[264] The cow is the symbol of prolific generation and of intellectual nature. She was sacred to Isis in Egypt; to Christna, in India, and to an infinity of other gods and goddesses personifying the various productive powers of nature. The cow was held, in short, as the impersonation of the Great Mother of all beings, both of the mortals and of the gods, of physical and spiritual generation of things.
[265] In Genesis the river of Eden was parted, “and became into four heads” (Gen. ii. 5).
[266] Genesis iii. 21.
[267] This is claimed to be one of the missing books of the sacred Canon of the Jews, and is referred to in Joshua and II. Samuel. It was discovered by Sidras, an officer of Titus, during the sack of Jerusalem, and published in Venice in the seventeenth century, as alleged in its preface by the Consistory of Rabbins, but the American edition, as well as the English, is reputed by the modern Rabbis, to be a forgery of the twelfth century.
[268] See Godfrey Higgins: “Anacalypsis,” quoting Faber.
[269] See Cory’s “Ancient Fragments.” Berosus.
[270] We refer the reader for further particulars to the “Prose Edda” in Mallett’s “Northern Antiquities.”
[271] It is worthy of attention that in the Mexican “Popol-Vuh” the human race is created out of a reed, and in Hesiod out of the ash-tree, as in the Scandinavian narrative.
[272] See Kanne’s “Pantheum der Æltesten Philosophie.”
[273] “Origin of Species,” p. 484.