Metis, first sire, and all-delighting Love.
Metis is Minerva or Vulcan, the mind of the universe already noticed.
From a general view of the Ægyptian and Orphic theogonies, they would appear to consist in an atheistic materialism; for although they acknowledge a certain divine, or active, principle pervading and animating passive matter, nothing can be inferred from this, superior to a physical operative energy. Jablonski indeed contends that, exclusive of the worship of the signs of the zodiac, and the solar and lunar phenomena, the more ancient Ægyptians recognized an intelligent power, or infinite Eternal Mind, on whose wisdom the operations of the sensible or visible divinities depended. But it may be doubted whether this controlling intelligence were any thing different from the before described emanation of the supposed ethereal spirit of holy dæmons, or deified men.
Hesiod begins his poem on the generation of the gods with certain cosmogonical principles. Chaos first exists; then Earth; and thirdly Love. Erebus and Night spring from Chaos, and generate Ether and Day; and Earth produces Heaven. But we search in vain through the rest of the work for the subtile intelligence of the Orphic philosophy. It has been attempted, indeed, to reduce the whole into a consistent scheme of theogonic physiology, by allegorizing the supernatural battles into volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, and earthquakes; but much would still remain incapable of being wrested to a physical sense. On certain crude principles of cosmogonical tradition, and lineal generations of gods, intermingled with the generation of the world, the theogonist has ingrafted ancient legendary histories, and poetical and moral allegories. The historical mythology is alone significant; for every thing respecting the nature of the gods was in Hesiod’s time perverted and misunderstood. The bard was no longer clothed in the robe of the hierophant.
Very different hypotheses have been framed to explain the Greek polytheism. They have failed because they were hypotheses. When the Abbé Banier[22] detects the real characters of profane history in the gods of the Pantheon; and when De Gebelin[23] sees in them only emblematical shadows, personifying the successive inventions of the sciences and arts, we are reminded of the observation of Dr. Reid; (Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man:) “that there never was an hypothesis invented by an ingenious man, which although destitute of direct evidence, did not serve to account for a variety of phenomena, and had not therefore an indirect evidence in its favour.” Even the Alchemists have laid claim to the heathen mythology; the pagan stories have been analysed into chemical arcana: the golden fleece becomes a recipe for the discovery of the philosopher’s stone inscribed on a ram’s-skin, and Medea restores her father to life by means of the grand elixir.[24]
But it were an unreasonable scepticism to argue from these visionary theories, that the ancient fabulous philosophy is a mass of inscrutable and unmeaning superstition. The affinity between the different systems of paganism rests on irrefutable proof.[25] This affinity points to a common origin. The light of history directs us to Ægypt. The astronomical genius of that nation led them to symbolize their idols by the celestial signs. These idols were the deified memories of men. As to their individuality, we are assisted by certain resemblances in heathen theology to Mosaic scripture. This parallel may have been urged too closely and too fancifully; as by Huet, in his “Demonstratio Evangelica:” who affirms that all the deities of the Ægyptians, Indians, Americans, Greeks, and Italians, are only Moses in disguise; and by Theophilus Gale, in his “Court of the Gentiles;” who draws a parallel between the god Pan, and the Messias, Abel, and Israel; and who derives not only both the mythic or fabulous, and the physical theology of the heathens, but all human letters and sciences from the Hebrew language and scriptures, and the philosophies of Joseph, Moses, and Solomon. Mistakes may have arisen from trusting too much to a specious analogy; as where Tubal-cain, the artificer of brass and iron, is identified with Vulcan.[26] The conjectures of Hebraic etymologists, also, as of Bochart, in the Phaleg and Canaan of his Geographia sacra, must be acknowledged to be often vague and inconclusive. But so plain are the general traces of corrupted scripture-history, that Celsus, in his books against the Christians, attacks the biblical records as plagiarisms from the pagan mythology; and asserts that Paradise is borrowed from the gardens of Alcinous, and the flood of Noah from that of Deucalion; which Origen refutes by the greater antiquity of the Jewish traditions.
It is not to be supposed that they, who trace these parallels of mythology with scripture, mean that scripture was its immediate source: as the French Encyclopædists seem to think, when they ridicule the idea of the Grecian poets having deduced their fables from the Mosaic books, of which they knew nothing. The religious separation of the Jews renders it improbable, that even the intellectual philosophy of the Greek sages, as Thales and Pythagoras, should have been indebted for the idea of pure incorporeal deity to the sacred oracles: though Dr. Anderson conceives it probable that “the Mosaic scriptures, and other prophetical writings under the Jewish dispensation, could not be unknown to the priests of Ægypt, Chaldæa, and other adjacent countries.” History of Philosophy, p. 88.
But the improbability is greatly increased with respect to the mythological philosophy; nor is it credible that the circumstances of pagan story, on the supposition of their representing the same events as those recorded in the book of Genesis, should have been transferred immediately from the volume of Moses by poets or philosophers into the popular religion. Nations do not borrow vast systems of theology from poets or even from priests. Gale does not suppose that priests or bards imported the Hebrew accounts from the sacred writings; but that they were learnt, through international communication with the Jews, by the Phœnicians; who, in their various nautical enterprizes, carried them to distant countries.
But the temple of heathen mythology rests its pillars in the two hemispheres, and overshadows climes unvisited by the navigators of Phœnicia. Its basis must, apparently, be sought without the circle of Jewish report and scripture, in ancient gentile tradition. Stillingfleet convincingly argues, that, assuming the descent of mankind from the posterity of Noah, the obliteration and extinction of all remnants of oral history concerning the ancient world is utterly inconceivable. He proceeds to show that such fragments were, in fact, so preserved in many nations after the dispersion; that they were appropriated by the Phœnicians, Greeks, Italians, and others to their respective countries; and that portions of Noah’s memory, in particular, were retained in many fables under Saturn, Janus, Prometheus, and Bacchus.