have relished fossils--still less so if the material bodies had been buried alive. [Illustration: FIG. 7.--From _Man the Primeval Savage_ (Smith, G. Worthington).] I venture to put forward the suggestion that primeval stone-worship, tree-worship, and the veneration paid to innumerable birds and beasts was largely based upon symbolism. In symbolism alone can one find any rational explanation for the intricacies of those ancient mysteries the debris of which has come down to us degraded into between symbolism and burial customs. Among some prehistoric graves disclosed at Dunstable was one containing the relics of a woman and of a child. The authorities superstitious "custom" and it is probable that in symbolism may also be found the origin of totemism. Is symbol the husk, the dry bone, Of the dead soul of ages agone? Finger-post of a pilgrimage way Untrodden for many a day? A derelict shrine in the fane Of an ancient faith, long since profane? A gew-gaw, once amulet? A forgotten creed's alphabet? Or is it....[68] Whatever symbolism may or may not be it has certainly not that close and exclusive connection with phallicism which some writers have been pleased to assign it. On the contrary, it more often flushes from unlikely quarters totally unexpected coveys of blue birds. Symbolism was undeniably a primitive mode of _thinging_ thought or expressing abstract ideas by things. As Massey says of mythology: "There is nothing insane, nothing irrational in it, ... the insanity lies in mistaking it for human history or Divine Revelation. Mythology is the depository of man's most ancient science, and what concerns us chiefly is this--when truly interpreted once more it is destined to be the death of those false theologies to which it has unwittingly given birth."[69] That the ancients were adepts at constructing cunningly-devised fables is unquestionable: to account for the identities of these pagan fables with certain teachings of the New Testament it was the opinion of one of the Early Fathers--Tertullian, I believe--that "God was rehearsing Christianity".