Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/133

the Arabs, and that species of eloquence which distinguishes the Jewish prophets and the Koran. The same must be said of their institutions. The Indo-European nations had, from their beginning, an old code, of which the remains are found in the Brahmanas of India, in the forms of the Romans, and in the laws of the Celts, the Germans, and the Slaves; the patriarchal life of the Hebrews and Arabs was governed, beyond contradiction, by laws totally different. Finally, the comparison of religions has thrown decisive light on this question. By the side of comparative philology in Germany there has of late years arisen the science of comparative mythology, which has shown that all the Indo-European nations had, in their beginning, with the same language also the same religion, of which each carried away scattered fragments on leaving their common cradle; this religion, the worship of the powers and phenomena of Nature leading by philosophical development to a sort of