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Old Symbols for New

Modern" is a vastly overworked adjective. We hear of modern ideas, modern art, modern music, modern women, modern this and modern that without realising that the word means previsely nothing. Every age has used the word or its equivalent to express the thought that it offers something new. Every age has been mistaken in thinking that it had anything new to offer. The present jeers at the past just as much as the past inclines to patronise the present. Both look ridiculous in doing so. Hence the everlasting bickering between age and youth destroys, in the impartial observer, respect for age and admiration for youth. The present is a pattern from the past and merges into it at the last without any murmur. Violence of change is but for the moment—man remains fixed, his ideas changing in expression only, his dreams the same. He procreates consciously enough, but unconsciously hands on the image of his past. He can no more avoid doing so than he could avoid being born.

Just as man hands down to his children his physical and mental attributes and those of his forbears, he also passes on his institutions. Generally he passes them on just as unwittingly. It is consequently not without interest to discover how and when the symbols of religious and social life of antiquity are used to-day. No one knows why. They have persisted in spite of altered conditions. From the mists of the past reach unseen hands moulding our ideas and actions. We are born to accept the past because we are born of it. The most rabid reactionary is as much a victim of this as any other person. He will usually, if he takes the trouble to enquire, find without much research that his "modern" ideas were the heresies of some almost forgotten civilization. The discovery ought to make him more humble, but it rarely does.

Twentieth century civilization (sic) might deserve the description "modern" if it could devise something new. Mechanical devices are not new—no one can explain the making of monuments ages old. We can but guess at the methods of our ancestors, but we know that they were capable of producing lasting works at which we can only marvel. It is a matter of opinion whether their infinite patience was not worth and did not achieve more than our time-pressed crazy speed. In any case, the method of accomplishment is immaterial beside the result.

To-day in our academic legal and religious observances we use the symbols of antiquity. Perhaps it is no bad thing that we do. To the more thoughtful it may perchance bring that decent humility which is the beginning of all knowledge. We are all in some sort "gleaners after time," and it is no reflection on our preachers, lawyers, and scholars if we point out (albeit quite gently) that their rituals, dress, and even their ideas, are relics of a past so ancient that it defies the antiquarian, and yet so new that it may be reckoned among the eternities.

Sun worship, one of the oldest forms, gives us a great many of our symbols. The ancient belief, which persisted until quite recently, that the earth was flat and square, accounts for some others. Egyptian mythology and worship is responsible for many of our most common symbols, such as the bishop's hat and apron, the king's sceptre, and the mace in Parliament. The courts of justice are clothed in symbolism, and the universities are quite as far advanced in this direction as they were some two thousand years or so ago.

Let Us take the university first. The foursquare trencher cap with its tassel is merely the symbol of the square flat earth with the sea flowing from the centre in all directions. While he wears it the undergraduate is reminded of the fact that his position in the world of learning is on the earthly plane. His black gown symbolises the dark earth not illumined by the sun. When he takes a bachelor's degree he wears the black robe, but with a hood edged with white fur. The colour of the hood varies with the degree, but the fur symbolises that he has risen in knowledge above the earth as high as the clouds, which are white like wool. The symbolic colour of the hood of the bachelor of laws is blue, that of the sky when the sun is fully risen, showing the justice of heaven; the colour of that of the bachelor of arts is pink, that of the colour of the sky at early dawn before the sun is fully risen—in fact a more earthly hue; that of the page 29 bachelor of agriculture is green, the colour of the springing grass. When the master's degree is attained the fur is discarded from the hood, symbolising that the altitude of the clouds has been passed and the wearer has ascended into the clearer atmosphere near to the giver of all light—the sun.

The majesty of the law is quite clotted with symbolism: Parliament knows and submits to it, judge and barrister are clothed in it, and one is tempted to wonder if the proverbial delays of the law are not the result of an attempt to symbolise the slow judgment of heaven.

The speaker of the House of Representatives and the judges of His Majesty's Courts wear white wigs on their heads, and white tabs below their faces. "His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow," says Revelations. The sun of justice had the clouds above it and below, and it shines upon all men alike. The judge in the court is the sun of justice shining impartially. The barristers wear a wig of slightly different make and the white tabs also. They are the lesser luminaries, the myriad of stars pleading with the sun for the justice of heaven.

The Chief Justice wears (on certain occasions) scarlet robes. This indicates that he is like the sun itself, risen beyond the earthly colour, but before the full glory. He is just above the horizon. His ermine cape and wig again symbolise the clouds. When sentence of death is passed the judge places over his wig, or on it, a black cap or cloth. The sun is being obscured for the moment by a dark cloud which (for the prisoner at least) darkens its light.

The speaker of the House is likewise the symbol of the sun that shines impartially upon all. He favours no one side, and preserves the decent order of the heavens in the place where he is set. That he sometimes has unruly subjects is but indicative of the general imperfectness of things. The minor luminaries are not always well-behaved, and occasionally imagine they are comets instead of falling stars.

Both the speaker and the judges wear a full wig, showing their importance as arbiters of justice and fair play. From this we have the expression "big-wig," meaning a high official. The bathos is, of course, as apparent as it is deplorable!

The figure of Justice is also interesting. Ma-at was the god of right, truth, justice, or Law in the pantheon of the Egyptians. The negative confession uttered by a deceased person was spoken in the vestibule to the throne-room of Osiris. This vestibule was that of Ma-at, who held the emblem of justice, the balance, represented in the hieroglyphic writing by a feather, which, as the Egyptians knew, has an equal number of fronds on either side. Ma-at holding the balance was an alternative deity, represented as either male or female. The figure of Justice holding the balance (or scales) is the god or goddess Ma-at. It is perhaps unfortunate that the bandage concealing the eyes of this figure has been added to the symbolism, for it might possibly be interpreted to mean that the vision of the legal deity is slightly obscured. The balance should have been sufficient indication of impartiality without addition of anything which might be misunderstood. However, among so many symbolical virtues this defect may be of no great matter.

The churches are so packed with symbols that an exhaustive survey is tiring. Its bishops are, however, so beautifully dressed in them they deserve mention.

The circle of the sun held in the horns of a bull was a symbol of gods and royalty in Egypt and in Chaldea. Monarch after monarch and god after god is depicted with a headdress of this type. The priests of Chaldea more than a thousand years before the Christian era wore the same head covering. The rounded hat with its turned-up brim (held in place by tapes) worn by bishops of the Anglican Church is exactly the same symbolic headgear. A comparison of the two makes the likeness plain. The gaiters are the hind legs of the bull, and the bishop's apron its members. If one imagines a rotund ecclesiastic on all fours and wearing this dress the similarity will be obvious.

Our small life is surrounded by such symbols significant of past beliefs and age-old worship. Man in the dawn of the world sought and found his gods in the phenomena around him. They, or so he thought, answered his seeking and satisfied his natural desire for support in an alarming world. So symbolism begins. Through the ages it runs, and we to-day inherit it. page 30 We shall no doubt pass on the inheritance, such as it may be. To some extent, directly or indirectly, we are obeying the unspoken commands of peoples of the far past, of nations almost forgotten, of pagans who, whatever their limitations may seem to us, have impressed their thoughts upon the centuries.

The straggling procession of humanity passes along the highway of life and out of the mists come poet, priest, peasant, king and courtier, all manner of men, to dwell for a while in the sun and pass into the mists again. As through the ages it passes by, one similarity only is seen. The type of the past is the type of the present. Time has no effect upon the nature of the poet, whether he be clad in toga or trousers. Man changes only externally, and since the symbols he uses are in some way an expression of his inward self he seems reluctant to let them go. When he does we may perhaps be able to welcome something really new. I am afraid that it will be a cold welcome.

—H. R. B.