When a wave of love takes over a human being. . . such an exaltation takes him that he knows he has put his finger on the pulse of the great secret and the great answer.
Death is the inseparable antecedent of life; the seed dies in order to produce the plant, and earth itself is rent asunder and dies at the birth of Dionusos. Hence the significancy of the phallus, or of its inoffensive substitute, the obelisk, rising as an emblem of resurrection by the tomb of buried Deity at Lerna or at Sais.