as the result of observation:-"That nothing is annihilated in the world; that the elements are indestructible; that they change their combinations, but not their nature; that the life and death of beings are nothing more than the varied modifications of the same atoms; that matter possesses self-dependent properties, from which originate all its mode of existing; that the world is eternal (c 5,) having no bounds either of space or duration:"-Some again maintained,-" that God was the whole universe; and that He was at once both effect and cause, agent and patient, moving principle and thing moved, that the unalterable properties, which constitute fatality or physical pre-destination, are his Law, and they depicted their idea sometimes by the emblem of PAN (the GREAT WHOLE ;) or of Jupiter, with a starry front, a planetary body, and feet of animals;* or by the symbol of the Orphic egg, whose yolk suspended in the middle of a liquid enclosed around by a vaulted concavity or ceiling, represented the globe of the sun swimming in ather in the middle of the vault or canopy of heaven (d5;) sometimes by the emblem of a large round serpent, figurative of the heavens, where they placed the first principle of motion, and for that reason of an azure colour, spangled with gold spots (the stars,) and devouring his tail, that is, re-entering or returning into himself by winding continually round like the revolutions of the spheres; sometimes by the emblem of a man, with his feet locked and tied together to denote immutable existence, co

* Vide Edip. Egypt. tom. II. page 205.

vered with a mantle of all colours, like the face of nature, and supporting on his head a sphere of gold (e 5,) representative of the planetary sphere; or by that of another man sometimes seated upon the flowers of the Lotos borne upon the watery abyss, at others, reposing upon a pile of twelve cushions, symbolical of the twelve celestial signs. And this, O nations of India, Japan, Siam, Thibet and China! this is the theology, which was originally founded by the Egyptians, and has been thence transmitted down and preserved among you in the representations you give of Brama, Beddou, Sommanacodom, and Omito. This too, ye Jews and Christians, is the counterpart of an opinion, of which you have retained a certain portion, when you describe God as the breath of life moving upon the face of the waters, in allusion to the wind (f5,) which, at the origin of the world, that is at the departure of the spheres from the sign of the Crab, announced the overflowing of the Nile, and seemed to be the forerunner of creation.”

SECT. VII. Seventh system. Worship of the SouL of the WORLD, that is, of the element of fire, the vital principle of the universe.

BUT other theological philosophers, revolting at the idea of a being at once both effect and cause, agent and patient, and which united in one and the same nature such contrary natures, distinguished the moving principle from the thing moved; and assuming as an infallible position or datum, that matter was in itself in

ert, they pretended that it received its properties by communication from a distinct agent, of which it was only the enveloping tegument or case. Some made this agent the igneous principle, the acknowledged source of all motion: while others again made it the fluid called æther, as being thought more active and subtile. Now, as they denominated the vital and motive principle in animals, a soul, a spirit; and, as they always reasoned by analogy, and more particularly by the analogy of the human species, they gave to the motive principle of the whole universe the name of soul, intelligence, spirit; and hence God became the vital spirit diffused through all beings, which animated the vast mundane body. This idea was represented sometimes by You-piter, essence of motion and animation, principle of existence, or rather existence itself (g 5); at other times by Vulcan, or Phtha, elementary principle of fire, or by the altar of Vesta, placed in the centre of her temple, like the sun amid the spheres ; and again by Kneph, a human being dressed in deep blue, holding in his hands a sceptre and a girdle (the Zodiac,) wearing on his head a plume of feathers to express the fugacity of thought, and bringing forth from his mouth the great egg (h. 5.).

"Now, as a consequence resulting from this system, every being containing in itself a portion of the igneous or æthereal fluid, the univer sal and common mover, and that fluid soul of the world being the Divinity, it followed that the souls of all beings were a portion of God himself, partaking of all his attributes, that is,

being an invisible, simple, and immortal substance; and hence originated the whole system of the immortality of the soul, which at first was eternity (i5.) Hence also its transmigrations known by the name of metempsychosis, that is, the transition of the vital principle from one body to another, an idea derived from the real transmigration of the material elements.Such, Ye Hindoos, Budsoists, Christians, Mussulmen, such is the origin of all your ideas of the spirituality of the soul: such the source of the dreams and reveries of Pythagoras and of Plato, your institutors, who were themselves no more than the mere echos of the concluding sect of visionary philosophers, which we have to give an account of."

SECT. VIII. Eighth system: THE WORLD A MACHINE: worship of the Demi-ourgos, Maker, or Supreme Artificer.

HITHERTO the theologians, through the whole course of their pursuits and disquisitions on the fine and subtile substances of æther and the igneous principle, had however uniformly confined their views to objects which palpably fall under the preceptive cognizance and jurisdiction of the senses, and their theology still continued to be the theory of physical powers, placed sometimes exclusively in the stars, and sometimes disseminated through the whole of the universe. But, at this period, some superficial minds, losing sight of the clue and concatenation of ideas which had led to these profound inquiries, or ignorant of the facts on which

they were founded, deranged and blasted the valuable results already obtained from them by the introduction of a novel and strange chimera. They pretended that the universe, the heavens, the stars, the sun, differed in no respect from an ordinary machine; and, applying to this hypothesis a comparative analogy borrowed from the works of art, they constructed a fanciful system erected upon the most whimsical and extravagant sophisms. "A machine," said they, "cannot form itself; there must antecedently exist an artificer or workman to construct it; its very existence implies this. Now, the world is a machine; consequently it must have a maker (j 5.)”

"Hence originated the Demi-ourgos, or supreme artificer, constituted independent, autocratic, and sovereign Divinity. In vain did the ancient philosophy urge in objection to this hypothesis, that the artificer himself was precisely in the same predicament with the machine in question by standing in equal need of parents and an author, and that it was merely adding an imaginary step to the ladder in order to carry the attribute of eternity a remove higher in their taking it away from the World and conferring it upon Him. But these innovators, not contented with this first paradox, proceeded to the fabrication of a second, and applying to their artificer the theory of the human understanding, pretended that the Demiourgos, fashioned his machine after a model or idea preexisting in his own mind. And, as their masters, the natural philosophers, had placed the primum mobile or sovereign power of motion in