_The Sun and Fire as emblems--The Serpent and the Sun--Taut and the Serpent--Horapollo and the Serpent symbol--Sanchoniathon and the Serpent--Ancient Mysteries of Osiris, &c.--Rationale of the connection of Solar, Phallic, and Serpent Worship--The Aztec Pantheon--Mexican Gods--The Snake in Mexican Mythology--The Great Father and Mother--Quetzalcoatl, the Feathered Serpent--Researches of Stephens and Catherwood--Discoveries of Mr. Stephens._ That fire should be taken to be the physical, of what the sun is the celestial emblem, is sufficiently apparent; we can readily understand also how the bull, the goat, or ram, the phallus, and other symbols should have the same import; also how naturally and almost inevitably and universally the sun came to symbolize the active principle, the vivifying power, and how obviously the egg symbolized the passive elements of nature, but how the serpent came to possess, as a symbol, a like significance with these is not so obvious. That it did so, however, cannot be doubted, and the proofs will appear as we proceed; likewise that it sometimes symbolized the great hermaphrodite first principle, the Supreme Unity of the Greeks and Egyptians. Although generally, it did not always symbolize the sun, or the power of which the sun is an emblem; but, invested with various meanings, it entered widely into the primitive mythologies. It typified wisdom, power, duration, the good and evil principles, life, reproduction--in short, in Egypt, Syria, Greece, India, China, Scandinavia, America, everywhere in the globe it has been a prominent emblem. In the somewhat poetical language of a learned author, "It entered into the mythology of every nation, consecrated almost every temple, symbolized almost every deity, was imagined in the heavens, stamped on the earth, and ruled in the realms of everlasting sorrow." Its general acceptance seems to have been remarked at a very early period. It arrested the attention of the ancient sages, who assigned a variety of reasons for its adoption, founded upon the natural history of the reptile. Among these speculations, none are more curious than those preserved by Sanchoniathon, who says:--"Taut first attributed something of the Divine nature to the Serpent, in which he was followed by the Phoenicians and Egyptians. For this animal was esteemed by him to be the most inspirited of all reptiles, and of a fiery nature, inasmuch as it exhibits an incredible celerity, moving by its spirit, without hands or feet, or any of the external members by which the other animals effect their motion; and, in its progress, it assumes a variety of forms, moving in a spiral course, and darting forward with whatever degree of swiftness it pleases."