Ebook The Migration of Symbols

Those familiar with the delightful papers con tributed in recent years by the Count Goblet d'alviella to the Bulletin de z'ama'émz'e royale a'e Belgique on le Tricula, ou vardhamana des Bouddhistes, l'histoire du Globe Ailée, la Croix Gammée ou Svastika, les Arbres Paradisiaques, and other allusive types of the ancient reli ions of the Old World, warmly welcomed the pub ication, at Paris, in 1892, of his collective work on La Mi grmzoles, setting forth on a more syste matic plan, and with fuller references to original authorities and illustrations from authentic ex amples, the matured and permanent results of the learned and accomplished author's examination of the enigmatic subject of which he is now everywhere recognized as the greatest living exponent. It had been treated by others in a similar comprehensive spirit, but never before in the same thoroughly scientific manner; and thus, while the writings of Dupuis and Creuzer have, in spite of their immense erudition, but served to discredit it, and are already obsolete, the Count Goblet d'alviella, by pursuing his investigations on a severely inductive basis, at once, and, so to say, single handed, raised the inquiry to its proper position as a department of archaeological research, producing a work destined to exert an abiding in?uence on the whole future of the study of symbolism, and also, I would fain hope, on that of the decorative designs of the artistic industries of the West. One, indeed, of Messrs.