and representatives of the Godhead, and, as it were, his vicegerents in Nature, in process of time were thus regarded and adored as the supreme and only God-the sign instead of the thing signified-the instrument instead of the hand that guided it-the work instead of the workman. They deemed, as the author of the Book of Wisdom observes,' Either fire or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven, to be the Gods which govern the world. Veneration and love to those from whose actions or studies we derive great benefit, and respect for our ancestors, amiable motives when they do not lead us away from God, often induce mankind to throw a kind of Divinity, a ray of glory, around such persons; first, perhaps, they are complimented with the title of suns of their people or race, and their wives as moons, and next we transform them into what we regarded as their symbol. So the Egyptians, in process of time, added the adjunet On, or the Sun, to the name of their great ancestor, Ham; whence he was afterwards designated as Hamon, or Ham the sun, and became the Jupiter Ammon of the Greeks.* The idea of the incubation of the Spirit, of its being the principle of love that was in action, and that it produced the first motion, prevails, more or less, in all the cosmogonics. Aristophanes, in his Aves, gives an account of the Grecian cosmogony, which proves that the heathen gods of the Greeks were all subsequent to the original creation of matter, in a passage, of which the following lines are nearly a literal translation: Once Chaos was and Night, dark Erebus Were none, Wind-nursed egg. Gr. vanveμior wor Literally, the egg under the wind, alluding to the incubation of the Spirit. Love. This is the motion infused by the Spirit into the chaos which was followed by light and expansion, and the 1 Wisdom, xiii, 2, 2 Cudworth, I. ii. 338. whole harmonious circle of creation, in which there was no discord, but all was very good. His shoulders golden-winged. Gr. Στιλβων νώτον πτερυγοιν χρυσαιν. Literally, his back shining with two golden wings; these two golden wings were, perhaps, light and the expansion, which carried love through his whole work, Sprung. Gr. Easev, germinated. Wind-swift vortex. Gr. εixws avεμwxεot devais. whirlwinds or whirlpools, swift as the wind. Literally, like 1 He who mixed with Chaos winged and dark. Gr. Ov7os de πτεροεντι μιγεις νυχιω. This describes love or motion entering into chaos and beginning to produce order. Nested our race Gr. Ενεοπλευσε γενος ημετερον. The birds here claim an early origin. The allusion probably is to the mundane egg, and the birth of winged love. But from that commixture rose heaven, sea, and earth, &c. Gr. Συμμιγνομένων δ' ετέρων ετέροις, εγένετ' έρανος, οκεανός τε, και γη, παντων τε Θεων μακαρων γενῶ αφθιτον. Literally, "one thing being mingled with another, heaven, ocean, and earth, and the incorruptible race of all the immortal Gods were produced. It is evident from this passage that those whom the Greeks accounted their Gods were the elements, the heavenly bodies and other works of creation. Thus they changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. NOTE 2, p. 3.-Kindred monsters. I allude here to the gigantic Reptiles, those especially which are now seen only in a fossil state, many of which instead of legs are furnished with paddles; as the Icthyosauri and Plesiosauri. These animals seem intermediate between the amphibious Saurians and the Chelonians. Some of them also exhibit several characters in common with some of the Cetaceans, Amphibians, &c. NOTE 3, p. 5.-Intermediate, as it were, between matter and spirit. I find a similar idea in the Nouveau Dictionaire D'Histoire Naturelle,1 "Le mot de matière porte avec soi l'idée d'un corps lourd et grossier: cependant il est des substances auxquelles on donne le nom de matière, telle que la matière éthérée, et qui sont d'une si inconceivable tenuité, qu'on diroit qu'elles tiennent le milieu entre l'esprit et la matière." Sir Humphry Davy seems to have adopted a similar opinion, which I have given in another part of this work; and Dr. Wollaston 1 xix. 449. article Matières. Patrin. 2 See above, P. 323. also, in his Religion of nature delineated, asks-" Might it not be more reasonable to say, it (the soul) is a thinking substance intimately united to some fine material vehicle which has its residence in the brain?" And again-" If we should suppose the soul to be a being by nature made to inform some body, and that it cannot exist and act in a state of total separation from all body; it would not follow from thence, that what we call death, must therefore reduce it to a state of absolute insensibility, and inactivity, which to it would be equal to non-existence. For that body, which is so necessary to it, must be some fine vehicle that dwells with it in the brain, and goes off with it at death. This vehicle, which is so necessary to the soul, dwells with it in the brain, and goes off with it at death, he further supposes, is that by which it acts and is acted upon, by means of the nerves. This vehicle seems not very different from the vital powers of modern physiologists, who regard the nervous power as their agent. The doctrine of a vehicle for the soul which accompanies her when separated from the body is not a modern hypothesis, but was held by the Platonists and many of the fathers. Our Lord says to his disciples-The hairs of your head are all numbered: upon which we may observe that the head of man is clothed with hair to answer a certain end, an end which has not yet been duly investigated, but which in Scripture has been intimated by making it the symbol of strenth or powerby which latter term it is designated by St. Paul-as in the case of Sampson, whose superhuman strength seems to have departed from him, when his seven locks were shorn off; symbolizing might from the seven spirits of God," or in other words, the sevenfold might of the Spirit. It is well known that the hair is affected by the electric fluid, and it may conduct it to the brain or other organs. Whatever be its function, however, its force will depend upon the quantity, and the quantity upon the number of conductors, and this God regulates in the case of individuals, according to circumstances, so that, though some receive more and some less, He that receives much has nothing over, and he that receives little has no lack.8 NOTE 4, p. 5.-For if the instinct of the predaceous ones was 4 Dr. Wilson Philip, in Philos. Tr. 1829, 271, 278. 3 Ibid. 293. 5 See Dr. H. More, On the Immortality of the Soul, B. iii. Axiome xxvii. and Cudworth's Intellectual Syst. 799. 6 1 Cor. xi. 10. 7 Revel, i. 4, 5. 8 2 Cor. viii. 15. not restrained, they would soon have annihilated the herbivorous ones, even if, as Lightfoot supposes, they were at first created by sevens. If the fall of man, as is generally supposed, happened soon after his creation, the first sacrifice, which as the Lord God clothed the first pair with skins before their expulsion from paradise, must have been offered immediately after the former sad event, would have caused the annihilation of a species; which, in conjunction with the circumstance of Noah being directed to admit clean animals into the ark by sevens the male and his female, afforded no slight ground for Lightfoot's supposition alluded to in the text. He thus expresses his opinion. "Bestia munda creatæ sunt septenæ, tria paria ad prolem, et reliqua singulæ Adamo in sacrificium post lapsum: at immundæ tantummodo binæ ad generis propagationem." Lightfoot here speaks of three pairs and a half, and some writers quoted by Poole, seem to think, that the same number were received into the ark, and that the seventh, a male, was intended for sacrifice after the deluge; others think there were seven pairs. NOTE 5, p. 6.—In the fiercest enmity and opposition to each other. There was a show-man, who in the year 1831, exhibited on one of the London bridges, as I was informed by a friend upon whose accuracy I could rely, the animals here spoken of, in a state of reconciliation. In one cage were cats, rats, and mice, and in another hawks and small birds living together in the utmost harmony, and without any attempt on the part of the predaceous ones to injure their natural prey. NOTE 6, p. 9.-Concerning the kind of which interpreters differ. The Septuagint renders the Hebrew word, which our translation renders lice, by oxvipes, which is supposed to mean the mosquito or gnat, but I cannot help thinking with Bochart, that it rather means the louse, not only on account of its derivation from a root, 12, which signifies to fix firmly, which agrees better with the animal just named than with the mos quito, but also because it was produced from the dust of the earth like other apterous animals, and not from the waters, like the winged ones. The African negroes, as was before observed, have a peculiar louse.* 3 NOTE 7, p. 10.-Geologists have observed, from the remains of plants and animals embedded in the strata of this and other north 1 Lightfoot, Opera, Ed. Leusden. i. 154. conf. 2. 2 Hierozoic. 574. 3 Genes. i. 21. 4 Fabr. Syst. Antliat. 340, 2. ern countries, that the climate must formerly have been warmer than it now is. That the inclination of the earth's axis was once different from what it now is was a very ancient opinion; but whatever might be the cause, the fact seems to have been certain, from the existence in very high latitudes of the plants and animals here alluded to, such as various species of palms, of elephants, hippopotami, turtles, and similar tropical forms. Cuvier indeed has conjectured, that the carcass of a mammoth found in Siberia belonged to a cold climate because it was clothed with wool as well as hair. Its hair was stated to consist of three kinds. One being stiff black long bristles, another flexible hair of a reddish brown colour, and the third a reddish brown wool which grew among the roots of the long hair. Now with respect to sheep, there is evidently a difference with regard to their coat in those that live in warm climates, and those that inhabit cold ones, the coat of the former usually consisting chiefly of hairs, and the latter of wool; but Dr. Buckland, and Dr. Virey have advanced some satisfactory arguments which prove that the Mammoth could not have existed in the countries in which its fossil remains are so abundant, if it had been exposed to a great degree of cold. It is remarked with respect to the remains of fossil elephants, which are so numerous without the tropics, in regions too cold for their existence, that none have been hitherto found in those countries which they actually inhabit at the present time.s This throws no small degree of doubt upon that hypothesis which assigns them for their habitation the countries in which their remains are now deposited: but with regard to the remains of coral reefs found in the Arctic seas, no doubt can be entertained that at the period of their formation, those seas were warm enough to suit the temperature of the animals that formed them; but which no longer exist and rear their structures in those latitudes. I met with the following extract in the Literary Gazette for April 7, 1832; it is taken from a work entitled Six months in North America, by G. T. Vigne, Esq.: "The fossil remains of about thirty animals, now supposed to be extinct, have been found at the Big-bone lick; and Mr. Bullock conjectures that there are more remaining. That these animals did not perish on the spot, but were carried and deposited by the mighty torrent, which it is evident once spread over 1 Cuvier, Theory of the Earth, by Jameson, 275. 2 See above, p. 35. 3 Supplement to Captain Beechey's Voyage, ii. 355, 356. 4 N. D. D'H. N. x. 162. 5 Ibid. 169. 6 Dr. Buckland in the Appendix to Beechey's Voyage, ii. 355. |