Of these, it need hardly be said that the last has no foundation in fact; and the two preceding require no remark. The idea, however, that circumcision was initiated for purposes of cleanliness has lasted to the present day, and still appears to have considerable currency. Whatever may have been the social condition of the ancient Egyptians and Arabians, on behalf of both which races, as having been the source whence Abraham derived his evident familiarity with the custom, plausible pretensions have been put forth; it is simply preposterous to imagine for a moment that the numerous savage tribes (witness the Hottentots and the Australian aborigines) who practise it, could ever have been actuated by any such considerations. Its world-wide diffusion, again, totally forbids the supposition, either of its introduction into these tribes by contact with other nations more highly civilised; or of its adoption, by the former, while in a higher stage of sociology, from which they have subsequently become degraded. And this explanation is put finally out of court by the phenomenon of an analogous rite applied in sufficiently numerous quarters to the persons of females. In order, therefore, plausibly to account for the general prevalence of this strange mutilation, we are compelled to look elsewhere; and an examination of the religious ideas which are known to actuate primitive man, will afford a clue. Copious illustrations of the working of such ideas among peoples emerging from barbarism can be traced in almost every page of the earlier books of our Old Testament; and, even in classical mythology, although overlaid by the later developments of a high civilisation, their influence is still not entirely effaced. The principle of substitution was familiar to all the nations of antiquity, to the Israelites not the least. Witness the universal resort to sacrifices, the theory of which is well indicated by that of Isaac in Genesis xxii. Further illustrative examples are afforded by the law of the scapegoat, in Leviticus xvi.; by the offering of children to Molech (Lev. xx. 2); and by the legend of Jephthah's daughter (Judg. xi.). With this, various ceremonies, involving either mutilation or the shedding of blood, were in vogue--for example, the priests of Baal (1 Kings xviii. 28); even cutting off the hair seems to have been in the nature of a representative sacrifice.[5]