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.

Nor is the wide adoption and preservation of symbols alone due to an
easily noticed similarity between certain objects and the earliest
conceptions of the supernatural, or to the preservative power of
religious veneration.

I have previously referred to the associations of ideas arising from
ancestral reversions of memory, and fr