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always been a feeling that there was some sympathy between the weapon 
and the wound. Sir Kenelm Digby, one of the most distinguished surgeons 
of his time, and who was far in advance of his own day, used to bandage, 
not the wounded limb, but the weapon that had inflicted the wound ; and 
the superstition of the wounded man’s mind associated his cure with the 
unwinding of the bandages from the weapon. In the same way, with the 
brazen serpent. What inflicted the wound ? Fiery serpents. What cured 
it? The brazen serpent. There you have the sympathy between the 
weapon and the wound. I do not quite agree with Dr. Phene’s reference to 
the flaming sword. I think that fire-worship is a lingering of a lost tradition 
of the symbol of J ehovah’s presence in the various parts of the history of the 
Old Testament, as when Moses came down from the rock, when his face shone, 
and, above all, when the fiery tongues appeared upon the day of Pentecost. 
With regard to the question raised in the case of the Africans and South 
Africans, serpent-worship and devil-worship go together. The Krooman 
says : “ I do not want to propitiate the Good Being, for He is always good. 
But the ‘ bad being^is always bad, and I want to give him gifts to make him 
good.’'* That is an argument which has been more or less adopted in various 
parts of the world. The serpent spoken of in the Scripture is that old 
serpent the devil, and you have that most remarkable illustration, to which 
Dr. Phene referred in the case of Krishna, which bears out the third 
chapter of Genesis in a most wonderful manner. In that representation 
of Krishna, you have a superior being whose heel is being literally and truly 
wounded by a serpent, and the being herself is inflicting a mortal wound on 
the reptile. The whole subject is most interesting ; and it is important to 
gather together these disjointed fragments of lost traditions, and to 
bring back to our minds this great fact — that God sent man forth not 
without the truth, but man himself broke up that truth into a variety of 
fragments, each nation using them as it thought fit. I trust that Dr. Phene 
will enter more fully into the subject upon another occasion. 
Mr. S. D. Waddy, Q.C., M.P. — I think our thanks- are due to Dr. 
Phene for his patient accumulation of facts, which is a far more valuable 
contribution to our knowledge than merely setting up a theory. We have 
all felt that we wanted more facts upon this subject. I do not quite agree with 
all that Dr. Phen£ has said, but I go with him very far. For instance, with 
regard to the serpent and sun worship ; so far from thinking them identical 
or related, I think they come from two entirely different quarters, and repre- 
sent entirely antagonistic ideas and principles. When man began to abandon 
the worship of the true God, he began also by degrees to worship two dis- 
tinct beings — a good one and a bad one. The spirit of instinctive adoration 
in him led him still to worship the good Jehovah, the Supreme Being ; but, 
inasmuch as mere terror in the human mind influenced it, sometimes more 
powerfully even than the feeling of adoration and reverence, so, by degrees, 
man got to worship that which was to him the source of all evil and sorrow. 
But in either case, whether he worshipped the good or the evil spirit, he 
wished to worship by the help of some symbol. The more striking the 
YOL. VIII. 2 E 
