heathenism should return.[144-2] Thus fire became the
type of life. "Know that the life in your body and the fire on your
hearth are one and the same thing, and that both proceed from one
source," said a Shawnee prophet.[144-3] Such an expression was wholly in
the spirit of his race. The greatest feast of the Delawares was that to
their "grandfather, the fire."[144-4] "Their fire burns forever," was
the Algonkin figure of speech to express the immortality of their
gods.[144-5] "The ancient God, the Father and Mother of all Gods," says
an Aztec prayer, "is the God of the Fire which is in the centre of the
court with four walls, and which is covered with gleaming feathers like
unto wings;"[144-6] dark sayings of the priests, referring to the
glittering lightning fire borne from the four sides of the earth.

As the path to a higher life hereafter, the burning of the dead was
first instituted. It was a privilege usually confined to a select few.
Among the Algonkin-Ottawas, only, those of the distinguished totem of
the Great Hare, among the Nicaraguans none but the caciques, among the
Caribs exclusively the priestly caste, were entitled to this peculiar
honor.[145-1] The first gave as the reason for such an exceptional
custom, that the members of such an illustrious clan as that of Michabo,
the Great Hare, should not rot in the ground as common folks, but rise
to the heavens on the flames and smoke. Those of Nicaragua seemed to
think it the sole path to immortality, holding that only such as offered
themselves on the pyre of their chieftain would escape annihilation at
death;[145-2] and the tribes of upper California were persuaded that
such as were not burned at death were liable to be transformed into the
lower orders of brutes.[145-3] Strangely, enough, we thus find a sort of
baptism by fire deemed essential to a higher life beyond the grave.

Another analogy strengthened the symbolic force of fire as life. This is
that which exists between the sensation of warmth and those passions
whose physiological end is the perpetuation of the species. We see how
native it is to the mind from such coarse expressions as "hot lust," "to
burn," "to be in heat," "stews," and the like, figures not of the
poetic, but the vulgar tongue. They occur in all languages, and hint how
readily the worship of fire glided into that of the reproductive
principle, into extravagances of chastity and lewdness, into the
shocking orgies of the so-called