presence of the latter in the synthesis of the two, had manifested itself in the sublime mythus περί γενέσεως τοῦ νοῦ ἐν ἀνθρωποῖς, concerning the genesis, or birth of the vous or reason in man. This the most venerable, and perhaps the most ancient, of Grecian mythi, is a philosopheme, the very same in subject-matter with the earliest records of the Hebrews, but most characteristically different in tone and conception;—for the patriarchal religion, as the antithesis of pantheism, was necessarily personal; and the doctrines of a faith, the first ground of which, and the primary enunciation, is the eternal I AM, must be in part historic, and must assume the historic form. Hence the Hebrew record is a narrative, and the first instance of the fact is given as the origin of the fact.

That a profound truth—a truth that is, indeed, the grand and indispensable condition of all moral responsibility-is involved in this characteristic of the sacred narrative, I am not alone persuaded, but distinctly aware. This, however, does not preclude us from seeing, nay, as an additional mark of the wisdom that inspired the sacred historian, it rather supplies a motive to us, impels and authorizes us, to see, in the form of the vehicle of the truth, an accommodation to the then childhood of the human Under this impression we may, I trust, safely consider the narration,-introduced, as it is here introduced, for the purpose of explaining a mere work of the unaided mind of man by comparison, as an Enos isgoyhuqizòr, and as such (apparently, I mean, not actually) a synthesis of poesy and philosophy, characteristic of the childhood of nations.

race.

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In the Greek we see already the dawn of approaching manhood. The substance, the stuff, is philosophy; the form only is poetry. The Prometheus is a philosophema ravinɣogixò,-the tree of knowledge of good and evil,-an allegory, a noолalds vua, though the noblest and the most pregnant of its kind. The generation of the vous, or pure reason in man. 1. It was superadded or infused, a supra to mark that it was no mere evolution of the animal basis ;—that it could not have grown out of the other faculties of man, his life, sense, understanding, as the flower grows out of the stem, having pre-existed potentially in the seed 2. The vous, or fire, was stolen,'-to mark its heteroor rather its allo-geneity, that is, its diversity, its difference in kind, from the faculties which are common to man with the

nobler animals: 3. And stolen from Heaven,'-to mark its superiority in kind, as well as its essential diversity: 4. And it was a 'spark,'—to mark that it is not subject to any modifying reaction from that on which it immediately acts; that it suffers no change, and receives no accession, from the inferior, but multiplies itself by conversion, without being alloyed by, or amalgamated with, that which it potentiates, ennobles, and transmutes : 5. And lastly (in order to imply the homogeneity of the donor and of the gift), it was stolen by a 'god,' and a god of the race before the dynasty of Jove,-Jove the binder of reluctant powers, the coercer and entrancer of free spirits under the fetters of shape, and mass, and passive mobility; but likewise by a god of the same race and essence with Jove, and linked of yore in closest and friendliest intimacy with him. This, to mark the pre-existence, in order of thought, of the nous, as spiritual, both to the objects of sense, and to their products, formed as it were, by the precipitation, or, if I may dare adopt the bold language of Leibnitz, by a coagulation of spirit.* In other words this derivation of the spark from above, and from a god anterior to the Jovial dynasty—(that is, to the submersion of spirits in material forms), --was intended to mark the transcendency of the nous, the contra-distinctive faculty of man, as timeless, xgorov u, and, in this negative sense, eternal. It signified, I say, its superiority to, and its diversity from, all things that subsist in space and time, nay, even those which, though spaceless, yet partake of time, namely, souls or understandings. For the soul, or understanding, if it be defined physiologically as the principle of sensibility, irritability, and growth, together with the functions of the organs, which are at once the representations and the instruments of these, must be considered in genere, though not in degree or dignity, common to man and the inferior animals. It was the spirit, the nous, which man alone possessed. And I must be permitted to suggest that this notion deserves some respect, were it only that it can show a semblance, at least, of sanction from a far higher authority.

* Schelling ascribes this expression, which I have not been able to find in the words of Leibnitz, to Hemsterhuis: "When Leibnitz," says he, "calls matter the sleep-state of the Monads, or when Hemsterhuis calls it curdled spirit,—den geronnenen Geist.-In fact, matter is no other than spirit contemplated in the equilibrium of its activities."-Transl. Transsc. Ideal. p. 190.-S. C.

The Greeks agreed with the cosmogonies of the East in deriving all sensible forms from the indistinguishable. The latter we find designated as the τὸ ἄμορφον, the ὕδωρ προκοσμικόν, the χάος, as the essentially unintelligible, yet necessarily presumed, basis or sub-position of all positions. That it is, scientifically considered, an indispensable idea for the human mind, just as the mathematical point, &c. for the geometrician;-of this the various systems of our geologists and cosmogonists, from Burnet to La Place, afford strong presumption. As an idea, it must be interpreted as a striving of the mind to distinguish being from existence-or potential being, the ground of being containing the possibility of existence, from being actualized. In the language of the mysteries, it was the esurience, the лó0оs or desideratum, the unfuelled fire, the Ceres, the ever-seeking maternal goddess, the ori-gin and interpretation of whose name is found in the Hebrew root signifying hunger, and thence capacity. It was, in short, an effort to represent the universal ground of all differences distinct or opposite, but in relation to which all antithesis as well as all antitheta, existed only potentially. This was the container and withholder (such is the primitive sense of the Hebrew word rendered darkness (Gen. i, 2)) out of which light, that is, the lux lucifica, as distinguished from lumen seu lux phænomenalis was produced;—say, rather, that which, producing itself into light as the one pole or antagonist power, remained in the other pole as darkness, that is, gravity, or the principle of mass, or wholeness without distinction of parts.

And here the peculiar, the philosophic, genius of Greece began its fœtal throb. Here it individualized itself in contradistinction from the Hebrew archæology, on the one side, and from the Phœnician, on the other. The Phoenician confounded the indistinguishable with the absolute, the Alpha and Omega, the ineffable causa sui. It confounded, I say, the multeity below intellect, that is, unintelligible from defect of the subject, with the absolute identity above all intellect, that is, transcending comprehension by the plenitude of its excellence. With the Phoenician sages the cosmogony was their theogony and vice versa. Hence, too, flowed their theurgic rites, their magic, their worship (cultus et apotheosis) of the plastic forces, chemical and vital, and these, or their notions respecting these, formed the hidden meaning, the

soul, as it were, of which the popular and civil worship was the body with its drapery.

The Hebrew wisdom imperatively asserts an unbeginning creative One, who neither became the world; nor is the world eternally; nor made the world out of himself by emanation, or evolution;-but who willed it, and it was! Τὰ ἄθεα ἐγένετο, καὶ ¿yévεto xúos,—and this chaos, the eternal will, by the spirit and the word, or express fiat-again acting as the impregnant, distinctive, and ordonnant power-enabled to become a world— *оoμεio0α. So must it be when a religion, that shall preclude superstition on the one hand, and brute indifference on the other, is to be true for the meditative sage, yet intelligible, or at least apprehensible, for all but the fools in heart.

The Greek philosopheme, preserved for us in the Eschylean Prometheus, stands midway betwixt both, yet is distinct in kind from either. With the Hebrew or purer Semitic, it assumes an X Y Z (I take these letters in their algebraic application)—an indeterminate Elohim, antecedent to the matter of the world, ὕλη ἄκοσμος—no less than to the ὕλη κεκοσμημένη. In this point, likewise, the Greek accorded with the Semitic, and differed from the Phoenician-that it held the antecedent X Y Z to be supersensuous and divine. But on the other hand, it coincides with the Phoenician in considering this antecedent ground of corporeal matter-τῶν σωμάτων καὶ τοῦ σωματικοῦ,—not so properly the cause of the latter, as the occasion and the still continuing substance. Materia substat adhuc. The corporeal was supposed co-essential with the antecedent of its corporeity. Matter, as distinguished from body, was a non ens, a simple apparition, id quod mere videtur; but to body the elder physico-theology of the Greeks allowed a participation in entity. It was spiritus ipse, oppressus, dormiens, et diversis modis somnians. In short, body was the productive power suspended, and as it were, quenched in the product. This may be rendered plainer by reflecting, that, in the pure Semitic scheme there are four terms introduced in the solution of the problem, 1. the beginning, self-sufficing, and immutable Creator; 2. the antecedent night as the identity, or including germ, of the light and darkness, that is, gravity; 3. the chaos; and 4. the material world resulting from the powers communicated by the divine fiat. In the Phœnician scheme there are in fact but two-a self-organizing chaos, and the omniform

nature as the result. In the Greek scheme we have three terms, 1. the hyle &λŋ, which holds the place of the chaos, or the waters, in the true system; 2. rà σóμara, answering to the Mosaic heaven and earth; and 3. the Saturnian xoóvο úлɛgɣgóνio,—which answer to the antecedent darkness of the Mosaic scheme, but to which the elder physico-theologists, attributed a self-polarizing power—a natura gemina quæ fit et facit, agit et patitur. In other words, the Elohim of the Greeks were still but a natura deorum, ò fetor, in which a vague plurality adhered; or if any unity was imagined, it was not personal-not a unity of excellence, but simply an expression of the negative-that which was to pass, but which had not yet passed, into distinct form.

All this will seem strange and obscure at first reading-perhaps fantastic. But it will only seem so. Dry and prolix, indeed, it is to me in the writing, full as much as it can be to others in the attempt to understand it. But I know that, once mastered, the idea will be the key to the whole cypher of the Eschylean mythology. The sum stated in the terms of philosophic logic is this: First, what Moses appropriated to the chaos itself: what Moses made passive and a materia subjecta et lucis et tenebrarum, the containing gо0μevor of the thesis and antithesis;—this the Greek placed anterior to the chaos;-the chaos itself being the struggle between the hyperchronia, the idéαι лgóvoμоi, as the unevolved, unproduced, prothesis, of which idéa nai vóμos--(idea and law)--are the thesis and antithesis. (I use the word 'produced' in the mathematical sense, as a point elongating itself to a bipolar line.) Secondly, what Moses establishes, not merely as a transcendant Monas, but as an individual Evas likewise ;—this the Greek took as a harmony, Оɛoì åÐáratoι, Tò Оɛìov, as distinguished from ó Оɛòs—or, to adopt the more expressive language of the Pythagoreans and cabalists numen numerantis; and these are to be contemplated as the identity.

Now according to the Greek philosopheme or mythus, in these, or in this identity, there arose a war, schism, or division, that is, a polarization into thesis and antithesis. In consequence of this schism in the τò Оɛîov, the thesis becomes nomos, or law, and the antithesis becomes idea, but so that the nomos is nomos, because, and only because, the idea is idea: the nomos is not idea, only because the idea has not become nomos. And this not must be heedfully borne in mind through the whole interpretation of this