ng;[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,
(~helikoiedes~) applied by the Greeks to the lightning and a snake; when
the Quiche 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.