{p.15}
THE ORIGIN
OF ALL
RELIGIOUS WORSHIP
² ² ² ²
CHAPTER I
OF THE GOD-UNIVERSE AND HIS WORSHIP
The word God seems intended to express the idea of a power universal and eternally active, which gives impulse to the movements of all Nature, following the laws of a harmony alike constant and wonderful, and developing itself in various forms, which organized matter can take, which blends itself with and animates everything and which seems to constitute One, and only to belong to itself, in its infinite variety of modifications. Such is the vital force, which comprehends in itself the Universe, or that systematic combination of all the bodies, which one eternal chain binds amongst themselves and which a perpetual movement rolls majestically through the bosom of space and Time without end. When man began to reason upon the causes of his existence and preservation, also upon those of the multiplied effects, which are born and die around him, where else but in this vast and admirable Whole could he have placed at first that sovereignly powerful cause, which brings forth everything, and in the bosom of which all re-enters, in {p.16} order to issue again by a succession of new generations and under different forms. This power being that of the World itself, it was therefore the World, which was considered as God, or as the supreme and universal cause of all the effects produced by it, of which mankind forms a part. This is that great God, the first or rather the only God, who has manifested himself to man through the veil of the matter which he animates and which forms the immensity of the Deity. This is also the sense of that sublime inscription of the temple of Sais: I am all that has been, all that is, and all that shall be, and no mortal has lifted yet the veil, that covers me.
Although this God was everywhere and was all, which bears a character of grandeur and perpetuity in this eternal World, yet did man prefer to look for him in those elevated regions, where that mighty and radiant luminary seems to travel through space, overflowing the Universe with the waves of its light, and through which the most beautiful as well as the most beneficient action of the Deity is enacted on Earth. It would seem as if the Almighty had established his throne above that splendid azure vault, sown with brilliant lights, that from the summit of the heavens he held the reins of the World, that he directed the movements of its vast body, and contemplated himself in forms as varied as they are admirable, wherein he modifies himself incessantly. "The World," says Pliny, "or what we otherwise call Heaven, which comprises in its immensity the whole creation, is an eternal, an infinite God, which has never been " created, and which shall never come to an end. To look for something else beyond it, is useless labour for man, and out (f his reach. Behold that truly sacred Being, eternal and immense, which in eludes within itself everything; it is All in All, or rather itself is All. It is the work of Nature, and itself is Nature." Thus spoke the greatest philosopher as well as the wisest of ancient naturalists. He believed that the World and Heaven ought to be called the supreme cause and God. According {p.17} to his theory, the World is eternally working within itself and upon itself, it is at the same time the maker and the work. It is the universal cause of all the effects, which it contains. Nothing exists outside of it, it is all that has been, all that is, and all that shall be, in other words: Nature itself or God, because by the name of God we mean the eternal infinite and sacred Being, which as cause, contains within itself all that is produced. This is the character, which Pliny attributes to the World, which he calls the great God, beyond whom we shall seek in vain for another.
This doctrine is traced up to the highest antiquity with the Egyptians and the East Indians. The former had their great Pan, who combined in himself all the characters of universal Nature, and who was originally merely a symbolical expression of her fruitful power.
The latter have their God Vishnu, whom they confound frequently with the World, although they make of him sometimes only a fraction of that treble force, of which the universal power is composed. They say, that the Universe is nothing else but the form of Vishnu; that he carries it within his bosom; that all that has been, all that is, and all that shall be, is in him; that he is the beginning and the end of all things; that he is All, that he is a Being alone and supreme, who shows himself right before our eyes, in a thousand forms. He is an infinite: Being, adds the Bagawadam, inseparable from the Universe, which essentially is one with him, because say the Indians. Vishnu is All, and All is in him; which is entirely a similar expression as the one used by Pliny, in order to characterize the God-Universe, or the World, the supreme cause of all the effects produced.
In the opinion of the Brahmins, as well as that of Pliny, the great-maker or the great Demiurgus is not separated or distinguished from his work. The World is not a machine foreign to the Divinity, which is created and moved by it and outside {p.18} of it; it is the development of the divine substance; it is one of the forms under which God shows himself before our eyes. The essence of the World is one and indivisible with that of Bramah, who organizes it. He, who sees the World, sees God, so far as men can see him; as he, who sees the body of a man and his movements, sees man, so much as can be seen of him, although the principle of his movements, of his life and of his mind, remain concealed under the envelope, which the hand touches and the eyes perceives. It is the same with the sacred body of the Deity or of the God-Universe. Nothing exists but in him and through him; outside of him all is nonentity or abstraction. His power is that of the Divinity itself. His movements are those of the great Being, principle of all the others; and his wonderful order is the organization of his visible substance and of that portion of himself, which God shows to man. In this magnificent spectacle, which the Deity presents to us of itself, were conceived the first ideas of God and the supreme cause; on him were fixed the eyes of all those, who have investigated the source of life of all creatures. The first men worshipped the various members of this sacred body of the World, and not feeble mortals, who are carried away in the current of the torrent of ages. And where is indeed the man, who could have maintained the parallel, which might have been drawn between him and Nature?
If it is alleged, that it is to Force, to which altars were first erected, where is that mortal, whose strength could have been compared to that immeasurable, incalculable one, which is scattered all over the World and developed under so many forms and through so many different degrees, producing such wonderful effects; which holds the Sun in equilibrium in the centre of the planetary system; which propels the planets, and yet, retains them in their orbits; which unchains the winds, heaves up the seas or calms the storm; which darts the lightning, displaces and overthrows mountains by volcanic erup- {p.19} tions, and holds the whole Universe in eternal activity? Can it be believed, that the admiration, which this force even to this day produces on our minds, did not equally affect the first mortals, who contemplated in silence the spectacle of the World, and who tried to divine the almighty cause, which set so many different springs in motion? Instead of supposing that the son of Alcmena had replaced the God-Universe and brought him into oblivion, is it not more simple to assume, that man, not being able to paint or represent the power of Nature, except by images as feeble as himself, endeavoured to find in that of the lion or in that of a robust man the figurative expression, with which he designed to awaken the idea of the force of the World? It was not the man or Hercules, who had raised himself to the rank of the Deity, it was the Deity which was lowered and abased to the level of man, who lacked the means to paint or represent it. Therefore, it was not the apotheosis of man, but rather the degradation of the Deity by symbols and images, which has seemed to displace all in the worship rendered to the supreme cause and its parts, and in the feasts designed to celebrate its greatest operations. If it is to the gratitude of mankind for benefits received, that the institution of religious ceremonies and the most august mysteries of antiquity, must be attributed, can it be believed, that mortals, whether Ceres or Bacchus, had higher merits in the eyes of men, than that Earth, which from its fruitful bosom brings forth the crops and fruits, which Heaven feeds with its waters, and which the Sun warms and matures with its fire? that Nature, showering upon us its bountiful treasures, should have been forgotten, and that only some mortals should have been remembered, who had given instructions how to use it? To suppose such a thing, would be to acknowledge our ignorance of the power, which Nature always exercised over man, whose attention is ceaselessly claimed by her, on account of his absolute dependence on her, and of his wants. True it is, that [p.20] sometimes audacious mortals wanted to contend with the veritable gods for their incense and to share it with them, but such an extorted worship lasted only so long, as flattery and fear had an interest in its continuation. Domitian was nothing but a monster under Trajan. Augustus himself was soon forgotten, but Jupiter remained master of the Capitol. Old Saturn was always held in veneration amongst the ancient communities of Italy, where he was worshipped as the God of time, the same as Janus, or the Genius who opens to him the course of the seasons. Pomona and Flora preserved their altars, and the various constellations continued to be the heralds of the feasts of the sacred calendar, because they were those of Nature.
The reason, why the worship of ma}; has always met with obstacles in its establishment and maintenance amongst its equals, is to be found in man himself, when compared with the great Being, which we call the Universe. In man all is weakness, while in the Universe all is grand, all is strength, all is power. Man is born, grows and dies, and scarcely shares for an instant the eternal duration of the World, of which he occupies such an infinitesimal point. Being the issue of dust, he very soon returns to it entirely, while Nature alone remains with its formations and its power, and from the remains of mortal beings is reconstructing new ones. It knows no old age, nor alteration of its strength. Our fathers did not see it come into existence, nor shall our great grand children see it come to an end. When we shall descend into the grave, we shall leave it behind just as young, as when we first sprung into life from its bosom. The farthest posterity shall see the Sun rise as brilliant, as we see it now, and as our fathers saw it. To be born to grow, to get old and to die, express ideas, which do not belong to universal Nature, they being only the attributes of mankind and of the other effects produced by the former. "The Universe," says Ocellus of Lucania, "when con- {p.21} sidered in its totality, gives us no indication whatsoever, which would betray an origin or portend a destruction, nobody has seen it spring into existence, nor grow or improve, it is always the same in the same manner, always uniform and like itself." Thus spoke one of the oldest philosophers, whose writings have come down to us, and since then our observations have made no additions to our knowledge. The Universe seems to us the same, as it appeared to him. Is not this character of perpetuity belonging to the Deity, or to the supreme cause? What would then God be, If he was not all that, which to us seems to be Nature and the internal power which moves it? Shall we search beyond this World for that eternal uncreated Being, of which there is no proof of existence? Is it in the class of produced effects, that we shall place that immense cause, beyond which we see nothing but phantoms, the creatures of our own imagination? I know, that the mind of man, whose reveries are uncontrollable, has gone beyond that, which the eye perceives, and has overleaped the barrier, which Nature has placed before its sanctuary. It has substituted for the cause it saw in action, an other cause, which it did not see, as beyond and superior to it, without in the least troubling itself about the means to prove its reality. Man asked, who had made the World, just as if it had been proved, that the World had been made; nor did he at all enquire, who had made this God, foreign to the World, entirely convinced, that one could exist, without having been made; all of which the philosophers have really thought of the World, or of the universal and visible cause. Because man is only an effect, he wanted also the World to be one, and in the delirium of his metaphysics, he imagined an abstract Being called God, separated from the World and from the cause of the World, placed above the immense sphere, which circumscribes the system of the Universe, and it was only himself alone the guarantee of the existence of this new cause; and thus did {p.22} man create God. But this audacious conjecture is not his first step. The ascendancy, which the visible cause exercises over him is too strong for conceiving the idea of shaking it off so soon. He believed for a long while in the evidence of his own eyes, before he indulged in the illusions of his own imagination, and lost himself in the unknown regions of an invisible World. He saw God, or the great cause in the Universe, before he searched for him beyond it, and he circumscribed his Worship to the sphere of the World, which he saw, before he imagined a God in a World, which he did not see. This abuse of the mind, this refinement of metaphysics is of a very recent date in the history of religious opinions, and may be considered as an exception of the universal religion, which had for its object the visible Nature, and the active and spiritual force, which seems to spread through all its parts, as it may be easily ascertained by the testimony of historians, and by the political and religious monuments of the ancients.
{p.23}
CHAPTER II
EVIDENCES OF HISTORY AND OF POLITICAL AND
RELIGIOUS MONUMENTS,
OF THE UNIVERSALITY OF THE WORSHIP OF NATURE
Henceforth we shall not be satisfied with mere arguments, in order to prove that the Universe and its members, considered as so many parts of the great cause or of the Great Being, must have attracted the attention and the homage of mortals. We shall be able to demonstrate by facts, and by a summary of the religious history of all nations, that that, which ought to have come to pass, has really happened, and that all men of all countries, since the highest antiquity, have had no other Gods, but those of Nature, in other words, the World and it most active and most luminous parts, Heaven, Earth, the Sun and the Moon, the Planets, the fixed Stars, the Elements and in general all, which bears a character of cause and perpetuity in Nature. To portray and to praise in songs the World and its operations, was in olden times the same, as portraying and glorifying the Deity.
In whatever direction we may look on the ancient as well as on the new continent, Nature and its principal agents have had everywhere their altars. Its august body and its sacred members were the object of veneration of all nations. "Chaeremon," and the wisest priests of Egypt believed with Pliny, "that nothing but the World and the visible cause should be admitted, and they supported their opinion by that of the oldest Egyptians," who, they say, "did only acknowledge as Gods, the Sun, the Moon, the Planets, the Stars composing the Zodiac, and all those decades which by their rising and setting mark the divisions of the signs, their subdivisions into decans, the horoscope and the stars which preside there, and which are {p.24} called the mighty rulers of Heaven. They aver, that the Egyptians who looked upon the Sun as a great God, architect and moderator of the Universe—explained not only the fable of Osiris, but also all their religious fables generally by the Stars and by the action of their movements, by their apparition and by their disappearance, by the phases of the Moon, by the increase or the diminution of its light, by the progressive march of the Sun, by the divisions of the Heavens and of time into two great parts, one of which was assigned to the Day, and the other to the Night; by the Nile and finally by the action of physical causes. Those are—they say—the Gods, sovereign arbiters of destiny, which our fathers have honoured by sacrifices and to which they have erected images." Indeed, we have shown in our larger work, that even the animals, which were consecrated in the temples of Egypt and honoured by worship, represented the various functions of the great cause and had reference to Heaven, to the Sun and the Moon, and to the different constellations, as it has been well observed by Lucian. For instance, that beautiful star Sirius, or the dog star, was worshipped under the name of Anubis, and under the form of a sacred dog was fed in the temples. The hawk represented the Sun, the bird Ibis, the Moon, and astronomy was the soul of the whole religious system of the Egyptians. They ascribed the government of the World to the Sun and the Moon, which were worshipped under the name of Osiris and Isis, as the two primary and eternal Divinities, from which depended all that great work of generation and vegetation in this sublunary World. In honour of that luminary, which dispenses the light, they built the city of the Sun or Heliopolis, and a temple in which they placed the statue of that God. It was gilded and represented a young beardless man, whose arm was raised and who held in one hand a whip, in the attitude of a charioteer. In his left hand was the lightning and a bundle of ears of corn. {p.25} They represented thus the power and at the same time the beneficence of that God, who darts the lightning and makes the crops grow and ripen.
The river Nile, which in its periodical overflow fertilizes tile fields of Egypt with its mud, was also honoured as a God, or as one of the beneficent causes of Nature. It had its altars and temples at Nilopolis or at the city of the Nile. Near the cataracts, above Elephantis, there was a college of priests, appointed for its worship. The most magnificent feasts were given in its honour, principally at the moment, when it commences to overflow the plain, which was thereby fertilized every year. They carried its statue around the fields with great ceremonies; afterwards the people went to the theatre and assisted at public feasts; they celebrated dances and chanted hymns similar to those, with which they addressed Jupiter, whose functions devolved on the soil of Egypt upon the Nile. All the other active parts of Nature received the respectful homage of the Egyptians. There was an inscription on an ancient column in honour of the immortal Gods, and the Gods which are mentioned there, are the Breath or the Air, Heaven, Earth, the Sun and the Moon, Night and Day.
Finally, in the Egyptian system, the World was looked upon as a great Divinity, composed of the assemblage of a multitude of Gods or partial causes, which represented only the several members of that great body, called the World or the Good Universe.
The Phoenicians, who with the Egyptians, have mostly influenced the religion of other nations, and have spread over the globe their theogonies, attributed Divinity to the Sun and Moon and the Stars, and regarded them as the only causes of the production and destruction of all beings. The sun was their great Divinity under the name of Hercules.
The Ethiopians, the fathers of the Egyptians, living in a burning climate, worshipped nevertheless the divinity of the Sun, {p.26} but above all that of the Moon, which presided over the nights, the sweet coolness of which, made them forget the heat of the day. All the Africans offered sacrifices to these great Divinities. It was in Ethiopia, where the famous table of the Sun was found. Those Ethiopians, who lived above Meroe, acknowledged eternal Gods of an incorruptible nature, according to Diodorus, such as the Sun and the Moon, and all the Universe or the World. The same as the Incas of Peru, they called themselves the children of the Sun, which they regarded as their first progenitor: Persina was the priestess of the Moon, and the King her consort was priest of the Sun.
The Troglodytes had a fountain, dedicated to the Star of Day. In the neighbourhood of the temple of Ammon, there was a rock, sacred to the south-wind, and a fountain of the Sun. The Blemmyes, situated on the confines of Egypt and Ethiopia, immolated human victims to the Sun. The rock of Bagia and the island of Nasala, situated beyond the territory of the Ichthyophagi, were dedicated to the same luminary. No man dared to approach the island, and frightful stories deterred the most daring mortals to put a profane foot on it.
There was also a rock in ancient Cyrenaica, on which no one dared to lay a hand, without committing a crime, because it was dedicated to the east wind.
The divinities, which were invoked as witnesses in the treaty of the Carthaginians with Philip, the son of Demetrius, were the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the Rivers, the Prairies, and the Water. Massinissa, in thanking the Gods on the arrival of Scipio in his empire, addresses himself to the Sun.
The natives of the island of Socotora and the Hottentots preserve to this day the ancient veneration, which the Africans had always for the Moon, which they regard as the principle of sublunary vegetation; they applied to her, when they wanted rain, sunshine or good crops. She is to them a kind {p.27} and beneficent Divinity, such as was Isis with the Egyptians.
All the Africans, who inhabit the coast of Angola and of Congo, worship the Sun and the Moon. The natives of the island of Tenerife worshipped them also, as well as the planets and other stars, on the arrival of the Spaniards.
The Moon was the great Divinity of the Arabs. The Sarazens gave her the epithet of Cabar or the Great; her Crescent adorns to this day the religious monuments of the Turks. Her elevation under the sign of the Bull, constituted one of the principal feasts of the Saracens and of the sabean Arabs. Each Arab tribe was under the invocation of a constellation. The tribe Hamiaz was consecrated to the Sun; the tribe Cemah to the Moon; the tribe Miza was under the protection of the Star Aldebaran; the tribe Tai under that of Canopus; the tribe Kaïs under that of Sirius; the tribes Lachamus and Idamus worshipped the planet Jupiter; the tribe Asad that of Mercury, and so forth the others. Each one worshipped one of the celestial bodies as its tutelar genius. Atra, a city in Arabia, was consecrated to the Sun and was in possession of rich offerings, which had been deposited in her temple. The ancient Arabs gave sometimes to their children the title of servants to the Sun.
The Caabah of the Arabs was before the time of Mahomet, a temple dedicated to the Moon. The black stone which the Musulmans kiss with so much devotion to this day, is, as it is pretended, an ancient statue of Saturmus. The walls of the great mosque of Kufah, built on the foundation of an ancient Pyrea or temple of the fire, are filled with figures of planets artistically engraved. The ancient worship of the Arabs was the Sabismus, a religion universally spread all over the Orient. Heaven and the Stars were the first objects thereof.
This religion was that of the ancient Chaldeans, and the Orientals pretend that their Ibrahim or Abraham was brought up in that doctrine. There is still to be seen at Hella, over {p.28} the ruins of the ancient Babylon, a mosque called Mesched Eschams, or the mosque of the Sun. It was in this city, that the ancient temple of Bel or the Sun, the great Divinity of the Babylonians, existed, it is the same God, to whom the Persians erected temples and consecrated images under the name of Mithras. They worshipped also the Heavens under the name of Jupiter, the Moon and Venus, Fire, Earth, Air or the Wind, Water, and they acknowledge no other Gods since the remotest antiquity. In reading the sacred books of the ancient Persians, which are contained in the collection of the books of Zend, we find on every page invocations addressed to Mithras to the Moon, to the stars, to the elements, to mountains, to trees and to all parts of Nature. The fire Ether, which circulates in the whole Universe and of which the Sun is the most apparent centre, was represented in the Pyreas or fire temples by the sacred fire, which was kept burning by the Magi.
Each planet, which contains a portion of it, had its Pyrea or particular temple, where incense was burned in its honour; people went to the chapel of the Sun, in order to worship that luminary and to celebrate its feast, to that of Mars and Jupiter &c. to adore Mars and Jupiter and so of the other planets. Darius, King of the Persians, invoked the Sun, Mars and the eternal Fire, before giving battle to Alexander. Above his tent there was an image of this luminary, enclosed in crystal, reflecting far off its rays. Amongst the ruins of Persepolis, there may be seen the figure of. a King, kneeling before the image of the Sun; near it, is the sacred fire preserved by the Magi, and which Perseus, as they say, had formerly brought down from Heaven to the Earth.
The Parsees, or the descendants of Zoroaster, still address their prayers to the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, and principally to the Fire, as the most subtle and the purest of all the elements. They preserved this fire especially in Aderbighian, where the great Pyrea or fire temple of the Persians was, and {p.29} at Asaac in the country of the Parthians. The Guebres, established at Surat, preserve carefully in a temple, remarkable for its simplicity, the sacred fire, with the worship of which their fathers had been intrusted by Zoroaster. Niebuhr has seen one of these hearths, where as they pretend, the fire was preserved for over two hundred years, without ever having been extinguished.
Talarsaces built a temple at Armavir in the ancient Phasiah on the shores of the Araxes and consecrated there a statue to the Sun and the Moon, Divinities, which were worshipped formerly by the Iberians, the Albanians and the Colchians. The latter planet was principally worshipped in all that part of Asia, in Armenia and Capadocia, also the God Month, which the Moon engendered by its revolution. All Asia minor, Phrygia, Jonia were covered with temples, dedicated to these two great flambeaux of Nature. The Moon, under the name of Diana, had a magnificent temple at Ephesus. The God.M2onth had also his own near Laodicea, and in Phrygia; the Sun was worshipped at Thymbra in Troas, under the name of Apollo.
The island of Rhodes was consecrated to the Sun, to which a colossal statue was erected, known by the name of the Colossus of Rhodes.
The Turks in the North of Asia, established near the Caucasus, held the Fire in great veneration, also Water and Earth, which they celebrated in their sacred hymns.
The Abasges or Abascians, inhabiting the extreme end of the Black Sea, worshipped still in the time of Justinian, woods and forests, and their principal Divinities were trees.
All those Scythian nations, which led a nomadic life in those immense countries in the North of Europe and of Asia, had for their principal Divinity the Earth, from which they drew their nourishment, for themselves and their herds;-they made her the wife of Jupiter or of Heaven, by the rain of which, she is fe- {p.30} cundated. The Tartars, established at the East of Imaiis, worship the Sun, the Light, the Fire, the. Earth, and they offer to those Divinities the premices of their food, chiefly in the morning.
The ancient Massagetes had for their sole Divinity the Sun, to which they immolated horses.
The Derbices, a people of Hyrcania, worshipped the Earth. All the Tartars in general have the greatest veneration for the Sun, which they regard as the father of the Moon, which borrows its light from it. They make libations in honour of the Elements, and principally of Fire and Water.
The Votiacs of the government of Orenburg adore the Divinity of the Earth, which they call Mon-Kalzin; the God of the Water, which they call Vu-Imnar, they adore also the Sun, as the seat of their great Divinity.
The Tartar mountaineers of the territory of Udiusk (Oudiusk) worship Heaven and the Sun.
The Moskanians sacrificed to a Supreme Being, which they called Schkai, being the name, which they give to Heaven. When they made their prayers, they turned towards the East, like all the nations of Tchudic origin.
The Tchuvaches counted the Sun and the Moon amongst the number of their Divinities; they sacrificed to the Sun at the commencement of spring, at their seed time and to the Moon on each renewal.
The Tunguses worship the Sun and make it their principal Divinity; they represent it under the emblem of Fire.
The Huns worshipped Heaven and Earth, and their leader took the title of Tanjan or the son of Heaven.
The Chinese, located at the eastern confines of Asia, worship Heaven under the name of the great Tien, and his name signifies according to some, the spirit of Heaven, and according to others the material Heaven. This is the Uranus of the Phoenicians, of the Atlantes and of the Greeks. The supreme {p.31} Being is denoted in the Chu-King, by the name of Tien or Heaven and of Chang-Tien, the supreme Heaven. The Chinese say of this Heaven, that it penetrates all and comprises all. In China there are temples of the Sun and the Moon and of the North stars. Thait-Tçurn may be seen to go to Miac, in order to offer a burnt offering to Heaven and Earth. Similar sacrifices are made also to the mountain and river Gods.
Augustha makes libations to the august Heaven and to the queen Earth.
The Chinese erected a temple to the Great Being, the effect of the union of Heaven, Earth and the Elements, a being which answers to our World and which they call Tay-Kai: it is at the epoch of the two solstices, when the Chinese are worshipping Heaven.
The Japanese adore the stars and they suppose, that they are animated by Spirits or by Gods. They have their temple of the splendour of the Sun, and they celebrate the feast of the Moon on the seventh of September. The people passes the night in rejoicings at the light of that luminary.
The inhabitants of the land of Yeço worship Heaven.
It is not yet 900 years ago, that the inhabitants of the island of Formosa acknowledged no other Gods but the Sun and the Moon, which they regarded as two Divinities, or supreme causes, an idea absolutely similar to that, which the Egyptians and the Phoenicians had of these two luminaries.
The Aracanese have built a temple to the Light, in the island of Munay, known by the name of temple of the atoms of the Sun.
The inhabitants of Tuncquin worshipped seven heavenly idols, which represent the seven planets, and five terrestrial ones, consecrated to the elements. The Sun and the Moon have their worshippers in the island of Ceylon, the Taprobane of the Ancients; the other planets are also worshipped there. The two first mentioned luminaries are the only Divinities of {p.32} the natives of the island of the Sunatra; the same Gods are revered in the islands of Java, of Celebes and of Sonde, also at the Moluccas and the Philippine islands.
The Talapoins, or the religionists of Siam profess the greatest veneration for all the elements and for all parts of the sacred body of Nature.
The Hindus have a superstitious veneration for the water of the river Ganges; they believe in its divinity, as the Egyptians believed in that of the Nile. The Sun has been one of the great Divinities of the East Indians, if we may believe Clement of Alexandria. The Indians and even the spiritualists worship the two great luminaries of Nature, the Sun and the Moon, which they call the two eyes of the Divinity. They celebrate every year on the 9th of January a feast in honour of the Sun. They admit five elements, to which they have erected five pagodas.
The seven planets are adored to this day under various names in the kingdom of Nepal; they sacrifice to them every day.
Lucian avers, that the Indians, when worshipping the Sun, turn their faces towards the East, and that amidst of a profound silence, they executed a kind of a dance in imitation of the movements of that luminary. In one of their temples they had the God of Light represented, as mounted on a chariot drawn by four horses.
The ancient Indians had also their sacred fire, which they drew from the rays of the Sun on the summit of a very high mountain, which they regarded as the central point of India. The Brahmins preserve up to this day on the mountain Tirunamaly a fire, which they hold in the greatest veneration. At sunrise they go to draw water from a pond, and they throw some of it towards that luminary as a testimonial of their respect and gratitude for having again reappeared and dissipated the darkness of night. On the altar of the Sun, they lighted {p.33} the flambeaux, which they had to carry before Phaotes, their newly made King, whom they desired to receive.
The author of the Bagawadanm acknowledges, that several Indian tribes address their prayers to the fixed stars and to the planets. Thus, the worship of the Sun, the Stars and the Elements formed the basis of the religion of the whole of Asia, in other words, of countries peopled by the greatest, the oldest and wisest of nations, by those, which influenced the religion of the nations of the West and in general those of Europe. So, that when we look on this last portion of the old World, we find the sabismus and the worship of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars equally extended, although often disguised under other names and under other forms so skilfully drawn up, that they were sometimes not recognized even by their own worshippers.
The ancient Greeks, if we may believe Plato, had no other Gods but those which the Barbarians of that time worshipped, when that philosopher lived, and those Gods were the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, Heaven and Earth.
Epicharmis, a disciple of Pythagoras, speaks of the Sun and the Moon and the Stars, the Earth, Water and Fire as Gods. Orpheus considered the Sun as the greatest of all the Gods, and ascending before daybreak an elevated place, he awaited there the reappearance of that luminary, in order to render homage to it. Agamemnon, according to Homer, sacrificed to the Sun and to the Earth.
The chorus in the Oedipus of Sophocles, invokes the Sun as the first of all the God's and as their Chief.
The Earth was worshipped in the island of Cos; it had a temple at Athens and at Sparta, also its altar and oracle at Olympia. That of Delphi was originally consecrated to it. In reading Pausanias, to whom we owe a description of Greece and of her religious monuments, we find everywhere traces of the worship of Nature; there are altars, temples and statues {p.34} consecrated to the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, to the Pleiades, the celestial Charioteer, the Goat, the Bear or Callisto, to the Night, Rivers, &c.
There were to be seen in Laconia seven columns erected in honour of the seven planets. The Sun had its statue, and the Moon its sacred fountain at Thalma, in the same country.
The people of Megalopolis sacrificed to the wind Boreas, and had a sacred grove planted in his honour.
The Macedonians worshipped Estia or the Fire, and addressed their prayers to Bedy or to the element of Water; Alexander, King of Macedonia, sacrificed to the Sun, the Moon and to the Earth.
The oracle of Dodona required in all its answers, a sacrifice to the river Acheloius; Horner gives the epithet of sacred to the waters of Alpheus; Nestor and the Pylians sacrificed a bull to that river. Achilles let his hair grow in honour of Sperchius, he invokes also the wind Boreas and Zephyr.
The rivers reputed sacred and divine, as much on account of the perpetuity of their course, as because they kept up vegetation, watered plants and beasts, and because Water is one of the first principals of Nature, and one of the most powerful agents of the universal power of the Great Being.
In Thessaly they fed sacred ravens in honour of the Sun. The same bird is found on the monuments of Mithras in Persia.
The temples of ancient Byzantium were consecrated to the Sun, the Moon and to Venus. Those three luminaries, also Areturus or the beautiful star of the herdsman Bootes, and the twelve signs of the zodiac had their idols there. Rome and Italy preserved also a great many monuments of the worship of Nature and of her principal agents. Tatius, when he came to Rome to share the sceptre of Romulus, erected temples to the Sun, the Moon and Saturnus, to the Light and to the Fire. The eternal fire or Vesta was the most ancient object of {p.35} worship of the Romians; virgins were entrusted with its preservation in the temple of that Goddess, like the Magi in Asia in their Pyreas; because it was the same worship as that of the Persians. It was, as Jornandes says, an image of the eternal fires, which shine in the Heavens.
Every one knows the famous temples of Tellus or of the Earth, in which very often the meetings of the Senate were held. The Earth took the name of mother, and was regarded as a Divinity with the Manes.1
A fountain was discovered in Latium, called the fountain of the Sun, in the vicinity of which two altars had been erected, on which Æneas, on his arrival in Italy, had offered a sacrifice. Romulus instituted the games of the circus, in honour of that Luminary, which measures the year in its career, and the four elements, which it modifies by its mighty action. Aurelianus erected at Rome the temple of the Star of Day, which he enriched with gold and precious stones. Augustus before him imported from Egypt the images of the Sun and the Moon, which adorned his triumph over Antonius and Cleopatra.
The Moon had its temple on the Monte Aventino.
If we pass over into Sicily, we see three oxen consecrated to the Sun. That island itself was called the island of the Sun. The oxen which were eaten by the companions of Ulysses, when they arrived there, were consecrated to that luminary.
The inhabitants of Assora worshipped the river Chrysas, which ran along their walls, and which supplied them with water. They had erected to it a temple and a statue. At Engyum the mother Goddesses were worshipped, which were the same Divinities as were adored at Creta, in other words, the great and the little Bear.
In Spain, the people of the province of Betica had built a temple in honour of the morning star and the twilight. The Accitanians had erected a statue by the name of Mars to the {p.36} Sun, the radiant head of which expressed the nature of that Divinity. This same God was worshipped at Cadiz under the name of Hercules since the highest antiquity.
All the nations of the North of Europe, known under the general denomination of the Celtic nations, rendered religious worship to Fire, Water, Air, Earth, to the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, to the vault of Heaven, to the Trees, Rivers, Fountains, &c.
Julius Caesar, the conqueror of the Gauls, affirms, that the ancient Germans worshipped only the visible cause and its principal agents, the Gods only, of which they could see and feel the influence, the Sun the Moon, the Fire or Vulcan, the Earth under the name of Hertha.
A temple was found in the province of Narbone in ancient Gaul, erected to the wind Circius, which purifies the air. There was also a temple of the Sun at Toulouse. In the district of the Gevaudan there was a lake called Helanus, to which religious honours were rendered.
Charlemagne in his capitulars, forbid the old custom of placing lighted candles near the trees and fountains, for the purpose of a superstitious worship.
Canute, King of England, prohibited in his realm the worship of the Sun, the Moon and the Fire of the running Water, of Fountains and Forests, &c.
The Francs, who entered Italy under the leadership of Theodibert, immolated the women and children of the Goths, and made an offering of then to the river Po, as the first fruits of the war. Also the Alemanni, according to Agathias, sacrificed horses to the rivers; and the Trojans to the Scamnander, by throwing these animals alive into its waves. The natives of the island of Thule, and all the Scandinavians placed their Divinities in the Firmament, in the Earth, in the Sea, into running Water, &c.
It will be seen from this abridged statement of the religious {p.37} history of the ancient continent, that there is not a point in the three parts of the ancient World, where the worship of Nature and of her principal agents may not be found established, and that civilized nations, as well as those that were not, have all acknowledged the power or dominion of the universal visible cause, or of the World and its most active parts over man.
If we pass over to America, a new scene is presented to us there everywhere, as much in the physical, as in the moral and political order. Everything is new, plants, quadrupeds, trees, fruits, reptiles, birds, customs and habits. Religion alone is still the same as in the old World, it is always the Sun, the Moon, Heaven, the Stars, Earth and the Elements which are worshipped there.
The Incas of Peru called themselves the sons of the Sun; they erected temples and altars to that luminary and instituted feasts in its honour; it was looked upon, the same as in Egypt and Phoenicia, as the fountain of all the blessings of Nature. In this worship, the Moon had also its share, as she was regarded as the mother of all sublunary productions, and was honoured as the wife and sister of the Sun. Venus, the most brilliant planet after the Sun, had also its altars there, like the meteors, lightning, thunder, and chiefly the beautiful Iris or the rainbow. Virgins, like the Vestals at Rome, had charge of the perpetual maintenance of the sacred fire.
The same worship was established at Mexico with all the splendour, which an intelligent people can give to its religion. The Mexicans contemplated the Heavens and gave it the name of Creator and of Admirable; there was not the least apparent part of the Universe, which was not worshipped by' them, and had its altars.
The natives of the Isthmus of Panama and of all that country, known by the name of Terra firma, believe in a God in Heaven, and that God was the Sun, the husband of the Moon; {p.38} they worshipped these two luminaries, as the two supreme causes, which govern the World. It was the same with the natives of Brazil, of the Caribbee islands, of Florida, and with the Indians of the coast of Cumana, of Virginia, of Canada and of Hudson's bay.
The Iroquois call Heaven Garonthia; the Hurons, Sironhiata, and both worship it as the great spirit, the good Lord, the father of life, they also give to the Sun the title of the Supreme Being.
The savages of North-America never make a treaty, without taking the Sun as a witness and as a guarantee, the same as was done by Agamemnon in Homer and by the Carthaginians in Polybius. They make their allies smoke the calumet, or the pipe of peace, and they blow the smoke towards that luminary. According to the traditions of the Pawnees, savages living on the shores of the Missouri, they received the calumet from the Sun.
The natives of Cayenne worshipped also the Sun, the Heavens and the Stars. In one word, everywhere in America, where traces of worship were discovered, it was observed, that it had for object some of the parts of the great All, or the World.
The worship of Nature must therefore be considered as the primitive and universal religion of the two hemispheres. To these evidences, which are drawn from the history of the nations of the two continents, are added others, which are taken from their religious and political monuments, from the divisions and distributions of the sacred and of the social order, from their feasts, from their hymns and from their religious cantos and from the opinions of their philosophers.
From the time, when men ceased to assemble on the summit of high mountains, in order to contemplate and to worship Heaven, the Sun, the Moon and the other Stars, which were the first Divinities, and that they gathered in temples, they {p.39} wanted to find again within those narrow precincts the images of their Gods and a regular representation of that astonishing Whole, known by the name of World or the great All, which they worshipped.
Thus the famous labyrinth of Egypt represented the twelve houses of the Sun, to which it was consecrated by twelve palaces, which communicated with each other, and which formed the mass of the temple of that luminary, which engenders the year and the seasons in circulating in the twelve signs of the Zodiac. In the temple of Heliopolis or of the city of the Sun, were found twelve columns covered with symbols, relative to the twelve signs and the Elements.
Those enormous masses of stone, consecrated to the Star of Day, had a pyramidal configuration, as the most appropriate to represent the solar rays and the form under which the flame ascends.
The statue of Apollo Agyeus was a column which ended in a point, and Apollo was the Sun.
The care of modelling the figures of the images and statues of the Gods of Egypt was not left to common artists. The priests gave the designs, and it was upon spheres, or in other words, after the inspection of the Heavens, and its astronomical images, that they determined upon the forms. Thus we find, that in all religions the numbers seven and twelve, of which the former applies to the seven planets and the other to that of the twelve signs, are sacred numbers, which are reproduced in all kind and sorts of forms. For instance, such. are the twelve, great Gods, the twelve apostles, the twelve sons of Jacob or the twelve tribes; the twelve altars of Janus; the twelve labours of Hercules or of the Sun; the twelve shields of Mars; the twelve brothers Arvaux; the twelve Gods Consentes; the twelve governors in the Manichean system; the adeetyas of the East Indians; the twelve asses of the Scandinavians; the city of the twelve gates in the Apocalypse; the twelve wards of the {p.40} city, of which Plato conceived the plan; the four tribes of Athens, subdivided into three "fratries" according to the division made by Cecrops; the twelve sacred cushions, on which the Creator sits in the cosmogony of the Japanese; the twelve precious stones of the rational or the ornament worn by the high-priest of the Jews, ranged three and three, as the seasons; the twelve cantons of the Etruscan league and their twelve "lucumons" or chiefs of the canton; the confederation of the twelve cities of Jonia; that of the twelve cities of Eolia; the twelve Teheu, into which Chun divided China; the twelve regions into which the natives of Corea divided the World; the twelve officers, whose duty it is to draw the sarcophagus in the obsequies of the King of Tunquin; the twelve led-horses; the twelve elephants, &c., which were conducted in that ceremony.
It was the same case with the number seven. For instance the candlestick with seven branches, which represented the planetary system in the temple of Jerusalem; the seven enclosures of the temple; those of the city of Ecbatana likewise of the number of seven and dyed in the colours that were assigned to the planets; the seven doors of the cave of Mithras or the Sun; the seven stories of the tower of Babylon, surmounted by the eight, which represented Heaven, and which served as a temple to Jupiter, the seven gates of Thebes, each of which had the name of a planet; the flute of seven pipes put into the hands of the God Pan, who represented the great, All or Nature; the lyre of seven strings, touched by Apollo, or by the God of the Sun; the book of Fate, composed of seven books; the seven prophetic rings of the Brahmins, on each of which the name of a planet was engraved; the seven stones consecrated to the same planets in Laconia, the division into seven casts adopted by the Egyptians and by the Indians since the highest antiquity; the seven idols, which the Bonzes carry every year with great ceremony into seven different temples; the seven mystic vowels, which formed the sacred formula, ut- {p.41} tered in the temples of the planets; the seven Pyreas or altars of the monument of Mithras; the seven Amchaspands or great spirits invoked by the Persians; the seven archangels of the Chaldeans and of the Jews; the seven ringing towers of ancient Byzantium; the week of every nation, or the period of the seven days, each one being consecrated to a planet; the period of seven times seven years of the Jews; the seven sacraments of the Christians, &c. We find chiefly in that astrological and cabalistical book, known by the name of the Apocalypse of John the number twelve and seven repeated on every page. The first one is repeated fourteen times, and the second twenty-four times.
The number three hundred and sixty, which is that of the days of the year, without including the epagomenes or epacts, was also described by the 360 Gods, which the theology of Orpheus admitted; by the 360 cups of water of the Nile, which the Egyptian priests poured out, one each day, into a sacred cask in the city of Achante; by the 360 Eons or gnostic Genii; by the 360 idols placed in the palace of the Dairi of Japan; by the 360 small statues surrounding that of Hobal or of the God Sun, Bel, worshipped by the ancient Arabs; by the 360 chapels built around the splendid mosque of Balk, erected by the exertions of the chief of the family of the Barmecides; by the 360 Genii, who take possession of the soul after death, according to the doctrine of the Christians of St. John; by the 360 temples built on. the mountain of Lowham in China; by the wall of 360 stades, with which Semiramis surrounded the city of Belus or of the Sun, the famous Babylon. All these monuments give us a description of the same division of the World, and of the circle divided into degrees, which the Sun travels over. Finally the division of the zodiac into twenty-seven parts, which signify the stations of the Moon, and into thirty-six, which is that of the decaris, were in like manner the object of the political and religious distributions.
{p.42} Not only the divisions of Heaven, but the constellations themselves were represented in the temples, and their images were consecrated amongst the monuments of worship and on the medals of the cities. The beautiful star of the Capricorn, which is placed in the heavens in the constellation of the charioteer, had its statue in gilded bronze in the public square of the Phliassians. The Charioteer himself had his temples, his statues, his tomb, his mysteries in Greece, and was worshipped under the name of Myrtillus, Hippolytus, Spherocus, Cillas, Erechtheus, &c.
The statues and the tombs of the Atlantides, or of the Pleiades, Sterope, Phaedra, &c., were also to be seen there.
Near Argos the hill or mount was shown, which covered the head of the famous Medusa, the type of which is in the heavens at the feet of Perseus.
The Moon or the Diana of Ephesus, wore on her breast the figure of the Cancer, which is one of the twelve signs and is the abode of that planet. The celestial Bear, worshipped by the name of Calisto, and the Herdsman (Bootes) under that of Areas, had their tombs in Arcadia, near the Altars of the Sun.
The same herdsman Bootes had his statue in ancient Byzantium, also Orion, the famous Nimbrod (Nimrod) of the Assyrians: the last mentioned had his tomb at Tanagra in Boeotia.
The Syrians had the image of the Fishes, one of the celestial signs, consecrated in their temple.
The constellation of Nesra or the Eagle, of Aiyuk or the Capricorn, of Yagutho or the Pleiads, and of Suwaha or Alhauwnha, the Serpentarius, had their statues with the ancient Sabeans. These names may still be found in the commentary of Hyde on Ulug-Beigh.
The religious system of the Egyptians was entirely sketched upon the Heavens, if we believe Lucian, and as it is easy to demonstrate.
In general it may be said, that the whole starred Heaven {p.43} had come down on the soil of Greece and Egypt, in order to be painted there and to be embodied in the images of the Gods, be they living or inanimate.
Most of these cities were built under the inspection and under the protection of a celestial sign. Their horoscope was drawn; hence the impression of the images of the constellations on their medals. Those of Antiochia on the Orontes represent the Ram with the crescent of the Moon; those of Mamertina that of the Bull; that of the Kings of Comagena the type of the Scorpion; those of Zeugma and of Anazarba that of the Capricorn. Almost all the celestial signs are found on the medals of Antoninus; the star Hesperus was the public seal of the Locrians, of the Ozoles and of the Opuntians.
It is also remarkable, that the ancient feasts are connected with the great epochs of Nature and with the celestial system. Everywhere are to be found the solsticial and equinoctial festivals. The winter solstice is above all distinguished; it is then, that the Sun begins to rise again, and to take anew its route towards our climes; and that of the solstice of spring, when it brings back the long clays to our hemisphere with the active and genial heat, which sets vegetation again in motion, which develops all the germs and ripens all the products of the Earth. Christmas and Easter of the Christians, those worshippers of the Sun under the name of Christ, which was substituted for that of Mithras, whatever the allusion, which ignorance and bad faith may try to make itself, are yet an existing proof amongst us. All nations have had their feasts of Ember-week or of the four seasons.
They may be found even with the Chinese. One of their most ancient emperors, Fohi, established sacrifices, the celebration of which were fixed at the two equinoxes and at the two solstices. Four pavilions were erected to the Moons of the four Seasons. The ancient Chinese, says Confucius, established a solemn sacrifice in honour of Chang-Ty, at the time of the winter sol- {p.44} stice. because it was then, that the Sun, after having passed through the twelve palaces, recommences again its career, in order to distribute anew the blessings of its light.
They instituted a second sacrifice in the season of spring, as a particular thanksgiving day, of the gifts to mankind by means of the Earth. These two sacrifices could only be offered by the emperor of China, the son of Heaven.
The Greeks and the Romans did the same thing, for about the same reasons.
The Persians have their Neuruz or feasts of the Sun in its transit across the Ramn, or of the sign of the equinox, of spring, and the Jews have their feast of the passage under the Lamb. The Neuruz is one of the greatest festivities of Persia. The Persians celebrated formerly the entrance of the Sun into each sign with the noise of musical instruments.
The ancient Egyptians walked the sacred cow seven times around the temple at the winter solstice. At the equinox of spring they celebrated the happy epoch, when the celestial Fire warmed Nature again every year. That festival of the Fire and the triumphant light, of which our sacred Fire on holy Saturday, and our paschal wax taper are still the true image, existed in the city of the Sun in Assyria, under the name of the feast of the Pyres.
The feasts which were celebrated by the ancient Sabeans in honour of the planets, were fixed under the sign of their elevation, sometimes under that of their abode, as that of Saturnus of the ancient Romans was established in December under the Capricorn, the abode of that planet. All the feasts of the ancient calendar of the pontiffs are connected with the rising and setting of some constellation or some star, as we can ascertain, by reading the fastes (or Calendars) of Ovid. It is chiefly in the games of the Circus, instituted in honour of the God, who dispenses the light, that the religious genius of the Romans and the connection of their feasts with Nature, {p.45} are manifested. The Sun, the Moon, the Planets, the Elements, the Universe and its most conspicuous parts, all was represented by emblems, which were analogous to their nature. The Sun had its horses, which on the race course or Hippodrom, imitated the career of that luminary in the Heavens.
The Olympic fields were represented by a vast amphitheatre or arena, which was consecrated to the Sun. In the midst of it there stood the temple of that God which was surmounted by his image. The East and the West, as the limits of the course of the Sun were traced and marked by boundaries, and placed towards the remotest part of the circus.
The races took place from East to West, until seven rounds were made, on account of the seven planets.
The Sun and the Moon had their chariots, the same as Jupiter and Venus; the charioteers were dressed in clothes, the colour of which was analogous to the hue of the different elements. The chariot of the Sun was drawn by four horses, and that of the Moon by two.
The Zodiac was represented in the circus by twelve gates; there was also traced the movement of the circumpolar stars or of the two Bears.
Everything was personified in those feasts; the Sea or Neptune, the Earth or Ceres, and so on the other elements. They were represented by actors, contending for the prizes.
These contests were instituted, they say, in order to illustrate the harmony of the Universe, of Heaven, of the Earth and of the Sea.
The institution of these games was attributed to Romulus by the Romans, and I believe that they were an imitation of the races of the hippodrome of the Arcadians and of the games of Elis.
The phases of the Moon were also the object of feasts and chiefly of the neomenia or the new light, with which this planet is invested at the commencement of each month, because the {p.46} God Month had his temples, his statues and his mysteries.
The whole ceremonial of the procession of Isis, described in Apuleius, has reference to Nature and delineates its various parts. The sacred hymns of the Ancients had the same object, if we may judge by those which have come down to us, and which are attributed to Orpheus, but whosoever may be their author, it is evident, that he only sings Nature.
Chun, one of the most ancient Emperors of China, ordered a great number of hymns to be composed, which were addressed to Heaven, to the Sun, to the Moon, the Stars, &c. The same is the case with almost all the prayers of the Persians, which are contained in the book of Zend. The poetical songs of the ancient authors, from whom we have the theogonies, such as Orpheus, Linus, Hesiod, &c., have reference to Nature and its agents. Sing, says Hesiod to the Muses,—sing the immortal Gods, children of the Earth and of the starred Heaven, Gods, which were born from the womb of Night and nourished by the Ocean; the brilliant Stars, the immense vault of the Heavens, and the Gods which were born of it, the Sea, the Rivers, &c.
The songs of Iopas, in the banquet given by Dido to the Trojans, contain the sublime lessons of the sage Atlas, on the course of the Moon and of the Sun, on the origin of the human race, of the animals, &c. In the pastorals of Virgil, old Silenus sings the chaos and the organization of the World. Orpheus does the same in the Argonautics of Appollonius; the cosmogony of Sanchoniathon or that of the Phoenicians hides under the veil of allegory the great secrets of Nature, which were taught to the neophytes. The philosophers, the successors of the poets, who had preceded them in the career of philosophy, deified all parts of the Universe, and searched for the Gods only in the members of that great God, or in that great All, called the World; so much had the idea of its Di- {p.47} vinity struck all those, who wanted to reason on the causes of our organization and of our destiny.
Pythagoras thought, that the celestial bodies were immortal and divine; that the Sun, the Moon and all the Stars were as many Gods, which contained superabundant heat, which is the principle of life. He placed the substance of the Divinity in the Fire Ether, of which the Sun is the principal centre.
Parmenides imagined a crown of light, which enveloped the World, and he also made of it the substance of the Divinity, of which the Stars participated the Nature. Alcmeon of Croton made the Gods reside in the Sun, the Moon and in the Stars. Anthistenes acknowledges only one Divinity, namely Nature. Plato attributes Divinity to the World, to Heaven, the Stars and to the Earth. Xenocrates admitted eight great Gods, the Heaven of the fixed Stars and the seven Planets. Heraclid of Pontus professed the same doctrine. Theophrastus gives the title of first causes to the Stars and to the celestial signs. Zeno called God also the Ether, the Stars, Time and its parts. Cleanthes admitted the dogma of the Divinity of the Universe and chiefly of the Fire Ether, which envelopes and penetrates the spheres. The entire Divinity, according to this philosopher, was distributed in the Stars, the depositaries of as many portions of that divine Fire. Diogenes, the Babylonian., traces the whole mythology back to Nature or to physiology. Chrysipps recognizes the World as God. He made the divine substance reside in the Fire Ether, in the Sun, the Moo1n, the Stars and finally in Nature and its principal parts.
Anaximander regarded the Stars as so many Gods; Anaximenes gave that name to Ether and Air; Zeno gave it to the World in general and to Heaven in particular.
We shall no further proceed in our researches about the dogmas of the ancient philosophers in. order to prove, that they agree with the most ancient poets, with the theologians, who composed the first theogonies, with the legislators, who {p.48} regulated the religious and political order, and with the artists who erected the first temples and statues of the Gods.
According to these explanations, it would appear clearly demonstrated, that the Universe and its parts, or in other words Nature and its principal agents must not only have been worshipped as Gods, but that this was actually so, from which there is resulting this necessary consequence, namely: "that it is through Nature and her members, and through the performance of the physical causes, that the theological system of all the ancient nations ought to be explained." That we must look to Heaven, to the Sun, the Moon, the Stars and the Elements, if we wish to find the Gods of all nations, and to discover them under the veil, which allegory and mysticism have often thrown over them, be it in order to stimulate our curiosity, or to inspire us with more awe. This worship having been the first, and the most universally employed, is that, which bears entirely on the performance "(jeu)" of the physical causes and on the mechanism of the organization of the World. All that, which shall receive a reasonable construction, considered in that point of view; all that, which in the ancient poems on the Gods and on the sacred legends of the different nations, shall contain an ingenious picture of Nature and her operations, must be considered as appertaining to that religion, which may be called the universal religion. All that, which can be explained without difficulty by the physical and astronomical system, must be considered as part of the fictitious adventures, which allegory has introduced into the songs on Nature. On this basis rests the whole system of explanations, which has been adopted in the present work. We have said, that nothing was worshipped, that nothing was sung but Nature; she alone was portrayed, therefore everything must be explained through her: the conclusion is inevitable.
{p.49}
CHAPTER III
OF THE ANIMATED AND INTELLIGENT UNIVERSE
Before entering upon the explanation of our system and the results, which are its consequence, it will be well to consider in the Universe all the relations, under which the Ancients contemplated it.
It would be a mistaken idea to believe, that they considered the World merely as a machine, without life and intelligence, moved by a blind and necessary force. By far the greater and soundest part of the philosophers have been of the opinion, that the Universe contained in an eminent degree the principle of life and of movement, with which Nature had endowed them, and which was in them only, because of its eternal existence in her, as in an abundant and teeming source, from which the brooks vivified and animated all that had life and intelligence. Man was not yet vain enough to imagine himself more perfect than the World, and to admit in an infinitesimal portion of the great All that, which he himself refused to that great All; and in that transient being, that which he did not grant to the always subsisting Being.
As the World seemed animated by a principle of life, which circulates in all its parts, holding it in eternal activity, it was believed that the Universe lived s man did and the other animals, or rather that these lived only because the Universe, being essentially animated, communicated them for a few instants an infinitesimal portion of its immortal life, which it infused into the coarse and inert matter of sublunary bodies. Was it restored back to itself? man and beast died and the Universe alone, always alive, circulated around the remain {p.50} of their bodies by its perpetual motion, and organized new Beings. The active Fire or the subtle substance, which animated it, by incorporating itself in its immense mass, was the universal soul of it. This is the doctrine, which is embodied in the system of the Chinese, on Yang and Yin, one of which is the celestial matter, moveable and luminous, and the other the terrestrial one, inert and gloomy, of which all bodies are composed. This is the dogma of Pythagoras, contained in those beautiful verses in the sixteenth book of the Æneid, where Auchises reveals to his son the origin of the souls and their fate after death.
"You must know, my son, he said, that Heaven and Earth, the Sea, the luminous globe of the Moon and all the Stars, are moved by a principle of eternal life, which perpetuates their existence; that there is a great intelligent Spirit extended in all the parts of the vast body of the Universe, which, while mixing itself in All, is agitating it by an eternal motion. It is this soul, which is the source of life of man, of the beasts, of the birds and all the monsters living within the bosom of the Ocean. The vital force, which animates them, emanates from that eternal Fire, which shines in the Heavens, and which while it is held captive in the raw matter of the bodies, is only developed as much, as the various mortal organizations permit it, which subdue its power and activity. At the death of each creature, these germs of a particular life, these portions of an universal breath, return to their principle and to their source of life, which circulates in the starred sphere."
Timaeus (Timee) of Locris, and after him Plato and Proclus made a treatise on the universal spirit or soul, called the soul of the World, which under the name of Jupiter undergoes so many metamorphoses in ancient mythology and which is represented under so many forms, which were borrowed from animals and plants in the system of the Egyptians. The Uni- {p.51} verse was therefore considered as a living creature, communicating its life to all Beings engendered through its eternal fecundity.
It was not only reputed to be, as if it were in a state of life, but also as highly intelligent and peopled with a crowd of particular spirits, scattered over entire Nature, the source of which was in its' supreme and immortal spirit.
The World, says Timaeus, includes all; it is animated and gifted with reason; this made so many philosophers say, that the World was a living and intelligent Being.
Cleanthes, who regarded the Universe as God, or as the universal and uncreated cause of all effects, attributed to the World a soul and a spirit, and that the Divinity properly belonged to this intellectual soul. God according to him, established his principal seat or residence in the ethereal substance, in that subtle and luminous element; which circulates so abundantly around the firmament and thence is extending to all the Stars, which thus participate its divine nature.
In the second book of Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, one of the interlocutors tries to prove by many arguments, that the Universe is necessarily gifted with intelligence and wisdom. One of the principal reasons, which he adduces, is, that it is not very likely, that man who is merely an infinitesimally small portion of the great All should have sense and intelligence, while the whole of an infinitely superior nature, than that of man, should be deprived of it. "One and the same kind of souls," says Marcus Aurelius, "has been distributed to all creatures not endowed with reason, and an intelligent spirit to all reasonable beings. As all terrestrial bodies are formed out of the same clay, and all that lives and all that breathes sees only one light, inhale and emits only' the same air, for the same reason there is only one soul, although it is distributed in an infinity of organized bodies; there is only one mind, although seemingly partaken with {p.52} others. For instance, the light of the Sun is only one, although it is seen extending over walls, mountains and over thousand different objects."
The result of these philosophical principles is, that the matter of particular bodies is embodied in one universal matter, of which the body of the World is composed; that the souls and the particular spirits are embodied in one soul and in one universal spirit, which moves and rules this immense mass of matter, forming the body of the World. Thus the Universe is a vast body, moved by one soul, governed and directed by one spirit, which have the same extent and which are acting within all its parts, or in other words, within all that exists, because nothing exists outside the Universe, which is the congregation of all things. Reciprocally, in the same manner that universal matter is divided in an innumerable quantity of particular bodies under changed forms; so also the life or the universal soul, as well as the mind or the spirit, divide themselves into the bodies and take there a character of life and particular intelligence in the infinite multitude of vases, which receive them; such for instance as the immense body of water, known by the name of Ocean, furnishes through evaporation the various kinds of waters, distributed in lakes and fountains, in rivers and in plants, in all vegetables and animals, where the fluids circulate under forms and with particular qualities, only to re-enter afterwards into the basin of the seas, where they commingle into one single mass of homogeneous quality. This was the idea, which the Ancients had of the soul or of life and of the universal mind, which is the source of life and of the spirits, distributed amongst all particular beings, with whom they communicate by a thousand channels. From this fruitful source sprang those innumerable spirits, which were placed in Heaven, in the Sun, the Moon, and in all the Stars, in the Elements, in the Earth and the Waters and generally in every place, where the universal cause seems to {p.53} have fixed the seat of some particular action and some of the agents of the great work of Nature. Thus was composed the court of the Gods, which inhabit the Olympus; also that of the Divinities of the Air, the Sea and of the Earth; thus the general system of the administration of the World was organized, the care of which was confided to spirits of different orders and different denominations, may they be Gods, or Genii, Angels or celestial Spirits, Heroes, Izeds, Azes, &c.
Henceforth, there was nothing in the World, which was accomplished by physical means, by the force alone of matter and by the laws of motion; everything depended upon the will and from the orders of spiritual agents. The council of the Gods regulated the destiny of mankind and decided of the fate of entire Nature, subordinate to their laws and directed by their wisdom. It is under this form, that theology shows itself with all those nations, which possessed a regular worship and rational theogonies. The savage, up to this very day locates life everywhere he finds movement and intelligence in all those causes, of which he ignores the mechanism, in other words in the whole of Nature; hence the opinion that the Stars are animated and ruled by spirits; this opinion was common with the Chaldeans, the Persians, the Greeks, the Jews and the Christians, because the latter placed angels in every Star, which had the care of conducting the celestial bodies and of regulating the movement of the spheres.
The Persians have also their angel Chur, who directs the course of the Sun; and the Greeks had their Apollo, who had his seat in that luminary. The theological books of the Persians speak of seven great spirits under the name of Amshaspands, which form the court of the God of light, and which are only the Genii of the seven planets. The Jews made of it their seven Archangels, which were always in the presence of the Lord. These are the seven great powers, which Avenar tells us, were set over the World by God, or the seven angels {p.54} charged with the care of conducting the seven planets; they correspond to the seven Usiarks, which according to the doctrine of Trismegistes govern the seven spheres. They have been preserved by the Arabs, the Mahometans and by the Copthes. Thus with the Persians, each planet is superintended by a Genius placed in a fixed Star. The Star Taschter has charge of the planet Tir or Mercury, who has become the Angel Tiriel, and which the Cabalists call the spirit of Mercury; Hafrorang is the Star charged with the planet Behram or Mars, &c. The name of these Stars are to-day the names of as many Angels with the modern Persians.
To the number seven of the planetary spheres, there has been added the sphere of the fixed Stars and the circle of the Earth and thus was produced the system of the nine spheres. The Greeks appropriated thereto nine intelligences, under the name of Muses, who by their songs formed the universal harmony of the World. The Chaldeans and the Jews placed there other intelligences, under the name of Cherubims and Seraphims, &c., to the number of nine choirs, which rejoiced the Eternal with their concerts.
The Hebrews and the Christians admit four angels, charged with keeping watch on the four corners of the World. Astrology had conferred this care to four Planets; the Persians to four great Stars, which are placed at the four cardinal points of Heaven. The Indians have also their Genii, which are set over the various regions of the World. The astrological system had subjected each climate, and each city to the influence of a Star. For this an Angel was substituted, or the spirit which was presumed to preside over that Star and to be its soul. Thus the sacred books of the Jews admit a tutelar Angel of Persia, as a tutelar Angel of the Jews.
The number twelve, or that of the signs, gave the origin to the idea of the twelve great guardian Angels of the World, of {p.55} which Hyde has preserved the names. Each of the divisions of the time into twelve months had its Angel, as well as the Elements. There are also Angels, who are set over the thirty days of each month. All things of this World, according to the Persians, are administered by Angels, and this doctrine is traced with them up to the highest antiquity. The Basilidians had their 360 Angels, who were set over 360 Heavens, which they had imagined. These are the 360 Aeons of the Gnostics.
The administration of the Universe was divided between this multitude of spirits, which were either Angels or Izeds, Gods or Heroes, Genii or Gines, &c., each one of them had charge of a certain department, or of a particular function; the cold, the heat, the rain, the drought, the production of the fruits of the earth, the increase of the herds, the arts, the agricultural operations, &c., all were under the superintendence of an Angel.
Bad, with the Persians, is the name of an Angel, who is set over the winds. Mordad, is the Angel of death. Aniran is set over the nuptials. Fervardin is the name of the Angel of air and of water. Curdat is called the Angel of the Earth and its fruits. This theology was transferred to the Christians. Origen speaks of the Angel of vocation of the Gentiles, of the Angel of grace. Tertullian mentions the Angel of prayer, the Angel of baptism, the Angel of marriage, the Angel presiding over the formation of the foetus. Chrysostom and Basil celebrate the Angel of peace. It will be seen that the Fathers of the Church have thus copied the hierarchical system of the Persians and Chaldeans.
In the theology of the Greeks, it was supposed, that the Gods had divided amongst them the different parts of the Universe, the different arts, the various works. Jupiter presided in Heaven, Neptune over the Water, Pluto over the subterranean world, Vulcan over the Fire, Diana over the chase, {p.56} Ceres over the Earth and the crops, Bacchus over the vintage, Minerva over the arts and architecture. The mountains had their Oreads, the fountains their Naiads the forests their Driads and Hamadriads. It is the same dogma under other names, and Origen of the Christians shares the same opinion, when he says: "I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying, that there are celestial virtues, who have the government of this World; one presides over the earth, another over the plants; such a one over rivers and fountains; such another over the rain, over the winds." Astrology placed a part of these powers in the Stars; thus the Hyads were set over the rain, Orion over the storms, Sirius over the hot season (dog days) the Ram over the flocks, &c. The system of the Angels and of the Gods, amongst which are distributed the various parts of the World and the different operations of the great work of Nature, is nothing else but the ancient astrological system, in which the Stars exercised the same functions, which their Angels and their Genii have since filled.
Proclus makes a Pleiade preside over each sphere; Celeno is set over the sphere of Saturn, Stenope over that of Jupiter, &c. In the Apocalypse these same Pleiades are called the seven Angels, which smite the World with the seven last plagues.
The natives of the isle of Thule worshipped celestial, Trial and terrestrial Genii; they also placed some in the water, in the rivers and fountains.
The Sindovistas of Japan worship Divinities distributed in the Stars, and spirits, which are set over the elements, over the plants, over the animals, over the various events of life.
They have their Udsigami, which are the tutelar Divinities of a province, of a city, of a village, &c.
The Chinese worship the Genii, which are placed in the Sun and in the Moon, in the Planets, in the Elements, and those which preside over the Sea and the Rivers, over the Fountains, woods and Mountains, corresponding precisely to the {p.57} Naiads, the Dryads and other Nymphs of the theogony of the Greeks. All those Genii, according to the learned, are the emanation of the great All, or in other words of Heaven and of the universal soul, which moves it.
The Chen of the Chinese of the sect of Tao, are an administration of spirits or intelligences, which are ranged in different classes and charged with the different functions of Nature. Some are inspectors of the Sun, others of the Moon, those of the Stars, those of the Winds, others of the Weather, of the Seasons, of the Days, of the Nights, of the Hours.
The Siamese like the Persians, acknowledge Angels which are set over the four corners of the World; they place several classes of Angels over the seven Heavens; the stars, the winds, the rain, the earth, the mountains, the cities are under the inspection of Angels or Intelligences. They make a distinction between males and females; thus the guardian Angel of the Earth is a female.
In consequence of the fundamental dogma, which places God in the universal soul of the World, says Dow, a soul pervading all parts of Nature, the East Indians worship the Elements and all the great parts of the body of the Universe, as they believe that they contain a portion of the Divinity. This is the cause, which has originated amongst the people, the worship of subaltern Divinities; because the Indians in their vedam, make the Divinity or the universal soul pervade all parts of matter. Thus they admit, besides their trinity or treble power, a multitude of Intermediate Divinities, Angels, Genii, Patriarchs, &c. They worship Vayu, the God of the wind; this is the Æolus of the Greeks; Agni the God of the Fire; Varug the God of the Orean; Sasanko, the God of the Moon; Prajapati, the God of Nations; Cubera is set over wealth, &c.
In the religious system of the East Indians, the Sun the Moon and the Stars are so many Devatas or Genii. The World {p.58} has seven degrees, each of which is surrounded by its Sea and by its Genius; the perfection of each Genius is graduated like that of stories or degrees. This is the system of the ancient Chaldeans, about the great Sea or firmament, and about the various Heavens, peopled by Angels of a different nature and composing a graduated hierarchy.
The God Indra, who as the Indians believe, is set over the air and the wind, is presiding also over the inferior Heaven and over the subaltern Divinities, the number of which amounts to three hundred and thirty-two millions; these subaltern Gods are subdivided into different classes. The superior Heaven has also its Divinities; Adytya is conducting the Sun; Nishagara the Moon, &c.
The Chingaleese give lieutenants to the Divinity: all the island of Ceylon is filled with tutelar idols of cities and provinces. The prayers of these islanders are not addressed directly to the supreme Being, but to his lieutenants and to the inferior Gods, as the depositaries of a portion of his power.
The Molucchians have their Nitos, which are under the command of a superior chief, called Lanthila. Each city, town and hamlet has its Nitos, or its tutelar Divinity; they give to the Genius of the Air the name of Lanitho.
At the Philippine islands, the worship of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars is accompanied with that of subaltern spirits, some of which are superintending the seeds, others the fisheries, these the cities and those the mountains, &c.
The natives of the island of Formosa, who looked upon the Sun and the Moon as two superior Divinities, believed that the Stars were Demi Gods or inferior Divinities. The Parsees subordinate to the supreme God seven ministers, under which are ranged twenty-six others, amongst which the government of the World is divided. They pray to them to intercede in their behalf for their wants, as being the mediators between man and the supreme God.
{p.59} The Sabeans placed Angels, which they called mediators between them and the supreme God, whom they qualified the Lord of Lords.
The islanders of the isle of Madagascar admit, besides the sovereign God, Spirits, the duty of which is that of moving and governing the celestial spheres, others, which have the department of the air, of the meteors, some that of the waters: while others are watching over mankind.
The natives of Loango have a great many idols for Divinities, who divide amongst themselves the empire of the World. Amongst those Gods or Genii there are some, which preside over the winds, others over the lightning, others over the crops; some have command over the fishes of the sea and of the rivers; others over the forests, &c.
The nations of Celtica admitted Spirits, which the first Being had spread in all parts of matter in order to animate and to conduct it. They added Genii to the worship of the different parts of Nature and of the Elements, which were presumed to reside there and to conduct it. They supposed, says Peloutier, that each part of the visible World was united with an invisible Spirit, which was the soul of it. The same opinion was held by the Scandinavians. "According to the belief of those people," says Mallet, "it would appear, that from the supreme Deity, which is the animated and spiritual World, an infinity of subaltern Divinities and of Genii had emanated, which had for their seat and temple each part of the World: there resided not only Spirits, but they also directed its operations. Each Element had its Spirit or its proper Divinity. There were some of it in the Earth, others in the Water, in the Fire, in the Air, in the Sun, in the Moon and in the Stars. The trees, the forests, the rivers, the mountains, the rocks, the winds, the lightning, the storm, contained them also, and deserved on this account religious worship." The Slovenians had Kupalu, who was set over the produc- {p.60} tions of the Earth; and Bog, the God of Water. Lado or Lada presided over love.
The Burkans of the Kalmucks, reside in the World, which they adopt, and in the Planets; others occupy the celestial regions. Sakji-Muni resides on Earth; Erlik-Kan in Hell where he reigns over the souls.
The Kalmucks are convinced that the Air is filled with Genii; they give to these serial Spirits the name of Tengri; some are beneficent and others are malevolent.
The natives of Tibet have their Lahes, which are Genii, that emanated from the divine substance.
In America, the savages from the island of St. Domingo recognized under a sovereign God, other Divinities by the name of Zemes, to which each hut idols were consecrated. The Mexicans, the Virginians supposed also, that the supreme God had left the Government of the World, to a class of subaltern Gods. It is with this invisible World or this compound of Spirits, which were hidden in every part of Nature, that the priests had established a commerce, which has caused all the misfortunes and the shame of mankind. According to the foregoing enumeration of the religious opinions of the different nations of the World it appears demonstrated, that the Universe and its parts have been worshipped, not only as causes, but also as living, animated and intelligent causes, and that this dogma is not traced to one or two nations only, but that it is a dogma, which is universally spread over the whole Earth. It has been equally shown, what has been the source of this opinion: that it originated from the dogma of an only and universal soul, or of a soul of the World, eminently intelligent, disseminated over all the points of matter, where Nature exercises as cause some important function, or produces some regular effect, be it eternal or constantly reproduced. The single great cause, or the God-Universe was therefore decomposed into a number of partial causes, which were subordinate to its unity, {p.61} and which were considered as so many living and spiritual causes of the nature of the supreme cause, of which they are either parts or emanations. The Universe was therefore an only God, composed of the assemblage of a multitude of Gods, which concurred as partial causes to the action of the whole, which it exercised itself in itself and on itself. Thus arose this great administration, one in its wisdom and in its primitive force, but infinitely multiplied in its secondary agents, called. Gods, Angels, Genii, &c., which, it was believed, could be treated with, as people treated the ministers and agents of human administrations.
It is here that worship commences; because we address our wishes and prayers only to Beings, which are capable of hearing and executing our wishes. Thus said Agamemnon in Homer, while addressing the Sun. Oh Sun! which sees all and hears all. This is not here a mere poetical figure or metaphor; it is a dogma constantly received, and the first philosopher, who dared to proclaim, that the Sun was nothing but a mass of fire, was regarded as an impious man. It will be observed, how prejudicial must have been such opinions to the progress of natural philosophy, when all the phenomena of Nature could be explained through the will of spiritual causes, which resided in the place, where the actions of the cause was manifested. But while this threw great obstacles in the way of the study of natural philosophy, that of Poetry found there great resources for fiction. All was animated in it, as all seemed to be so in Nature.
Ce n'est plus la vapeur qui produit le tonnerre,
C'est Jupiter arme pour effrayer la Terre;
Un orage terrible aux yeux des matelots,
C'est Neptune en courroux qui gourmante les flots.
Echo n'est plus un son qui dans lair retentisse,
C'est une Nymphe en pleurs, qui se plaint de Narcisse.(Boileau, Art Poet. L. III.)
Such was the language of poetry since the highest antiquity; and in conformity with these data, we shall proceed with the {p.62} explanation of mythology and of religious poems, of which it contains the remains. As the poets were the first theologians, so we shall analyse also according to the same method all the traditions and sacred legends, under whatsoever name that the agents of Nature shall find themselves disguised in the religious allegories, be it that Spirits were supposed united to visible bodies, which they animated, or that they had been separated by abstraction, and that a World of Spirits had been created, which were placed outside the visible World, but the outlines of which had always been sketched in accordance with it and upon its divisions.
{p.63}
CHAPTER IV
OF THE GREAT DIVISIONS OF NATURE INTO ACTIVE
AND PASSIVE CAUSES,
AND INTO PRINCIPLES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS!
The thus animated and spiritual Universe, or the great cause, being subdivided into a number of partial and likewise intelligent causes, was also divided into two great masses or parts, one called the active, and the other the passive cause, or the male and female part, which composed the great Androgynous, the two sexes of which were presumed to unite, in order to produce everything, in other words, the World acting in itself and upon itself. Here we have one of the great mysteries of ancient theology. Heaven contained the first part; the Earth and Elements up to the Moon comprised the second.
Two things have always struck mankind in the Universe and in the forms of the bodies which it contains: namely that, which seems to remain there always, and that which is merely transient; the causes, the effects, the places which are assigned them, otherwise, the places where one part acts, and those where the other part reproduces itself. Heaven and Earth represent the image of this remarkable contrast of the eternal Being and of the transient Being. In the Heavens, nothing seems to be born, nothing to grow, to get old and to die, when we rise above the sphere of the Moon. The latter alone seems to show some trace of alteration, destruction and reproduction of forms in the changes of her phases, when at the same time on the other hand, she offers an image of perpetuity in her proper substance, in her motion, and in the periodical and invariable succession of these same phases. She is like the most elevated limit of the sphere of beings, subject {p.64} to alteration. Above her everything moves in constant and regular order, and is preserving eternal forms. All celestial bodies show themselves perpetually the same, in their size, in their colours, in their same diameters, in their respective distances, if we except the planets and other movable stars: their number never grows nor diminishes. Uranus neither begets children, nor does he lose any, All is with him, eternal and immutable, at least to us, all seems to be so.
Such is not the case with the Earth. If on one side she shares the eternity of Heaven in her mass, in her force and her own qualities, on the other hand, she carries in her bosom and on her surface an innumerable number of bodies, which are extracted from her substance and from that of the elements surrounding her. These have only a momentary existence and pass successively through all the forms in the various organizations, which terrestrial matter experiences: they have scarcely emerged from her bosom, when they subside into it immediately. It is to this particular species of matter, which is successively organized and decomposed, that man has applied the idea of being transient and of effect, whilst he attributed the prerogative of causes to the Being, which is perpetually existing, whether in Heaven and in the Stars, or on Earth with her elements, her rivers and mountains.
Here are then two great divisions, which must have been conspicuous in the Universe, and which separate the existing bodies throughout Nature by very distinct differences. On the surface of the Earth, matter is seen undergoing a thousand different forms, according to the different contextures of the germs, which she contains, and the various configurations of the moulds which receive them, and where they are developed. Here she creeps under the forms of a flexible shrub; there she elevates herself majestically in that of a robust oak; elsewhere she is bristling with thorns, blooming in roses, variegated in flowers, ripening in fruits, stretching herself in roots, or is {p.65} rounding in a bushy mass, and covers with its dense shade the green turf, in which she nourishes the cattle, which is also herself, put into action in a more perfect organization, and moved by the fire, that principle, which gives life to animated bodies. In this new state she has again her germs, her development, her growth, her perfection or maturity; her youth, her age, her death, leaving rubbish behind, which is destined to recompose new bodies. Under this animated form she may be seen alike creeping in insect and reptile, elevating herself in the bold eagle, spiking herself with the darts of the porcupine, covering herself with down, with hair, with plumage of various colours, fastening herself to rocks by the roots of the polypus, crawling as a turtle, skipping as a stag, or a nimble deer, or crushing the earth with its ponderous mass, as in the elephant, roaring as a lion, bellowing as a bull, singing under the form of a bird, finally articulating sounds under that of man, combining ideas, knowing and imitating herself, creating the arts and reasoning over all his operations, and over those of Nature. This is the known boundary of perfection of organized matter on the surface of the Earth.
Next to man are those extremes, which form the greatest contrast with animated matter in those bodies, which are organized in the midst of water, and which live in shells. Here the fire of intellect, sense and life are almost entirely extinct, and a light shade separates there the animated being from that, which only vegetates. Nature takes there still more variegated forms, than on land: the masses there are enormous and the figures still more monstrous; but the matter, which is animated by the fire Ether is always there distinguishable. The reptile creeps here in the slime, while the fish is cutting the body of the water, aided by fins, over the tortuous eel, developing its fold towards the bottom of the fluid. The enormous whale shows here a mass of living matter, which has no equal amongst the dwellers on the Earth, and in the Air, al- {p.66} though each of the three elements may have animals, which may offer very often parallels. A common character is distinguishable in all; it is the instinct of reproduction, which brings them together to that effect, and another not so gentle an instinct, which inclines them, to pursue each other for food, and. which also is coherent with the want of perpetuating the transformation of the same matter under a thousand forms, and to make it revive by turns in the various elements, which serve as habitations to organized bodies. This is the Protheus of Homer according to some allegorists.
Nothing of the kind is offered for the contemplation of man beyond the elementary sphere, which is believed to extend to the last strata of the atmosphere, and even up to the orbit of the Moon. There the bodies take another character; that of constancy and perpetuity, which distinguishes them essentially from the effect. The Earth conceals therefore, in her fruitful womb the cause or germs of beings, which she brings forth, but she is not the sole cause. The rains, which fertilize her, seem to come from Heaven or from the abode of the clouds, which the eye locates there. The heat comes from the Sun; and the vicissitudes of the seasons are connected with the movements of the luminaries, which seem to bring them back. Heaven was therefore as much cause as the Earth, but an active cause, producing all the changes, without itself experiencing any, and producing them in another, unlike itself.
Ocellus of Lucania was therefore right, when he says: "that the existence of generation and cause of generation in the Universe had been observed, and that generation was placed, where there was a change and dislocation of the parts, and the cause, where there was stability of Nature." "As the World," adds this philosopher, "is ungenerated and indestructible, that it has no beginning, and that it shall have no end; it is therefore necessary, that the principle, which {p.67} operates the generation in another, unlike itself, and the one, which operates in itself, had existed.
The principle, which operates in another unlike itself, is all that, which is above the Moon, and principally the Sun, which, by its going and returning, constantly changes the air, as far as cold and heat are concerned, from which result the changes on Earth, and of everything, which pertains to the Earth. The zodiac, in which the Sun moves is still another cause, which concurs to the generation: in one word, the composition of the World includes the active and passive cause; the one, which generates outside of it, and the other, which begets in it. The first is the World above the Moon; the second is the sublunary World, of these two parties: one divine and always constant, the other mortal and always changing, is composed what is called the World, of which one of the principles is always moving and governing, and the other is always moved and governed."
This is a summary of ancient philosophy, which has passed in the theologies and cosmogonies of the different nations.
This distinction of the two-fold manner, in which the great cause acts in the generation of beings, which are produced by her and within her, must have originated comparisons with the generations here below, where two causes concur in the formation of the animal, the one actively, the other passively; one as male the other as female, one as the father, the other as the mother. The Earth must have been regarded as the womb of Nature; as the receptacle of the germs, and as the nurse of the beings, which are produced in her bosom; Heaven, as the principle of the seed and of fecundity. They must have stood towards each other in the relation of male and female, or rather as husband and wife, and their conjunction must have appeared like the image of marriage, wherefrom all beings take their origin. These comparisons have actually been made. Heaven, says Plutarch, appeared to {p.68} mankind, as if it was exercising the functions of father, and the Earth that of mother. "Heaven was the father, because it poured out its seed in the shape of rain into the womb of the Earth; the Earth, while receiving it, became fruitful and I brought forth, seemed to be the mother." Love presided, according to Hesiod, at the clearing away of the chaos. This is then the chaste marriage of Nature with herself, which Virgil has sung in those beautiful verses of the second book of the Georgics. "The Earth," says the poet, "expands in spring, in order to ask of Heaven the germ of fecundity. Ether, that mighty God, descends then in order to join his wife, which is gladdened by his presence. At the moment, when he pours out his seed in the form of rain, by which she is moistened, the union of both their immense bodies gives life and nourishment to all beings." It is also in spring and on the 25th of March, when the sacred fictions of the Christians suppose, that the Eternal communicates with their Virgin-Goddess, in order to redeem the calamities of Nature and to regenerate the Universe.
Columella in his treatise On Agriculture, has also sung the courtship of Nature, or the marriage of Heaven and Earth, which is consummated every year in spring. He portrays the eternal Spirit, source of the life or of the soul, which animates the World, as overcome with Love and fired with all the passion of Venus, which unites with Nature or with itself, because she forms a part of it, and which fills her own bosom with new productions. It is the Union of the Universe with itself, or that mutual action of its two sexes, which he calls the great secrets of Nature, her sacred orgies, her mysteries, which have been portrayed by the ancient Initiations with innumerable emblems. From this are derived the Ithyphallic feasts and the consecration of Phallus and Cteis, or the sexual organs of man and woman in the ancient sanctuaries.
Such is also the origin of the worship of Lingam with the {p.69} East Indians, which is nothing else but the union of the organs of generation of the two sexes, which those nations kept exposed in the temples of Nature, because of their being the always subsisting emblem of universal fecundity. The East Indians hold this symbol in the greatest veneration, and its worship is traced with them up to the highest antiquity. Under this form, they worship their great God Isuren, the same as the Grecian Bacchus, in honour of whom that people raised the Phallus.
The candlestick of seven branches, designed to represent the planetary system, through which the great work of sublunary generations is consummated, is placed before the Lingam, and the Brahmins light it, when they are paying homage to that emblem of the double force of Nature.
It is the duty of the Gurus ("Gourous"), to adorn the Lingam with flowers, almost exactly as the Greeks adorned the Phallus. The Taly, which the Brahma consecrates, and which the new husband hangs on the neck of his wife, to be worn by her all her lifetime, is frequently a Lingam, or the emblem of the union of the two sexes.
The Egyptians had also consecrated the Phallus in the mysteries of Isis and Osiris. According to Kircher, the Phallus was even found to be honoured in America. If this should be the case, then this worship has had the same universality as that of Nature, or of that Being, which unites in itself that double power. We learn from Diodorus, that the Egyptians were not the only nation which had consecrated that emblem; that the Assyrians, the Persians and the Greeks had it as well as the Romans, and in fact the whole of Italy.
Everywhere it was held sacred as an image of the organs of generation of all animated beings, according to Diodorus, or as a symbol designed to represent the natural and spermatic force of the Stars, according to Ptolemy.
{p.70} The Christian doctors, quite as ignorant as they were wicked, and always at work to decry and to pervert the theological ideas, ceremonies, statues and sacred fables of the ancients, were therefore wrong to inveigh against the feasts and the images, which had the worship of universal fecundity for objects. Those images and symbolical expressions of the two great forces of the God-Universe, were as simple as they were ingenious; they had been imagined in those ages, when the organs of generation and their union had not yet been blemished by the ridiculous prejudice of mysticism, or dishonoured by the abuse of lewdness. The operations of Nature and of her agents were held as sacred as herself: our religious errors and vices have only profaned her.
The double sex of Nature, or its distinction into active and passive cause, was also represented with the Egyptians by an androgynal Divinity, or by the God Cneph, which vomits from its mouth the symbolical egg, designed to represent the World. The Brahmins of India expressed the same cosmogonical idea by a statue, which was imitative of the World and which represented the two sexes: The male bore the image of the Sun, as being the centre of the active principle; the female represented that of the Moon, which fixes the beginning and the first lying in of passive Nature, as we have seen in the passage of Ocellus of Lucania.
From the reciprocal union of the two sexes of the World or of Nature, as universal cause, have originated the fictions, which are found at the head of all theogonies. Uranus married Ghea, or Heaven had the Earth for wife. These are the two physical beings, of which Sanchoniathon, the author of the theogony of the Phoenicians, speaks, when he says that Uranus and Ghea were two spouses, which gave their names, the one to Heaven, the other to Earth, from which marriage the God Time or Saturn was born. The author of the theogony of the Cretans, of the Atlantes, Hesiod, Apollodorus, Proclus, {p.71} and all those, who wrote the genealogy of the' Gods or causes, place Heaven and Earth at the head of it. These are the two great causes, from which all things have emanated. The name of king and queen, given to them by certain theogonies, belonging to the allegorical style of antiquity, and ought not to be an obstacle to recognize there the two first causes of Nature. We shall also discover in their marriage the union of the active and passive causes, which is one of those cosmogonical ideas, which all religions have endeavoured to portray. We shall therefore take off Uranus and Ghea of the number of the first princes, which have reigned over the Universe, and the epoch of their reigns shall be stricken from the chronological records. The same will be the case with Prince Saturn and Prince Jupiter, with Prince Helios or the Sun and with the Princess Selena or the Moon, &c. The fate of the fathers shall decide that of their children. and nephews, in other words, that the sub-divisions of the two primary great causes shall not be of a different nature, than the causes themselves, of which they are a part.
To this first division of the Universe into active and passive cause, a second one is added, which is that of the principles, one of which is the principle of Light and of goodness, and the other the principle of Darkness and of evil. This dogma forms the basis of all theogonies, as has been well remarked by Plutarch. "We must not be under the impression," says that philosopher, "that the principles of the Universe are inanimate bodies, as Democritus and Epicurus have imagined, nor that unqualified matter is organized and ordained by one single mind or Providence, mistress of all things, as the Stoics have said; because it is impossible, that a single being—be it good or bad, should be the cause of all, as God cannot be the cause of any evil."
"The harmony of this World is a combination of contraries, like the chords of a lyre or the string of a bow, which bend {p.72} and unbend. Never, as the poet Euripides said, is the good separated from the evil: there must be a mixture of the one and the other."
"This opinion of the two principles," continues Plutarch, is "of the highest antiquity; it has passed from the theologians and the legislators, to the poets and philosophers. The author is unknown, but the opinion itself is proved by the traditions of the human family; it is consecrated by the mysteries and the sacrifices of the Greeks and of the Barbarians. The Dogma of the principles, which are opposed to each other in Nature, and which by their contrarieties produce a mixture of good and of evil, is there recognized. It cannot therefore be said, that there is a sole dispenser, who is drawing off the events, like liquor from two casks, in order to mix them together, and to give us that mixture to drink; because Nature produces nothing here below, which might be without that mixture. But there are two contrary causes, which must be acknowledged, two antagonistic powers, of which one carries to the right, the other to the left, and thus govern our life and all this sublunary World, which for that very reason is subject to so many changes and irregularities of our species, because nothing can exist without a cause; and if Good cannot be the cause of Evil, it is therefore absolutely necessary, that there is a cause for Evil, as well as there is one for Good."
It should seem from this last phrase of Plutarch, that the real origin of the dogma of the two principles, proceeds from the difficulty, under which mankind has ever laboured, to explain by one and the same cause, the good and the evil of Nature, and to make virtue and crime, light and darkness, issue from one common source. Two such antagonistic effects appeared to them to require two causes equally antagonistic in their nature and in their action. "This dogma," adds Plutarch, "has been generally received by most nations, and chiefly {p.73} by those, which were most celebrated for their wisdom. They have all acknowledged two Gods, of different occupations, if I may be allowed this expression, one of which was the author of good, and the other of the evil, which is found in the World. They gave to the first the title of God the most high, and to the other that of Demon."
Indeed, we see in the Cosmogony or the Genesis of the Hebrews two principles, one called God, who does good, and who after the termination of each of his works exclaims: that he saw, what he had made, was good; and after him there comes another principle, called Demon, or Devil, and Satan, who destroys the good, which the first has made, and "who introduces the evil, death and sin into the Universe." This cosmogony, as we shall see elsewhere, was copied from the ancient cosmogony of the Persians, and its dogmas were copied from the books of Zoroaster, who also admits two principles, according to Plutarch, one called Ormuzd and the other Ahriman. "The Persians said of the first, that he was of the nature of Light, and of the other, that he was of that of Darkness. The Egyptians called the first, Osiris, and the second Typhon, who was the eternal enemy of the first."
All the sacred books of the Persians and Egyptians contain the marvellous and allegorical story of the various battles, which were given by Ahriman and his Angels to Ormuzd, and which were given by Typhon to Osiris. These fables have been repeated by the Greeks in the war of the Titans and Giants with feet, in the shape of serpents, against Jupiter or against the principle of Godless and of Light; because in their theology, as it is well observed by Plutarch, Jupiter corresponded to the Ormuzd of the Persians and to the Osiris of the Egyptians.
To the examples quoted by Plutarch, which are taken from the theogony of the Persians, Egyptians, Grecians and the Chaldeans, I shall add some others, which shall corroborate {p.74} what he asserts, and which shall finally prove, that this dogma was universally spread all over the World, and that it belongs to all theologies.
The natives of the Kingdom of Pegu admit two principles, one the author of Good and the other of Evil. They attempt chiefly to lower the latter. Thus it happens, that the natives of the island of Java, who acknowledge a supreme ruler, of the Universe, address also their oblations and their prayers to the evil spirit, in order that he might not do them any harm. The same is the case with the Molucchians and with all the savages of the Philippine islands. The natives of the island of Formosa have their good God, Ishy, and their devils, Chouy; they offer sacrifices to the evil Genius and rarely to the good one. The Negroes of the Gold Coast admit also two Gods, one of which is good and the other bad; one is white, and the other is black and wicked. They trouble themselves very little with the first one, whom they call the good man, but they fear principally the second one, to whom the Portuguese have given the name of Demon; it is him, whom they try to propitiate.
The Hottentots call the good principle, the Captain above, and the bad principle, the Captain below. The Ancients also thought, that the source of all evil was in the gloomy matter of the Earth. The Giants and Typhon were children of the Earth. The Hottentots say, that it is better to let the good principle alone; that it is not necessary to pray to it, that it will always do good; but that it is necessary to address prayers to the bad one, that he may not do any mischief. They call their bad Divinity Tuquoa, and they represent it as of small size, crooked and of bad temper, enemy of the Hottentots, and they say that it is the source of all the evils, which afflict the World, but beyond that its power ceases.
The natives of Madagascar acknowledge also the two principles; they give to the bad one, the attributes of the serpent, {p.75} which the cosmogonies of the Persians, Egyptians, the Jews and the Greeks also attributed to it; they call the good principle Jadhar, or the great almighty God; and the bad one Angat. To the first one they erect no temples, neither do they address to him their prayers, because he is good, just as if fear alone, more than gratitude had made the Gods. Thus the Mingrelians honour above all that of their idols, which is in repute of being the most cruel.
The inhabitants of the island of Tenerife acknowledge a supreme God, to whom they give the name of Achguaya-Xerac, which means the greatest, the most sublime, the preserver of all things. They also believe in a bad Genius, which they call Guayotta.
The Scandinavians have their God Locke, who makes war to the Gods and chiefly to Thor; he slanders the Gods, says the Edda, and is the great artificer of frauds. He has a wicked spirit; of him are born three monsters, the wolf Feuris, the serpent Midgard, and Hela or Death. He, like Typhon produces the Earthquakes.
The Tehuvaches and the Morduans acknowledge a supreme Being, from whom mankind derives all the good, enjoys. They admit also malevolent Genii, whose occupation is to persecute mankind.
The Tartars of Katzchinzi address their prayers to a beneficent God, while turning their faces towards the East, or towards the source of light; but they stand more in fear of a malevolent Divinity, which they worship in order, that it might not do them any harm. They consecrated to it in Spring a black stallion; they called this malevolent Divinity Touis. The Ostiaks and the Voguls call it Kul, the Samoyedes, Sjudibe; the Motores, Huala; the Kargassians Sedkyr.
The natives of Tibet also admit malevolent Genii, which they place above the air. The religion of the Bonzes supposes likewise two principles.
{p.76} The Siamese sacrifice to a principle of evil, which they consider as the author of all the evil, which happens to mankind, and it is chiefly in their afflictions that they apply to it for relief.
The East Indians have their Ganga and their Gurnatha, which are Genii, that have the power to do evil, and which they try to appease by prayers, sacrifices and processions. The inhabitants of Tolgoni in India, admit two principles, which govern the Universe; a good one, which is the Light; and the other bad, which is Darkness. The ancient Assyrians shared the opinion of the Persians on the two principles, and they worshipped, says Augustine, two Gods. one good and the other bad, as it is easy to be convinced of it by their books. The Chaldeans had their good and bad Stars, to which they joined Spirits, which shared their nature, whether good or bad.
We find again also in the new World this same dogma, which had been generally received by the old one, on the distinction of the two principles, and of tile beneficent and malevolent Genii.
The Peruvians worshipped Pacha-Camac, the God, author of Good, to whom they opposed Cupai the Genius author of Evil.
The Caraibes admitted two kinds of Spirits; some of which were good, which had their abode in Heaven, and of which every one of us has his own, which is his guide on Earth: these are our Guardian Angels; others were malevolent Spirits, which hover in the air and take pleasure to annoy the mortals.
The natives of Terra firma thought that there was a God in Heaven, that this God was the Sun. They admitted besides, a bad principle, the author of all the evils, which we suffer; and and in order to propitiate his good will, they offer him flowers, fruit, corn and perfumes. These were the Gods, of which the sings had some reason to say, that they themselves were their {p.77} representatives and images on Earth. The more they are feared, the more they are flattered, the more homage is showered upon them.
This is the reason, why the Gods have always been treated like Kings and like men of influence, of whom we either are in fear or expect something. All the prayers and all the wishes, which the Christians address to their God and to their Saints are always selfish. Religion is merely a commerce of barter. That Tenebrous Being, which is so venerated by the Savages, appears to them very often, as their priests say, who are at the same time legislators, physicians and ministers of war; because the priests everywhere have taken possession of all the branches of power, which force or imposture exercise over the credulous mortals.
The Tabuyes in America, situated in about the same latitude as the Madegassians in Africa, have also nearly the same opinion with regard to the two principles.
The natives of Brazil acknowledge a bad Genius, which they call Aguyan; they have their conjurers, who pretend to stand in connection with this Spirit.
The Aborigines of Louisiana admitted two principles, one is the cause of Good and the other of Evil; the latter according to their notions, governs the whole World.
Those of Florida worshipped the Sun, the Moon and the Stars, and acknowledged also a Genius of evil by the name of Toia, which they try to conciliate, by the celebration of feasts in his honour.
The Canadians and the Savages in the neighbourhood of Hudson's Bay, worship the Sun, the Moon and the Thunder. The Divinities to which they address most frequently their wishes, are the malevolent Spirits, of which they stand greatly in fear, as they believe them to be all powerful to do evil.
The Esquimaux have a God; which is exclusively good, called Ukuma, and another called Ouikam, which is the author {p.78} of all their evils. He is the originator of the storms, which upset their boats and causes their labour to be of no account;