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the careful ceremonies of embalming were immediately connected.

The lofty contempt which the Greeks entertained towards the outer world of barbarians, whilst it may have impeded those extensive commercial relations which were maintained by other nations of antiquity, but the neglect of which seems to us to be fully accounted for by the internal condition of the nation, during the prosperous period of its history, did not, as has been so often loosely stated, close up the avenues of intercourse, between the enterprising and inquisitive Greek, and the peoples by which he was surrounded. Still less did it operate in this way at a time earlier than probably the existence of this feeling of excessive disdain, which was engendered by victory and the acquirement of high literary polish, or upon the natives of provinces which, although peopled by the Hellenic race, were not sharers in its political exaltation. The Ionian philosophers had abundant opportunities of intercourse with the philosophers of Persia, and through the medium of the extensive communication between the neighbouring country of Phoenicia and India, by the overland route from Rhinocolura to the Arabian Gulf, they might easily have informed themselves of the peculiar faith of the Brahmins. Without any violation of historical truth, Virgil tells us of remote intercourse between Southern Italy and the opposite shores of Africa, and it is indeed improbable that the scholars of Cortona and Elea, remained ignorant of the civilization which had established itself on the Nile and in the Pentapolis; nor is it likely that Diodorus was the first Sicilian who devoted his life to the study of that history, whose origin, like that of the famous river which waters the Egyptian plains, is hidden in some silent tract which the curiosity of explorers has in vain endeavoured to discover.

In the philosophical systems of the Persians, Indians, and Egyptians, we have. traced the doctrines-1st, that the universe was penetrated by a presiding though not personal being, but an influence, animating and controlling it. 2nd. That eternal antagonism existed between two opposing powers of nature. 3rd. That the law of perpetual change conducted the various beings through an immense cycle of transmutations, and 4th, that ultimately all became absorbed into the Absolute One, which Transcendental Being again evolved Himself under

another series of changes, phenomenal and fluctuating as those which had preceded.

Had the summaries which an adequate, and in no sense exclusive analysis of the systems of the east, and of Greece respectively, has in each case conducted us to, possessed only a general and indistinct resemblance, we should still have felt considerable difficulty in attributing the likeness to casual coincidence, for even in that case we should have been embarrassed by the cumulative evidences of connection supplied by the traditions of the Grecian people, by the ethnical affinities of the populations more especially to which the philosophers belonged, and still more by the unmistakable Oriental impress which Grecian art has preserved. But when we find that the accordance is not in one tenet merely, nor even in the general form of their philosophies, but obtaining between each distinct dogma maintained, in a manner so striking as to suggest the inference rather of identity than of similarity, the conclusion becomes an imperative one, that the two philosophies are not the separate products of distinct national minds, acted upon by unlike outward circumstances, but compose one integral system, expounded, it may be, with varying illustrations, and adopted with unequal faith, but belonging to some one older formation, and brought down by the same traditionary stream to the different lands in which we have discovered it.

But what still further strengthens the conclusion wo adopt is the circumstance that the coincidences we should have looked for in our hypothesis, are found to be those which actually existed. In Egypt the doctrine of Metempsychosis chiefly flourished; in the adjoining schools of Magna Græcia this error first appears in Grecian philosophy. The doctrine of an all-pervading essence was most widely diffused in Persia and India, as well as that of cyclic renovation; it is in the sects of the Ionian philosophers that these speculations are found to have been rifest. The eastern principle of dualism, indeed, shows itself more conspicuously in the tenets of the Eleatics, but the eastern origin of their school may easily explain the circumstance, which is also accounted for by what has been already stated of the universal prevalence of the dualistic error which belonged to no special system, but under some guise entered into all.

The same conclusion to which we have been led by the

intrinsic evidence of the eastern origin of Greek philosophy is fully sustained by the extrinsic arguments. Without referring to the traditionary accounts that many of the Greek teachers travelled into Egypt and Persia for instruction, inasmuch as events so particular are necessarily hardly capable of verification, we may safely rely upon the very high probability that they who so ardently desired wisdom were not ignorant of the reputed lore of the Persian, Chaldæan, and Egyptian priests, and that being aware of it they were not all devoid of the energy to seek from them some solution of the problems in which they felt so profound an interest, and to the task of solving which they found themselves so unequal. We may, with the highest degree of probability, conclude that such minstrel rhapsodists as Xenophanes of Colophon, whom the Eleatic school venerated as its founder, did not remain uninformed of the speculations which in his time entered so largely into the national faith of the countries through which he wandered.

But in addition to the proof afforded by such reflections as these, the acknowledged derivation of many parts of the Greek religion should not be lost sight of, as rendering it probable that the same sources which supplied so much to its mythological creed should also have contributed to its philosophical. The most ancient traditions speak of the introduction of the system of oracles from Lybia, and scholars are generally agreed in connecting the worship of Dionysus with the earlier rites celebrated in his honour in Phoenicia and India, and whatever opinion as to the origin of the Eleusinian mysteries may be deemed most probable, the belief entertained by some that they have been at least in part borrowed from the esoteric worship of the Egyptians, is in all likelihood not without good foundation.

On the high authority of Mr. Fergusson it can be stated that the plain outlines of the Doric architecture have their prototype in what has been thence designated the protodoric style of some Egyptian structures, and that the flowing and more graceful lines of the Ionic have been copied from the Assyrian models.

Whatever may be thought of Sir Henry Rawlinson's

[graphic]

theory as to the workmanship of Grecian architects being traceable in the recently excavated remains, it is on all hands agreed that an early connection subsisted between Greece and Assyria, in reference to an adoption by the one nation of the style which had been devised by the other; and no difference of opinion exists as to the eastern birth of the musical modes most cultivated by the Greeks. It has been usual to allege against the eastern extraction of Greek philosophy, that it does not exhibit the two important ideas of a superintending providence and of creation, which are assumed to have been embodied in the eastern mythologies. In the mythologies which we have briefly reviewed, the idea of creation as signifying production out of nothing, and of a Providence as implying the superintendence of a personal Deity, is incompatible with the abstract nature in them attributed to the Divinity, and with the doctrine of successive evolutions of the Divine essence, and of reabsorption into it after a long succession of transformations. Of the Egyptians Aristotle testifies that they believed chaos, or night, to be one of the eternal principles from which the world had been produced.* Diogenest Laertius similarly testifies to the eternal existence of matter having been believed by the Egyptians. Maimonides, who is however a much more recent authority, in his work, (Moreli Nebochim) affirms of the Sabaists, that they also maintain the same doctrine. The dogma of emanation, which was so universally disseminated in the east, excluded the idea of real creation. The dogma of a Divine Providence, caring for the most insignificant as well as the most important of His creatures, could not co-exist either with a faith in an impersonal God, or with a belief in the immediate superintendence of numberless inferior divinities, who were supposed not to be exempt from human passions and weaknesses. It is not, therefore, in the Pantheistical theogonies of the celebrated Asiatic kingdoms, that the conception of an ever vigilant Providence, and of omnipotence capable of creating out of nothing, are to be discovered; it is rather in the pure creed so wonderfully preserved within the comparatively narrow limits of Judæa.

Without at present offering an opinion whether later

*

Aristotle, Metaphysic, lib. xii. c. 6.

Prom. 10.

Greek philosophy, such as that of Plato, was indebted to communications with the Jewish nation, we do not feel at all called upon to defend the extreme opinions of some who maintained a far more extensive influence of the Jewish faith on the Grecian traditions; hence we are not surprised to find that the sublime dogmas which were the peculiar possession of the Jewish people, should not be discernible in the systems of the philosophers.

It is highly probable that after the primitive religion had become corrupted, the earliest degradation it received was that of Pantheism, and that Polytheism was a lower condition still, and a further defilement. The nations in which Polytheism ultimately obtained either exclusive sway, or very great predominance, retained vestiges of the intermediate phase, as, for example, the Dii Involuti of the Etrurian mythology. Whilst the Dii Consentes were worshipped with every superstitious rite, the Dii Involuti were never made the objects of immediate adoration, just as amid the rank Polytheism of India, the supreme Brahm is adored in almost deserted temples by the few whom the severest ordeal is supposed to have purified from every earthly stain. Herodotus says that the Pelasgi worshipped a nameless divinity, which is far more likely to have represented a Pantheistic faith than pure Monotheism, which, at the period of the Pelasgic migrations, had in many parts of the east undergone already considerable modifications.

The brief retrospect we have taken of the first changes of the primeval religion, and of the perplexing fancies of the reputed sages of antiquity, places before us in plain but clearly defined colours, one of the most important truths which can be learned from history-the utter powerlessness of the human intellect to create a consistent religion, adequately solving the great problems of nature.

The accumulated knowledge of modern times is not favourable to the development of the intellect, or the extension of its acquaintance with speculative studies. Dean Swift humorously laments that should law books multiply at the rate at which they were increasing in his day, it would, after a time, become impossible to be a lawyer. It is in our days almost impossible to be a learned man.

The rage for what has been so aptly called "diluted omniscience" is in reality self-destructive. To but a few

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