674 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



feet of the Being, superior to all definition, which the human 

 mind has discerned more clearly according to its development, 

 through and above them all ? 



It seems as if the variety of symbols should be without limits, 

 as are the combinations of the human imagination. But we not 

 rarely find the same symbolical figures among the most distant 

 peoples. Such coincidences can hardly be explained as matters of 

 chance, like the combinations of the kaleidoscope. Aside from the 

 case of symbols found among peoples belonging to the same race, 

 which can be traced back to the common cradle, there are only two 

 possible explanations of them. The images have either been con- 

 ceived separately, by virtue of some law of the human mind, or 

 they have passed from one country to another by borrowing. 



There is a symbolism so natural that, like certain implements 

 peculiar to the Stone age, it does not belong to any particular race, 

 but constitutes a characteristic trait of mankind at a certain phase 

 of its development. Of this class are representations of the sun 

 by a disk or radiating face, of the moon by a crescent, of the air by 

 birds, of water by fishes or a broken line, of thunder by an arrow 

 or a club, etc. We ought, perhaps, to add a few more complicated 

 analogies, as those which lead to symbolizing the different phases 

 of human life by the growth of a tree, the generative forces of 

 nature by phallic emblems, the divine triads by an equilateral 

 triangle or, in general, by any triple combination the members of 

 which are equal, and the four principal directions of space by a 

 cross. How many theories have been built up on the presence of 

 the cross as an object of veneration among nearly all the peoples 

 of the Old and New Worlds ! Roman Catholic writers have justly 

 protested, in recent years, against attributing a pagan origin to 

 the cross of the Christians because there were cruciform signs in 

 the symbolism of religions anterior to Christianity. It is also 

 right by the same reason to refuse to accept the attempts to seek 

 for infiltrations of Christianity in foreign religions because they 

 also possess the sign of redemption. 



When the Spaniards seized Central America, they found in the 

 native temples crosses which passed for the symbol sometimes of 

 a deity at once terrible and beneficent, Tlaloc ; at other times of a 

 civilizing hero, white and bearded, Quetzacoatl, who, according 

 to the tradition, came from the East. Thev concluded that the 

 cross had been brought to the Toltecs by Christian missionaries 

 of whom the trace had been lost ; and, as there must always be 

 some known name to a legend, they gave the honor to St. Thomas, 

 the legendary apostle of all the Indies. Although there were men 

 to defend this theory in the last Congress of Americanists, it may 

 be regarded as definitely rejected. It is now established that the 

 pre-Columbian cross is a wind-rose representing the four princi- 



