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still more where the prolific fruitfulness of nature and the conditions of climate induce a listless and inactive state of the faculties, the polytheistic element will not give its character to the system, but rather the mystical and abstract qualities, such as characterise the Hindoo worship, will assert their supremacy over the mind, and impart to the institutions and ideas of the people the con. templative and impassive mould, in which the manners and thoughts of the natives of Hindostan have during so many ages unchangingly remained.

These views derive remarkable illustration from the often noted antithesis which exists between oriental institutions and those of the progressive nations of Europe. Whilst the oriental world of to-day reproduces the story of four thousand years ago, and still retains in the unvarying habitudes of its peoples the same peculiarities which its earliest monuments portray, present Europe has little in common with the Europe of the Ugrians or of the Celts. This remarkable contrast is not the result of an original difference of race. The natives of India and of Persia belong to even the same subordinate division of the human family, as do the Lithuanians and the Germans.

The same peculiar qualities of individual character which prompted some adventurers from the Arian plains to seek new settlements in the west, sustained in them, and in their descendants, that practical tone of mind which is essentially irreconcilable with dreamy and spiritualistic speculations. The same thoughtful and contemplative cast of thought which caused other individuals of the same race to expend their energies in the realizing of a mystical creed, occupied in the learned investigations of the Brahmins, or, like the Gioghi, meditating amid their primeval forests, or patiently undergoing the slow martyrdom of the enthusiastic Faquirs,, fostered the germ of mysticism inherent in the ancient religions until it had so grown as to overshadow every other institution, and to arrest every principle of evolution and advance. Hence the predominant feature of Oriental life has been its unaltering and stationary as well as ideal character, whilst the west has ever been the eventful theatre of change.

Apart from these broader outlines of contrast there have always existed special distinctive marks introduced within the same nation, and originating in the principle to which the wider differences are due. When the tumult of the

early unsettled life had subsided, the speculative spirit again reappeared in a section of the so-called "practical" nations. There will exist from time to time men of very imaginative tendencies even in communities where circumstances are least favourable to the development of such qualities.

It would be difficult to cite the example of any refined nation in which a remarkable philosopher has not appeared, if we except only the Roman. The one employment and ambition of the Roman mind-the lust of dominion-was an all engrossing passion which checked its other energies. Hence it is that the absence of philosophy from Roman literature is not the only proof which can be adduced that in it the mystical element had altogether died out, and that its mythology was simple, unadulterated Polytheism. This is more strikingly evidenced by the Roman idea of fate as compared with the Grecian destiny. With the Greeks destiny was an all-ruling power, superior to the gods, and controlling even the councils of Jove. Thus in the tragedies of Eschylus and Sophocles, in which the pagan mythology is adopted as the guiding idea, the conception of destiny is presented as inevitable power, to which gods and men were obliged alike to submit.

With the Romans, destiny was merely an expression of the will of the gods, who were subject to no higher influences in the accomplishing of their own decrees. Thus we find Ovid drawing back from the supposition that the decrees of the fates superseded the will of the gods.

"Au dominæ fati quidquid cecinere sorores

Omne sub arbitrio desinit esse Dei."-Ovid, Fasti, v. 3, 17.

Amongst the Greeks the speculative genius of their philosophers restored the weakened fire of Mysticism and Pantheism, which the stormy period of their migrations and early settlement had nigh extinguished.

The imagination of the first Greek generations was not principally devoted to fostering this element of their religion. It rather fastened on the belief in the multitude of inferior deities, which we have mentioned as the first corruption of the primitive Monotheistic faith. The general testimony of modern scholars is in favour of that Genesis of the pagan mythology, which has been so fully and

eloquently described by the learned Dr. Döllinger. The powers of nature were the first objects of Apotheosis. The terrific energy of the storm, and the milder influence of the gently descending shower, were alike deified in the popular belief. The sun diffusing his beneficent influence through all the changes of the zodiac;-earth at one season yielding to decay, and again displaying its former bloom;-all the latent springs of change, which were traceable throughout the vicissitudes of nature, were worshipped under suitable forms, which aptly symbolized the supposed hidden powers of which they were designed to be the emblems. Thus nature-worship, probably allied with a certain vague Pantheism, became the religion of the early Greeks, and found its first priests in the early Orphic Minstrels. The hymns of Olen were sung in honour of the sun god, and Orpheus celebrated the worship of Dionysius Zagreus, who symbolized the fertility of the earth. There are not wanting authorities for believing that Orpheus taught in his mythical strains the Pantheistic doctrine of an all-pervading God, or the kindred dogma of emanation. The same eastern idea of emanation is probably contained in the theogony of Hesiod, which was not without its influence upon the later imaginings of Greek philosophy. "The way," says Thirlwall,

in which Hesiod treats his subject suggests a strong suspicion that his theogony or cosmogony was not the fruit of his own invention, and that although to us it breathes the first lispings of Greek philosophy, they are only the faint echoes of an earlier and deeper strain.'

In what regarded the prominent details of its mythology, as well as in the view it preferred to take of the great problems of existence, the intellect of Greece appears to us to present the same general characters, which distinguishes what has been in general terms denominated Oriental Philosophy; as comprehending those more fundamental tenets which, although variously modified, and often overlaid by unlike deposits of a later period, form the substratum of all the eastern systems.

The same essential feature of nature-worship distinguishes all the ancient mythologies. Whilst, as has been

*Heathenism and Judaism, lib. 2nd.
† Vol. i.

already observed, in some systems the purely mythological element has received less development, it has in all attained a sensible growth. Thus the leading idea of this form of idolatry discovers itself in the adoration of the sun, whether figured under the Persian Mithras, under the Egyptian Osiris, the Grecian Phoebus, or as in the Assyrian statue, described by Macrobius,* in which the yellow beard, flowing downwards, is supposed to symbolize the earthward influence of the solar beams, the female figure resting at the base to represent the earth deriving thence warmth and vigour, and the flowers held in the left hand of the god to typify his beneficence, and the beautiful gifts he brings. Though somewhat departed from in the Assyrian type, as instanced in the example referred to, the more general idea supposed the sun god to be beardless, as more expressive of his unchanging youth.

"Solis æterna est Phoebo, Bacchoque juventa

Nam decet intonsus crinis utrumque Deum."-Tibullus. Whereas the mystical element widens out in the Asiatic worships, in the Grecian the deification of nature attained a most widely-spread and harmonious development. Every object became to the Grecian faith instinct with divinity. The quiet glades became the abodes of beautiful nymphs, highest models of Grecian female perfection, creations evidently of a period long anterior to that in which the female type became degraded to the ideal exhibited to us in the conceptious of the tragic poets, in an Antigone and in a Clytemnestra. Every power of nature expressed the agency of a special Deity, and even the seasons in their unceasing round represented some ethereal beings to whose ministrations were owing the fresh garlands of spring, and the odorous gifts of summer, as well as the rich vintage and the bleak desolateness of the two later

seasons.

"Verque novum stabat, cinctum florente corona,
Stabat nuda æstas, et spicea ferta gerebat,
Stabat et autumnus, calcatis sordidus uvis,
Et glacialis hiems canos hirsuta capillos."

Ovid Metamorph.

From the imaginative worship of the period of Hesiod and

* Lib. ii. Saturnalia.

the Rhapsodists, the transition was an insensible one to the systematic philosophy which commenced with Thales.

Anaxagoras, who lived in the fifth century before Christ, may be justly regarded as one of the most eminent of the Greek philosophers. His doctrines are generally considered as exhibiting an advance on preceding speculations.

He rejected the idea of chance as an empty name, (ovouaKevÒV) and attributed the order of the universe to an intelligent first Cause. Compared with the teaching of his predecessor in the mechanical division of the Ionian School, Anaximander, the views of Anaxagoras display points of contrast as well as of resemblance. Both supposed the eternal existence of countless simple elements, of which those which were homogeneous, formed by their union all the various substances which compose the world. The cause which operated a change in the existing particles was to Anaximander-motion;-to Anaxagoras-intelligence-no conception of personal existence being associated with these abstract powers, which therefore by logical necessity, must have been supposed to have pervaded matter and the infinite elements in some inexplicable manner. Diogenes of Apollonia, who belonged to the dynamical section of the Ionian School, and who flourished a short time previous to Anaxagoras, like him, believed in the existence of a Causal Intelligence, and superadded to the conceptions of Thales and Anaximenes, the idea of a principle of rationality. He confounds air and intelligence in his exposition of the origin of the universe, and supposes in the world an intrinsic capability of change, through which all things again resolved themselves into the principle from which they proceeded. Heraclitus, who was nearly a contemporary of Diogenes, also adopted the belief in a vital principle of the universe, which he taught to be fire, and which originated an endless series of transmutations. He also asserted that the predominant and disposing principle was unalterable destiny (cipappén). He further taught that the harmony of the world is produced by the antagonism of two ever-opposing principles. Some half century earlier, Anaximenes of Miletus, promulgated the same belief, that resolution into the primal source repeated in perpetual cycles, was brought about by the animating principle of the universe, which, according to his system, was the most ethereal of the elements-air.

VOL. XLVIII-No. XCV.

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