The whole world of thought is reproached by the Church with having adored the serpent. The whole of humanity burnt incense to it or stoned it. The _Zends_ speak of it as do the _Kings_ and _Vedas_, as the _Edda_ ... and the _Bible_.... Everywhere the sacred serpent [the Nâga] has its shrine and its priest; in Rome it is the Vestal who ... prepares its meal with the same care that she bestows on the sacred fire. In Greece, Æsculapius cannot cure without its assistance, and delegates to it his powers. Every one has heard of the famous Roman embassy sent by the Senate to the god of medicine and its return with the not less famous serpent, which proceeded of its own will and by itself toward its master’s temple on one of the islands of the Tiber. Not a Bacchante that did not wind it [the serpent] in her hair, not an Augur but questioned it with care, not a Necromancer whose tombs are free from its presence! The Cainites and the Ophites call it Creator, while recognizing, as Schelling did, that the serpent is “evil in substance and in person.”(472) Yes, the author is right, and if one would have a complete idea of the prestige which the serpent enjoys to our own day, he ought to study the matter in India and learn all that is believed about, and still attributed to, the Nâgas (cobras) in that country; one should also visit the Africans of Whydah, the Voodoos of Port‐au‐Prince and Jamaica, the Nagals of Mexico, and the Pâ, or Men‐serpents of China, etc. But why wonder that the serpent is “adored” and at the same time cursed, since we know that from the beginning it was a symbol? In every ancient language the word _dragon_ signified what it now does in Chinese, _long_ or “the being who excels in intelligence,” and in Greek, δράκων, or “he who sees and watches.”(473) Is it to the animal of this name that any of these epithets can apply? Is it not evident, wherever superstition and oblivion of the primitive meaning may have led savages now, that the above qualifications were intended to apply to the human originals, who were symbolized by Serpents and Dragons? These originals—called to this day in China the “Dragons of Wisdom”—were the first disciples of the Dhyânîs, who were their Instructors; in short, the Primitive Adepts of the Third Race, and later, of the Fourth and Fifth Races. The name became universal, and no sane man before the Christian era would ever have confounded the man and the symbol. The symbol of Chnouphis, or the Soul of the World, writes Champollion: