_ Plato adopted this emblem;
Pascal had inserted it among the material which he intended using, and
which has been called his "Thoughts."
In metaphysics, in moral philosophy, the ancients have said everything.
We coincide with them, or we repeat them. All modern books of this kind
are only repetitions.
It is above all among the Indians, the Egyptians, the Syrians, that
these emblems, which to us appear most strange, were consecrated. It is
there that the two organs of generation, the two symbols of life, were
carried in procession with the greatest respect. We laugh at it, we dare
treat these peoples as barbarous idiots, because they innocently thanked
God for having given them existence. What would they have said if they
had seen us enter our temples with the instrument of destruction at our
side?
At Thebes the sins of the people were represented by a goat. On the
coast of Phoenicia a naked woman, with a fish's tail, was the emblem
of nature.
One must not be astonished, therefore, if this use of symbols reached
the Hebrews when they had formed a body of people near the Syrian
desert.
One of the most beautiful emblems of the Judaic books is this passage of
Ecclesiastes: "... when the grinders cease because they are few, and
those that look out of the windows be darkened, when the almond-tree
shall flourish and the grasshopper shall be a burden: or ever the silver
cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken
at the fountain.
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