Anacalypsis/Volume 1/Book 1/Chapter 2

by Godfrey Higgins

CHAPTER II.

FIRST GOD OF THE ANCIENTS.—THE SUN.—DOUBLE NATURE OF THE DEITY.—METEMPSYCHOSIS AND RENEWAL OF WORLDS.—MORAL EVIL.—ETERNITY OF MATTER.—BUDDHA—GENESIS.

1. I shall now proceed to shew, in a way which I think I may safely say cannot be refuted, that all the Gods of antiquity resolved themselves into the solar fire, sometimes itself as God, or sometimes as emblem or shekinah of that higher principle, known by the name of the creative Being or God. But first I must make a few observations on his nature, as it was supposed to exist by the ancient philosophers.

On the nature of this Being or God the ancient oriental philosophers entertained opinions which took their rise from a very profound and recondite course of reasoning, (but yet, when once put in train, a very obvious one,) which arose out of the relation which man and the creation around him were observed by them to bear, to their supposed cause—opinions which, though apparently well known to the early philosophers of all nations, seem to have been little regarded or esteemed in later times, even if known to them, by the mass of mankind. But still they were opinions which, in a great degree, influenced the conduct of the world in succeeding ages; and though founded in truth or wisdom, in their abuse they became the causes of great evils to the human race.

The opinions here alluded to are of so profound a nature, that they seem to bespeak a state of the human mind much superior to any thing to be met with in what we have been accustomed to consider or call ancient times. From their philosophical truth and universal reception in the world, I am strongly inclined to refer them to the authors of the Neros, or to that enlightened race, supposed by Mons. Bailly to have formerly existed, and to have been saved from a great catastrophe on the Himmalah mountains. This is confirmed by an observation which the reader will make in the sequel, that these doctrines have been like all the other doctrines of antiquity, gradually corrupted—incarnated, if I may be permitted to compose a word for the occasion.

Sublime philosophical truths or attributes have become clothed with bodies and converted into living creatures. Perhaps this might take its origin from a wish in those professing them to conceal them from the vulgar eye, but the cause being forgotten, all ranks in society at last came to understand them in the literal sense, their real character being lost; or perhaps this incarnation might arise from a gradual falling away of mankind from a high state of civilization, at which it must have arrived when those doctrines were discovered, into a state of ignorance,—the produce of revolutions, or perhaps merely of the great law of change which in all nature seems to be eternally in operation.

2. The human animal, like all other animals, is in his mode of existence very much the child of accident, circumstance, habit: as he is moulded in his youth he generally continues. This is in nothing, perhaps, better exemplified than in the use of his right hand. From being carried in the right arm of his nurse, his right hand is set at liberty for action and use, while his left is at rest: the habit of using the right hand in preference to the left is thus acquired and never forgotten. A similar observation applies to the mind. To natural causes leading men to peculiar trains or habits of thinking or using the mind, may be traced all the recondite theories which we find among the early races of man. If to causes of this kind they are not to be ascribed, I should be glad to know where their origins are to be looked for. If they be not in these causes to be found, we must account for them by inventing a history of the adventures of some imagined human being, after the manner of the Greeks and many others, whose priests never had a difficulty, always having a fable ready for the amusement of their credulous votaries.

In opposition to this, I, perhaps, may be asked, why the inhabitants of the new world have not arrived at the high degree of civilization,—at the same results, as the inhabitants of the old? The answer is, Accident or circumstances being at first different, they have been led to a different train of acting or thinking; and if they branched off from the parent stock in very early times, accident or circumstances being after their separation different, are quite sufficient to account for the difference of the results. It seems probable, that from their knowledge of figures and their ignorance of letters, they must have branched off in a very remote period. Although the peculiar circumstance, that few or none of the animals of the old world were found in the new one, or of the animals of the new one in the old, seems to shew a separate formation of the animal creation; yet the identity of many of the religious rites and ceremonies of the inhabitants of the two worlds, and other circumstances pointed out by Mr. Faber and different writers, seem to bespeak only one formation or creation of man.

The rise of the doctrine respecting the nature of God named above, is said to be lost in the most remote antiquity. This may be true; but perhaps a little consideration will enable us to point out the natural cause from which, as I have observed, it had its origin. Like the discovery of figures or arithmetic, the septennial cycle, &c., it probably arose among the first philosophers or searchers after wisdom, from their reflecting upon the objects which presented themselves to their observation.

3. That the sun was the first object of the adoration of mankind, I apprehend, is a fact, which I shall be able to place beyond the reach of reasonable doubt. An absolute proof of this fact the circumstances of the case put it out of our power to produce; but it is supported by reason and common sense, and by the traditions of all nations, when carefully examined to their foundations. The allegorical accounts or mythoses^[1] of different countries, the inventions of an advanced state of society, inasmuch as they are really only allegorical accounts or mythoses, operate nothing against this doctrine.

When, after ages of ignorance and error, man became in some degree civilized, and he turned his mind to a close contemplation of the fountain of light and life—of the celestial fire—he would observe among the earliest discoveries which he would make, that by its powerful agency all nature was called into action; that to its return in the spring season the animal and vegetable creation were indebted for their increase as well as for their existence. It is probable that for this reason chiefly the sun, in early times, was believed to be the creator, and became the first object of adoration. This seems to be only a natural effect of such a cause. After some time it would be discovered that this powerful and beneficent agent, the solar fire, was the most potent destroyer, and hence would arise the first idea of a Creator and Destroyer united in the same person. But much time would not elapse before it must have been observed, that the destruction caused by this powerful being was destruction only in appearance, that destruction was only reproduction in another form—regeneration; that if he appeared sometimes to destroy, he constantly repaired the injury which he seemed to occasion—and that, without his light and heat, every thing would dwindle away into a cold, inert, unprolific mass.^[2] Thus at once, in the same being, became concentrated, the creating, the preserving, and the destroying powers,—the latter of the three being, at the same time, both the destroyer and regenerator. Hence, by a very natural and obvious train of reasoning, arose the creator, the preserver, and the destroyer—in India, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; in Persia, Oromasdes, Mithra, and Arimanius; in Egypt, Osiris, Neith, and Typhon: in each case Three Persons and one God. And thus arose the Trimurti, or the celebrated Trinity. On this Mr. Payne Knight says, “The hypostatical division and essential unity of the Deity is one of the most remarkable parts of this system, and the farthest removed from common sense and reason: and yet this is perfectly reasonable and consistent, if considered together with the rest of it, for the emanations and personifications were only figurative abstractions of particular modes of action and existence, of which the primary cause and original essence still continued one and the same. The three hypostases being thus only one being, each hypostasis is occasionally taken for all, as is the case in the passage of Apuleius before cited, where Isis describes herself as the universal deity.”^[3]

The sun himself, in his corporeal and visible form of a globe of fire, I do not doubt was, for a long time, the sole trinity. And it would not be till after ages of speculation and philosophizing that man would raise his mind to a more pure trinity, or to a trinity of abstractions,—a trinity which would probably never have existed in his imagination if he had not first had the more gross corporeal igneous trinity, with its effects, for its prototype, to lead him to the more refined and sublime doctrine, in which the corporeal and igneous trinity gave way among philosophers to one of a more refined kind; or to a system of abstractions, or of attributes, or of emanations, from a superior being, the creator and preserver of the sun himself.

It has been said in reply to this, Then this fundamental doctrine on which, in fact, all the future religion and philosophy of the world was built, you attribute to accident! The word accident means, by us unseen or unknown cause; but I suppose, that when an intelligent Being was establishing the present order of the universe, he must know how the unseen cause or accident which he provided would operate,—this accident or unseen cause being only a link in a chain, the first link of which begins, and the last of which ends, in God.

That the sublime doctrine of emanations, or abstractions as it was called, above alluded to, prevailed among the oriental nations, cannot be doubted; but yet there may be a doubt whether they were ever entirely free from an opinion that the creative Deity consisted of a certain very refined substance, similar, if not the same, as the magnetic, galvanic, or electric fluid. This was the opinion of all the early Christian fathers, as well, I think, as of the Grecians. But still, I think, certain philosophers arose above this kind of materialism, among whom must have been the Buddhists and Brahmins of India; but of this we shall see more in the sequel. We shall find this a most difficult question to decide.

4. The Trinity described above, and consisting of abstractions or emanations from the divine nature, will be found exemplified in the following work in a vast variety of ways; but in all, the first principle will be found at the bottom of them. I know nothing in the works of the ancient philosophers which can be brought against them except a passage or two of Plato, and one of Numenius, according to Proclus.

Plato says, “When, therefore, that God, who is a perpetually reasoning divinity, cogitated about the god who was destined to subsist at some certain period of time, he produced his body smooth and equable; and every way from the middle even and whole, and perfect from the composition of perfect bodies.”^[4]

Again Plato says, “And on all these accounts he rendered the universe a happy God.”^[5] Again he says, “But he fabricated the earth, the common nourisher of our existence; which being conglobed about the pole, extended through the universe, is the guardian and artificer of night and day, and is the first and most ancient of the gods which are generated within the heavens. But the harmonious progressions of these divinities, their concussions with each other, the revolutions and advancing motions of their circles, how they are situated with relation to each other in their conjunctions and oppositions, whether direct among themselves or retrograde, at what times and in what manner they become concealed, and, again emerging to our view, cause terror, and exhibit tokens of future events to such as are able to discover their signification; of all this to attempt an explanation, without suspecting the resemblances of these divinities, would be a fruitless employment. But of this enough, and let this be the end of our discourse concerning the nature of the visible and generated gods.”^[6]

How from these passages any ingenuity can make out that Plato maintained a trinity of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, as the Supreme God or the Creator, I do not know, and I should not have thought of noticing them if I had not seen an attempt lately made in a work not yet published, to depreciate the sublime doctrines of the ancients by deducing from these passages that consequence.

The other passage is of Numenius the Pythagorean, recorded by Proclus, who says that he taught, that the world was the third God, ὁ γαρ κατ᾽ αυτον ὁ τριτος εστι Θεος.^[7]

This is evidently nothing but the hearsay of hearsay evidence, and can only shew that these doctrines, like all the other mythoses, had become lost or doubtful to the Greeks. The latter quotation of this obscure author will be found undeserving of attention, when placed in opposition to the immense mass of evidence which will be produced in this work. And as for the passage of Plato, I think few persons will allow it to have any weight, when in like manner every construction of it is found to be directly in opposition to his other doctrines, as my reader will soon see.^[8]

5. The doctrine as developed above by me, is said to be too refined for the first race of men. Beautifully refined it certainly is: but my reader will recollect that I do not suppose that man arrived at these results till after many generations of ignorance, and till after probably almost innumerable essays of absurdity and folly. But I think if the matter be well considered, the Pantheistic scheme (for it is a part of a pantheism) of making the earth the creator of all, will require much more refinement of mind than the doctrine of attributing the creation to the sun. The first is an actual refinement run into corruption, similar to Bishop Berkley’s doctrine,—refinement, indeed, carried to a vicious excess, carried to such an excess as to return to barbarism; similar, for instance, to what took place in the latter ages of Greece and Rome in the fine arts, when the beautiful Ionic and Corinthian orders of architecture were deserted for the Composite.

We may venture, I think, to presume that adoration must first have arisen either from fear or admiration; in fact, from feeling. As an object of feeling, the sun instantly offers himself. The effect arising from the daily experience of his beneficence, does not seem to be of such a nature as to wear away by use, as is the case with most feelings of this kind. He obtrudes himself on our notice in every way. But what is there in the earth on which we tread, and which is nothing without the sun, which should induce the half-civilized man to suppose it an active agent—to suppose that it created itself? He would instantly see that it was, in itself, to all appearance תהו tëu, ובהו ubëu,^[9] an inert, dead, unprolific mass. And it must, I think, have required an exertion of metaphysical subtlety, infinitely greater than my trinity must have required, to arrive at a pantheism so completely removed from the common apprehension of the human understanding. In my oriental theory, every thing is natural and seductive; in the other, every thing is unnatural and repulsive.

My learned friend who advocates this degrading scheme of Pantheism against my sublime and intellectual theory, acknowledges what cannot be denied, that the doctrines held in these two passages of Numenius and Plato, are directly at variance with their philosophy as laid down in all their other works. Under these circumstances, I think I may safely dismiss them without further observation, as passages misunderstood, or contrivances to conceal their real opinions.

6. Of equal or nearly equal date, and almost equally disseminated throughout the world with the doctrine of the Trinity, was that of the Hermaphroditic or Androgynous character of the Deity. Man could not help observing and meditating upon the difference of the sexes. He was conscious that he himself was the highest in rank of all creatures of which he had any knowledge, and he very properly and very naturally, as far as was in his power, made God after the being of highest rank known to him, after himself; thus it might be said, that in his own image, in idea, made he his God. But of what sex was this God? To make him neuter, supposing man to have become grammarian enough to have invented a neuter gender, was to degrade him to the rank of a stone. To make him female was evidently more analogous to the general productive and prolific characters of the author of the visible creation. To make him masculine, was still more analogous to man’s own person, and to his superiority over the female, the weaker vessel; but still this was attended with many objections. From a consideration of all these circumstances, an union of the two was adopted, and he was represented as being Androgynous.

Notwithstanding what I have said in my last paragraph respecting the degradation of making God of the neuter gender, I am of opinion that had a neuter gender been known it would have been applied to the Deity, and for that reason would have been accounted, of the three genders, the most honourable. For this, among other reasons, if I find any very ancient language which has not a neuter gender, I shall be disposed to consider it to be probably among the very oldest of the languages of the world. This observation will be of importance hereafter.

7. Of all the different attributes of the Creator, or faculties conferred by him on his creature, there is no one so striking or so interesting to a reflecting person as that of the generative power. This is the most incomprehensible and mysterious of the powers of nature. When all the adjuncts or accidents of every kind so interesting to the passions and feelings of man are considered, it is not wonderful that this subject should be found in some way or other to have a place among the first of the human superstitions. Thus every where we find it accompanying the triune God, called Trimurti or Trinity, just described, under the very significant form of the single obelisk or stone-pillar, denominated the Lingham or Phallus,^[10] and the equally significant Yoni or Cteis, the female organ of generation: sometimes single, often in conjunction. The origin of the worship of this object is discussed at large in my Celtic Druids, and will be found in the index by reference to the words Phallus, Linga, Lithoi.

8. The next step after man had once convinced himself of the existence of a God would be, I think, to discover the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Long before he arrived at this point, he must have observed, and often attempted to account for, the existence of moral evil. How to reconcile this apparent blot in the creation to the beneficence of an all-powerful Creator, would be a matter of great difficulty: he had probably recourse to the only contrivance which was open to him, a contrivance to which he seems to have been driven by a wise dispensation of Providence, the doctrine of a future state of existence, where the ills of this world would find a remedy, and the accounts of good and evil be balanced; where the good man would receive his reward, and the bad one his punishment. This seems to me to be the probable result of the contemplation of the existence of evil by the profound primeval oriental philosophers, who first invented the doctrine of the Trinity.

9. Other considerations would lend their assistance to produce the same result. After man had discovered the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, the metempsychosis followed the doctrine of the reproduction or regeneration by the third person of the triune God, by a very natural process, as the doctrine of the triune God had before arisen by an easy process from the consideration by man of the qualities of the beings around him. Everywhere, throughout all nature, the law that destruction was reproduction appeared to prevail. This united to the natural fondness for immortality, of which every human being is conscious, led to the conclusion, that man, the élite of the creation, could not be excepted from the general rule; that he did but die to live again, to be regenerated; a consciousness of his own frailty gradually caused a belief, that he was regenerate in some human body or the body of some animal as a punishment for his offences, until by repeated penances of this kind, his soul had paid the forfeit of the crimes of its first incarnation, had become purified from all stain, and in a state finally to be absorbed into the celestial influence, or united to the substance of the Creator. As it happens in every sublunary concern, the law of change corrupted these simple principles in a variety of ways; and we find the destroyer made into a demon or devil, at war with the Preserver or with the Creator. Hence arose the doctrine of the two principles opposed to each other, of Oromasdes and Arimanius in perpetual war, typified by the higher and lower hemisphere of the earth, of winter and summer, of light and darkness, as we shall find developed in a variety of ways. What could be so natural as to allot to the destroyer the lower hemisphere of cold and darkness, of winter, misery, and famine? What so natural as to allot to the beneficent Preserver the upper hemisphere of genial warmth, of summer, happiness, and plenty? Hence came the festivals of the equinoxes and of the solstices, much of the complicated machinery of the heathen mythology, and of judicial astrology.

From similar trains of reasoning arose the opinion that every thing in nature, even the world itself, was subject to periodical changes, to alternate destructions and renovations—an opinion, perhaps, for sublimity not to be equalled in the history of the different philosophical systems of the world, the only doctrine which seemed, in the opinion of the ancients, to be capable of reconciling the existence of evil with the goodness of God.

10. A little time ago I said, that the first philosophers could not account for the existence of moral evil without the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. I am induced to make another observation upon this subject before I leave it. In the modern Christian system, this difficulty has been overcome, as most theological difficulties usually are, among devotees, by a story. In this case by a story of a serpent and a fruit tree, of which I shall not here give my opinion, except that, like most of the remainder of Genesis, it was anciently held to have an allegorical meaning, and, secondly, that I cannot do Moses the injustice of supposing that he, like the modern priests, could have meant it, at least by the higher classes of his followers, to be believed literally.

Moral evil is a relative term; its correlative is moral good. Without evil there is no good; without good there is no evil. There is no such thing known to us as good or evil per se. Here I must come to Mr. Locke’s fine principle, so often quoted by me in my former book, the truth of which has been universally acknowledged, and to which, in their reasoning, all men seem to agree in forgetting to pay attention,—that we know nothing except through the medium of our senses, which is experience. We have no experience of moral good or of moral evil except as relative and correlative to one another; therefore, we are with respect to them as we are with respect to God. Though guided by experience we confidently believe their existence in this qualified form, yet of their nature, independent of one another, we can know nothing. God having created man subject to one, he could not, without changing his nature, exclude the other. All this the ancients seem to have known; and, in order to account for and remove several difficulties, they availed themselves of the metempsychosis, a renewal of worlds, and the final absorption of the soul or the thinking principle into the Divine substance, from which it was supposed to have emanated, and where it was supposed to enjoy that absolute and uncorrelative beatitude, of which man can form no idea. This doctrine is very sublime, and is such as we may reasonably expect from the school where Pythagoras studied;^[11] but I do not mean to say that it removes all difficulties, or is itself free from difficulty. But absolute perfection can be expected only by priests who can call to their aid apples of knowledge. Philosophers must content themselves with something less. Of the great variety of sects or religions in the world there is not one, if the priests of each may be believed, in which any serious difficulties of this kind are found.

11. Modern divines, a very sensitive race, have been much shocked with the doctrine of the ancients, that nothing could be created from nothing, ex nihilo nihil fit. This is a subject well deserving consideration. The question arises how did the ancients acquire the knowledge of the truth of this proposition. Had they any positive experience that matter was not made from nothing? I think they had not. Then how could they have any knowledge on the subject? As they had received no knowledge through the medium of the senses, that is from experience, it was rash and unphilosophical to come to any conclusion.

The ancients may have reasoned from analogy. They may have said, Our experience teaches that every thing which we perceive has pre-existed before the moment we perceive it, therefore it is fair to conclude that it must always have existed. A most hasty conclusion. All that they could fairly conclude was, that, for any thing which they knew to the contrary, it may have existed from eternity, not that it must have existed. But this amounts not to knowledge.

Are the modern priests any wiser than the ancient philosophers? Have they any knowledge from experience of matter having ever been created from nothing? I think they have not.^[12] Then how can they conclude that it was created from nothing? They cannot know any thing about it; they are in perfect ignorance.

If matter have always existed, I think we may conclude that it will always exist. But if it have not always existed, will it always continue to exist? I think we may conclude it to be probable that it will. For if it have not always existed it must have been created (as I will assume) by God. God would not create any thing which was not good. He will not destroy any thing that is good. He is not changeable or repents what he has done: therefore he will not destroy the matter which he has created. From which we may conclude, that the change of form which we see daily taking place is periodical; at least there is in favour of this what the Jesuits would call a probable opinion; and this brings us to the alternate creations and destructions of the ancients. A learned philosopher says, “The bold and magnificent idea of a creation from nothing was reserved for the more vigorous faith and more enlightened minds of the moderns, who seek no authority to confirm their belief; for as that which is self-evident admits of no proof, so that which is in itself impossible admits of no refutation.”^[13]

This doctrine of the renewal of worlds, held by the ancient philosophers, has received a great accession of probability from the astronomical discoveries of La Place, who has demonstrated, that certain motions of the planetary bodies which appeared to Newton to be irregular, and to portend at some future period the destruction of the solar system, are all periodical, and that after certain immensely elongated cycles are finished, every thing returns again to its former situation. The ancient philosophers of the East had a knowledge of this doctrine, the general nature of which they might have acquired by reasoning similar to the above, or by the same means by which they acquired a knowledge of the Neros.

This is not inconsistent with the doctrine of a future judgment and a state of reward and punishment in another world. Why should not the soul transmigrate, and after the day of judgment (a figure) live again in the next world in some new body? Here are all the leading doctrines of the ancients. I see nothing in them absurd—nothing contrary to the moral attributes of God—and nothing contrary even to the doctrines of Jesus of Nazareth. It has been thought that the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls may be found in the New Testament.

Many of the early fathers of the Christians held the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, which they defended on several texts of the New Testament.^[14] It was an opinion which had a very general circulation both in the East and in the West. It was held by the Pharisees or Persees, as they ought to be called, among the Jews; and among the Christians by Origen,^[15] Chalcidius, (if he were a Christian,) Synesius, and by the Simonians, Basilidians, Valentiniens, Marcionites, and the Gnostics in general. It was held by the Chinese, and, among the most learned of the Greeks, by Plato and Pythagoras. Thus this doctrine was believed by nearly all the great and good of every religion, and of every nation and age; and though the present race has not the smallest information more than its ancestors on this subject, yet the doctrine has not now a single votary in the Western part of the world. The Metempsychosis was believed by the celebrated Christian apologist, Soame Jenyns, perhaps the only believer in it of the moderns in the Western parts.

The following observations tend not only to throw light on the doctrine of the Indians, the earliest philosophers of whom we have any genuine records, but they also shew that their doctrine is identically the same as that of certain individuals of the Western philosophers, who, recorded traditions inform us, actually travelled in very remote ages to the country of the Brahmins to learn it.

“Pythagoras, returning from his Eastern travels to Greece, taught the doctrine of the Metempsychosis, and the existence of a Supreme Being, by whom the universe was created, and by whose providence it is preserved; that the souls of mankind are emanations of that Being. Socrates, the wisest of the ancient philosophers, seems to have believed that the soul existed before the body; and that death relieves it from those seeming contrarieties to which it is subject, by its union with our material part. Plato (in conformity to the opinions of the learned Hindoos) asserted, that God infused into matter a portion of his divine spirit, which animates and moves it: that mankind have two souls of separate and different natures—the one corruptible, the other immortal: that the latter is a portion of the Divine Spirit: that the mortal soul ceases to exist with the life of the body; but the divine soul, no longer clogged by its union with matter, continues its existence, either in a state of happiness or punishment: that the souls of the virtuous return, after death, into the source whence they flowed; while the souls of the wicked, after being for a certain time confined to a place destined for their reception, are sent back to earth to animate other bodies. Aristotle supposed the souls of mankind to be portions or emanations of the divine spirit; which at death quit the body, and, like a drop of water falling into the ocean, are absorbed into the divinity. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic sect, taught that throughout nature there are two eternal qualities; the one active, the other passive: that the former is a pure and subtle æther, the divine spirit; and that the latter is in itself entirely inert, until united with the active principle. That the divine spirit, acting upon matter, produced fire, air, water, earth: that the divine spirit is the efficient principle, and that all nature is moved and conducted by it. He believed also that the soul of man, being a portion of the universal soul, returns after death to its first source. The opinion of the soul being an emanation of the divinity, which is believed by the Hindoos, and was professed by Greeks, seems likewise to have been adopted by the early Christians. Macrobius observes, Animarum originem emanare de cœlo, inter recte philosophantes indubitatæ constant esse fidei. Saint Justin says, the soul is incorruptible, because it emanates from God; and his disciple Tatianus, the Assyrian, observes, that man having received a portion of the divinity, is immortal as God is. Such was the system of the ancient philosophers, Pythagoreans, Brachmans, and some sects of the Christians.”^[16]

Thus from trains of reasoning similar to what I have briefly described, and from natural causes, I think arose all the ancient doctrines and mythologies.

12. The oldest philosophy or mythology of which we have any certain history, is that of the Buddha of the Eastern nations, in which are to be found the various doctrines to which I have just alluded. From the Metempsychosis arose the repugnance among the Buddhists to the slaughter of animals,—a necessary consequence of this doctrine uncorrupted and sincerely believed. From this circumstance in the first book of Genesis, or book of Wisdom, which is probably a work of the Buddhists, the slaughter of animals is prohibited or not allowed. After a time the mild doctrines of Buddha came to be changed or corrupted and superseded by those of Crishna. Hence in the second book of Genesis, or the book of the Generations, or Re-generations^[17] of the planetary bodies, which is, I think, a Brahmin work, they are allowed to be used for sacrifice. In the third book, or the book of the Generations, or Re-generations^[18] of the race of man, the Adam, they are first allowed to be eaten as food.

How long a time would elapse before man would arrive at the point I here contemplate—the knowledge of the doctrines which I have described—must evidently depend, in a great measure, upon the degree of perfection in which he was turned out from the hand of his Creator. On this point we are and we must remain in ignorance. I argue upon the supposition that man was created with only sufficient information for his comfortable existence, and, therefore, I must be considered to use merely a conditional argument. If any person think it more probable that man was turned out of his Creator’s hand in a state of perfection, I have no objection to this; but my reasoning does not apply to him. If he will condescend to reason with me, he must conditionally admit my premises.

13. It is not to be supposed, that I imagine these profound philosophical results respecting the Trinity, &c., to have been arrived at by the half civilized or infant man all at once—in a day, a week, or a year. No, indeed! many generations, perhaps thousands of years may have elapsed before he arrived at this point; and I think the discovery of several of them in every part of the world, new as well as old, justifies the inference that they were the doctrines of a race, in a high state of civilization, either immediately succeeding or before the flood, which has so evidently left its traces everywhere around us. Before these profound results were arrived at, innumerable attempts must have been made to discover the origin of things. Probably every kind of absurdity imaginable may have been indulged in. All this we may readily suppose, but of its truth we cannot arrive at absolute certainty. At the same time, for any thing we know to the contrary, man may have been created in such a state as easily to have arrived at these conclusions. It is scarcely possible for us at this day to be able to appreciate the advantages which the first races of mankind would possess, in not having their minds poisoned, and their understandings darkened, and enervated by the prejudices of education. Every part of modern education seems to be contrived for the purpose of enfeebling the mind of man. The nurse begins with hobgoblins and ghosts, which are followed up by the priests with devils and the eternal torments of hell. How few are the men who can entirely free themselves from these and similar delusions in endless variety instilled into the infant mind!

A learned philosopher has said, “It is surprising that so few should have perceived how destructive of intellect, the prevailing classical system of education is; or rather that so few should have had courage to avow their conviction respecting classical absurdity and idolatry. Except Bacon and Hobbes, I know not that any authors of high rank have ventured to question the importance or utility of the learning which has so long stunned the world with the noise of its pretensions; but sure it does not require the solid learning or philosophic sagacity of a Bacon or a Hobbes to perceive the ignorance, nonsense, folly, and dwarfifying tendency of the kind of learning which has been so much boasted of by brainless pedants.”

All the doctrines which I have stated above, are well known to have been those of the most ancient nations; the theory of the origin of those doctrines is my own. But I beg leave to observe, that whether the theory of their origin be thought probable or not, the fact of the existence of the doctrines will be proved beyond dispute in a great variety of ways; and it is on the fact of their existence that the argument of this work is founded. The truth or falsity of the theory of their origin will not affect the argument. But of such persons as shall dispute the mode above described, by which the ancients are held to have arrived at their knowledge, I request the statement of a more rational theory.

I shall now proceed to shew, that the doctrines which I have here laid down were disseminated among all nations, and first that the Sun or solar fire was the sole object of the worship of all nations either as God himself, or as emblem or shekinah of the Supreme Being.

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1. This is nothing against the Mosaic account, because it is allowed by all philosophers, as well as most of the early Jews and Christian fathers, to contain a mythos or an allegory—by Philo, Josephus, Papias, Pantænus, Irenæus, Clemens Alex., Origen, the two Gregories of Nyssa and Nazianzen, Jerome, Ambrose, Spencer de Legibus Hebræorum, Alexander Geddes, the Romish translator of the Bible, in the Preface and Critical Remarks, p. 49. See also Marsh’s Lectures, &c., &c. Of this I shall say more hereafter.
2. Described in Genesis by the words תהו ובהו tëu-u-bëu, which mean a mass of matter effete, unproductive, unprolific, ungenerating, and itself devoid of the beautiful forms of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms,—the mud or Ιλυς of Sanchoniathon. The words of our Bible, as here used, without form and void, have not any meaning.
3. Knight, p. 163.
4. Plato’s Tim., Taylor, p. 483.
5. Ibid. p. 484.
6. Ibid. p. 499, 500.
7. Comment in Tim. of Plat. II. 93.
8. In the seventh chapter of the 2nd book of Arch. Phil. by Thomas Burnet, who was among the very first of modern philosophers, may be seen an elaborate and satisfactory proof that the ancient philosophers constantly held two doctrines, one for the learned, and one for the vulgar. He supports his proofs by an example from Jamblicus and Laertius, relative to some notions of Pythagoras, which accorded with the vulgar opinion of the Heavens, but which were contrary to his real opinions. He has completely justified the ancients from the attempts of certain of the moderns to fix upon them their simulated opinions. The fate of Socrates furnishes an admirable example of what would happen to those who in ancient times taught true doctrines to the vulgar, or attempted to draw aside the veil of Isis.
9. Gen. chap. i.
10. Religion de l’Antiquité, par Cruizer, Notes, Introd. p. 525.
11. Carmel, close to the residence of Melchizedek, where was the temple of Iao, without image. See Jamblicus, chap. iii., Taylor’s translation. When I formed the table of additional errata to my Celtic Druids, I had forgotten where I found the fact here named relating to the residence of Pythagoras, which caused the expression of the doubt which may be seen there respecting it.
12. The book of Genesis, when properly translated, says nothing on the subject.
13. Knight, p. 131.
14. Beausobre, Hist. Manich. L. vii. c. v. p. 491.
15. Ib. p. 492.
16. Forbes, Orient. Mem. Vol. III. Ch. xxxiii. p. 261.
17. Parkhurst, in voce, ילד ild.
18. These are the names which the books give to themselves.