he ancient Germans, the "red-painted great warpole" of the American
Indians, the May-pole of Old England, the spire of sacred edifices, the
staff planted on the grave, the terminus of the Roman landholders, all
these objects have been interpreted to be symbols of life, or the
life-force. As they were often of wood, the trunk of a tree for
instance, they have often been called by titles equivalent to the "tree
of life," and are thus connected with the nigh innumerable myths which
relate to some mystic tree as the source of life. The ash Ygdrasyl of
the Edda, the oak of Dordona and of the Druid, the modern Christmas
tree, the sacred banyan, the holy groves, illustrate but faintly the
prevalence of tree worship. Even so late as the time of Canute, it had
to be forbidden in England by royal edict.

Now, the general meaning of this symbol I take to be the same as that
which led to the choice of hills and "high places," as sites for altars
and temples, and to the assigning of mountain tops as the abodes of the
chief gods. It is seen in adjectives applied, I believe, in all
languages, certainly all developed ones, to such deities themselves.
These adjectives are related to adverbs of place, signifying _above_,
_up_ or _over_. We speak of the supernatural, or supernal powers, the
Supreme Being, the Most High, He in Heaven, and such like. So do all
Aryan and Semitic tongues. Beyond them, the Chinese name for the Supreme
Deity, Tien, means _up_. I have elsewhere illustrated the same fact in
native American tongues. The association of light and the sky above, the
sun and the heaven, is why we raise our hands and eyes in confident
prayer to divinity. That at times, however, a religion of sex-love did
identify these erect symbols with the phallus as the life-giver, is very
true, but this was a temporary and adventitious meaning assigned a
symbol far more ancient than this form of religion.

In this review of the principles of religious symbolism, I have
attempted mainly to exhibit the part it has sustained in the development
of the religious sentiment. It has been generally unfavorable to the
growth of higher thought. The symbol, in what it is above the emblem,
assumes more than a similarity, a closer relation than analogy; to some
degree it pretends to a hypostatic union or identity of the material
with the divine, the known to sense with the unknown. Fully seen, this
becomes object worship; partially so, personification.

There