For the Southern Literary Messenger.
HINTS TO STUDENTS OF GEOLOGY.
No. II.
BY PETER A. BROWNE, ESQ.
The most effectual way to guard against the dangerous tendency of theories is to collect and lay open to examination at one view some of the most celebrated of them, with which mankind have from time to time been furnished. Several of these will be found to be so obscure that astonishment is excited that they were ever dignified with the name of philosophy; others are so entirely inconsistent and at the same time have such equal claims to plausibility that they mutually confute each other; a few are so intimately connected with the truths that the study of geology and astronomy have displayed that it is difficult to escape the hazardous abyss into which they would lead—but the greater part are the effusions of fancy, and resemble more the emanations of a feverish or disordered brain than the cool dictates of reason and common sense. It is confidently believed that the student who will attentively read them all, will be very slow to adopt any one of the number.
The most ancient Indian and Egyptian philosophers agreed in rightly ascribing the creation of the world to an OMNIPOTENT and INFINITE BEING, and it is a curious fact that they represented him as having repeatedly destroyed and reproduced the world and its inhabitants. In "the Institutes of Menu," the sacred volume of the Hindoos, which were written eight hundred and eighty-eight years B.C., are the following verses:
"The Being whose powers are incomprehensible, having created me, (Menu,) and this universe, again became absorbed in the Supreme Spirit, changing the time of energy for the hour of repose."
"When this power awakes, then has this world its full expansion; but when he slumbers with a tranquil spirit, then the whole system fades away."
It is perfectly ascertained that the Greeks borrowed this idea of a former successive destruction and renovation of this world from the Egyptians. Plutarch tells us that it was the theme of one of the hymns of Orpheus; and it is well known that Orpheus, although a Greek poet, gained all his knowledge of astronomy, divinity, music and poetry in Egypt.
This most ancient Pagan theologist believed that all things were created by a Being whom he represents as invisible and incomprehensible, and to whom he has given the appellation of THE COUNSELLOR of LIGHT and SOURCE of LIFE; but he has degraded this sublime idea of the Almighty by supposing that from an egg, the progeny of chance, all mankind have been produced.