Book Description

Excerpt from A Comparison of Egyptian Symbols: With Those of the Hebrews The origin of the science of symbols is lost in the distance of time, and seems to be connected with the cradle of humanity - the oldest religions were governed by it; the arts of design, architecture, statuary, and painting were born under its influence, and primitive writing was one of its applications. Did symbols exist in spoken, before being translated into written, language? Were primitive words the source of symbols? are the questions on which these researches are based. The first men, in order to express abstract ideas, borrowed images from surrounding nature; by a surprising intuition, they attached to each race and species of animals, to plants, and the elements, ideas of beauty or ugliness, of good or evil, of affection or hatred, of purity or uncleanness, of truth or error. Those fathers of the human race did not compare, but they named their ideas from corresponding objects in the material world; thus, if they wished to say, the king of an obedient people, they did not compare him to a bee governing a submissive hive, but they called him bee; if they desired to say filial piety, they did not compare it to the stork feeding its family, but they called it stork; to express power, they called it bull; the power of man, the arm; strength of soul, lion; the soul aspiring to heaven, the hawk that sails in the clouds and looks stead-fastly at the sun. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.