Symbol of Life. And not one of their suggestions seems to go to the
root of the matter.

Let us therefore in thought go back tens of thousands of years, and
conceive the genus Homo as a race gradually awakening to reason but as
yet unfettered by inherited traditions and creeds. Let us imagine Man
ere he began to make gods in his own image. Let us remember that what
would strike him as the greatest of all marvels would of necessity be
Life itself, and that far and away the next greatest marvel must have
been the glorious Sun; the obvious source of earth life, and Lord of
the Hosts of Heaven.

Let us bear in mind, too, that though the Nature Worship of our remote
ancestors had other striking features, the facts mentioned would lead
to the predominance of the phallic idea, and to its association with
Sun-God worship. And as Life, the greatest marvel of all, must have had
a symbol allotted to it at a very early date, let us ask ourselves what
the untutored mind of Man would be most likely to select as its symbol.

To this question there is, so far as the author can see, but one
reasonable answer:--the figure of the cross.

And the author conceives this to be the real solution of the difficulty
for this reason:--because the figure of the cross is the simplest
possible representation of that union of two bodies or two sexes or two
powers or two principles, which alone produces life.

For the ancients cannot fail to have perceived that all life more
immediately proceeds from the _union_ of _two_ principles; and the
first, readiest, simplest, and most natural symbol of Life, was