"On the other hand, the astrological and geological priests told such stories and made such descriptions of their heavens, as accorded perfectly well with these fictions. Having, in their metaphorical language, called the equinoxes and solstices the gates of heaven, the entrance of the seasons, they explained these terrestrial phenomena by saying, that through the gate of horn (first the bull, afterwards the ram) and through the gate of Cancer, descended the vivifying fires which give life to vegetation in the spring, and the aqueous spirits which bring, at the solstice, the inundation of the Nile; that through the gate of ivory (Libra, formerly Sagittarius, or the bowman) and that of Capricorn, or the urn, the emanations or influences of the heavens returned to their source, and reascended to their origin; and the Milky Way, which passed through the gates of the solstices, seemed to be placed there to serve them as a road or vehicle.* Besides, in their atlas, the celestial scene presented a river (the Nile, designated by the windings of the hydra), a boat, (the ship Argo) and the dog Sirius, both relative to this river, whose inundation they foretold. These circumstances, added to the preceding, and still further explaining them, increased their probability, and to arrive at Tartarus or Elysium, souls were obliged to cross the rivers Styx and Acheron in the boat of the ferryman Charon, and to pass through the gates of horn or ivory, guarded by the dog Cerberus. Finally, these inventions were applied to a civil use, and thence received a further consistency.
*See Macrob. Som. Scrip. c. 12.
"Having remarked that in their burning climate the putrefaction of dead bodies was a cause of pestilential diseases, the Egyptians, in many of their towns, had adopted the practice of burying their dead beyond the limits of the inhabited country, in the desert of the West. To go there, it was necessary to pass the channels of the river, and consequently to be received into a boat, and pay something to the ferryman, without which the body, deprived of sepulture, must have been the prey of wild beasts. This custom suggested to the civil and religious legislators the means of a powerful influence on manners; and, addressing uncultivated and ferocious men with the motives of filial piety and a reverence for the dead, they established, as a necessary condition, their undergoing a previous trial, which should decide whether the deceased merited to be admitted to the rank of the family in the black city. Such an idea accorded too well with all the others, not to be incorporated with them: the people soon adopted it; and hell had its Minos and its Rhadamanthus, with the wand, the bench, the ushers, and the urn, as in the earthly and civil state. It was then that God became a moral and political being, a lawgiver to men, and so much the more to be dreaded, as this supreme legislator, this final judge, was inaccessible and invisible. Then it was that this fabulous and mythological world, composed of such odd materials and disjointed parts, became a place of punishments and of rewards, where divine justice was supposed to correct what was vicious and erroneous in the judgment of men. This spiritual and mystical system acquired the more credit, as it took possession of man by all his natural inclinations. The oppressed found in it the hope of indemnity, and the consolation of future vengeance; the oppressor, expecting by rich offerings to purchase his impunity, formed out of the errors of the vulgar an additional weapon of oppression; the chiefs of nations, the kings and priests, found in this a new instrument of domination by the privilege which they reserved to themselves of distributing the favors and punishments of the great judge, according to the merit or demerit of actions, which they took care to characterize as best suited their system.
"This, then, is the manner in which an invisible and imaginary world has been introduced into the real and visible one; this is the origin of those regions of pleasure and pain, of which you Persians have made your regenerated earth, your city of resurrection, placed under the equator, with this singular attribute, that in it the blessed cast no shade.* Of these materials, Jews and Christians, disciples of the Persians, have you formed your New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, your paradise, your heaven, copied in all its parts from the astrological heaven of Hermes: and your hell, ye Mussulmans, your bottomless pit, surmounted by a bridge, your balance for weighing souls and good works, your last judgment by the angels Monkir and Nekir, are likewise modeled from the mysterious ceremonies of the cave of Mithras** and your heaven differs not in the least from that of Osiris, of Ormuzd, and of Brama.
* There is on this subject a passage in Plutarch, so
interesting and explanatory of the whole of this system,
that we shall cite it entire. Having observed that the
theory of good and evil had at all times occupied the
attention of philosophers and theologians, he adds: "Many
suppose there to be two gods of opposite inclinations, one
delighting in good, the other in evil; the first of these is
called particularly by the name of God, the second by that
of Genius or Demon. Zoroaster has denominated them Oromaze
and Ahrimanes, and has said that of whatever falls under the
cognizance of our senses, light is the best representation
of the one, and darkness and ignorance of the other. He
adds, that Mithra is an intermediate being, and it is for
this reason the Persians call Mithra the mediator or
intermediator. Each of these Gods has distinct plants and
animals consecrated to him: for example, dogs, birds and
hedge-hogs belong to the good Genius, and all aquatic
animals to the evil one.
"The Persians also say, that Oromaze was born or formed out
of the purest light; Ahrimanes, on the contrary, out of the
thickest darkness: that Oromaze made six gods as good as
himself, and Ahrimanes opposed to them six wicked ones: that
Oromaze afterwards multiplied himself threefold (Hermes
trismegistus) and removed to a distance as remote from the
sun as the sun is remote from the earth that he there formed
stars, and, among others, Sirius, which he placed in the
heavens as a guard and sentinel. He made also twenty-four
other Gods, which he inclosed in an egg; but Ahrimanes
created an equal number on his part, who broke the egg, and
from that moment good and evil were mixed (in the universe).
But Ahrimanes is one day to be conquered, and the earth to
be made equal and smooth, that all men may live happy.
"Theopompus adds, from the books of the Magi, that one of
these Gods reigns in turn every three thousand years during
which the other is kept in subjection; that they afterwards
contend with equal weapons during a similar portion of time,
but that in the end the evil Genius will fall (never to rise
again). Then men will become happy, and their bodies cast
no shade. The God who mediates all these things reclines at
present in repose, waiting till he shall be pleased to
execute them." See Isis and Osiris.
There is an apparent allegory through the whole of this
passage. The egg is the fixed sphere, the world: the six
Gods of Oromaze are the six signs of summer, those of
Ahrimanes the six signs of winter. The forty-eight other
Gods are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient
sphere, divided equally between Ahrimanes and Oronmze. The
office of Sirius, as guard and sentinel, tells us that the
origin of these ideas was Egyptian: finally, the expression
that the earth is to become equal and smooth, and that the
bodies of happy beings are to cast no shade, proves that the
equator was considered as their true paradise.
** In the caves which priests every where constructed, they
celebrated mysteries which consisted (says Origen against
Celsus) in imitating the motion of the stars, the planets
and the heavens. The initiated took the name of
constellations, and assumed the figures of animals. One was
a lion, another a raven, and a third a ram. Hence the use
of masks in the first representation of the drama. See Ant.
Devoile, vol. iii., p. 244. "In the mysteries of Ceres the
chief in the procession called himself the creator; the
bearer of the torch was denominated the sun; the person
nearest to the altar, the moon; the herald or deacon,
Mercury. In Egypt there was a festival in which the men and
women represented the year, the age, the seasons, the
different parts of the day, and they walked in precession
after Bacchus. Athen. lib. v., ch. 7. In the cave of
Mithra was a ladder with seven steps, representing the seven
spheres of the planets, by means of which souls ascended and
descended. This is precisely the ladder in Jacob's vision,
which shows that at that epoch a the whole system was
formed. There is in the French king's library a superb
volume of pictures of the Indian Gods, in which the ladder
is represented with the souls of men mounting it."
VI. Sixth System. The Animated World, or Worship of the Universe under diverse Emblems.
"While the nations were wandering in the dark labyrinth of mythology and fables, the physical priests, pursuing their studies and enquiries into the order and disposition of the universe, came to new conclusions, and formed new systems concerning powers and first causes.
"Long confined to simple appearances, they saw nothing in the movement of the stars but an unknown play of luminous bodies rolling round the earth, which they believed the central point of all the spheres; but as soon as they discovered the rotundity of our planet, the consequences of this first fact led them to new considerations; and from induction to induction they rose to the highest conceptions in astronomy and physics.
"Indeed, after having conceived this luminous idea, that the terrestrial globe is a little circle inscribed in the greater circle of the heavens, the theory of concentric circles came naturally into their hypothesis, to determine the unknown circle of the terrestrial globe by certain known portions of the celestial circle; and the measurement of one or more degrees of the meridian gave with precision the whole circumference. Then, taking for a compass the known diameter of the earth, some fortunate genius applied it with a bold hand to the boundless orbits of the heavens; and man, the inhabitant of a grain of sand, embracing the infinite distances of the stars, launches into the immensity of space and the eternity of time: there he is presented with a new order of the universe of which the atom-globe which he inhabited appeared no longer to be the centre; this important post was reserved to the enormous mass of the sun; and that body became the flaming pivot of eight surrounding spheres, whose movements were henceforth subjected to precise calculations.
"It was indeed a great effort for the human mind to have undertaken to determine the disposition and order of the great engines of nature; but not content with this first effort, it still endeavored to develop the mechanism, and discover the origin and the instinctive principle. Hence, engaged in the abstract and metaphysical nature of motion and its first cause, of the inherent or incidental properties of matter, its successive forms and its extension, that is to say, of time and space unbounded, the physical theologians lost themselves in a chaos of subtile reasoning and scholastic controversy.*