Without in this place going into the different reasons that have been alleged to account for the original introduction of Circumcision, especially among the Jews, we may yet say, looking back to our previous exposition in § 29., that we hold ourselves bound to see in Circumcision originally a religious-hygienic measure, intended to guard a part of the body already in the earliest times held in such high honour among the Egyptians, Indians etc. as was the penis, against any probable chance of defilement by uncleanliness (sebaceous smegma on the _glans penis_); for it was found that the uncurtailed prepuce made the maintenance of a clean _glans penis_ much more difficult, favouring as it did the collection of the smegma resulting from the sebaceous secretions, and thus gave occasion for the formation of pustules and ulcers and the like inconveniences. These were referred not to the natural cause, but rather looked upon as a deserved punishment due to the anger of the offended deity to whom the penis was sacred, the deity being himself defiled and made unclean by the uncleanliness of the organ. To escape such anger men were ready enough to remove a part, the direct utility of which was as little obvious at the first glance as that of the hair that grew in its neighbourhood,—a proceeding they were the more willing to agree to, as the mischief the uncurtailed prepuce occasioned was often enough manifested. At first only the Priests, who of course were at the same time the Physicians of primitive Peoples, were allowed to undertake the performance of this operation; subsequently it devolved upon the people generally as well, either by direct command or because they were now convinced of the utility of circumcision. This utility however must have grown less and less frequently visible in proportion as fewer uncircumcised individuals were left in evidence; and so in the same degree the hygienic motive fell more and more into the background. Thus only the religious was left, and this was now taken as the sole reason and sufficient explanation of the universal custom. Circumcision accordingly came to be a symbol signifying adoption among such as were initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries, and similarly adoption among the initiated of the Lord, adoption into the peculiar People of God. It is in this fashion the various discordant views as to the origin of circumcision, all of which proceeded in the first instance from a more or less one-sided point of view, may most satisfactorily be brought into agreement. True the motive for the operation was supplied by a pathological factor, but one which owed its force to a religious idea, and thus at first the knife was regarded not so much from the _physician’s_ point of view as from the _religious_ side.