bicornuate uterus), according to Griffith
("Hieroglyphics," p. 60). (c) The Egyptian sign for a key.
(d) The double axe of Crete and Egypt 191

Fig. 9.--The Egyptian emblem for gold, the sign _nub_ 222

Chapter I.

INCENSE AND LIBATIONS.[3]

The dragon was primarily a personification of the life-giving and
life-destroying powers of water. This chapter is concerned with the
genesis of this biological theory of water and its relationship to the
other germs of civilisation.

It is commonly assumed that many of the elementary practices of
civilization, such as the erection of rough stone buildings, whether
houses, tombs, or temples, the crafts of the carpenter and the
stonemason, the carving of statues, the customs of pouring out libations
or burning incense, are such simple and obvious procedures that any
people might adopt them without prompting or contact of any kind with
other populations who do the same sort of things. But if such apparently
commonplace acts be investigated they will be found to have a long and
complex history. None of these things that seem so obvious to us was
attempted until a multitude of diverse circumstances became focussed in
some particular community, and constrained some individual to make the
discovery. Nor did the quality of obviousness become apparent even when
the enlightened discoverer had gathered up the threads of his
predecessor's ideas and woven them into the fabric of a new invention.
For he had then to begin the strenuous fight against the opposition of
his fellows before he could induce them to accept his discovery. He had,
in fact, to contend against their preconceived ideas and their lack of
appreciation of the significance of the progress he had made before he
could persuade them of its "obviousness". That is the history of most
inventions since the world began. But it is begging the question to
pretend that because tradition has made such inventions seem simple and
obvious to us it is unnecessary to inquire into their history or to
assume that any people or any individual simply did these things without
any instruction when the spirit moved it or him so to do.

The customs of burning incense and making libations in religious
ceremonies are so widespread and capable of being explained in such
plausible, though infinitely diverse, ways that it has seemed
unnecessary to inquire more deeply into their real origin and