Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/217

Rh and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant; to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. . . . This is my covenant:. . . Every male child among you shall be circumcised;. . . and ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. . . . And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his house, and all that were bought with his money, every male among the men of Abraham's house; and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin, in the self-same day, as God had said unto him." We have no time, nor is it pertinent here, to consider all that circumcision has to teach, nor to trace its wide-spread practice in varying forms. Enough to say that everywhere we find underlying it the idea of sacrifice of one's own blood as a symbol of compact with some deity, more or less clearly. The Jew and the Egyptian circumcised, but many peoples do not do so. Such may, however, have some other bodily mutilation; for instance, a perforation as the sign of a blood covenant. Wherever the part of the body operated upon was visible to every passer, and the operation itself was a perforation, it might be that some object might be inserted in the opening to keep it open and to render it conspicuous. In such a way may have arisen the use of labrets and earrings. These plugs, at first rude, may become beautiful. When this occurs, the original religious idea may be lost sight of, and the perforation may still be made simply to admit of ornaments being worn.

The history of the ear perforation is particularly interesting. In its origin this is no doubt as truly a sign of a blood covenant as is the Jewish circumcision. It seems possible that the ancestors of the Jews were in compact with a god whose sign of covenant was ear-piercing. After this god was renounced and Jehovah