rew Psalms, to see how inexhaustible was the poetic fancy, stirred by
religious awe, in the discovery of similitudes, any of which, under
favoring circumstances, might become a symbol.

Before leaving this branch of my subject, I may illustrate some of the
preceding comments by applying them to one or two well known subjects of
religious art.

A pleasing symbol, which has played a conspicuous part in many
religions, is the Egyptian lotus, or "lily of the Nile." It is an
aquatic plant, with white, roseate or blue flowers, which float upon the
water, and send up from their centre long stamens. In Egypt it grows
with the rising of the Nile, and as its appearance was coincident with
that important event, it came to take prominence in the worship of Isis
and Osiris as the symbol of fertility. Their mystical marriage took
place in its blossom. In the technical language of the priests, however,
it bore a profounder meaning, that of the supremacy of reason above
matter, the contrast being between the beautiful flower and the muddy
water which bears it.[214-1] In India the lotus bears other and
manifold meanings. It is a symbol of the sacred river Ganges, and of the
morally pure. No prayer in the world has ever been more frequently
repeated than this: "Om! the jewel in the lotus. Amen" (_om mani padme
hum_). Many millions of times, every hour, for centuries, has this been
iterated by the Buddhists of Thibet and the countries north of it. What
it means, they can only explain by fantastic and mystical guesses.
Probably it refers to the legendary birth of their chief saint,
Avalokitesvara, who is said to have been born of a lotus flower. But
some say it is a piece of symbolism not strange to its meaning in
Egypt,[214-2] and borrowed by Buddhism from the Siva worship. In the
symbolic language of this sect the lotus is the symbol of the vagina,
while the phallus is called "the jewel." With this interpretation the
Buddhist prayer would refer to the reproductive act; but it is
illustrative of the necessity of attributing wholly diverse meanings to
the same symbol, that the Buddhists neither now nor at any past time
attached any such signification to the expression, and it would be most
discrepant with their doctrines to do so.[214-3]

Another symbol has frequently been open to this duplicate
interpretation, that is, the upright pillar. The Egyptian obelisk, the
pillars of "Irmin" or of "Roland," set up now of wood, now of stone by
t