also ardent passions, which rarely suffer them to preserve a rational freedom of mind, or to see things coolly and impartially. Hence the wild frenzies of the Egyptians, Syrians and Greeks in religious matters; and hence that chaos of extravagances, in some respects ingenious, known by the name of mythology: through which we can hardly discover any traces of the ancient doctrines. And yet we do discover them, and can make it appear, that those first doctrines, which the southern nations so much disguised, were the very same that composed for a long time after all the religion of the Scythians, and were preserved in the North without any material alteration. There the rigour of the climate necessarily locks up the capricious desires, confines the imagination, lessens the number of the passions, as well as abates their violence, and by yielding only to painful and unremitted labour, wholly confines to material objects, that activity of mind, which produces among men levity and disquiet.
But whether these causes have not always operated with the same efficacy, or whether others more powerful have prevailed over them; the greatest part of the Scythian nations after having, for some
