st be represented
in its full proportions. Such seems to be the nature of certain images
among the Western Bantu,[713] and this may have been the case with the
images of the Egyptian Khem and Osiris and similar deities. In general
this sort of representation in savage and ancient civilized communities
is often either simple realism or indecency. Folk-stories abound in
details that sound indecent to modern ears, but were for the authors
often merely copies of current usages.

+390+. All important members of the human body have been regarded as to
a greater or less extent sacred, their importance depending on their
subservience to man's needs. The head of an enemy gives the slayer
wisdom and strength; an oath sworn by the head or beard of one's father
is peculiarly binding; the heart, when eaten, imparts power; a solemn
oath may be sworn by the sexual organs. In no case does the sacredness
of an object necessarily involve its worship; whether or not it shall
receive a true cult depends on general social considerations.

+391+. Though phallic cults proper cannot be shown to be universal among
men, they have played a not inconsiderable part in religious history.
They appear to have passed through the usual grades of
development--simple at first, later more complicated. The attitude of
savages and low communities generally, non-Christian and Christian,
toward the phallus, suggests that in the earliest stage of the cult some
sort of worship was paid the physical object itself considered as a
creator of life; satisfactory data on this point, however, are lacking.
It was at so early a period that it was brought into cultic connection
with supernatural beings that its initial forms escape us.

+392+. It seems not to exist now among the lowest peoples. There are no
definite traces of it in the tribes of Oceania, Central Africa, Central
Asia, and America. The silence of explorers on this point cannot indeed
be taken as proof positive of its nonexistence; yet the absence of
distinct mention of it in a great number of carefully prepared works
leads us to infer that it does not play an important part in the
religious systems therein described.[714] It seems to require, for its
establishment, a fairly well-developed social and political
organization. Some of the tribes named above have departmental deities,
mostly of a simple sort, but apparently it has not occurred to them to
isolate this particular function, which they probably re