294 MYTH AND SCIENCE. 



and primitive popular ideas. This was the case in 

 India, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Egypt, Judaea, Greece, 

 Ancient and Christian Rome, and in the ancient 

 remains found in savage countries and in America. 

 The freemasons of the Middle Ages united the 

 earliest and most varied traditions with the symbols 

 of Christianity. We unconsciously carry on the 

 same traditions, preserving some of their forms, 

 although the meaning of the symbol is lost. Tombs 

 in the open air which enclosed a spirit, and round 

 which the shades roamed, were the first sacred 

 buildings, from which by an easy and intelligible 

 evolution of ideas, temples, with a similar orientation, 

 and other works of architecture, both religious and 

 civil, were derived. If we follow, step by step, the 

 development of the tomb into the temple, the palace, 

 and the triumphal arch, we shall see how the out- 

 ward form and the human and cosmic myth were 

 reciprocally enlarged. Ethnography, archaeology, and 

 the history of all peoples indicate their gradual 

 evolution, so that it is only necessary to allude to it ; 

 proofs abound for any intelligent reader. Even in 

 modern architecture the arrangement of parts, the 

 general form, the ornaments and symbols relating to 

 mythical ideas, still persist, although we are no longer 

 conscious of their meaning ; just as human speech 

 now makes use of a simple phonetic sign as if it were 

 an algebraic notation, in which the philologist can 

 trace the primitive and concrete image whence it 



