to our ideas. The construction of language was, therefore, one of the
first products of the science of symbolism.

We must constantly bear in mind this fact, of the primary existence and
predominance of symbolism in the earliest times.[41] when we are
investigating the nature of the ancient religions, with which the history
of Freemasonry is so intimately connected. The older the religion, the
more the symbolism abounds. Modern religions may convey their dogmas in
abstract propositions; ancient religions always conveyed them in symbols.
Thus there is more symbolism in the Egyptian religion than in the Jewish,
more in the Jewish than in the Christian, more in the Christian than in
the Mohammedan, and, lastly, more in the Roman than in the Protestant.

But symbolism is not only the most ancient and general, but it is also the
most practically useful, of sciences. We have already seen how actively it
operates in the early stages of life and of society. We have seen how the
first ideas of men and of nations are impressed upon their minds by means
of symbols. It was thus that the ancient peoples were almost wholly
educated.

"In the simpler stages of society," says one writer on this subject,
"mankind can be instructed in the abstract knowledge of truths only by
symbols and parables. Hence we find most heathen religions becoming
mythic, or explaining their mysteries by allegories, or instructive
incidents. Nay, God himself, knowing the nature of the creatures formed by
him, has condescended, in the earlier revelations that he made of himself,
to teach by symbols; and the greatest of all teachers instructed the
multitudes by parables.[42] The great exemplar of the ancient philosophy
and the grand archetype of modern philosophy were alike distinguished by
their possessing this faculty in a high degree, and have told us that man