One Jove and Pluto; Bacchus, and the Sun;
One God alike in all, and all are one.
The cosmogonists of Ægypt represented the Demiurgus or Universal Maker, in a human form, sending forth from his mouth an egg; which egg was the world. They called him Kneph; who was the same as Pthas, the essential pervading energy. Chaos is described by Orpheus, in the manner of Ovid, as an immense, self-existent, heterogeneous mass; neither luminous nor tenebrous; which in the lapse of ages generated an egg; and from this egg was produced a masculo-feminine principle, which disposed the elements, and created the forms of nature. A primæval water or Chaos, and a mundane egg, are found also in the mythology of India.
In the cosmogonic system of Ægypt the world was Deity, and its parts other gods; a doctrine equivalent to the το πᾶν of the Stoics; the inherent divinity of the universe; which Lucan seems to intend in the sentiment of Cato:
Deus est quodcunque vides: quòcunque moveris.
Whate’er we see, where’er we move, is God.
This system is unfolded in the Orphic hymns:
Jove is the breath of all: the force of quenchless flame:
The root of ocean Jove: the sun and moon the same:
Jove is the king, the sire, whence generation sprang: