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]
[115] See Dacier's _Life of Pythagoras_ (Eng. trans.), pp. 60, 105.
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.
In Oriental and primitive thought Salt and Sun are closely connected, even if they are not considered as identical. They stand together as Life and Light. Their mention side by side in various places tends to confirm this view of their remarkable correspondence. The similarity of their forms accords with the Oriental delight in a play upon words, even apart from the question of any similarity in their meanings.
Pliny, who, while not an original thinker, was a faithful and industrious collater of the sayings and doings of his contemporaries, and those who had gone before him, especially in the realm of material things, summed up the popular beliefs as to salt and its uses in the declaration that there is nothing better for the human body, in health or in sickness, than salt and sun, "_sale et sole_."[117]
Not only in the English and the Latin, but in the Greek, the Kymric, and the Keltic, this similarity in the form of the words for salt and sun is to be observed. The Greek _hals_ and _helios_, the Welsh _hal_ and _haul_, the Irish _sal_ and _sul_, illustrate this so far as the form is concerned.[118] As to the signification of the words, it has already been shown that "salt" represents "life" in primitive thought and speech. Similarly the sun was considered "as the life-giver, the emblem of procreation." In consequence, "son" and "sun" are from the same root.[119] In view of this it is not strange that salt and sun, as life and light, were considered in primitive and popular thought as the means of health and hope for mankind.