In the preceding pages the view is advanced that the ancient cross-symbol
or swastika was first used by man, presumably in circumpolar regions, as a
record of the opposite positions assumed, by circumpolar constellations,
in performing their nocturnal and annual circuit around Polaris. Employed
as a year sign in the first case, the cross or swastika later became the
symbol of the Four Quarters, of quadruplicate division and of a stable
central power whose rule extended in four directions and controlled the
entire Heaven.
At some remote period of antiquity man developed the idea of social
organization and, in India, ancient Egypt and Babylonia-Assyria, actual
proofs exist that the earliest cities and states were divided into four
quarters, a division involving the distribution of the population into
four tribes under a central chief. Wherever this division was carried out,
it represented an attempt to harmonize human society and the establishment
of the ideal of a religious democracy, founded on principles of law,
order, justice, peace and good will. The pyramid, a primitive form of
which consisted of four stories, and cruciform sacred structures, may be
regarded as monuments commemorating a cosmical and territorial
organization into four parts. The more extended conception of seven
directions in space, consisting of the Above and Below, or Heaven and
Earth, the Four Quarters and the sacred Middle, the synopsis of all, was
also evolved. In the confederations of India and Iran, and Arabia, in the
seven-storied towers of Babylonia, and in the division of the Egyptians
into seven classes, we find the earliest traces of a practical application
of this numerical division.
The ancient historical records of Egypt and Greece reveal that, in the
earliest polities, the population was divided into groups consisting of a
fixed number of individuals, officially represented by chieftains, or
officers of the state, and that, in consequence, a state formed a unit,
constituted according to a mathematical scheme, which was also applied to
the regulation of time. Each officer of the state held office for a fixed
term, in a prescribed order of rotation. The year was divided into a fixed
number of seasons, marked by the positions of a circumpolar constellation,
and this therefore appeared to regulate not only the cycle of time but the
governmental rotation of office and the entire activity of the community.
Starting from a common basis of quadruplicate division in different
countries, a great variety of constitutions of state was independently
invented by statesmen and philosophers, who devised cycles produced by
different combinations of numbers and signs, the object being to regulate
time and communal life in imitation of the law, order and harmony existing
in the motion of the stars and under the guidance of a supreme ruler, the
earthly representative of Polaris.
The origin of these ideas and governmental scheme, in the Old World, is
assigned by competent authorities to a northern race which had discovered
the art of fire-making and evolved a religious cult and ritual suggested
by it, in association with pole-star worship. Their civilization is
supposed to have been developed by contact with a southern race, in
Phrygia, and to have been carried at a remote period by their seafaring
descendants to India, Asia Minor, Egypt and beyond the pillars of
Hercules, to European countries, situated on the Atlantic.
The present investigation brings into prominence the fact that, just as
the older Andean art closely resembles that of the early Mediterranean, an
observation first made by Prof. F. W. Putnam,(159) so the fundamental
principles, numerical scheme and plan of the state founded by the foreign
Incas in Peru, resembled those formulated by Plato in his description of
an ideal state.
It is a remarkable fact, on which the writer lays utmost stress, that,
whereas there is a marked difference between the Chinese and the Mexican
and Peruvian divisions of the elements and numerical cycles, the American
systems exactly agree with those propounded by Greek philosophers and said
to have reached them from more ancient centres of culture, presumably
through the Phœnicians. On the other hand, there undoubtedly exist
remarkable analogies between the Chinese and Hindu and Mexican
sociological, chronological, cyclical systems, their principles being
precisely the same. These close analogies as well as the marked
divergences which have been noted can only be satisfactorily accounted for
by the assumption that each of these countries derived their civilization
from the same source. Over and over again different writers have pointed
out undeniable analogies and resemblances between the highest forms of
American civilization and that of China, India, Asia Minor, the
Mediterranean and Western European countries. At the same time modern
research has shown that the seafarers, whom we shall conveniently
designate as the Phœnicians, acted as the intermediaries of ancient Old
World civilization and formulated a culture which incorporated and formed
a curious compound of elements drawn from different countries and people.
While investigation, moreover, reveals that the conquest of Phœnicia and
intermittent periods of warfare and persecution directed against the
religion and democratic principles of its people, must have furnished the
most powerful incentive for them to extend their voyages of discovery and
seek distant lands where colonies might be established. It is obvious
that, if safe places of refuge were found, their existence would remain a
secret and that, in course of time, a complete isolation of distant
colonies would result.
Considering that it would be premature to formulate a final conclusion on
a subject which demands so much more investigation, I merely observe here
that, as far as I can see, the conditions which existed and survive
amongst the aborigines of America would be fully accounted for by the
assumption that they received certain elements of culture and civilization
from Mediterranean seafarers who, at widely separated, critical periods of
Old World history, may have transported refugees and would-be colonists or
founders of ideal republics and “divine polities” to different parts of
the hidden or divine land of “the West,” the existence of which was known
by tradition to the Egyptian priesthood.
Under such circumstances it is apparent how the American Continent could
have become an isolated area of preservation where archaic and primitive
forms of civilization, religious cult, symbolism and industries, drawn at
different epochs, from various, more or less important centres or from the
outposts of Old World culture, would be handed down, transformed through
the active and increasing influence of the native elements. The latter
must always have been markedly predominant since it must be assumed, if at
all, that the number of individuals who reached America, and the
subsequent duration of their lives, must have been extremely limited. What
is more, as Montezuma related that the colonists, from whom he descended,
married native women, it is obvious that, from the outset, foreign and
native influences were combined.
There was one main element, however, underlying both foreign and native
civilizations, which formed the basis of both, united and made them as
one, namely, the recognition of fixed immutable laws governing the
universe, attained, by both races, by long-continued observation of
Polaris and the “Northern” constellations.
To me the most precious result of the preceding investigation is the
gradual recognition that the entire intellectual, moral and religious
evolution of mankind has been the result of the fixed laws which govern
the universe. From the time when our world began to revolve in space, at
intervals, a luminous point of fixity in space has existed and an unknown
force, irresistible as that which controls the magnetic needle and
gyrostat,(160) appears to have raised the mind of man from ignorance and
darkness and guided his footsteps towards a higher scale of existence and
a more elevated conception of a supreme central power.
From this, amongst favored races, the higher conception of an invisible
supreme deity seems to have been gradually developed by the human mind, as
it rose in the scale of spiritual evolution. To many, the idea that it was
the observation of the stars and the recognition of the fixity of Polaris
which first led man to realize the existence of immutable laws, and of a
supreme celestial power ruling the universe and to form the sacred sign of
the cross, will appear as the fulfilment of the text in Genesis, which
expressly mentions as the first, and therefore chief, purpose for which
the lights in the firmament were created, that “they should be for _signs_
and portents, for seasons, for days and years ... and for lights.”
When we realize that all revolving spheres in space, and the beings that
may live upon them, have been, are, or shall be subject to the same
conditions as govern our tiny world, forcing their intellectual evolution
to proceed in parallel lines to ours, we are compelled to recognize the
existence of One Great Plan, and to render reverent homage to the
Master-Architect of the Universe.