PART II. THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLISM. Section I. Symbolism and Ideographs. Is not a symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God‐like?... Through all ... there glimmers something of a Divine Idea. Nay, the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the cross itself, had no meaning, save an accidental extrinsic one. CARLYLE. The study of the hidden meaning in every religious and profane legend, of whatsoever nation, large or small, and preëminently in the traditions of the East, has occupied the greater portion of the present writer’s life. She is one of those who feel convinced that no mythological story, no traditional event in the folk‐lore of a people, has ever, at any time, been pure fiction, but that every one of such narratives has an actual historical lining to it. In this the writer disagrees with those symbologists, however great their reputation, who find in every myth nothing more than additional proof of the superstitious bent of mind of the Ancients, and who believe that all mythologies sprang from, and are built upon, _solar myths_. Such superficial thinkers have been admirably disposed of by Mr. Gerald Massey, the poet and Egyptologist, in a lecture on “Luniolatry, Ancient and Modern.” His pointed criticism is worthy of reproduction in this part of our work, as it echoes so well our own feelings, expressed openly so far back as 1875, when _Isis Unveiled_ was written. For thirty years past Professor Max Müller has been teaching in his books and lectures, in the _Times_, _Saturday Review_, and various magazines, from the platform of the Royal Institution, the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, and his chair at Oxford, that mythology is a disease of language, and that the ancient symbolism was a result of something like a primitive mental aberration.