[16] That is probably an allusion to the escape of inflammable gas, like that in the district of Baku, west of the Caspian; at Pietramala, in the Tuscan Apennines; and several other places.
[17] Many of those described seem fanciful fictions, like the virtue still so commonly attributed to mineral waters.
[18] Raspe, in a learned and judicious essay (De Novis Insulis, cap. 19), has made it appear extremely probable that all the traditions of certain islands in the Mediterranean having at some former time frequently shifted their positions, and at length become stationary, originated in the great change produced in their form by earthquakes and submarine eruptions, of which there have been modern examples in the new islands raised in the time of history. When the series of convulsions ended, the island was said to become fixed.
[19] It is not inconsistent with the Hindoo mythology to suppose that Pythagoras might have found in the East not only the system of universal and violent catastrophes and periods of repose in endless succession, but also that of periodical revolutions, effected by the continued agency of ordinary causes. For Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the first, second, and third persons of the Hindoo triad, severally represented the Creative, the Preserving, and the Destroying powers of the Deity. The coexistence of these three attributes, all in simultaneous operation, might well accord with the notion of perpetual but partial alterations finally bringing about a complete change. But the fiction expressed in the verses before quoted from Menù of eternal vicissitudes in the vigils and slumbers of Brahma seems accommodated to the system of great general catastrophes followed by new creations and periods of repose.
[20] Meteor. lib. i. cap. 12.
[21] De Die Nat.
[22] Lib. ii. cap. 14, 15, and 16.
[23] Lib. ii. cap. 14, 15, and 16.
[24] Omne ex integro animal generabitur, dabiturque terris homo inscius scelerum.—Quæst. Nat. iii. c. 29.
[25] This author was Regius Professor of Syriac and Arabic at Paris, where, in 1685, he published a Latin translation of many Arabian MSS. on different departments of philosophy. This work has always been considered of high authority.