symbolismn.

1653 J. Webster Academiarum Examen 24 Who can be ignorant of the..compendious use of all sorts of Symbolisms, that have but any insight into Algebraick Arithmetick?

1841 T. Carlyle On Heroes iv. 198 ‘You do not believe,’ said Coleridge; ‘you only believe that you believe.’ It is the final scene in all kinds of Worship and Symbolism.

1850 J. S. Blackie in tr. Æschylus Lyrical Dramas I. 327 These volcanic movements in the religious symbolism of early Greece became giants.

1870 D. Rock Textile Fabrics (S. Kensington Mus.) Introd. p. cxxxvii Heraldry grew out of symbolism.

1874 J. T. Micklethwaite Mod. Parish Churches 6 Durandus himself, the prophet of symbolism, often gives alternative interpretations.

1882 F. W. Farrar Early Days Christianity II. 273 Every item of the symbolism..is borrowed from ancient prophecy.

1835 J. B. Robertson in tr. F. von Schlegel Philos. of Hist. I. p. xiv All the divine symbolism in nature and in man.

1871 A. C. Fraser Life & Lett. G. Berkeley iii. 63 The theory of sense symbolism, which connected Berkeley with the Baconian movement.

1876 ‘Ouida’ In Winter City xiv. 388 To embroider..the loveliest Bacchic symbolisms.

1866 Contemp. Rev. May 60 By Symbolism in art, poetic or pictorial, we understand the attempt to suggest higher, wider, purer, or deeper ideas by the use of simpler, humbler, or more familiar thoughts or objects.

1898 R. N. Bain in Literature 12 Nov. 453/1 Symbolism is the name given by French critics to that revolt against the dryness and photographic exactness of naturalism, which..is characterized, at its best, by a..somewhat dreamy poetry, and half-naïve, half-mystical attempt to interpret the moods of nature through the medium of human sensations.