mound-builders of North America, in Mexico, Central America, Peru, and Hayti, and in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, and in Africa. They even see its traces among the Jews, and in the use of certain symbols in Christianity. Thus, e. g., Westropp teaches: " The or- igin of the idea is coeval among primitive nations with that of the family, and rests in part upon the natural veneration of the father as the generator, the priest, and the ruler. Marriage derived much of its importance from a veneration of the principles at the foundation of the phallic worship. Its ceremony was attended with rites which marked their significance, and one of its symbols, the wedding-ring, is employed at the present day. Circumcision was in its inception a purely phallic ordinance. Although the O.-T. narrative relates that it was instituted as a covenant between Jehovah and Abraham, the rite had been practiced by the Egyptians and Phoenicians long before the birth of the Hebrew patriarch. Serpent symbolism was associated with the phallic emblems, but that there was an identity in their signification has not been clearly established. The ser- pent was used among most archaic nations as a symbol of wisdom and health, and yet its meaning often includ- ed the notion of life and an embodiment of the spirit." Mr. Wake, another essayist of the same school, treats the Mosaic account of the fall of man as a phallic le- gend, which was borrowed by the compiler of the Pen- tateuch from some foreign source, probably from the mysteries of Mithra, a Persian deity. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil he identifies with the fig- tree, which was highly venerated by many primitive peoples. Its leaves, it will be remembered, were sewed into aprons by Adam and Eve after their transgression. The kerub which guarded the tree of life is interpreted as a symbol of the Deity himself, in the form of the sa- cred bull of antiquity — a form under which the kerub is described by Ezekiel (ch. i and x). The story of the Deluge is also regarded as a myth, with decided evi- dences of a phallic character. In many of the incidents interwoven into the history of the Hebrews, and in many of their religious observances, Mr. Wake discov- ers testimony of the influence of the phallic superstition. Abraham was a Chaldrean, and by tradition declared to have been learned in astronomy, and to have taught the science to the Phoenicians. " He had higher notions of the relation of man to the Divine than his ancestors," says the writer, but there was no fundamental differ- ence between his religious faith and that of his Syrian neighbors. The Jewish patriarchs erected pillars and planted groves, both of which were customs connected with phallic worship. Throughout the rule of the judges, and especially after the establishment of the monarchy, the Hebrews were given to derelictions from the purer religion of their nation to the idolatrous prac- tices of their neighbors, which involved worship of phal- lic statues and omphalic emblems in " high places." The religion of F.aal. openly denounced by the prophets, was a sort of phallism, and was conducted with lewd ami abominable ceremonies, which the Jews too often im- itated. Mr. Wake even holds that the basis of Chris- tianity is more purely phallic than that of any other religion. " In the recognition of God as the universal Father, the great Parent of mankind, there is a devel- opment of the fundamental idea of phallism. In the position assigned to Mary as the mother of God the paramount principle of the primitive belief is again predominant. The nimbus, the aureole, the cross, the fish, and even the spires of churches, are symbols re- tained from the old phallic worship." The May-pole festival is cited as having a phallic origin, and, in the beginning, a reference to some event connected with the occurrences in the Garden of Eden. In fact, says Dr. Wilder, also of this class of writers. '-There is not a fast or festival, procession or sacrament, social custom or religious symbol, existing at the present day which has not been taken bodily from phallism, or from some suc- cessive system of paganism" (comp. .1 tich ul Symbol Wor-
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ship: Infill in-' ofthe Phallic /"'■ a in ih /.'■ lit ions ofAn- i Westropp and Wake; with [utrod., etc., by \. 'i . 1871, 8vo i. I bese theorists lose sight altogether of the possibility thai in the retrogression to which the nations cited became subjeci they ratisi nec- essarily have manifested sensual tendencies "I the verj nature of phallicism, and i li.it only in tht ir lowest estate Buch worship was extensively indulged in. Absurd ii is to poinl to circumcision as in anywise connected with phallic worship. The Jew practiced it as a rite of ad- mission i" the fold t" distinguish him. and also as a sanitary precaution which physicians approve of in our day. We do nol wonder that such ridiculous and ex- travagant hypotheses lead to the proposition recently made by "if "I the same school of thinkers as those quoted, thai "th< re would also now appear good ground for believing thai the ark of the covenant, held so sacn d by the Jews, contained nothing more nor less than a phallus, the ark being the type of the Argha or IToni (Linga worship) of India" (Sellon, in Anthropol. Society of London, 1863 I. p. 327 sq., 12th paper). (J. II. W.)'