of production visible in nature must have given rise to comparisons with the mode of proceeding in the generation of animals, in which two causes concur, the one active and the other passive, the one male and the other female, the one as father, the other as mother. These ideas were doubtless suggested independently and spontaneously in different countries; for the human mind is so constituted that the same objects and the same operations of nature will suggest like ideas in the minds of men of all races, however widely apart.

Nature to the early man was not brute matter, but a being invested with his own personality, and endowed with the same feelings, passions, and performing the same actions. He could only conceive the course of nature from the analogy to his own actions. Generation, begetting— production, bringing forth-were thus his ideas of cause and effect. The earth was looked upon as the mould of nature, as the recipient of seeds, the nurse of what was produced in its bosom; the sky was the fecundating and fertilizing power. An analogy was suggested in the union of the male and female. These comparisons are found in ancient writers. "The sky," Plutarch says, "appeared to men to perform the functions of a father, as the earth those of a mother. The sky was the father, for it cast seed into the bosom of the earth, which in receiving them became fruitful and brought forth, and was the mother." This union has been sung in the following verses by Virgil:

"Tum pater omnipotens fecundis imbribis æther Conjugis in gremium lætæ descendit."—Geor. II. Columella has related, in his treatise on agriculture, the loves of nature, or the marriage of heaven and earth, which takes place in the spring of the year.

These ideas bear a prominent part in the religious creeds of several nations. In Egypt the Deity or principle of generation was Khem, called "the father "-the abstract idea of father; as the goddess Maut was that of mother. The office of Khem was not confined to the procreation

and continuation of the human species, but extended even to the vegetable world, over which he presided, when we find his statue accompanied by trees and plants; and kings offering to him herbs of the ground, cutting the corn before him, or employed in his presence tilling the land, and preparing it to receive the generating influence of the deity. In the Saiva Purana of the Hindoos, Siva says: "From the supreme spirit proceed Purusha (the generative or male principle), Prakriti (the productive or female principle), and Tirue; and by them was produced this universe, the manifestation of the one god. . . . Of all organs of sense and intellect, the best is mind, which proceeds from Ahankara, Ahankara from intellect, intellect from the supreme being, who is, in fact, Purusha. It is the primeval male, whose form constitutes the universe, and whose breath is the sky; and though incorporeal, that male am I." In the Kritya Tatwa, Siva is thus addressed by Brahma: "I know that Thou, O Lord, art the eternal Brahm, that seed which, being received in the womb of thy Sakti (aptitude to conceive), produced this universe; that thou united with thy Sakti dost create the universe from thine own substance like the web from the spider." In the same creed Siva is the personification of the sun (which he is equally with Surya) or fire, the genial heat which pervades, generates and vivifies all; and Bhavani, who, as the goddess of nature is also the earth, is the universal mother.

Among the Assyrians, the supreme god, Bel, was styled "the procreator"; and his wife, the goddess Mylitta, represented the productive principle of nature, and received the title of the queen of fertility. Another deity, the god Vul, the god of the atmosphere, is styled the beneficent chief, the giver of abundance, the lord of fecundity. On Assyrian cylinders he is represented as a phallic deity. With him is associated a goddess Shala, whose ordinary title is "Sarrat," queen, the feminine of the word "Sar," which means chief. Sir Henry Rawlinson remarks, with regard to the Assyrian San, or Shamas, the sun-god, that

In

the idea of the motive influence of the sun-god in all human affairs arose from the manifest agency of the material sun in stimulating the functions of nature. Phoenician mythology, Ouranos (heaven) weds Ghè (the earth), and by her becomes father of Oceanus, Hyperon, Iapetus, Cronos, and other gods. In conformity with the religious ideas of the Greeks and Romans, Virgil describes the products of the earth as the result of the conjugal act between Jupiter (the sky) and Juno (the earth). According to St. Augustin, the sexual organ of man was consecrated in the temple of Liber, that of woman in the sanctuaries of Libera; these two divinities were named father and mother.

In the month of April, when the fertilizing powers of nature begin to operate and its productive powers to be visibly developed, a festival in honor of Venus took place at Rome; in it the phallus was carried in a cart, and led in procession by the Roman ladies to the temple of Venus outside the Colline gate, and then presented by them to the sexual parts of the goddess. This is only symbolizing the same idea as expressed by Virgil in the Georgics. We find similar ideas in the religious creeds of America, and of the remote islands of the Pacific Ocean. According to the Indians of Central America, Famagostad and Zipaltonal, the first male and the second female, created heaven, earth, man, and all things.

The Tahitians imagined that everything which exists in the universe proceeds from the union of two beings: one of them was named Taroataihetounou; the other Tepapa: they were supposed to produce continually and by connection the days and months. Those islanders supposed that the sun and moon, which are gods, had begotten the stars, and that the eclipses were the time of their copulation.

A New Zealand myth says we have two primeval ancestors, a father and a mother. They are rangi and papa, heaven and earth. The earth, out of which all things are produced, is our mother; the protecting and overruling heaven is our father.

It is thus evident that the doctrine of the reciprocal principles of nature, or nature active and passive, male and female, was recognized in nearly all the primitive religious systems of the old as well as of the new world, and in none more clearly than in those of Central America; thus proving, not only the wide extent of the doctrine, but also its separate and independent origin, springing from those innate principles which are common to human nature in all climes and races. Hence the almost universal reverence paid to the images of the sexual parts, as they were regarded as symbols and types of the generative and productive principles in nature, and of those gods and goddesses who were the representatives of the same principles. The Phallus and the Cteis, the Lingam and the Yoni-the special parts contributing to generation and production, becoming thus symbols of those active and passive causes, could not but become objects of reverence and worship. The union of the two symbolized the creative energy of all nature; for almost all primitive religion consisted in the reverence and worship paid to nature and its operations.

Evidence that this worship extensively prevailed will be found in many countries, both in ancient and modern times. It occurs in ancient Egypt, in India, in Syria, in Babylon, among the Assyrians, in Persia, Greece, Italy, Spain, Germany, Scandinavia, and among the Gauls. In Egypt, the phallus is frequently represented as the symbol of generation. According to Ptolemy, the phallus was the object of religious worship among the Assyrians and also among the Persians. In Syria, Baal-Peor was represented with a phallus in his mouth, according to St. Jerome. The Jews did not escape this worship; and we see their women manufacturing phalli of gold and of silver, as we find in Ezekiel xvi. 17.* Among the Hindoos a religious reverence was paid to the Lingam and Yoni,

* "Thou didst take also thy fair jewels of my gold, and didst make to thyself images of men, and didst commit fornication with them.”—Noyes's Translation of Ezekiel.

and among the Greeks and Romans to the Phallus and Cteis. Among the Teutons and Scandinavians, the god Fricco, corresponding to the Priapus of the Romans, was adored under the form of a phallus; a similar god under a similar symbol was adored in Spain, whose name was Hortanes.

This worship has been found in different parts of America, in Mexico, in Peru, at Hayti; it still prevails at the present day in a great part of India and Thibet. According to Mr. Stephens, the upright pillar in front of the temples of Yucatan is a phallus. We read in an ancient document written by one of the companions of Fernando Cortez "In certain countries, and particularly at Panuco, they adore the phallus (il membro che portano gli nomini fra le gambe), and it is preserved in the temples." The inhabitants of Tlascala also paid worship to the sexual organs of a man and woman. In Peru, several representations in clay of the phallus are met with. At Hayti, according to Mr. Artaud, phalli have been discovered in different parts of the island, and are believed to be undoubtedly the manufacture of the original inhabitants of the island. In one of the Marianne islands of the Pacific Ocean, on festive occasions, a phallus, highly ornamented, called by the natives Tinas, is carried in procession.

Among the simple and primitive races of men, the act of generation was considered as no more than one of the operations of nature contributing to the reproduction of the species, as in agriculture the sowing of seed for the production of corn, and was consequently looked upon as a solemn duty consecrated to the Deity; as Payne Knight remarks, it was considered as a solemn sacrament in honor of the Creator.

In those early ages, all the operations of nature were consecrated to some divinity, from whom they were supposed to emanate; thus the sowing of seed was presided over by Ceres.

In Egypt, the act of generation was consecrated to Khem; in Assyria, to Vul; in India, to Siva; in Greece,