Identification of the British Inch as the Unit of Measure. 233 



became modified, though it always appears to relate in some sense 

 to the creative energy of nature." 



That which proves Mr. Rau to be right is the fact that, among 

 other things, the technical terms for these real images with the 

 Hebrews, became in after times, and are to-day made use of in 

 modern languages, to convey a modified and spiritual, in place of 

 a real, significance. -■■ Again : 



{b) " The pudency of Christian nations of our time is by no 

 means an innate quality, but simply the result of long- continued 

 training." 



This remark also is true. No one can carefully study the 

 reach of phallic symbolization without, somewhat to his amaze- 

 ment, finding that one of the chief places for discovering multitudes 

 of representations deriveci directly from it is in church ornamenta- 

 tion and dress. It seems the place especially devoted to this 

 mode, slightly, and only slightly, obscured. The writer is led to 

 make this comment from the idea that, though the remark of Mr. 

 Rau is true in itself, Mr. Rau seems to have labored under a 

 common misapprehension in making it, viz., that of attributing to 

 the origin of the symbol, and its use, .a gross, sensual, and truly 

 degrading, because merely animal and sexual, conception. The 

 writer considers that the use of the symbol was conceived of in the 

 utmost purity of thought, as the very basis and radix of all the 

 religious systems of worship, and ot all theosophic philosophy, 

 which the better world has ever possessed. 



He would also call attention to a remarkable fact connected 

 with the phallic literature. While the cross-bones and skull have 

 ever been taken as emblems of mortality, the grave, and decay, 

 they have been also taken as the emblems of femininity and its 

 generative functions. In Hindoo representations, the skull and 

 cross bones are placed over the pudenda, or door of life. The 

 mountain top, gilded with light, presents the same type when con- 



NOTE —For an illustrative instance: The ITebrew jeliovah, in the most solemn 

 passage of Exodus, skives his name as SaCR, which word means, in its first and essen- 

 tial signification, membrum virile. From tlie signification the word, passing over to the 

 secondary meaning of w/^r/c- victim, tlirough tlie offering of which tlie Deity was memo- 

 rialized, hence took the derived signification of ^'•memorial.'''' "The making ot, or 

 placing the SaCR. or memorial., before the Lord," was handed down, idem soiians, 

 among the nations, and with the Roman priest became " SaCR-y"«(£"/-t^," or afterward, 

 with the English-speaking race, SaCR-;?<v; thus showing that the latest modern usage 

 points back to the aacient phallic usage as its essential element. To this can be added: 

 The word clierub is, in Hebrew, -x participle from the word CRB, the participle being 

 GRUB (clieriib\. For the initial C use its kindred form SC, and we have SCRB, which, 

 with the proper voweling and the Greek termination, gives us SCaRaB-f«.«, the scar- 

 abeiis, or Egyptian beetle, emblem ot divinity. The Egyptian hieroglyphical meaning 

 of the zvinged beetle was, especially, tlie flight of lunar time; being sacred to the moon 

 (Sevffarthj; because of the moon's svipposed generative influence. 



