It is wonderful, however, the extraordinary hold these ideas attained upon the human mind, whether they entered into the religious conceptions of the people, or pandered to vicious desires under the mere cloak of religion. The Tetrabiblos of Ptolemy (four books relative to Starry Influences), speaking of the countries India, Ariana, Gedrosia, Parthia, Media, Persia, Babylon, Mesopotamia, and Assyria, says:--"Many of them practise divination, and devote their genitals to their divinities because the familiarity of these planets renders them very libidinous." Nor must we forget the peculiar sacredness with which in the early Jewish Church these organs were always regarded,--that is, the male organs. Injury of them disqualified the unfortunate victim from ministering in the congregation of the Lord, and the severest punishment was meted out to the criminal who should be guilty of causing such injury. Thus in the book of Deuteronomy, chap. xxv., 11, 12, we read:--"When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets: then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall not pity her." And this was not to be an act of revenge on the part of the injured man, but was to be the legal penalty duly enforced by the civil magistrate. It is very extraordinary, for it appears that such an injury inflicted upon an enemy--and evidently it meant the disablement of the man from the act of sexual intercourse--was regarded as even more serious than the actual taking of life in self-defence. The degradation attached to the man thus mutilated was greater than could otherwise be visited upon him--all respect for him vanished and he was henceforward regarded as an abomination. Such mutilation has always been common in heathen nations--similarly regarded as amongst the Hebrews, but used as the greatest mark of indignity possible to inflict upon an enemy--some of the Egyptian bas-reliefs represent the King (Rameses II.) returning in triumph with captives, many of whom are undergoing the operation of castration, while in the corners of the scene are heaped up piles of the genital organs which have been cut off by the victors. Some of the North American Indians, particularly the Apaches of California and Arizona, have been noted for their frequent use of the same barbarous practice on the prisoners taken in war and upon the bodies of the slain.