reasons for such belief are always, as is now more generally recognised than formerly, well worthy of the attention of the philosopher, since inasmuch as the mind of man is practically a unity,' we are but studying ourselves in the persons of distant ages. We thus also notice what root ideas or principles are common to all minds in all times, and so if any reliance can be placed upon consciousness and its attendant phenomena (and if not, the less said or done the better) we are enabled to obtain a more correct approximation to truth. The subject, moreover, possesses a special literary and historical interest of its own, and that of a high order. There are numerous other considerations illustrative of the genuine importance of such an enquiry, and deducible from the foregoing ; but he who loves the study of religious-mythology and archaic idea, either considered separately or in connection with all religious ideas, will require but slight excuse to justify his investigations. To the second possible objection-that this particular subject has already been exhaustively treated-it is enough to reply that whilst the vast amount of scholarly labour bestowed since the era of the Reformation on Hellas and Rome, their history, literature, manners, arts, and arms, considered as isolated and all-important nationalities, leaves comparatively little to be accomplished in this particular direction; yet that modern historical research has deposed the lofty pair from their lonely mediaeval position as the beginning and end of the studies of antiquity. The historic telescope is almost daily revealing to us more and more of the distant empires of the Euphrates and the Nile, stars vast, brilliant, and remote, embedded in time as Sirius or Aldebaran in space. The whole mighty family of the Aryan

1 There is one mind common to all individual men.' Emerson, Essay on History. Complete works,

2 Vide the general argument on this point in Mr. Herbert Spencer's First Principles, part i. chap. i.

Nations, with Hellas and Rome as but two younger sisters of the house, now demand the attention of the student of the Past. The dim figures of Arabia, Syria, and Phoenicia, are gradually becoming plainer through the scattering mists of ages; and, in a word, we have no longer only to compare Hellas with Rome, or Rome with Hellas, but must consider in connection the history and mutual relations of many empires and nationalities-Kaldea,1 Assyria, Syria, Phoenicia, Arabia, Egypt, Persia, India, Hellas, Italy. Something, but how little, has long been known of Kaldea, Assyria, and Egypt; we have had the fragmentary notices of the Old Testament, the hearsay histories of Herodotos and Diodoros, and the traditional accounts of later writers such as Justinus. But the combined information of all Hellenik and Latin authorities, even were it reliable in every particular, which is far indeed from being the case, would be chiefly remarkable as illustrating the scantiness of our knowledge of the subject. Modern energy and talent, however, have revolutionised the position; the Sphinx has broken her majestic silence, and hieroglyph and cuneiform reveal their long-hidden secrets. These considerations might readily be greatly amplified, but the reader can easily follow out for himself the conclusions to which they point; sufficient to remark here, that time has recently brought to light a great quantity of fresh and most important material, which not only requires treatment, but also may modify or otherwise alter our views respecting that which we already possess. It is obvious that the force of these considerations is not restricted to the Dionysiak Myth, or to any other particular study; in each case a greater acquaintance with the sources of knowledge warrants, or rather demands, a

1 'Dans les documents cunéiformes, Kaldi est une tribu de la

grande nation d'Accad.' (Lenormant, La Magie, 270.)

fresh adjustment of facts, and probably a consequent alteration of opinion.

But it may perhaps be hastily asked: What has the Hellenik Dionysos to do with hieroglyph or cuneiform, with Egypt or Kaldea? The present work must be an answer to the question; and I urge the reader to weigh the evidence carefully, and not to conclude at the outset that any particular theory which he may chance to hold is necessarily correct or exhaustive. Time was when men believed that the sun moved round the earth, and that all languages were derived from the Hebrew; and it is quite possible that many opinions which now pass unchallenged, and as a matter of course, may ultimately be found to be as wanting in truth as numbers of admitted errors long since consigned to the limbo of the past. When the great discoveries of Professor Max Müller and his fellow-labourers in the field of Aryan comparative philology and mythology had demonstrated the family connection between the divinities of the Vedas and of Olympos, the fresh truth was, in accordance with the tendency of the human mind, pushed beyond its proper limits. It became an axiom that an Aryan nation must have Aryan divinities and none others, in disregard of the obvious and undeniable fact that commerce, conquest, colonisation, and local proximity, as well as original unity of nationality, all necessarily exercise a vast influence on communities. Nations in history are not cbserved to change their gods, by formally discarding the old, but they constantly add strange divinities to their elastic Pantheons. I am, however, quite willing to admit that, in the abstract, the probability is that any divinity of an Aryan nation is Aryan in origin; any divinity of a Semitic nation, Semitic; and that consequently the onus probandi, which I willingly accept, is on any one who asserts the contrary. A few years ago when the above-mentioned

views respecting Aryan divinities were even more pronounced than at present, I endeavoured to test the general correctness of the theory by its application to a particular Hellenik god, Poseidon.1 Whatever the shortcomings of this little monograph may have been, and it undoubtedly took the side of the question then unpopular, I am pleased to find that the leading principles which it advocated are not likely to be impeached by subsequent investigation, and that a juster view on this important question has recently gained ground.

The unity and uniformity of man, both in his physical and in his mental aspect,2 and of the world in which he is placed, suggests, and even necessitates, an intrinsic unity of his ideas; a circumstance which emboldens us to enquire into the belief of far-off ages with a good hope. of being able to unfold and to understand it. The principle of comparison, so ably and successfully applied in modern times, reveals endless similarity and resemblance, a family likeness and a consequent common parentage, of all mythologico-religious conceptions. Man in all ages, possessing a consciousness and sensations equivalent to our own, has been surrounded by the same external phenomena. It is a great achievement to have discovered the intrinsic unity of the religious ideas of the Aryan race, or of any other particular family of mankind; but it will be a still greater accomplishment to reveal and to demonstrate the grand unity into which the religious ideas of all nations and tribes are necessarily resolvable. From the unity of man and of the Kosmos, as well as otherwise, thinkers of all creeds and in all ages have accepted the idea of the unity of the Supreme Being, deducing, as S. Athanasios expresses it, 'the unity of the workman from the unity of the work.' Atheism doubtless exists, and has

1 Poseidon. By the writer. London: Longmans & Co. 1872.

2 A double-faced unity.' Bain, Mind and Body, 169.

existed, although its genuine disciples are few indeed; but its chief dogma will not bear any philosophical test, for if it be an unwarrantable assumption to affirm that God is, it is still more so to declare that He is not. The unity of God, by whatever name He may have been known, or however regarded, shines through the most complicated religious systems, whether archaic or comparatively recent. Much has been written about Semitic Monotheism, but Aryan Monotheism is a fact equally obvious. Ilu, Il, El, Allah, Amen, Yahveh, Iao, Dyaus, Deus, Theus, Zeus, 'Jehovah, Jove, or Lord,' are all in reality identical, and names for the Monad and First Cause. This doctrine is the central point and principal feature in the Timaios, 'the greatest effort of the human mind to conceive the world as a whole, which the genius of antiquity has bequeathed to us,' 1 and in which, ideas Platonik and Pythagorean meet not inharmoniously. The idea of a First Cause, it is also to be noted, is an hypothesis necessarily consequent upon the act of thinking.2

No religious-mythology, therefore, is utterly erroneous; and, again, there is in reality but one religion, however at different times and in various places obscured or debased. Worship, or the expression of the reverent respect paid by the human mind to a potency admittedly superior and intelligent, is necessarily either of the invisible, or of the visible, or of both; and the less the former is reverenced, the more the latter will be. The Supreme is hidden from the votary by the infinity of His being and the intervention of His other creations; secondary causes obscure the primal, which remains shadowy and indefinable because definition, having nothing tangible to grasp, subsides into rhetorical expression, and idea is paralysed beneath illimitable capacities and apparent contradictions. The Visible,

1 Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, iii. 598.

2 Vide Herbert Spencer, First Principles, part i. chap. ii. 12.