perpetual motion is universal; we know of no such thing as absolute rest. Causes over which man has no controul overturn and change his wisest institutions. Monuments of folly and of wisdom, all, all crumble into dust. The Pyramids of Egypt, and the codes of the Medes or of Napoleon, all will pass away and be forgotten.
M. Dupuis, in his first chapter, has shewn that probably all nations first worshiped, as we are told the Persians did, without altars or temples, in groves and high places. After a certain number of years, in Persia, came temples and idols, with all their abuses; and these, in their turn, were changed or abolished, and the worship of the Sun restored, or perhaps the worship of the Sun only as emblem of the Creator. This was probably the change said to have been effected by Zoroaster.
The Israelites at the exodus had evidently run into the worship of Apis the Bull, or the Golden Calf of Egypt, which it was the object of Moses to abolish, and in the place thereof to substitute the worship of one God—Iao, Jehovah—which, in fact, was only the Sun or the Solar Fire, yet not the Sun, as Creator, but as emblem of or the shekinah of the Divinity. The Canaanites, according to the Mosaic account, were not idolaters in the time of Abraham; but it is implied that they became so in the long space between the time he lived and that of Moses. The Assyrians seem to have become idolaters early, and not, as the Persians, to have had any reformer like Zoroaster or Moses, but to have continued till the Iconoclasts, Cyrus and Darius, reformed them with fire and sword; as their successor Cambyses soon afterward did the Egyptians. The observations made on the universality of the solar worship, contain but very little of what might be said respecting it; but yet enough is said to establish the fact. If the reader wish for more, his curiosity will be amply repaid by a perusal of Mr. Bryant’s Analysis of the Heathen Mythology. He may also read the fourth chapter of Cudworth’s Intellectual System, which is a most masterly performance.
CHAPTER IV.
TWO ANCIENT ETHIOPIAS.—GREAT BLACK NATION IN ASIA.—THE BUDDHA OF INDIA A NEGRO.—THE ARABIANS WERE CUSHITES.—MEMNON.—SHEPHERD KINGS.—HINDOOS AND EGYPTIANS SIMILAR.—SYRIA PEOPLED FROM INDIA.
1. In taking a survey of the human inhabitants of the world, we find two classes, distinguished from each other by a clear and definite line of demarkation, the black and white colours of their skins. This distinguishing mark we discover to have existed in ages the most remote. If we suppose them all to have descended from one pair, the question arises, Was that pair black or white? If I were at present to say that I thought them black, I should be accused of a fondness for paradox, and I should find as few persons to agree with me, as the African negroes do when they tell Europeans that the Devil is white. (And yet no one, except a West-India planter, will deny that the poor Africans have reason on their side.) However, I say not that they were black, but I shall, in the course of this work, produce a number of extraordinary facts, which will be quite sufficient to prove, that a black race, in very early times, had more influence over the affairs of the world than has been lately suspected; and I think I shall shew, by some very striking circumstances yet existing, that the effects of this influence have not entirely passed away.
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