In opposition to both these views I propose to show that the primary significance of all these widely extended symbols is quite clear; and that they can be shown to have arisen from certain fixed relations of man to his environment, the same everywhere, and hence suggesting the same graphic representations among tribes most divergent in location and race; and, therefore, that such symbols are of little value in tracing ethnic affinities or the currents of civilization; but of much import in investigating the expressions of the religious feelings. Their wide prevalence in the Old World is familiar to all students. The three legs diverging from one centre, which is now the well-known arms of the Isle of Man, is the ancient _Triquetrum_, or, as Olshausen more properly terms it, the _Triskeles_,[175] seen on the oldest Sicilian coins and on those of Lycia, in Asia Minor, struck more than five hundred years before the beginning of our era. Yet, such is the persistence of symbolic forms, the traveler in the latter region still finds it recurring on the modern felt wraps used by the native inhabitants.[176] As a decorative motive, or perhaps with a deeper significance, it is repeatedly found on ancient Slavic and Teutonic vases, disinterred from mounds of the bronze age, or earlier, in Central and Northern Europe. Frequently the figure is simply that of three straight or curved lines springing from a central point and surrounded by a circle, as: [Illustration: FIG. 1. ] [Illustration: FIG. 2. ] In the latter we have the precise form of the Chinese Ta Ki, a symbolic figure which plays a prominent part in the mystical writing, the divination and the decorative art of China.[177] As it is this symbol which, according to Dr. Hamy, the distinguished ethnologist and Director of the Museum of the Trocadero, Paris, indicates the preaching of Buddhistic doctrines in America, it merits close attention. The Ta Ki, expressed by the signs: [Illustration: FIG. 3. ] is properly translated, “The Great Uniter” (_ta_, great; _ki_, to join together, to make one, to unite); as in modern Chinese philosophy, expressed in Platonic language, the One is distinguished from the Many, and is regarded as the basis of the numerical system. But as the Chinese believe in the mystic powers of numbers, and as that which reduces all multiplicity to unity naturally controls or is the summit of all things, therefore the Ta Ki expresses the completest and highest creative force. In Chinese philosophy, the Universe is made up of opposites, heaven and earth, light and darkness, day and night, land and water, concave and convex, male and female, etc., the highest terms for which are _Yin_ and _Yang_. These are held to be brought into fructifying union by Ta Ki. Abstractly, the latter would be regarded as the synthesis of the two universal antitheses which make up all phenomena.[178]