Certain points appear to have once existed in common to nations on every part of the earth previous to authentic history, and in these America had probably more or less her share, as appears from certain monuments and relics of her early races.  They are as follows:—­

1.  A worship of nature, based on the inscrutable mystery of generation with birth and death.  As these two extremes caused each other, they were continually identified in the religious myth or symbol employed to represent either.

2.  This great principle of action, developing itself into birth and death, was regarded as being symbolized in every natural object, and corresponding with these there were created myths, or ‘stories,’ setting forth the principal mystery of nature in a thousand poetic forms.

3.  The formula according to which all myths were shaped was that of transition, or the passing through.  The germ, in the mother or in the plant, which after its sleep reappeared in life, was also recognized in Spring, or Adonis, coming to light and warmth after the long death of winter in the womb of the earth.  The ark, which floats on the waters, bearing within it the regenerator, signified the same; so did the cup or horn into which the wine of life was poured and from which it was drunk; so too did nuts, or any object capable of representing latent existence.  The passing into a cavern through a door between pillars or rocky passes, or even the wearing of rings, all intimated the same mystery—­the going into and the coming forth into renewed life.

4.  But the great active principle which lay at the foundation of the mystery of birth and death, or of action, was set forth by the serpent—­the type of good and evil, of life and destruction—­the first intelligence.  It is the constant recurrence of this symbol among the early monuments of America, as of the Old World, which proves most conclusively the existence at one time of a common religion, or ‘cultus.’  It was probably meant to signify water from its wavy curves, and the snake-like course of rivers, as inundation seems to have been, according to early faith, the most prolific source of the destruction of nature, and yet the most active in its revival.

There are in Brittany vast lines of massy Druidic stones, piled sometimes for leagues in regular order, in such a manner as to represent colossal serpents.  Those who will consult the French Dracontia will be astonished at the labor expended on these strange temples.  Squier has shown that the earth-works of the West represent precisely the same symbol.  Mexico and South America abound, like Europe and the East, in serpent emblems; they twine around the gods; they are gods themselves; they destroy as Typhon, and give life in the hands of Esculapius.