s
the Great Mother as well as the Eye of Re, was the bond of
identification of the Great Mother with an eye. This was probably how
the eye acquired the animating powers of the Giver of Life.

A whole volume might be written upon the almost world-wide diffusion of
these beliefs regarding the cow, as far as Scotland and Ireland in the
west, and in their easterly migration probably as far as America, to the
confusion alike of its ancient artists and its modern ethnologists.[104]

As an illustration of the identification of the cow's attributes with
those of the life-giving Great Mother, I might refer to the late
Professor Moulton's commentary[105] on the ancient Iranian Gathas, where
cow's flesh is given to mortals by Yima to make them immortal. "May we
connect it with another legend whereby at the Regeneration Mithra is to
make men immortal by giving them to eat the fat of the ... primeval Cow
from whose slain body, according to the Aryan legends adopted by
Mithraism, mankind was first created?"[106]

[103: See A. Moret, _op. cit._ p. 81, _inter alia_.]

[104: See the Copan sculptured monuments described by Maudslay in Godman
and Salvin's "Biologia Centrali-Americana," Archaeology, Plate 46,
representing "Stela D," with two serpents in the places occupied by the
Indian elephants in Stela B--concerning which see _Nature_, November 25,
1915. To one of these intertwined serpents is attached a cow-headed
human daemon. Compare also the Chiriqui figure depicted by MacCurdy,
"A Study of Chiriquian Antiquities," Yale University Press, 1911, fig.
361, p. 209.]

[105: "Early Religious Poetry of Persia," pp. 42 and 43.]

[106: _Op. cit._ p. 43. But I think these legends accredited to the
Aryans owe their parentage to the same source as the Egyptian beliefs
concerning the cow, and especially the remarkable mysteries upon which
Moret has been endeavouring to throw some light--"Mysteres Egyptiens,"
p. 43.]

The Diffusion of Culture.

In these pages I have made no attempt to deal with the far-reaching and
intricate problems of the diffusion abroad of the practices and beliefs
which I have been discussing. But the thoughts and the aspirations of
every cultured people are permeated through and through with their
influence.

It is important to remember that in almost every stage of the
development of these complex customs and ideas not merely the "finished
product" but also the ingredients out of which it was built up were