of life (Saw, v) was most naturally associated with the appearance of self-motion in fermentation or ebullition. (See page 27, note 4, on the words Syv and Séw.) Hence we cannot help thinking that there is some connexion between αιθήρ, αἴθω, and the verb αἴσθομαι, αἰσθάνομαι. Οπ this matter, some of the old poets and materializing philosophers may have indulged in views similar to what are now held by not a few modern savans, respecting the influence of an aethereal magnetic or galvanic fluid in the production of motion, sensation, and even thought. Hence Aristophanes, in the Clouds, 570, styles the æther Brooрéμμova: Αιθέρα σεμνότατον βιοθρέμμονα πάντων. The The scholiast thinks that it is here used for ȧýp. higher sense, however, best accords with the term oɛuvóTаTOV and other expressions of this writer, who, when he chooses to lay aside his buffoonery, is the most philosophical of all the Grecian poets, although much inclined to a materializing pantheism. In another place, in the style of the Orphic hymn and Homer, he calls it the dwelling-place of Jove, Όμνυμι τοίνυν αιθέρ' οἴκησιν Διός. Thesmoph., 279. Alonρ or π~ρ, on the one hand, and yñ on the other, being the two extremes, are frequently spoken of together as the cogenerating causes, or male and female parents of all material existences. As in Esch., Prom. Vinct., 88: *Ω δῖος αἰθήρ · παμμητόρ τε γῆ. So, also, in a fragment of Euripides, from the drama of Chrysippus, γαῖα μεγίστη καὶ Διὸς αἰθήρ. On like grounds, in the dissolution and death of animate objects, this semi-materializing philosophy and poetry taught that the more refined or spiritual parts returned to the higher element from which they derived their origin, Ἐάσατ ̓ ἤδη γῇ καλυφθῆναι νεκρούς, ἐνταῦθ ̓ ἀπελθεῖν· ΠΝΕΥΜΑ μὲν πρὸς 'ΑΙΘΕΡΑ Supplices, 533. Compare Orestes, 1085, and Helena, 1023: ὁ νοῦς τῶν κατθανόντων ζῇ μὲν οὔ, γνώμην δ' ἔχει Compare, also, the line of the fragment of the Hypsipyle from Stobæus, 108, in which we have the very language of the English Church burial service; earth to earth-dust to dust: ἄχθονται βροτοί εἰς γῆν φέροντες γῆν. In the case of the more gross and animal, it was supposed that the πvεvμa, being borne down by the attraction and weight of the earthy and sensual, and being unable to extricate itself from it, sank into still lower forms, until purified and set free by the penetrating and cleansing fires of Hades. See the Phædon, 81, D. We cannot conclude this long and yet, as we trust, not altogether irrelevant excursus, without giving an extract from a fragment of Euripides, in which there is most beautifully expressed this departure of the elements to their native homes, and which we cannot help thinking to be genuine, notwithstanding it is strongly controverted by Valckenaer: Χωρεῖ δ' ὀπίσω, τὰ μὲν ἐκ γαίας πόλον ἦλθε πάλιν· θνήσκει δ' οὐδὲν μορφὴν ἰδίαν ἀπέδειξεν. Valckenaer, Diatrib. in Eurip., Frag. XIII. Atheistical Doctrine of φύσις, τύχη, and τέχνη. 66 That PAGE 13, LINE 16. Φύσει πάντα εἶναι καὶ τύχη φασί· τέχνῃ δὲ οὐδὲν τούτων. “ They say that all these things are by nature and chance, but none of them by art.” is, these first four states, namely, πῦρ, ἀήρ, &c., were the production of τύχη and φύσις, whatever meaning they might have attached to these terms: the second stage, which resulted in the larger compounded bodies (arising from the composition of these four elements, or from their mixed combinations, when considered as states or conditions of existence), was regarded as chiefly the work of τύχη. Τύχη δὲ φερόμενα τῇ τῆς δυνάμεως ἕκαστα ἑκάστων, ᾗ ξυμπέπτωκεν ἁρμόττοντα οἰκείως πως, θερμὰ ψυχροῖς, ἢ ξηρὰ πρὸς ὑγρά, κ. τ. λ. In this department τύχη was the presiding power, although its influence was modified by those adaptations which belonged to φύσις, and to which reference is made in the above expression, άρμόττοντα οἰκείως πως; that is, although the original impulses and motions were the result of chance, a φύσις or natural necessity directed everything to its most fitting place, so that, after long wanderings in this wide domain of τύχη, a plenum at length found its rest in a vacuum, warm was neutralized by cold, convex adapted itself to concave, hard things found their repose in soft, influences constantly tending on all sides to an equality, at last brought many bodies to a spherical shape and to a circular motion, until finally in this way a universe was formed: κόσμος ἁρμόττων τὰς δυνάμεις τῆς φύσεως αὐτοῦ οἰκείως πως ; these various adaptations or fittings, after they had once happened to take place, becoming more and more stable by nature (púσis), and a certain habit (eği), which everything had a tendency to maintain when once assumed. After this immense region of púois and тúxŋ came the small province of Texvn, or art, which was itself supposed to grow out of (púɛ¤¤¤ɩ) and to be long posterior to the two first; according to the atheistic dogma, that mind, of which art or Téxvn is the offspring, is the last production of the generative power of the universe. Here we have the doctrine of progress in all its consistency; and why might not a God be the last result or consummation of this ascending scale, instead of being the beginning, as he is in that a priori view, which commences with the idea of the perfect, and from thence descends to the lower and the imperfect? We see not how, even on this scheme most ingenious as it is, the atheist can expect to find relief from his tormenting theophobia, or escape that object of his greatest dread, a superhuman being, whether he styles him a God or a Dæmon. If nature, puois and Túxn, have thus, after ages spent in lower productions on our earth, finally worked out the soul of man (or whatever else they may style that peculiar matter in us which wills, and thinks, and feels), why may not these agencies, during the long cycles of eternity, and in the infinitude of space, have given birth to a being excelling us in power as much as we surpass the lowest orders of vegetation? And what security have they as to his moral character, or what grounds for supposing that he would possess any moral character at all. The same progressive influences which, on our narrow scale, have called into being ichthyosauri, and megatheria, and mammoth monsters, such as sometimes now affright us by their exposed relics, may have given birth, on the immense field of the universe, to Gorgons, Hydras, and Chimæras dire, to a God or Gods of a more horrid nature than ever crossed the imagination of the Gnostic, or than ever figured in the wildest legends of Thibet or Hindostan. Indeed, we have every reason to believe that this monstrous Hindoo system, which should be styled a theogony rather than a theology, sprang in this very manner from an ancient atheism, which had been the offspring of a still earlier pantheism. It seems evidently to recognise such an older púois as Plato's atheists talked about, and the history of its Gods is only a history of successive generations from this primeval nature, each of a more horrid species than its predecessor. We say the atheist has no security against this, unless he takes shelter in that a priori idea of God which comes from the necessities of our own minds, inseparably con necting with it the notion of goodness, and of infinite perfection of every kind. But, then, this is a very different being from that last production of nature, which can never rise above its parent, or possess any other than physical attributes. Should they startle at the idea of such a superhuman being, whose malevolence might be commensurate with his power, and assert that it is improbable or impossible, the declaration proceeds only from an instinctive reverting to those ideas which belong to a directly opposite system, commencing with the moral instead of the natural, and making the necessary idea of God the ground of all truth. We are confined to so minute a portion of the universe, that no a posteriori induction, aside from any such necessary a priori idea, or some special revelation, can ever produce a firm conviction or a confiding trust in the Divine benevolence. |