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
- ↑ 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.
