Ancient Symbol Worship: Influence of the Phallic Idea in the Religions of Antiquity (An Old and Rare Book with Pinholed: Only 1 Quantity Available)

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Preface THE historian Gibbon has remarked that "a lively desire of knowing and recording our ancestors so generally prevails, that it must depend on the influence of some common principle in the minds of men" To this we are probably to refer the inquisi-tiveness that leads individuals to the investigation of the relics of bygone periods, whether as naturalists, philologists, or his-forical inquirers. The Book of Genesis has been eagerly scruti-nized as containing a divinely-inspired record of the Origin of Mankind; and ancient histories are carefully turned over in quest of clews in the same direction. The studies of language and etymology are interesting as affording traces of the ancestry. of our modern peoples. The same plea holds good in regard to religious inquiry. Language and worship are crystallized history. Unbecoming alike are the supercilious disdain and the sancti-monious contempt flung by pretentious men upon ancient ideas and usages. The ignorant cock that scorned the jewel because he new not how to ascertain its value, and preferred the corn which he could scratch out from the dunghill, is an apt likeness of such persons. It is certainly proper to pay due regard to utility and present advantage. But the disposition to confine the attention to that limit is as imbruting and sensual as anything in fetish worship or the orgies of the old-time divinities. The generous mind will cast asite such a temper, and, in obedience to its own instincts, hasten to broader fields of exploration, whether in natural science, metaphysical inquiry, or archaeological investigation. Labor which makes a person better acquainted with himself or his fellow-men is not wasted.

Introduction THE classic scholar whose studies have hardly exceeded the limits prescribed in the curriculum of the universities, and the biblical student whose explorations of the Hebrew Scriptures have not led him beyond the field of exegesis and theological pursuit, are ill-prepared to hear of a larger world than Greece, Rome, and Palestine, or of an archaic time which almost semands the annals of those countries into the domain of modern history. Olympian Zeus with his college of associate deities, afterward Latinized into Jupiter and his divine subordinates, and the Lord alone with his ten thousands of sacred ones, comprise their idea of the supernal world and its divinities. Beyond, they recognize a vague and misty chaos of mythologies, which, not accurately under-standing, they superciliously affect to despise. Whoeve. would be really intelligent, must boldly explore that chaos, voyaging through the "outer world" away from Troy and Greece, as far as Ulysses went, and from biblical scenes to the very heart of the ancient empires. There is no occasion for terror, like that displayed by the neariners who sailed with Columbus into the unknown ocean. Wherever man is to be found, like instincts, passions, hopes, and ambitions will attest a common kindred. Each person's life is in some manner-repeated in that of his fellows, and every human soul is a mirror in which other souls, as well as future and former events, reflect their image.