In all ages, and among all nations, important events have been commemorated and transmitted to future generations by significant symbols. These mute symbols have served to represent the great leading ideas and characteristics of nations, communities, societies, and schools of religion, philosophy, morals, and politics. Entire histories have been treasured up for ages in these simple and inanimate emblems. In thousands of instances they have served to call to mind the stirring events of a generation, the glories of a great nation, epochs in human progress, or the rise and fall of false religions, false philosophies, and false systems of all descriptions. Each symbol comprises a language and a history of its own, which can be comprehended at a glance by the most ignorant of those whom it addresses. As the ideas which they represent pertain, for the most part, to affairs of the highest magnitude, they have always been regarded with respect and veneration. When the legions of the Caesars were achieving the conquest of a world, their emblem of nationality and glory, and their inspiration in battle, was the Roman flag emblazoned with the Roman eagles. In the midst of the fiercest contests, a simple glance at the national symbol would fire the heart of the soldier with patrotic ardor, and often turn the tide of battle in his favor. As he looked upon his flag, the Roman soldier beheld the greatness and glory of his country, with himself as a constituent element of all this greatness, and his heart and hand were nerved with Herculean strength to meet the foe. In the eagles which floated amid the din of battle, he read the history of the empire, with her conquests, her riches, her power, her grandeur, and her Caesar; and he cheerfully gave his life for the ideas thus evoked. The Saracen, as he marched out to battle, beheld the crescent of his prophet, and was willing to die for his cause. As the crescent waves before him, his imagination pictures the prophet beckoning him on to battle, to conquest, to proselytism, and to the sensual joys of paradise, and his courage rises, his blood boils, and his cimeter leaps from its scabbard. No danger, no fatigue, no privation daunts or deters him so long as he beholds the emblem of his religion and his race. He loves and venerates the silent symbol for the associations it calls to mind. {22}