of it, this work will, notwithstanding my utmost care, scarcely be understood. It might very well have formed a first volume to this, and I now regret that I did not so arrange it.
I think it right to state here, what I beg my reader will never forget, that in my explanations of words and etymologies I proceed upon the principle of considering all the different systems of letters, Sanscrit excepted, to have formed originally but one alphabet, only varied in forms, and the different written languages but one language, and that they are all mere dialects of one another. This I consider that I have proved in my Celtic Druids, and it will be proved over and over again in the course of the following work.
Numerous are the analyses of the ancient mythology, but yet I believe the world is by no means satisfied with the result of them. There is yet a great blank. That the ancient mythoses have a system for their basis, is generally believed; indeed, I think this is what no one can doubt. But, whether I have discovered the principles on which they are founded, and have given the real explanation of them, others must judge.
The following work is similar to the solution of a difficult problem in the mathematics, only to be understood by a consecutive perusal of the whole—only to be understood after close attention, after an induction of consequences from a long chain of reasoning, every step of which, like a problem in Euclid, must be borne in mind. The reader must not expect that the secrets which the ancients took so much pains to conceal, and which they involved in the most intricate of labyrinths, are to be learned without difficulty. But though attention is required, he may be assured that, with a moderate share of it, there is nothing which may not be understood. But instead of making a consecutive perusal of the work, many of my readers will go to the Index and look for particular words, and form a judgment from the etymological explanation of them, without attending to the context or the arguments in other parts of the volume, or to the reasoning which renders such explanation probable, and thus they will be led to decide against it and its conclusions and consider them absurd. All this I expect, and of it I have no right to complain, unless I have a right to complain that a profound subject is attended with difficulties, or that superficial people are not deep thinkers, or that the nature of the human animal is not of a different construction from what I know it to be. The same lot befel the works of General Vallancey, which contain more profound and correct learning on the origin of nations and languages than all the books which were ever written. But who reads them? Not our little bits of antiquarians of the present day, who make a splashing on the surface, but never go to the bottom. A few trumpery and tawdry daubs on an old church-wall serve them to fill volumes. It is the same with most of our Orientalists. The foolish corruptions of the present day are blazoned forth in grand folios[1] as the works of the Buddhists or Brahmins; when, in fact, they are nothing but what may be called the new religion of their descendants, who may be correctly said to have lost, as they, indeed, admit they have done, the old
- ↑ Vide the works, for instance, published by Akerman.
b
