I. a second dualism. And it is remarkable how widely, CHAP. almost universally extended throughout the earlier world, appears the institution of a solemn period of mourning about the autumnal, and of rejoicing about the vernal, equinox.* The suspension, or apparent extinction of the great † vivifying power of nature, Osiris or Iacchus; the destitution of Ceres, Isis, or the Earth, of her husband or her beautiful daughter, torn in pieces or carried away into their realms by the malignant powers of darkness; their re-appearance in all their bright and fertilising energy; these, under different forms, were the great annual fast and festival of the early heathen worship. But the poets were the priests of this Poets. Nature-worship; and from their creative imagination arose the popular mythology, which gave its separate deity to every part of animate or inanimate being; and, departing still farther from the primitive allegory, and the symbolic forms under which * Plutarch, de Iside et Osiride:-Φρύγες τὸν θεὸν οἰόμενοι Xuwvoc μèv кaleúdεiv, Jépove & ἐγρηγορέναι, τότε μὲν κατευνασμούς τότε δ' ἀνεγέρσεις βακχεύοντες αὐτῷ τελοῦσι. Παφλαγόνες δὲ καταδεῖ σθαι καὶ καθείργνυσθαι χειμῶνος, ἦρος δὲ ἀναλύεσθαι φάσκουσι. + Bohlen (das Alte Indien, p. 139. et seq.) gives a long list of these festivals of the sun. Lobeck (i. 690.) would altogether deny their symbolical character. It is difficult, however, to account for the remarkable similarity between the usages of so many distinct nations in the New World as well as the Old, in Peru and Florida, in Gaul and Britain, as in India and Compare likewise Dr. Pritch- Nam rudis ante illos, nullo discrimine, vita Et stupefacta novo pendebat lumine mundi. MANIL. i. 67. I. CHAP. the phenomena of the visible world were embodied, wandered into pure fiction; till nature-worship was almost supplanted by religious fable: and hence, by a natural transition, those who discerned God in every thing, multiplied every separate part of creation into a distinct divinity. The mind fluctuated between a kind of vague and unformed pantheism, the deification of the whole of nature, or its animation by one pervading power or soul, and the deification of every object which impressed the mind with awe or admiration.* While every nation, every tribe, every province, every town, every village, every family, had its peculiar, local, or tutelar deity, there was a kind of common neutral ground on which they all met, a notion that the gods in their collective capacity exercised a general controlling providence over the affairs of men, interfered, especially on great occasions, and, though this belief was still more vague and more inextrica * Some able writers are of opinion that the reverse of this was the case-that the variety was the primary belief; the simplification the work of a later and more intellectual age. On this point A. W. Schlegel observes," The more I investigate the ancient history of the world, the more I am convinced that the civilised nations set out from a purer worship of the Supreme Being; that the magic power of Nature over the imagination of the successive human races, first, at a later period, produced polytheism, and, finally, altogether obscured the more spiritual religious notions in the popular belief; while the wise alone preserved within The my the sanctuary the primeval secret. I. bly involved in fable, administered retribution in CHAP. another state of being. And thus even the common language of the most polytheistic nations approached to monotheism.* caste. Wherever, indeed, there has been a great priestly Priestly caste, less occupied with the daily toils of life, and advanced beyond the mass of the people, the primitive nature-worship has been perpetually brought back, as it were, to its original elements; and, without disturbing the popular mythological religion, furnished a creed to the higher and more thinking part of the community, less wild and extravagant.† In Persia the Magian order retained or acquired something like a pure theism, in which the Supreme Deity was represented under the symbol of the primal uncreated fire; and their Nature-worship, under the form of the two conflicting principles, preserved much more of its original simplicity than in most other countries. To the influence of a distinct sacerdotal order may be traced ‡, in India, the singular union *This is strikingly expressed by a Christian writer:-"Audio vulgus cum ad cœlum manus tendunt, nihil aliud quam Deum dicunt, et Deus magnus est, et Deus verus est, et si Deus dederit. Vulgi iste naturalis sermo est, an Christiani confitentis oratio?" Min. Fel. Octavius. The same thought may be found in Cyprian, de Van. Idol., and Tertullian, Apolog. + This is nowhere more openly professed than in China. The early Jesuit missionaries assert that the higher class (the literatorum secta) despised the idolatry of the vulgar. One of the charges against "Non æque placere, rudem ple- "The learned brahmins adore one God, without form or quality, eternal, unchangeable, and occupying all space: but they carefully confine these doctrines to their own schools, as dangerous; and teach in public a religion, in which, CHAP. I. Anthropomorphism of the Greeks. of the sublimest allegory, and a sort of lofty poetical religious philosophy, with the most monstrous and incoherent superstitions; and the appearance of the profound political religion of Egypt in strange juxta-position with the most debasing Fetichism, the worship of reptiles and vegetables.* From this Nature-worship arose the beautiful anthropomorphism of the Greeks, of which the Homeric poetry, from its extensive and lasting in supposed compliance with the infirmities and passions of human nature, the deity is brought more to a level with our prejudices and wants. The incomprehensible attributes ascribed to him are invested with sensible and even human forms. The mind, lost in meditation, and fatigued in the pursuit of something, which, being divested of all sensible qualities, suffers the thoughts to wander without finding a resting-place, is happy, they tell us, to have an object on which human feelings and human senses may again find repose. To give a metaphysical deity to ignorant and sensual men, absorbed in the cares of supporting animal existence, and entangled in the impediments of matter, would be to condemn them to atheism. Such is the mode in which the brahmins excuse the gross idolatry of their religion." William Erskine, Bombay Transactions, i. 199. Compare Colebrooke, Asiat. Res. vii. 279.; and other quotations in Bohlen, Das Alte Indien, i. 153., which indeed might be multiplied without end. Mr. Mill (Hist. of India), among the ablest and most uncompromising opponents of the high view of Indian civilisation, appears to me not to pay sufficient attention to this point. der * Heeren has conjectured, with his usual ingenuity, or rather perhaps has adopted from De Brosses, the theory, that the higher part of the Egyptian religion was that of a foreign and dominant caste; the worship of plants and brutes, the original undisturbed Fetichism of the primitive and barbarous African race. (Compare Von Hammer, Geschichte Assassinen, p. 57.) On the whole, I prefer this theory to that of Cicero (Nat. Deor. i. 36.), that it was derived from mere usefulness; to the political reason suggested by Plutarch (de Isid. et Osir.); to that of Porphyry (de Abst. iv. 9.), which, however, is adopted, and, I think, made more probable by Dr. Pritchard in his Egyptian Mythology, from the transmigration of the soul into beasts; of Marsham and Warburton, from hieroglyphics; of Lucian (de Astrol.) and Dupuis, from the connection with astronomy; or, finally, that of Bohlen (Das Alte Indien, i. 186.), who traces its origin to the consecration of particular animals to particular deities among their Indian ancestors. popularity, may in one sense be considered the parent. The primitive traditions and the local superstitions of the different races were moulded together in these songs, which, disseminated throughout Greece, gave a kind of federal character to the religion of which they were, in some sort, the sacred books. But the genius of the people had already assumed its bias: few, yet still some, vestiges remain in Homer of the earlier theogonic fables.* Conscious, as it were, and prophetic of their future pre-eminence in all that constitutes the physical and mental perfection of our race, this wonderful people conformed their religion to themselves. The cumbrous and multiform idol, in which wisdom, or power, or fertility, were represented by innumerable heads or arms, or breasts, as in the Ephesian Diana, was refined into a being, only distinguished from human nature by its preterhuman development of the noblest physical qualities of man. The imagination here took another and a nobler course; it threw an ideal grandeur and an unearthly loveliness over the human form, and by degrees deities became men, and men deities, or, as the distinction between the godlike (Eosíxeλos) and the divine (os) became more indistinct, were united in the intermediate form of heroes and demi-gods. The character of the people here, as elsewhere, operated on the religion; the religion re-acted on the * Nothing can be more groundless or unsuccessful than the attempt of later writers to frame an allegorical system out of Homer; VOL. I. the history and design of this change C CHAP. I. |