soundest sense, who has never heard speak of them, he will not
understand anything: it is a language to be learned.

The old theological poets were in the necessity of giving God eyes,
hands, feet; of announcing Him in the form of a man. St. Clement of
Alexandria records some verses of Xenophanes the Colophonian (Stromates
liv. v.), from which one sees that it is not merely from to-day that men
have made God in their own image. Orpheus of Thrace, the first
theologian of the Greeks, long before Homer, expresses himself
similarly, according to the same Clement of Alexandria.

Everything being symbol and emblem, the philosophers, and especially
those who had travelled in India, employed this method; their precepts
were emblems and enigmas.

_Do not stir the fire with a sword_, that is, do not irritate angry
men.

_Do not hide the light under the bushel._--Do not hide the truth from
men.

_Abstain from beans._--Flee frequently public assemblies in which one
gave one's suffrage with black or white beans.

_Do not have swallows in your house._--That it may not be filled with
chatterers.

_In the tempest worship the echo._--In times of public trouble retire to
the country.