232 Cincinnati Society of Natiaal Histoiy. 



or philosojjhical view of the latter, this helps to even a more accep- 

 table comprehension thereof. P'or in place of looking upon the 

 Hebrew system as springing abruptly out from the world of 

 thought, and the nations, as the first true revelation of a personal 

 (Jod to man, we become informed that this Hebrew system was a 

 legitimate development of a world effort at formulating a mode of 

 religious jjhilosophy ; out of material long before accumulated by 

 the jjre-semite Old Babylonians and Egyptians, who can be traced 

 for their origin in Asia to the head of the Persian Gulf and the 

 mouth of the Nile, where the trace is lost, unless it be recovered in 

 Central America, and thence from the Mound Builders. The old 

 and pure ideas conveyed under symbols, became lost, and accep- 

 tance of these symbols was made merely for what the eye saw ; 

 consequently a degredation to the sensuous, and that inexpressible 

 offensiveness to modern ideas, which so loath any possible con- 

 nection or relation of such symbols with the high ideals of the 

 teachings of the Hebrew and Christian sacred books. We may 

 look upon the Hebrew religion as contained in the Sacred Text, 

 as recognizing this ancient symbolic origin as the very source out 

 of which it sprung, and the scaffolding or skeleton on which it was 

 framed. But in doing this it reformed the abuse of gross interpre- 

 tation and reverted to the true and ancient use of the phallic or 

 nature symbols, as setting forth a mode of exact science, which 

 should lay at the basis of religious worship. Out of natural 

 science or knowledge the development of the true and pure went 

 on evolving out of the ages, culminating in the Christian Dis])en- 

 sation, which to-day actuates the world. 



The writer would refer to the very sensible temperate and 

 judicious remarks on phallic pictures made by Mr. Charles Rau in 

 Chap, iv, ("The Group of the Cross.") of his article on the 

 Palenque Tablet, published in volume 22 of the Smithsonian 

 Contributions spoken of; two of which it seems well to quote : 



(a) "However, it will be evident to every one who has the 

 faculty of divesting himself for a time from now prevailing ideas 

 that the mysteries of generation must have powerfully acted upon 

 the imagination of men in earlier ages, and must have led, in conse- 

 quence of a tendency characteristic of a certain stage in human 

 development, to the symbolization of that life-giving and life con- 

 tinuing agency. In the course of time the meaning of the emblem 



