Correct thought would prevent the extension of the value of the symbol beyond the original element of similarity. More than this, it would recognize the fact that similarity does not suppose identity, but the reverse, to wit, defect of likeness; and this dissimilitude must be the greater, as the original and symbol are naturally discrepant. The supernatual, however, whether by this term we mean the unknown or the universal—still more if we mean the incomprehensible—is utterly discrepant with the known, except by an indefinitely faint analogy. In the higher thought, therefore, the symbol loses all trace of identity and becomes merely emblematic.
The ancients defended symbolic teaching on this very ground, that the symbol left so much unexplained, that it stimulated the intellect and trained it to profounder thinking;[205-1] practically it had the reverse effect, the symbol being accepted as the thing itself.
Passing from these general rules of the selection of symbols, to the history of the symbol when chosen, this presents itself to us in a reciprocal form, first as the myth led to the adoption and changes in the symbol, and as the latter in turn altered and reformed the myth.
The tropes and figures of rhetoric by which the conceptions of the supernatural were first expressed, give the clue to primitive symbolism. A very few examples will be sufficient. No one can doubt that the figure of the serpent was sometimes used in pictorial art to represent the lightning, when he reads that the Algonkins straightly called the latter a snake; when he sees the same adjective, spiral or winding, (ἑλικοιεδης) applied by the Greeks to the lightning and a snake; when the Quiché call the electric flash a strong serpent; and many other such examples. The Pueblo Indians represent lightning in their pictographs by a zigzag line. A zigzag fence is called in the Middle States a worm or “snake” fence. Besides this, adjectives which describe the line traced by the serpent in motion are applied to many twisting or winding objects, as a river, a curl or lock of hair, the tendrils of a vine, the intestines, a trailing plant, the mazes of a dance, a bracelet, a broken ray of light, a sickle, a crooked limb, an anfractuous path, the phallus, etc. Hence the figure of a serpent may, and in fact has been, used with direct reference to every one of these, as could easily be shown. How short-sighted then the expounder of symbolism who would explain the frequent recurrence of the symbol or the myth of the serpent wherever he finds it by any one of these!
This narrowness of exposition becomes doubly evident when we give consideration to two other elements in primitive symbolism—the multivocal nature of early designs, and the misapprehensions due to contiguous association.
To illustrate the first, let us suppose, with Schwarz[207-1] and others, that the serpent was at first the symbol of the lightning. Its most natural representation would be in motion; it might then stand for the other serpentine objects I have mentioned; but once accepted as an acknowledged symbol, the other qualities and properties of the serpent would present themselves to the mind, and the effort would be made to discover or to imagine likenesses to these in the electric flash. The serpent is venomous; it casts its skin and thus seems to renew its life; it is said to fascinate its prey; it lives in the ground; it hisses or rattles when disturbed: none of these properties is present to the mind of the savage who scratches on the rock a zigzag line to represent the lightning god. But after-thought brings them up, and the association of contiguity can apply them all to the lightning, and actually has done so over and over again; and not only to it, but also to other objects originally represented by a broken line, for example, the river gods and the rays of light.
This complexity is increased by the ambiguous representation of symbolic designs. The serpent, no longer chosen for its motion alone, will be expressed in art in that form best suited to the meaning of the symbol present in the mind of the artist. Realism is never the aim of religious art. The zigzag line, the coil, the spiral, the circle and the straight line, are all geometrical radicals of various serpentine forms. Any one of these may be displayed with fanciful embellishments and artistic aids. Or the artist, proceeding by synecdoche, takes a part for the whole, and instead of portraying the entire animal, contents himself with one prominent feature or one aspect of it. A striking instance of this has been developed by Dr. Harrison Allen, in the prevalence of what he calls the “crotalean curve,” in aboriginal American art, a line which is the radical of the profile view of the head of the rattlesnake (crotalus).[208-1] This he has detected in the architectural monuments of Mexico and Yucatan, in the Maya phonetic scrip, and even in the rude efforts of the savage tribes. Each of these elective methods of representing the serpent, would itself, by independent association, call up ideas out of all connection whatever with that which the figure first symbolized. These, in the mind entertaining them, will supersede and efface the primitive meaning. Thus the circle is used in conventional symbolic art to designate the serpent; but also the eye, the ear, the open mouth, the mamma, the sun, the moon, a wheel, the womb, the vagina, the return of the seasons, time, continued life, hence health, and many other things. Whichever of these ideas is easiest recalled will first appear on looking at a circle. The error of those who have discussed mythological symbolism has been to trace a connection of such adventitious ideas beyond the symbol to its original meaning; whereas the symbol itself is the starting-point. To one living in a region where venomous serpents abound, the figure of one will recall the sense of danger, the dread of the bite, and the natural hostility we feel to those who hurt us; whereas no such ideas would occur to the native of a country where there are no snakes, or where they are harmless, unless taught this association.
Few symbols have received more extended study than that of the cross, owing to its prominence in Christian art. This, as I have said, was coincident or incidental only. It corresponded, however, to a current “phonetic symbol,” in the expression common to the Greeks and Romans of that day, “to take up one’s cross,” meaning to prepare for the worst, a metaphor used by Christ himself.
Now there is no agreement as to what was the precise form of the cross on which he suffered. Three materially unlike crosses are each equally probable. In symbolic art these have been so multiplied that now two hundred and twenty-two variants of the figure are described![210-1] Of course there is nothing easier than to find among these similarities, with many other conventional symbols, the Egyptian Tau, the Hammer of Thor, the “Tree of Fertility,” on which the Aztecs nailed their victims, the crossed lines which are described on Etruscan tombs, or the logs crossed at rectangles, on which the Muskogee Indians built the sacred fire. The four cardinal points are so generally objects of worship, that more than any other mythical conception they have been represented by cruciform figures. But to connect these in any way with the symbol as it appears in Christian art, is to violate every scientific principle.
Each variant of a symbol may give rise to myths quite independent of its original meaning. A symbol once adopted is preserved by its sacred character, exists long as a symbol, but with ever fluctuating significations. It always takes that which is uppermost in the mind of the votary and the congregation. Hence, psychology, and especially the psychology of races, is the only true guide in symbolic exegesis.