THE MIGRATION OF SYMBOLS. 781 



form of the palm-leaf or acanthus. The Persians adopted it with 

 the conventional physiognomy which the Assyrians had impressed 

 upon it, and it was thus carried to India, where the Buddhists 

 substituted for it the sacred fig-tree of Buddha. On the other 

 side, the Persians bequeathed it to the Arabs, who, stripping it of 

 its religious signification, retained it as an ornament in the deco- 

 ration of their jewels and cloths. Finally, reaching Europe in the 

 middle ages, with cloths of Oriental origin, it was reproduced 

 among the sculptures of some churches, where it represented 

 sometimes the tree of the cross, sometimes, by a curious coinci- 

 dence, the tree of life of the biblical traditions. In all these va- 

 riations of the same theme, the plant constitutes only a part of 

 the symbol. That is completed and characterized by the presence 

 of two personages confronting one another — genii, demons, wild 

 or fanciful animals, monsters half beast and half man, between 

 which the sacred tree raises its stem or spreads its branches. 

 Nothing more is needed to establish the affiliations of this complex 

 image which brings into connection, through many thousand 

 years, the Chaldean cylinders and the medallions of the Javanese 

 pagodas, the Greek capitals of the Didymeon and the Christian 

 tympans of Calvados and Gloucestershire. 



A frequent cause of alteration, to which sufficient attention 

 has not yet been given in the study of symbols, is the attraction 

 which some figures exercise upon others. We can almost an- 

 nounce under the form of a law that when two symbols express 

 the same idea or near ideas they manifest a tendency to combine 

 so as to engender an intermediate type. For want of understand- 

 ing that a symbol can thus be connected with several figures very 

 different in origin and aspect, many archaeologists have lost their 

 time in disputing upon the origin of an image or of a sign which 

 each of the parties had reason to connect with a distinct anteced- 

 ent — like the knights in the legend who broke lances over the 

 color of a shield of which one saw one side of one color and the 

 other the reverse of another color. 



Examples of such real symbolic transmutations are too numer- 

 ous to be recited here. A simple and salient form of them is 

 given in the wheel, which, possessing the double advantage of 

 having a circular form and of implicating the idea of motion, is 

 one of the most frequent symbols of the sun. When that star was 

 likewise symbolized by an open flower, the effort was often made 

 to fuse the two images. Thus, in the bas-reliefs of Buddhist India 

 we find wheels the spokes of which are replaced by lotus-petals ; 

 while in the island of Cyprus there are coins bearing roses the 

 leaves of which are encircled by twisted rays, or arranged in the 

 form of a wheel. The special amulet of the Gauls, the solar 

 rouelle, easily furnished, on the advent of Christianity, the 



