The Philosophy of History

Chapter 9

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How a slight deviation from truth may suffice to give birth in time to a mighty and progressive error, is strongly exemplified in the fundamental doctrine of the ancient religion of Persia--a doctrine which was at first nothing more than a simple veneration of Nature, its pure elements and its primary energies--the sacred fire, and above all, light--the air, not the lower atmospheric air, but the purer and higher air of heaven--the breath that animates and pervades the breath of mortal life.

In India, too, this doctrine must have been very prevalent in the primitive ages; for many and very ancient pa.s.sages of the Vedas refer to these elements, while on the other hand, the names of the later Hindoo divinities appear to have been entirely unknown at that period. This pure and simple veneration of nature is perhaps the most ancient, and was by far the most generally prevalent in the primitive and Patriarchal world. In its original conception, it was by no means a deification of Nature, or a denial of the sovereignty of G.o.d--it was only at a later period that the symbol, as it so often happens, was confounded with the thing itself, and usurped the place of that higher Object which it was destined originally to represent. And how can we doubt that these pure elements and primitive essences of created Nature would offer to the first men, who were still in a close communication with the Deity, not indeed a likeness or resemblance (for in man alone is that to be found), nor a mere fanciful image, or a poetical figure, but a natural and true symbol of divine power;--how can we doubt this, I say, when we see that, in so many pa.s.sages of Holy Writ (not to say in every part), the pure light or sacred fire is employed as an image of the all-pervading and all-consuming power and omnipotence of G.o.d? Not to speak again of those pa.s.sages of scripture, which describe the animating breath and inspiration of G.o.d as the first source of life, and speak of the gentle breath, the light whisper of the breeze that announced to the prophet the immediate presence of his G.o.d, before whom he fell prostrate, and mantled himself in awe and reverence; and this surely cannot be understood as a poetical and figurative expression! Undoubtedly the scriptures often oppose to that natural emblem or veil of divine power, in the pure elements, an evil, subterraneous and destructive fire--the false light of the fiends of error--the poisonous breath of moral contagion. And how could it be otherwise? Nature in its origin was nought else than a beautiful image--a pure emanation--a wonderful creation--a sport of omnipotent love; so, when it was severed from its divine original, internally displaced, and turned against its Maker, it became vitiated in its substance, and fraught with evil. This alienation of Nature from G.o.d, this inversion of the right order in the relations between G.o.d and Nature, was the peculiar, essential and fundamental error of ancient Paganism, its false Mysteries, and the abusive application of the higher powers of Nature in magical rites. On the other hand, we ought to regard every similar inversion of things and of ideas, every similar derangement in the divine system, though established on the basis of Christianity, and by Christian philosophers--we ought, I say, to regard every such attempt as being in its essential nature and principle a heathen enterprise--the foundation of a scientific Paganism, although no altars be erected to Apollo, and no Mysteries be celebrated in honour of Isis.[61]

The pure symbolism of Nature, and the whole circle of the primitive symbolical ideas of the Egyptians, several of the Greek writers attempted to gather out of the ma.s.s of idolatrous tenets, natural emblems, and hieroglyphic signs of speech; but their researches do not correspond to the importance of the subject itself, nor to the present demands of science. It is well worthy of remark that the hieroglyphics, as far as they have yet been deciphered, do not indicate in their formation that variety of epochs observable in the Chinese system of writing; but on the contrary they seem to be all of a single cast, and offer the same circle of ideas and the same style of emblems. And as images of G.o.ds are to be found in a diminutive form among the other hieroglyphic signs, we may conclude from this circ.u.mstance, that all the hieroglyphics must have had a simultaneous origin, and have remained subsequently unchanged; and that their origin must have occurred at a time when the Egyptian idolatry had already been wrought into a perfect system.

In the primitive ages, during the first thirty-three centuries of the world, according to the ordinary computation, the various nations into which mankind were divided, followed in their development a separate and secluded course; and two mighty nations, the Indians and the Chinese, have remained to this day in this isolated and totally sequestered state. The peculiar character which distinguishes the second from the first epoch of the world is that, along with the first mighty conquests, there existed a much closer connection, a mutual influence, an active commerce, and various intercourse among many nations, nay, among all the nations of the then civilized world. From this period, when the intercourse among nations becomes more intimate, History acquires greater clearness, precision, and critical exactness; and this is only six, or at most seven centuries before the Christian era. The first Persian conquerors advanced with rapid strides towards the objects of their ambition; for after the founder of the Persian empire--Cyrus, had made himself master of the whole central region of Western Asia, as well as of the Lesser Asia, his successes were soon followed up by the conquest of Egypt by the arms of Cambyses; and a little subsequent to this, by the great expedition of Xerxes into Greece, whose valiant defenders, however, ruined his hopes of conquest. Egypt, which in its intellectual character, civilization, and political inst.i.tutions, had a much stronger a.n.a.logy and affinity with those two great primitive states--India and China, shut out from the rest of the world, was engaged in political relations with the nations of Western Asia, and those inhabiting the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, such as the Persians, the Phnicians, and the Greeks; and hence a short sketch of its political history, down to the period of the Persian conquest, as far at least as is necessary for the elucidation of general history, will not be here inappropriate or misplaced.

The long list of names of kings, belonging to more than twenty dynasties of the ancient Pharaohs, furnishes indeed matter of little interest or importance to the philosophic enquirer in his researches on universal history. It is, however, worthy of remark that many and vast expeditions appear to have been undertaken in the early ages of Egypt; though, while mention is made of such conquests, nothing is said of the permanent possession of the conquered countries. Sesostris, who, in the lifetime of his father, Amenophis, had seized the whole coast of Arabia, next vanquished, for the first time, Lybia and Ethiopia, afterwards extended his conquests to Bactriana, subdued the Scythian nations in the Caucasian countries, in Colchis, and as far as the Don, and even took possession of Thrace. The descent of the Colchians from the Egyptians, or the existence of an Egyptian colony in Colchis, was regarded by the ancients as an historical fact. The yet more ancient King Osymandas is said to have undertaken an expedition, attended by an immense army, to reconquer Bactriana that had revolted against the Egyptian sway; and the triumphant arms of Osiris stretched on one hand as far as the Ganges, and on the other as far as the sources of the Danube. Here a question arises:--did the Egyptians possess heroic poems similar to the Ramayana and Mahabarata of the Indians, and were these marvellous narratives extracted from these poems? Or had all these narratives a signification purely mythic, as we may easily conjecture to be the case in the expedition of Osiris? In those historical ages which are better known to us, Egypt was certainly never a conquering power--at least its conquests were never of a solid and permanent nature; though even in those times Egypt made some transient conquests, or at least expeditions; and, guilty of great political encroachments on other states and nations, was often doomed to experience from these a vigorous resistance to her attempts. A part of Libya, the coast of Arabia contiguous to the Red Sea, and the Arabia Petraea, acknowledged for a long time the sceptre of the Pharaohs, (and this fact indeed, the various monuments covered over with hieroglyphics, which are found in those countries, would seem to corroborate): Ethiopia, too, or at least a considerable portion of that region, was for a long period in the possession of the Egyptian kings.

The construction of the many ancient and vast edifices and monuments which are crowded together in the province of Thebais must, to all appearance, have required a greater number of hands than the Proper Egypt (a country by no means of considerable extent) could have furnished of itself. As Ethiopia had been conquered by the Egyptians, so the Ethiopians in their turn invaded Egypt, and founded there a royal dynasty. The second of these Ethiopian kings, Tirhaka, sought to stretch his conquests as far as Libya and the Northern coast of Africa, and must have penetrated as far as the columns of Hercules, or the modern straits of Gibraltar. On the other hand, there is historical evidence that even the Carthaginians, at the time when the family of Mago had the ascendancy in their state, conquered and took possession of the Egyptian city of Thebes. The king of Egypt, who is known in the historical books of the Hebrews by the name of Shishak, and who made the transient conquest of Jerusalem, is called Sheshonk or Sesonchis in the ancient inscriptions of the Pharaohs.

It is worthy of remark that we find, in the old Egyptian monuments, pictures of war-scenes representing very strangely-formed, or at least very remote, nations, as captives of war, and among these, we distinguish some with red hair and blue eyes, tattooed on the legs, perfectly corresponding to the descriptions which many ancients have left us of the Scythian nations. At a much earlier period, a Nomade tribe of Phnician, or, most probably, Arabian descent, had taken possession of the throne of Egypt, and had established in that country the national dynasty of the Hycsos, that is to say, the Shepherd-kings.

Some have wished to connect these with the Israelites; but in the whole history of the latter--the hospitable reception of the Hebrew colony under Joseph--its subsequent oppression--and its final expulsion from Egypt in the time of Moses, we can find no trace of any such dominion of a pastoral nation of Hebrews, or of any dynasty founded by them in Egypt; and even other circ.u.mstances agree not at all with such a supposition. With the neighbouring nations and tribes, Egypt had manifold and various relations, which, though in some particulars they might be similar, were far from being identical. If it is proved that Sesostris ascended the throne immediately after his father had succeeded in expelling the Hycsos, it may fairly be presumed that as an internal revolt against a foreign power and a foreign dynasty is wont to enkindle a spirit of martial enthusiasm, which easily leads to ulterior and more vigorous undertakings; the expeditions and conquests of Sesostris, though ever so much exaggerated, are not entirely dest.i.tute of historical foundation. Thus much is certain, that in antiquity there existed in many places, comparatively remote from Egypt, whole colonies, especially of a sacerdotal kind, whose origin was undoubtedly Egyptian; and that the first colonies which carried arts and civilization into Greece, and the other countries bordering on the Mediterranean; did not come solely from Phnicia; for even in Greece, the genealogy of many royal families and ancient cities, as well as most, if not all, the Mysteries, particularly the Orphic, pointed to Egypt as their common parent. And it is very possible that in those early ages, in which these Egyptian expeditions are said to have been undertaken, armed colonies may have emigrated from Egypt, not always influenced however by those commercial views which invariably directed the colonists of Phnicia; but animated by those higher motives of religion, which, for example, had such an evident influence on the first Persian conquests--by a desire to diffuse the Mysteries, and thereby, while they bound to Egypt the then still barbarous nations of the West, to raise the latter to the more exalted scale of Egyptian civilization. Even domestic troubles and civil discord may have been instrumental in producing those distant emigrations, which at this distance of time appear to us so mysterious and unaccountable. Such civil discord indeed existed in Egypt under various forms. The country itself was often divided into several kingdoms; and even when united, we observe a great conflict of interests between the agricultural province of Upper Egypt, and the commercial and manufacturing province of the Lower; as indeed a similar clashing of interests is often to be noticed in modern states. In the period immediately preceding the Persian conquest, the caste of warriors, that is to say, the whole cla.s.s of n.o.bility were decidedly opposed to the monarchs, because they imagined them to promote too much the power of the priesthood; in the same way as the history of India presents a similar rivalry or political hostility between the Brahmins and the caste of the Cshatriyas. In the reign of the Egyptian king Psammetichus, who had first checked or repelled the Scythian nations whose victorious arms then menaced the whole of Asia, this disaffection of the native n.o.bility obliged this prince to take Greek soldiers into his pay; and thus at length was the defence of Egypt intrusted to an army of foreign mercenaries. This circ.u.mstance, as well as the great commercial intercourse with the Greeks, and the number of Greek settlements in Lower Egypt, had made this province half Greek even prior to the Persian conquest; and had paved the way, and opened the door, to this, as well as to the later, conquest by the Greeks: for, in general, states and kingdoms, before they succ.u.mb to a foreign conqueror, are, if not outwardly and visibly, yet secretly and internally undermined.

The cla.s.sical writers of antiquity begin in general their universal history by an account of the a.s.syro-Babylonian empire, which preceded the Medo-Persian, and the annals of the early mythic ages of this empire are embellished with the fabulous victories of Semiramis; as similar fictions indeed are to be found in the primitive Sagas of all the other Asiatic nations. However, the conquest of Media by Ninus, appears to be more historical. The simplest, and for that reason, the most correct view of the subject is this, that in this great central region of Western Asia, four countries were contiguous, which often formed separate empires--Babylon and a.s.syria, Media and Persia; and which, when united, were governed sometimes by one, sometimes by another province, according to the country to which the ruling dynasty belonged; while the different capitals of these four countries, Babylon, Ninive, Ecbatana, Susa, or Persepolis alternately formed during their flourishing period the centre of a great empire. This first a.s.syro-Babylonian universal monarchy, as it is called, should not be considered as a distinct period of history, but rather as the most ancient dynasty of a great Asiatic empire, which was succeeded by a second, the Medo-Persian dynasty; in the same way as the successors of Alexander the Great founded in this very country a new Greek kingdom, and as at a later period the Parthians, whose original seat lay to the North-east, re-established in this land a native sovereignty, that proved very formidable to the Romans. This great middle country of Western Asia is the native seat of conquest; it was hence that emanated the spirit of ambition and enterprise, which found indeed in the very situation of the country most extraordinary facilities. And it is here, too, that Holy Writ places the abode of the first universal conqueror--the cradle of all ambition and conquest. In the very place where the ancient Babylon stood there are now immense ruins, to which the inhabitants of the country give the name of Nimrod"s castle, and which involuntarily bring to the modern traveller"s mind the old history of the Tower of Babel; as these ruins in all probability formed a part of the great temple of Belus, which in eight lofty stories rose to a prodigious height, and on the pinnacle whereof stood a colossal idol of the National Divinity--the sun. Even now the ruins of this temple, piled in immense heaps one upon the other, and which seem as if glazed by some raging fire, produce a very profound impression on the mind; and to such a height do they rise that the clouds rest on their summit above, while lions couch on the walls, or haunt the caverns below. Here, too, we look for the place where were the vast terraces, with their hanging or floating gardens, as the ancients called them, and which in a country by no means abounding in wood, the a.s.syrian monarch constructed from affection to his Median spouse. Here the widely scattered heaps and mounds of brick, inscribed with the cuneal characters of Babylon, attest the existence and vast circ.u.mference of the mighty capital, of whose dimensions no European city, but the Asiatic cities only, can furnish an adequate idea. This Babylonish tower has been in every age a figure of the heaven-aspiring edifice of lordly arrogance, which sooner or later is sure to be struck down and scattered afar by the arm of the divine Nemesis; and in Holy Writ itself, the Babylon giddied by the intoxicating cup of ambition, drunk with the blood of nations, is a mighty historical emblem, applicable to every age from the earliest to the latest times, of the mad, people-destroying career of a Pagan pride. Here did the evil commence, although the first a.s.syrian empire had no very extensive influence on the nations westward, and although the real epoch of universal conquest dates from the Persian Cyrus. Yet the ancient Babylon contrived to maintain her power, for, as has so often been exemplified in history, she, by the moral contagion of her voluptuous manners, conquered her conquerors, who abandoned the G.o.ds of their ancestors, to embrace the sensual nature-worship of the Babylonians. In the new monarchy founded by Cyrus, the Persians (now the ruling nation) were closely united and politically, at least, incorporated with the once more powerful Medes. Yet their race and language were originally very different, and even at a later period we can still observe some traces of mutual jealousy in a change of dynasty, or the forcible dethronement of the prince. The inst.i.tute of the Magi, which Cyrus established in his new Persian empire, served outwardly at least, to cement this union; for the Magi were of the Median race, and their sacred zend-books were not composed in the Persian language, but in two distinct dialects of Media, if one indeed were not rather Bactrian. The Magi were not so much an hereditary sacerdotal caste, as an order or a.s.sociation divided into various and successive ranks and grades, such as existed in the Mysteries--the grade of apprenticeship--that of mastership--that of perfect mastership. Foreigners could not easily gain admission into this sacerdotal order; and it was only at the express solicitation of the King of Persia, at whose court he resided, that this extraordinary favour was accorded to Themistocles. Whether the old Persian doctrine and _system of light_[62] did not undergo material alterations in the hands of its Median restorer, Zoroaster; or whether this doctrine were preserved in all its purity by the order of the Magi, may well be questioned. It is certain at least that that primitive veneration of nature is found completely disfigured and corrupted in the small existing remnant of the sect of Guebers or fire-worshippers.

On the order of the Magi devolved the important trust of the monarch"s education--a trust which must necessarily have given them great weight and influence in the state. They were in high credit at the _Persiangates_--for that was the oriental name given to the capital of the empire, and the abode of the prince; and they took the most active part in all the factions that encompa.s.sed the throne, or that were formed in the vicinity of the court. In Greece, and even in Egypt, the sacerdotal fraternities and a.s.sociations of initiated, formed by the Mysteries, had in general but an indirect, though not unimportant, influence on affairs of state; but in the Persian monarchy they acquired a complete political ascendency. The next main pillar of the Persian monarchy was its n.o.bility, or the princ.i.p.al race of the Pasargads, who immediately surrounded the throne, enjoyed the highest prerogatives, and formed indeed the flower of the Persian army. The strict moral and military education which this n.o.bility received, and of which Xenophon has drawn such a beautiful ideal sketch, const.i.tuted the chief strength of the state. And certainly the neglect of this old Persian system of education was one of the primary causes of the decline of the empire--a decline which the progressive relaxation and corruption of public morals accelerated with a fearful rapidity. After the first mighty impulse, and that severe moral character which Cyrus had imparted to Persia, had disappeared, the same fate befel this empire, as has befallen all the great oriental monarchies. The same evils, which the domination of provincial Satraps--a government of the Seraglio--invariably bring along with it--the factions, the conspiracies, the changes of dynasty, and the other disorders incident to despotism, appear in exactly similar colours in the Persian annals; and even in the modern kingdom of Persia, we find many of those characteristic traits or usages of Asiatic government, as they existed in the ancient empire. Even the army for the most part consisted of troops levied out of the conquered nations, and the greater were its numbers, the less internal union did it possess. Hence we can well conceive that a small army of Greeks, animated by patriotic valour, and commanded by generals possessed of a true tactical eye and genius, were able to oppose to the immense hosts of Persia a resistance which in a numerical point of view, appears almost incredible, and were even enabled to gain unexpected victories over their enemies. We can conceive too, how in the time of Alexander the Great, three battles should have decided the fate of this great empire; for its moral life and energy were gone, and the pillars of the state were completely decayed.

The Persian empire lasted but for the short period of two hundred and twenty years, from its foundation by Cyrus to the reign of the last Darius, whose personal character and fate leave such an affecting and tragical impression on our minds. The universal conquests of the Persians, rapid, but transient, acted on the age with all the violence of the elemental powers of nature. Sudden and rapid, like a wind-storm, they invaded and subdued all other states and kingdoms;--the expedition of Xerxes into Greece was a real inundation of nations--and as the destructive fire, after blazing on high and desolating and consuming all things around, sinks quickly again--it was so with the Persian empire.

The dominion of the Persians exerted no very permanent influence on those other nations whose civilization was anterior to their own. Egypt, in despite of the violent persecution which she sustained under Cambyses, remained still the ancient Egypt--and with yet greater fidelity did she cling to her ancient customs, under the milder sway of the Ptolemies, whose government was so much more congenial to her spirit and character. Phnicia, Palestine, and Asia Minor, also remained essentially unchanged. In an historical point of view, the main result of the Persian conquests was this--they brought the nations of Western Asia and of Egypt into a close contact, and a very active and permanent intercourse with the states of Greece, and those situated on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. The Persian dominion, and the contest of that power with Greece, had indeed a very great, though only indirect, influence on the latter country, inasmuch as it favoured the growth and development of Grecian liberty, and at a later period produced the great re-action under Alexander the Great. This Greek re-action was in its spirit and character somewhat similar to the previous irruption and ambitious invasion of the Persians; in Alexander at least, we can clearly discover an oriental spirit that, not content with the narrow boundaries of his hereditary kingdom of Macedon, sought to transcend the sphere of h.e.l.lenic civilization, h.e.l.lenic doctrines, and h.e.l.lenic modes of thinking. And I call that an Asiatic enthusiasm which, with resistless impetuosity, bore away the Macedonian to the capital of Persia, and even beyond the banks of the Indus.

END OF LECTURE VII.

LECTURE VIII.

Variety of Grecian life and intellect.--State of education and of the fine arts among the Greeks.--The origin of their philosophy and natural science.--Their political degeneracy.

It would be difficult to point out a more striking difference, a more decided opposition in the whole circle of the intellectual and moral character and habits of nations, as far at least as the sphere of known history extends, than that which exists between the seclusive and monotonous character of Asiatic intellect--the generally unchangeable uniformity of oriental manners and oriental society, and the manifold activity--the varied life of the Greeks, in the first flourishing ages of their history. This amazing diversity in the moral and intellectual habits of the Greeks appears not only in their legislation, their forms of government, their manners, occupations, and usages of life, but in their various and widely dispersed settlements and colonies, in their descent, which was composed of so many heterogeneous elements, in the first seeds of their civilization--as well as their distribution into hostile tribes and great and petty states, and even in their traditions, their history, and the arts and forms of art to which those gave rise--finally in a science, engaged in incessant strife, and marching from system to system, amid the noise and tumult of opposition. In Asia, even in those countries such as India, where the poetry, the views of life, and the systems of philosophy were extremely various, and bore in this respect an external resemblance to those of Greece; where even the country in ancient times was never permanently united into one compact empire; yet the whole way of thinking, the prevalent feeling was entirely monarchical, proceeding from, and returning again to, unchangeable unity. On the other hand, in Greece, science, like life itself, was thoroughly republican--and if we meet with particular thinkers, who leaned to this Asiatic doctrine of unity, we must regard this as only an exception--a system adopted from a love of change, or out of a spirit of opposition to the vulgar and generally received opinion that all in nature and the world, as well as in man, was in a state of perpetual movement, constant change, and freedom of life. Even the fabulous world of Grecian divinities, as it has been painted by their poets, has a republican cast; for there every thing is in a state of change, of successive renovation, and of mutual collision in the war of Nature"s elements, in the hostility of old and new deities of the superior and inferior G.o.ds--of giants and of heroes--presenting, as it does, a state of poetical anarchy. Hence, even the historical traditions of the Greeks, and the first accounts of their early seats, settlements, and the migrations of their different races, present to the eye of the historical enquirer a dense forest of truth and fiction, of fanciful conjecture, absolute fable, and ancient and venerable knowledge--a labyrinth of poetry and of history, in whose various and intricate mazes it is often difficult for the critic to find the true outlet, and to hold fast by the guiding clue of Ariadne, when he wishes to adopt a lucid arrangement, and a.s.sign to each part its due place in the system of the whole. The Greek tribes and nations inhabited not only the proper Greece, the Peninsula Peloponnesian, the contiguous islands, the Southern plains of the Continent (on whose Northern frontiers it is often difficult to draw the line of demarcation between the tribes of Greek and foreign extraction); and also the Western coasts of Asia Minor; but they had founded a number of small states and planted many flourishing colonies in the remotest corners of the Euxine, in the Lower Egypt, where, long prior to the Persian wars, many Greek settlements existed--along the Northern sh.o.r.e of Africa, where the flourishing Cyrene was situated, on the Southern coasts of Spain and Gaul, in Sicily, and throughout the whole of Southern Italy. Their navigation extended even to the Baltic, as the voyage of Pytheas evinces; and, though they did not circ.u.mnavigate Africa,--a thing which it is still doubtful whether the Phnicians accomplished,--they rather surpa.s.sed than yielded to the latter nation in the activity of their trade, and the wealth and extent of their Colonies. The stupendous monuments and edifices of the Egyptians are indeed of more colossal dimensions; yet the works of Grecian sculpture and architecture, while some of them are on a very large scale, are incomparably more various, more rich in ornament, more animated, and beautiful, than those of Egypt. The Greeks were not a mere sea-faring and commercial people, like the Phnicians; nor did they compete with the Egyptians in those proud monuments of architecture whose erection required such thousands of human hands; but they were from their earliest period a martial people, well trained to war. Independently of every feeling of patriotic enthusiasm and national defence, they looked on war as a trade and a living, and they loved it accordingly. This is proved by the fact that, in the age preceding the Persian conquest, and long before the Persians waged war with Greece, the Kings of Egypt had not only Greek squadrons in their service, but that the whole Egyptian army was for the most part composed of Grecian mercenaries. Such, too, was the case in Carthage, and, at a later period, in Persia, where whole legions and armies of Greeks were engaged in the service of the great king. This old custom among the Greeks of enlisting in the military service of foreign states, may have been indeed an excellent preparation for their great national wars, though in these the first great exploits were achieved by small companies of troops from Athens, Sparta, and other free states, as well as by a select body of free citizens. But this custom could have had no very favourable influence on national opinions and feelings, and the mutual relations of the Greek tribes and states.

The Republican form of government mostly prevailed in the various Greek settlements and Colonies, established round the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean; for it is to this species of government that maritime nations, commercial cities, and petty states almost always incline, as long as their territories remain circ.u.mscribed. Yet in these states, we find a great variety of political const.i.tutions; for along with that mult.i.tude of small commercial Republics, there were many, like Sparta and others, that depended exclusively, or for the most part, on agriculture and the riches of the soil. In these, the hereditary n.o.bility, the proprietors of the soil, formed the princ.i.p.al cla.s.s; for in general the Greeks attached a very high importance to the n.o.ble races and princely families that deduced their descent from the old heroic times. The original const.i.tution of many, of almost the greater part of these small Greek Republics, was a tolerably mild aristocracy, headed by an hereditary Prince, or chieftain. In some states, as for instance in Athens, the transition from this old aristocratical government, headed by an hereditary prince, to a thoroughly democratic const.i.tution, was but slow and gradual; as the memory of their ancient kings, for example, of Codrus, who fell in the defence of his country, was ever cherished by the Athenian people with love and reverence. The popular hatred in Athens was directed only against those leaders of the state who, like Pisistratus, after having obtained their power by means of popular influence, sought to stretch and perpetuate it by force of arms and the use of foreign mercenaries. Yet even Pisistratus possessed great qualities, and his sway was in general mild, and conformable to the laws of Solon;--it cannot be denied, however, that his was an usurped authority, and one founded on illegitimate force. At a later period, and when the Athenian state became more and more democratic--as there is not a more thankless being in all nature than the sovereign people, in its lawless and capricious rule, the people of Athens, jealous of their freedom, and too easily deluded by the arts of oratorical sophistry, pointed their hatred at all the great men and deserving citizens of the state. The general Miltiades perished in prison; Aristides the just, Cimon and many others fell the victims of ostracism, and died in exile, as did the great historians, Herodotus and Thucydides. Themistocles himself, who had been the liberator of Athens and of Greece, was obliged to take refuge at the court of the Persian monarch, from whom he received protection and hospitality. The wisest of the Athenians, the master of Plato, who had ever proved himself an honest citizen and a valiant defender of his country, received the cup of poison for his recompence.

But we no where discover in the early ages of Athens, and of the other Greek Republics, that hatred to kings and to royalty in general, which even the primitive history of Rome displays. Nay, in Sparta, amid a Republican const.i.tution, the kingly power and dignity were preserved inviolate down to the latest period; while in Macedon a new monarchy grew up, which at first a.s.serted a sort of Protectorate over the other states, and at last established a very despotic ascendancy over all Greece. Even in those states where the const.i.tution was more democratical, that is to say, where it was founded, not on an hereditary n.o.bility and the possession of the soil, but chiefly on moveable property, on trade, and manufactures, we must not look for that sort of arithmetical freedom and equality which exists in some modern Republics, for instance, in the United States of America. The number of citizens really free, eligible, and possessed of the right of suffrage, was exceedingly small when compared with the bulk of the population--by far the greater part were not so, and a mult.i.tude of bought slaves, especially in the commercial states, was employed in manufactures, and in the tillage of the land. This universally prevalent custom--the harsh treatment and oppression of slaves--forms a very painful contrast in the ancient Republics, little corresponding to our own ideal of social happiness, and in itself very degrading to humanity. In the interior and more aristocratic states, slavery a.s.sumed another shape--the remnant of the original inhabitants of the soil, that had survived the conquest of their country, such as the Helots of Sparta, and the Penestae of Thessaly, were not merely reduced by the conquerors in their newly-founded governments to the condition of va.s.sals, as we should term them, or even of serfs; but were degraded to a state of absolute slavery, and generally treated with great severity. If we except this one circ.u.mstance, the aristocracy, that ruled in most of the ancient Republics of Greece, was on the whole, tolerably well const.i.tuted; a number of accessory circ.u.mstances had tended to soften its sway, and even, in some instances, it was enn.o.bled by high worth. Ancestral manners and customs--the very smallness of the states--all tended to mitigate its rule--a wise legislation, like that of Solon, and of other law-givers animated by the same spirit, had at once consolidated and tempered its power; while it was adorned by republican virtues and many personal qualities in those elder and better times, ere the ancient simplicity of manners was yet totally corrupted.

In most of the Greek Republics, besides, commerce daily acquired greater influence and importance, and it was impossible in such a state of things that any rigidly exclusive aristocracy could have been formed, or could have long maintained its ascendancy. Even the priesthood in Greece (for there there was no danger of the political predominance of an hereditary sacerdotal caste, as in Egypt), even the priesthood, by maintaining ancient manners, customs and laws, on which indeed their own existence depended, exerted a mild and beneficial influence in the state; for they at least formed a counterpoise to a mere selfish aristocracy, and sometimes opposed the last barrier to democratic tyranny.

The Mysteries too, in particular, which, although they did not at a later period, as in their origin, diffuse a sounder morality than the popular mythology, yet certainly inculcated more serious doctrines, and more spiritual views of life, exerted, together with the Olympic and Isthmian games, a gentle, and on the whole, a very beneficial, influence, and served as a bond of connection between the variously divided and discordant nations of Greece. Nay these public and gymnastic games, which were celebrated in the festive poetry of the Greeks, served to knit more firmly the bond of national union, so exceedingly loose among this people; and many times, in a moment of danger, has the oracle of Delphi roused and united all the sons of h.e.l.las. These political decisions of the oracle were not false, so far at least as in these critical moments they gave no other counsel to the Greeks, but that of patriotic courage, prudent firmness, and national concord.

Widely dissimilar as were the Greek tribes and nations in their original seats and settlements, their occupations and modes of living, their manners and political inst.i.tutions, they differed not less in the primitive elements of their civilization. The Phnician Cadmus, according to tradition, brought the alphabet, and with it, undoubtedly, many other elements of knowledge to the city of Thebes--the Egyptian Cecrops laid the ground-work of the old Athenian manners and government--the Thracian Orpheus, though his doctrines had much a.n.a.logy to those of Egypt, founded the widely diffused Mysteries that bore his name, while he sought by song to mitigate the terrors of the lower world, and to overcome the powers of darkness. To these many other names might be added; and among them many which did not deduce their descent, like most indeed, from Phnicia and Egypt, but are clearly to be traced, as well as the doctrines and sacred customs they introduced, to the North; and, though they sprang more immediately from Asiatics on the northern side of the Caucasus, they were nearly allied to the nations dwelling further towards the North and West. The profound and concurrent researches of many modern scholars have adduced such numerous and repeated proofs from antiquity, of the existence of this Northern stratum in Greek antiquities, that this branch of Grecian history, formerly neglected, must no longer pa.s.s un.o.bserved. The Greeks were of very various extraction; and in the different countries of Greece we may distinguish, along with the h.e.l.lenes, two if not more, princ.i.p.al nations, clearly distinct from the former. These were the Thracians in the Northern provinces, or at least in those immediately contiguous--a race for the most part of Northern descent, and, together with the Indian, the most numerous on the earth according to Herodotus--perhaps of the same origin with the nations on the banks of the Danube, or even those further northward. There were, next, the Pelasgi, the real aborigines of Greece, the authors of those gigantic walls and constructions, which are known in Italy by the name of Cyclopean, and in Greece by that of Pelasgic, and some of which still exist, besides several others that existed in the Peloponnesus, and which are mentioned by the ancients. These Aborigines, or this primitive race of people, occur in many countries under the same, or at least very similar, traits--to them we must ascribe those monuments of architecture we have just spoken of, a certain knowledge of metals, some rude religious rites, without any mythology, which was only of later origin, nay without any names of specific divinities;--human sacrifices--manners and customs, if not absolutely savage, still very rude and barbarous, and a constant restlessness and a disposition to roam. Deucalion alone is to be considered as the ancestor of the h.e.l.lenes, as all the n.o.ble families of kings and heroes derived their descent from him, and the later tribes of Greece, the aeolians, the Dorians, and Ionians, took their names from his sons. According to every indication, this people would appear to be a Caucasian race of Asiatics, of Indian, or at least of a cognate, origin. When these h.e.l.lenes, aeolians and Dorians, had taken possession of Thessaly, of the adjacent countries, and the Peloponnesus, and had there formed settlements, the Pelasgi were every where dispossessed, or oppressed, and thrown into the back-ground. But they certainly were not entirely extirpated, nor did they emigrate in full numbers; and it is beyond a doubt that various causes contributed to unite the old and new inhabitants of Greece; for here intermarriages were not entirely prohibited and rigidly prevented, as in India or Egypt, by the inst.i.tution of castes; and the two nations were gradually formed into one race and one people, according as the circ.u.mstances or situation of one country or the other favoured such an union. And hence we can understand why Herodotus, for example, should have attributed to the Ionians in particular much that was Pelasgic, as if under this new denomination they were in all essential points the ancient Pelasgi, or had mingled more with the latter, and were not of such a pure h.e.l.lenic race as the Dorians: for in other respects, the Pelasgi and h.e.l.lenes are represented as being originally two perfectly distinct nations. The people of Thrace, too, although they continued as a separate nation to a much later period, undoubtedly mingled considerably with the h.e.l.lenic tribes that inhabited the borders of Thrace, or that lived among the inhabitants of that country.

The primitive inhabitants of Greece were in general extremely rude and barbarous in their manners and tenets; until the n.o.ble race of Prometheus, the sons of Deucalion, who had come from the regions of Mount Caucasus, and colonies still more civilized that had emigrated from Phnicia, Egypt, and other countries of Asia, exerted their beneficial influence, and gave by degrees an entirely new form and fashion to the people of Greece, and even to the country itself. For that region, which afterwards presented so beautiful an aspect, which was so richly endowed, and splendidly embellished by the hand of Nature, was, until it had been well cultivated and fertilized, and until the power of boisterous elements had been subdued, a complete wilderness, and the scene of many violent revolutions of nature; which were very naturally considered as a sort of partial and feeble imitation of the destructive and universal flood of elder times, when water was the all-prevailing element on the earth. In Greece there was an old obscure tradition, of the original existence of a continent called Lectonia, which occupied a portion of the subsequent Greek sea, and of which the islands form now the only existing remains; the rest of the continent having been sunk and destroyed, at the very time when the Black Sea, which had been originally connected with the Caspian, burst through the Bosphorus, and precipitated its waves into the Mediterranean. At this very remote period, all Thessaly was one vast lake, till, in a natural catastrophe of a similar kind, the river Peneus burst its way through a defile of rocks, and found an outlet into the sea. The lake Copais in Baeotia in an inundation overflowed the whole circ.u.mjacent flat country in the time of Ogyges; and thus the name and tradition of Ogyges served afterwards to designate the epoch of those early floods. At a later period, and when the civilization of the Greeks was more advanced, in the true flourishing era of their power and literature, the two princ.i.p.al races among this people, the Ionians and the Dorians, were completely opposed to each other in arts and manners, in government, modes of thinking, and even in philosophy. Athens was at the head of the Ionic race; Sparta took the lead in the Doric confederacy; and this internal discord did not a little contribute towards the utter ruin of Greece, and towards the consummation of that internal and external anarchy that dragged all things into its abyss.

Now that we enter upon that period when all the great political events have been sufficiently described, and partly, at least, set forth with incomparable talent, by the great cla.s.sical historians of antiquity; by a mult.i.tude of writers that have borrowed from that source, or have worked upon those lofty models; it would be idle to repeat what is universally known, and to recount, in long historical detail, how, after contests and struggles of less importance, the glory of Greece burst forth in all its l.u.s.tre in her resistance to Persian might; how, soon after, she exhausted her best strength in the great Peloponnesian civil war betwixt Sparta and Athens, and how both those states ruined themselves in the idle ambition of maintaining the ??e???a as they called it, or the superiority and preponderance in the political system of Greece;--how, after the short dominion of the Thebans under their single great man, Epaminondas, the Macedonians became lords of the ascendant, and ruled for a longer time with despotic sway;--and finally how Greece obtained an apparent freedom under the generous protection of Rome, and was soon after reduced to a state of permanent va.s.salage under her prefects and her legions. This instructive and, we may well say, eternal history may be read, studied, and meditated on in all its ample details and living clearness in the pages of the great cla.s.sical historians of antiquity. The knowledge of all these historical facts must be here pre-supposed, and I must confine myself to a rapid and lively sketch of the intellectual character and moral life of the Greeks, in their relation to the rest of mankind, and according to the place which they occupy in universal history.

In this point of view, all that is universally interesting in the character, life, and intellect of the Greeks will be best and most easily cla.s.sed under three categories. The first is the _divine_ in their system of art, or the mythology that was so closely interwoven with their traditions and their fictions, their whole arrangement of life, their customs, and political inst.i.tutions; and which so much excites our astonishment and admiration. The second is their science of Nature--a science so natural to them, and which embraced all the objects of Nature and the world, as well as of history, and even man himself, with the utmost clearness of perception, sagacity of intellect, and beauty and animation of expression--a science that, from its earliest infancy down to its complete perfection in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, has established the lasting glory of the Greeks, and has had a deep and abiding influence on the human mind, through all succeeding ages. The third and last category, in this portrait of the Greek intellect and character, is the political rationalism in Greece"s latter days, founded on those maxims and principles which had finally triumphed after the most violent contest of parties, and under which the state was entirely swayed by the arts of eloquence and the power of rhetoric, now become a real political authority in society. All that can be said truly to the honour of the ancient Greek states, and their Republican virtues, has been briefly noticed above. Their decay and general anarchy, and final subjugation by Rome, may be well accounted for by the decline of the Greek philosophy, and the consequent corruption of morals and doctrine--by that dominion of sophists, unparalleled at least in ancient history, and whose pernicious art of a false rhetoric was the bane of public life, government, and all national greatness.

The marvellous and living mythology in the glorious old poetry of Greece justly occupies here the first place, for all arts, even the plastic arts, had their origin in this first Homeric source. And this fresh living stream of mythic fictions and heroic traditions which has flowed, and continues to flow, through all ages and nations in the West, proves to us, by a mighty historical experience, which determines even the most difficult problems (and this has been universally acknowledged in Christian Europe), that all cla.s.sical education--all high intellectual refinement, is and should be grounded on poetry--that is to say, on a poetry which, like the Homeric, springs out of natural feelings, and embraces the world with a clear, intuitive glance. For there can be no comprehensive culture of the human mind,--no high and harmonious development of its powers, and the various faculties of the soul; unless all those deep feelings of life--that mighty, productive energy of human nature, the marvellous imagination, be awakened and excited, and by that excitement and exertion, attain an expansive, n.o.ble and beautiful form.

This the experience of all ages has proved, and hence the glory of the Homeric poems, and of the whole intellectual refinement of the Greeks, which has thence sprung, has remained imperishable. Were the mental culture of any people founded solely on a dead, cold, abstract science, to the exclusion of all poetry; such a mere mathematical people--with minds thus sharpened and pointed by mathematical discipline, would and could never possess a rich and various intellectual existence; nor even probably ever attain to a living science, or a true science of life. The characteristic excellence of this Homeric poetry, and in general of all the Greek poetry, is that it observes a wise medium between the gigantic fictions of oriental imagination, even as the purer creations of Indian fancy display; and that distinctness of view, that broad knowledge and observation of the world, which distinguish the ages of prosaic narrative, when the relations of society become at once more refined and more complicated. In this poetry, these two opposite, and almost incompatible, qualities are blended and united--the fresh enthusiasm of the most living feelings of nature--a blooming, fertile, and captivating fancy, and a clear intuitive perception of life, are joined with a delicacy of tact, a purity and harmony of taste, excluding all exaggeration--all false ornament--and which few nations since the Greeks, none perhaps in an equal degree, certainly none before them, have ever possessed to a like extent.

This poetry was most intimately interwoven with the whole public life of the Greeks--the public spectacles, games, and popular festivals were so many theatres for poetry: nay music and the gymnastic exercises were the ground-work, and formed almost the whole scope, of a high, polite, and liberal education among the Greeks. Both were so in a very wide, comprehensive and significant sense of the term. The gymnastic struggles, the peculiar object of the public games, and where the human frame attained a beautiful form and expansion by every species of exercise--the gymnastic struggles had a very close connection with, and may be said to have formed the basis for, the imitative arts, especially sculpture, which, without that habitual contemplation of the most exquisite forms afforded by these games, could never have acquired so bold, free, and animated a representation of the human body. Music, or the art of the Muses, included not only the art of melody, but the poetry of song. Still the plan of Grecian education and refinement was ever of too narrow and too exclusive a character; and when, at a later period, rhetoric came to form one of its elements, the Greeks considered it (what indeed it never should be considered) as a sort of gymnastic exercise for the intellect, a species of public spectacle, where eloquence, little solicitous about the truth, only sought to display its art or address in the combat. And in the same way philosophy, when the Greeks attained a knowledge of it, came to be regarded, according to the narrow and exclusive principles of their system of education, as nothing more than a species of intellectual melody, the internal harmony of thought and mind--the music of the soul; till later, by means of the sophists and popular sycophants that deluded their age, it sunk into the all-destructive abyss of false rhetoric, which was the death of true science and genuine art, and which, in the shape of logic and metaphysics, had as injurious an influence on the schools as a false political eloquence had on the state and on public life. That principle of harmony which formed the leading tenet of the primitive philosophy of Greece before the introduction of sophistry, was not an ign.o.ble,--it was even a beautiful, idea, although it might be far from solving the high problems and questions of philosophy, or satisfying the deeper enquiries of the human mind.

It was from these public games, popular festivals, and great poetical exhibitions, which had such a mighty and important influence on the whole public life of the Greeks, and which served to knit so strongly the bonds of the h.e.l.lenic confederacy, that, by means of the odes, specifically designed for such occasions, the theatre, and the whole dramatic art of the Greeks, derived their origin. This poetry, which is less generally intelligible to other nations and times than the Homeric poems, because it enters more deeply into the individual life of the Greeks, does not display less invention, sublimity, and depth of art, from that ideal beauty which pervades its whole character, and from its lofty tone of feeling. Even the Doric odes of Pindar, amid their milder beauties, rise often to the tragic grandeur of the succeeding poets, or to the comprehensive and epic fulness of the old Maeonian bard.

No nation has as yet been able to equal the charm and amenity of Homer, the elevation of aeschylus, and the n.o.ble beauty of Sophocles; and perhaps it is wrong even to aspire to their excellence, for true beauty and true sublimity can never be acquired in the path of imitation.

Euripides, who lived in the times when rhetoric was predominant, is ranked with the great poets we have named by such critics only, as are unable to comprehend and appreciate the whole elevation of Grecian intellect, and to discern its peculiar and characteristic depth. It is worthy of remark, as it serves to show the general propensity of Grecian intellect for the boldest contrasts, that these loftiest productions of tragedy, and which have retained that character of unrivalled excellence through all succeeding ages, were accompanied by the old popular comedy which, while its inventive fancy dealt in the boldest fictions of mythology, and in the humorous exhibitions of the G.o.ds, made it its peculiar business to fasten on all the follies of ordinary life, and to exhibit them to public ridicule without the least reserve.

That the sensual worship of Nature, the basis of all Heathenism, and more particularly so of the Greek idolatry, must have had a very prejudicial influence on Greek morals; that the want of a solid system of Ethics, founded on G.o.d and divine truth, must have given rise to great corruption even in a more simple period of society; and that this already prevalent corruption must have increased to a frightful extent in the general degradation of the state--is a matter evident of itself; and it would be no difficult task to draw from the pages of the popular comedy we have just spoken of, and from other sources, a terrific picture of the moral habits of the Greeks. Yet I know not whether such a description would be necessary, or even advantageous, for the purpose of this Philosophy of History--the more so, as it would not be difficult to draw from similar sources of immorality, and from the now usual statistics of vice and crime, a sketch of the moral condition of one or more Christian nations, that would by no means accord with the pre-conceived notion of the great moral superiority of modern times. We may thus the more willingly rest contented with a general acknowledgment of the great moral depravity of mankind, which exists wherever mighty powers and strong motives of a superior order do not counteract it, and which must have broken out more conspicuously there, where, as among the Greeks, the prevailing religion was a Paganism that promoted and sanctioned sensuality. In regard to the poetry and plastic arts of the Greeks, it must even strike us as a matter of astonishment that it is in comparatively but few pa.s.sages, and few works, this Pagan sensuality appears in a manner hurtful to dignity of style and harmony of expression. It would not at least have surprised us, had this defect been oftener apparent, when we consider the doctrines and views of life generally prevalent in antiquity; for it was in most cases, less the sterner dictates of morality that prevented the recurrence of this defect than an exquisite sense of propriety, which even in art is the outward drapery that girds and sets off beauty. Besides, a mere conventional concealment cannot be imposed as a law on the art of sculpture; our moral feelings are much less offended by the representation of nudity in the pure n.o.ble style of the best antiques, than by the disguised sensuality which marks many spurious productions of modern art. In poetry and in art, at least in the elder and flourishing period, the Greeks have, for the most part, attained to internal harmony--in philosophy they were much less fortunate--and least of all in public life, which was almost always distracted, and at last utterly jarring, dissonant, and ruinous.

I called the science of the Greeks a _natural_ science, and in this quality, which it possessed in so eminent a degree, it affords us the highest instruction, and is of itself extremely interesting; for in its origin, this science proceeded chiefly, almost exclusively, from nature--pursued a sequestered and solitary path--a stranger to poetry and to the mythology which was there predominant, far removed from public and political life--and often even in an att.i.tude of hostility towards the state. The physical sciences, and particularly natural history, were created by the Greeks--so was the science of medicine, in which Hippocrates is still honoured as the greatest master; and geometry and the ancient system of astronomy were handed down to posterity, considerably enlarged and improved by the labours of the Greeks. In the second place, Grecian science may be denominated a _natural_ science, because, as it directed its attention successively to the various objects of the world, of life, and to man himself, it ever took a thoroughly natural view of all things, and even in self-knowledge, in practical life, and in history, sought to seize and comprehend the nature of man, and to unfold the character of his Being, with the utmost precision of language, and according to conceptions derived exclusively from life. Thus when Plato and his followers direct their philosophical enquiries to objects lying beyond, and far exalted above, the sphere of Nature and real life, we must regard these inquiries as exceptions from the ordinary practice of Grecian intellect, and from the ruling spirit of its speculations; in the same way as the expeditions of Alexander the Great form an exception from the usual routine of Grecian politics.

Lastly, Grecian science may be denominated a _natural_ science, because philosophy, founded on the old basis of poetry and cla.s.sical culture, allied to history, and the language and symbols of tradition, a.s.sumed in general a form clear, beautiful, animated, and eminently conformable to Nature and the mind of man; and however much this philosophy may at times have been lost and bewildered in the void of a false dialectic, it still never perished in the petrifying chill of abstract speculations.

And even Plato, though his philosophy so far transcended the ordinary sphere of Grecian intellect, had been well nurtured in h.e.l.lenic eloquence, art, and culture--and, in all these, was himself the greatest master.

With this profound and lofty feeling for Nature, did the early philosophers of Greece, who were chiefly Ionians, like Thales, Anaximenes, and Herac.l.i.tus, consider respectively water, air, and fire, as the primary powers of Nature and of all things; and it was only Anaxagoras, the master of Socrates, who first clearly expounded the nature of that supreme and divine Intelligence which created nature and regulates the world. Prior to this philosopher, Herac.l.i.tus had a.s.serted this doctrine, perhaps with greater purity--certainly with more depth and penetration; but in his obscure writings it is less intelligibly expressed. With his supreme Intelligence in Nature, Anaxagoras conjoined the ????e?sa, that is to say, not the real atoms of a lifeless matter, but rather the animated substance of material life.

Thus his doctrine was a simple system of dualism, quite in harmony, it would seem, with the feelings of those early ages, as we have noticed a similar system in the history of Indian philosophy. These old Ionian philosophers in general regarded only the internal life in Nature and all existence--the constant change and endless vicissitude in the world and in all things; and hence many of them began to doubt, and at last finally denied, the existence of anything steadfast and enduring.

According to that law and march of contrast, which Grecian intellect, whether consciously or unconsciously, invariably pursued, these Ionian philosophers were now opposed by the school of Parmenides, which inculcated the doctrine of an all-pervading unity--and taught that this principle was the first and last, the sole, true, permanent, and eternal Being. Although this system was at first propounded in verse, it was by no means, in its essential and ruling spirit, a poetical Pantheism, like that of the Indians--but more congenial with the intellectual habits of the Greeks, it was a Pantheism thoroughly dialectic, which at first regarded all change as an illusion and idle phenomenon, and at last positively denied the possibility of change. Between these two extreme schools appeared the great disciple of Socrates, who sought, by a path of inquiry completely new, completely foreign to the Greeks--by a range of speculation which soared far above the world of sense, and outward experience, as well as above mere logic, to return to the supreme G.o.d-head, infinitely exalted above all nature--deriving the notion of the Deity from immediate intuition, primeval revelation, or profound internal reminiscence. By this doctrine of reminiscence, which is the fundamental tenet of the Platonic system, this philosophy has a strong coincidence or affinity with the Indian doctrine of the Metempsychosis, by the supposition it involves of the prior existence of the human soul.

To such a notion of the pre-existence of the soul, in the literal sense of the term, no system of Christian philosophy could easily subscribe.

But if, as there is no reason to prevent us, we should understand this Platonic notion of reminiscence in a more spiritual sense--as the awakening or resuscitation of the consciousness of the divine image implanted in our souls--as the soul"s perception of that image; this theory would then perfectly coincide with the Christian doctrine of the divine image originally stamped on the human soul, and of the internal illumination of the soul by the renovation of that image--and hence we ought in no way to be astonished that this Platonic mode of thinking, for such it is rather than any exclusive system,--as it is the first great philosophy of revelation clothed and propounded i

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