By a necessary consequence of these ideas, nature was despoiled of all power; she was contemplated only as a passive instrument, who acted at the will, under the influence of the numerous, all-powerful agents to whom she was subordinate. It was thus for want of contemplating nature under her true point of view, that man has mistaken her entirely, that he believed her incapable of producing any thing by herself; that he ascribed the honour of all those productions, whether advantageous or disadvantageous to the human species, to fictitious powers, whom he always clothed with his own peculiar dispositions, only he aggrandized their force. In short it was upon the ruins of nature, that man erected the imaginary colossus of the Divinity.

addressed to the Divinity. They were unceasingly prostrate before the imaginary power whom they judged had the right of commanding nature; whom they supposed to have sufficient energy to divert her course; and whom they considered to possess the means to make her subservient to his particular views; thus each hoped by presents, by humiliation, to induce him to oblige this nature to satisfy the discordant desires of their race. The sick man, expiring in his bed, asks that the humours accumulated in his body, should in an instant lose those properties which render them injurious to his existence; that, by an act of his puissance, his God should renew or recreate the springs of a machine worn out by infirmities. The cultivator of a low swampy country, makes complaint of the abundance of rain with which the fields are inundated; whilst the inhabitant of the hill, raises his thanks for the favours he receives, and solicitsers augment, his resources increase in a continuance of that which causes the despair of his neighbour. In this, each is willing to have a God for himself, and asks according to his momentary caprices, to his fluctuating wants, that the invariable essence of things should be continually changed in his favour.

From this it must be obvious, that man every moment asks a miracle to be wrought in his support. It is not, therefore, at all surprising that he displayed such ready credulity, that he adopted with such facility the relation of the marvellous deeds which were universally announced to him as the acts of the power, or the effects of the benevolence of the Divinity, and as the most indubitable proof of his empire over nature, in the expectation, that if he could gain them over to his interest, this nature, which he found so sullen, so little disposed to lend herself to his views, would then be controuled in his own favour.*

*It was easy to perceive that nature was deaf, or at least that it never interrupted its march; therefore men deemed it their interest to submit the entire of nature to an intelligent agent, whom, reasoning by analogy, they supposed better disposed to listen to them than an insensible nature which they were not able to controul. Now it remains to be shown, whether the selfish interest of man is a proof sufficient of the existence of an agent

If the ignorance of nature gave birth to the Gods, the knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them. As soon as man becomes enlightened, his pow

a ratio with his knowledge; the sciences, the protecting arts, industrious application, furnish him assistance; experience encourages his progress, or procures for him the means of resisting the efforts of many causes, which cease to alarm him as soon as he obtains a correct knowledge of them. In a word, his terrours dissipate in proportion as his mind becomes enlightened. Man, when instructed, ceases to be superstitious.

CHAPTER XIX.

Of Mythology, and Theology. THE elements of nature were, as we have shown, the first divinities of man; he has generally commenced with adoring material beings; each individual, as we have already said, and as may be still seen in savage nations, made to himself a particular God of some physical object, which he supposed to be the cause of those events in which he was himself interested; he never wandered to seek out of visible nature the source either of what happened to himself, or of those phe

endowed with intelligence-whether, because a thing may be very convenient, it follows that it is so!

nomena to which he was a witness. As he every where saw only material effects, he attributed them to causes of the same genus; incapable in his infancy of those profound reveries, of those subtile speculations, which are the result of leisure, he did not imagine any cause distinguished from the objects that met his sight, nor of any essence totally different from every thing he beheld.

cessant. These discoveries are generally the fruit of society: isolated beings, detached families, hardly ever make any discoveries-scarcely ever think of making any. The savage is a being who lives in a perpetual state of infancy, who never reaches maturity unless some one comes to draw him out of his misery. At first repulsive, unsociable, intractable, he by degrees familiarizes himself with those who render him service; once gained by their kindness, he readily lends them his confidence; in the end he goes the length of sacrificing to them his liberty.

The observation of nature was the first study of those who had leisure to meditate: they could not avoid being struck with the phenomena of the visible world. The rising and setting of the sun, the periodical return of the It was commonly from the bosom of seasons, the variations of the atmo- civilized nations that have issued those sphere, the fertility and sterility of the personages who have carried sociability, earth, the advantages of irrigation, the agriculture, arts, laws, Gods, religious damages caused by floods, the use- opinions, forms of worship, to those ful effects of fire, the terrible conse- families or hordes as yet scattered, who quences of conflagration, were proper were not formed into nations. These and suitable objects to occupy their softened their manners-gathered them thoughts. It was natural for them to together-taught them to reap the adbelieve that those beings they saw vantages of their own powers-to renmove of themselves, acted by their der each other reciprocal assistanceown peculiar energies; according as to satisfy their wants with greater fatheir influence over the inhabitants of cility. In thus rendering their existthe earth was either favourable or ence more comfortable, they attracted otherwise, they concluded them to have their love, obtained their veneration, either the power to injure them, or the acquired the right of prescribing opindisposition to confer benefits. Those ions to them, made them adopt such as who first acquired the knowledge of they had either invented themselves, gaining the ascendency over man, then or else drawn up in the civilized counsavage, wandering, unpolished, or dis- tries from whence they came. History persed in woods, with but little attach- points out to us the most famous legisment to the soil, of which he had not lators as men, who, enriched with useyet learned to reap the advantage, were ful knowledge they had gleaned in the always more practised observers-in- bosom of polished nations, carried to dividuals more instructed in the ways savages without industry and needing of nature, than the people, or rather assistance, those arts, of which, until the scattered hordes, whom they found then, these rude people were ignorant: ignorant and destitute of experience. such were the Bacchus's, the OrpheTheir superior knowledge placed them us's, the Triptolemus's, the Moses's, in a capacity to render them services- the Numas, the Zamolixis's; in short, to discover to them useful inventions, all those who first gave to nations their which attracted the confidence of the Gods-their worship-the rudiments unhappy beings to whom they came to of agriculture, of science, of theology, offer an assisting hand; savages who of jurisprudence, of mysteries, &c. It were naked, half famished, exposed to will perhaps be inquired, if those nathe injuries of the weather, and to the tions which at the present day we see attacks of ferocious beasts, dispersed assembled, were all originally dispersin caverns, scattered in forests, occu- ed? We reply, that this dispersion pied with hunting, painfully labouring may have been produced at various to procure themselves a very precarious times, by those terrible revolutions, of subsistence, had not sufficient leisure which it has before been remarked our to make discoveries calculated to facili- globe has more than once been the thetate their labour, or to render it less in-atre, in times so remote that history

has not been able to transmit to us the detail. Perhaps the approach of more than one comet may have produced on our earth several universal ravages, which have at each time annihilated the greater portion of the human species. Those who were able to escape from the ruin of the world, filled with consternation, plunged in misery, were but little conditioned to preserve to their posterity a knowledge, effaced by those misfortunes of which they had been both the victims and the witnesses: overwhelmed with dismay, trembling with fear, they were not able to hand down the history of their frightful adventures, except by obscure traditions; much less to transmit to us the opinions, the systems, the arts, the sciences, anterior to these revolutions of our sphere. There have been perhaps men upon the earth from all eternity; but at different periods they may have been nearly annihilated, together with their monuments, their sciences, and their arts; those who outlived these periodical revolutions, each time formed a new race of men, who by dint of time, labour, and experience, have by degrees withdrawn from oblivion the inventions of the primitive races. It is, perhaps, to these periodical revo-it lutions of the human species, that is to be ascribed the profound ignorance in which we see man plunged upon those objects that are the most interesting to him. This is, perhaps, the true source of the imperfection of his knowledge of the vices of his political and religious institutions over which terrour has always presided; here, in all probability, is the cause of that puerile inexperience, of those jejune prejudices, which every where keep man in a state of infancy, and which render him so little capable of either listening to reason or of consulting truth. To judge by the slowness of his progress, by the feebleness of his advance, in a number of respects, we should be inclined to say, the human race has either just quitted its cradle, or that he was never destined to attain the age of virility or of reason.

However it may be with these conjectures, whether the human race may always have existed upon the earth, or whether it may have been a recent pro

it

eral deluge, but even a great number since the existence of our planet; this globe itself may have been a new production in nature; may not always have occupied the place it does at present.-See Ch. VI. Whatever idea may be adopted on this subject, it is very certain that, independent of those exterior causes which are competent to totally change its face, as the impulse of a comet may do, this globe contains within itself a cause adequate to alter it entirely, since, besides the diurnal and sensible motion of the earth, it has one extremely slow, almost imperceptible, by which every thing must eventually be chang

ed in it: this is the motion from whence depends the precession of the equinoctial points, observed by Hipparchus and other mathematicians; by this motion, the earth must at the end of several thousand years change totally: this motion will at length at present forms the lands or continents. cause the ocean to occupy that space which From this it will be obvious that our globe, as well as all the beings in nature, has a continual disposition to change. This motion was known to the ancients, and was what gave rise to what they called their great year, which the Egyptians fixed at thirty-six thousand, five hundred and twenty-five years: the Sabines at thirty-six thousand, four hundred and twenty-five, whilst others have extended to one hundred thousand, some to even seven Again, to those general revolutions which our hundred and fifty-three thousand years.planet has, at different times experienced, may be added those that have been partial, such as inundations of the sea, earthquakes, subterraneous conflagrations, which have sometimes had the effect of dispersing particular nations, and to make them forget all those sciences with which they were before acquainted. It is also probable that the first volcanic fires, having had no previous vent, before they burst the crust of earth; as the were more central, and greater in quantity, sea washed the whole, it must have rapidly sunk down into every opening, where, falling on the boiling lava, it was instantly expanded into steam, producing irresistible explosion; whence it is reasonable to conclude, that the tended, and of much greater force, than those primeval earthquakes were more widely exwhich occur in our days. Other vapours may be produced by intense heat, possessing a much greater elasticity, from substances that the expansive force of these vapours would evaporate, such as mercury, diamonds, &c.; be much greater than the steam of water, even at redhot heat; consequently they may have had sufficient energy to raise islands, *These hypotheses will unquestionably ap- continents, or even to have detached the pear bold to those who have not sufficiently moon from the earth; if the moon, as has meditated on nature, but to the philosophic been supposed by some philosophers, were inquirer they are by no means inconsistent. thrown out of the great cavity which now There may have not only have been one gen-contains the South Sea; the immense quan

*

*

duction of nature, it is extremely easy | the imagination of their auditors.to recur to the origin of many existing nations: we shall find them always in the savage state; that is to say, composed of wandering hordes; these were collected together, at the voice of some missionary or legislator, from whom they received benefits, who gave them Gods, opinions, and laws. These personages, of whom the people, newly congregated, readily acknowledged the superiority, fixed the national Gods, leaving to each individual those which he had formed to himself, according to his own peculiar ideas, or else substituting others brought from those regions from whence they themselves had emigrated.

The better to imprint their lessons on the minds of their new subjects, these men became the guides, the priests, the sovereigns, the masters, of these infant societies; they spoke to

tity of water flowing in from the original ocean, and which then covered the earth, would much contribute to leave the conti nents and islands, which might be raised at the same time, above the surface of the water. In later days we have accounts of huge stones falling from the firmament, which may have been thrown by explosion from some distant earthquake, without having been impelled with a force sufficient to cause them to circulate round the earth, and thus produce numerous small moons or satellites.

Poetry, by its images, its fictions, its numbers, its rhyme, its harmony, conspired to please their fancy, and to render permanent the impressions it made: thus, the entire of nature, as well as all its parts, was personified; at its voice, trees, stones, rocks, earth, air, fire, water, took intelligence, held conversation with man, and with themselves; the elements were deified.The sky, which, according to the then philosophy, was an arched concave, spreading over the earth, which was supposed to be a level plain, was itself made a God; Time, under the name of Saturn, was pictured as the son of heaven; the igneous matter, the ethereal electric fluid, that invisible fire which vivifies nature, that penetrates all beings, that fetilizes the earth, which is the great principle of motion, the source of heat, was deified under the name of Jupiter: his combination with every being in nature was expressed by his metamorphoses-by the frequent adulteries imputed to him. He was armed with thunder, to indicate he produced meteors, to typify the electric fluid that is called lightning. He married the winds, which were designated under the name of Juno, therefore called the Goddess of the Winds; their nuptials were celebrated with

*It may be that the larger animals we now + Saturn was represented as an inexorable behold were originally derived from the small-divinity-naturally artful, who devoured his est microscopic ones, who have increased in own children-who revenged the anger of his bulk with the progression of time, or that, as mother upon his father, for which purpose the Egyptian philosophers thought, mankind she armed him with a scythe, formed of metwere originally hermaphrodites, who, like the als drawn from her own bowels, with which aphis, produced the sexual distinction after he struck Cœlus, in the act of uniting himsome generations. This was also the opinion self to Thea, and so mutilated him that he of Plato, and seems to have been that of was ever after incapacitated to increase the Moses, who was educated amongst the Egyp- number of his children: he was said to have tians, as may be gathered from the 27th and divided the throne with Janus, king of Italy, 28th verses of the first chapter of Genesis: whose reign seems to have been so mild, so "So God created man in his own image, in beneficent, that it was called the golden the image of God created he him; male and age; human victims were sacrificed on his female created he them. And God blessed altars, until abolished by Hercules, who subthem, and God said unto them, be fruitful and stituted small images of clay. Festivals in multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue honour of this God, called Saturnalia, were it: and have dominion over the fish of the instituted long antecedent to the foundation sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over eve- of Rome: they were celebrated about the ry living thing that moveth upon the earth" middle of Dece.nber, either on the 16th, 17th, it is not therefore presuming too much to sup- or 18th; they lasted in latter times several pose, as the Egyptians were a nation very days, originally but one. Universal liberty fond of explaining their opinions by hierogly-prevailed at the celebration, slaves were perphics, that that part which describes Eve as taken out of Adam's rib, was an hieroglyphic emblem, showing that mankind were in the primitive state of both sexes, united, who were afterwards divided into males and females.

No. VI.-23

mitted to ridicule their masters-to speak freely on every subject-no criminals were executed-war never declared; the priests made their human offerings with their heads uncovered; a circumstance peculiar to the Saturnalia, not adopted at other festivals.

great solemnity.* Thus, following the | of infant nations, themselves adored same fictions, the sun, that beneficent star which has such a marked influence over the earth, became an Osiris, a Belus, a Mithras, an Adonis, an Apollo. Nature, rendered sorrowful by his periodical absence, was an Isis, an Astarte, a Venus, a Cybele.†