Not only the Egyptian and Chaldean priests, but Moses and the Jewish doctors were well versed in religious symbolism. The fact is observed, also, that as late as medieval Christianity, the fathers in the Church, the Christian painters, sculptors, and architects, still employed signs and symbols to set forth their religious doctrines. Even at the present time, many of the emblems representing certain ideas connected with the creative principles, and which were part and parcel of the pagan worship, are still in use. The masses of the people, however, are without a knowledge of their origin or early significance. Everywhere, throughout the early historic nations, were worshipped symbols of the attributes or functions of the dual or triune God. Each symbol represented a distinctive female or male quality. Animals, trees, the sea, plants, the moon, and the heavens were, at a certain stage of religious development, symbolized as parts of the Deity and worshipped as possessing certain female or male characteristics or attributes. It is plain that, with the decline of female power, and the consequent stimulation of the animal instincts in man, the pure creative principles involved in Nature-worship gradually became unsuited to the sensualized capacities and tastes of the masses; but in addition to this were other reasons why the female principle in the Deity should be concealed. Women were already deposed from their former exalted position as heads of families and as leaders of consanguine communities. All their rightful prerogatives had been usurped. The highest development in Nature had become the slave of man's appetites, and motherhood, which had hitherto been accepted as the most exalted function either in heaven or on the earth, trailed in the dust. Under these conditions it is not perhaps singular that the capacity to bring forth, and the qualities and attributes of women which are correlated with it, namely, sympathy--a desire for the welfare of others outside of self, or altruism,--should no longer have been worshipped as divine, or that in their place should have been substituted the leading characters developed in man. From the facts at hand it is plain that at a certain stage of human growth physical might and male reproductive energy, or virility, became the recognized God. With passion as the highest ideal of a Creator, the female element appeared only in a sensualized form and simply as an appendage to the god which was dependent upon her ministrations. Under the above conditions it is not in the least remarkable that by the priests it should have been deemed necessary to conceal from women the facts bound up in their nature. Woman's importance as a creative agency and as a prime and most essential factor in the universe must be concealed. "Isis must be veiled."