean Sea; for he might make salt from the water, and so defraud the government.