the moon came in for a share of their adoration; but all the accounts of it are full of inconsistency and contradiction: for this reason I think it was of late invention, and that Isis was not originally the moon, but the mother of the gods. Many other reasons for this opinion will be given in the course of the work, when I come to treat of Isis and the Moon.
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
F
