Athens: Its Rise and Fall | Page 9

the vaguest result. For, the desire of the pious to trace
throughout all creeds the principles of the one they themselves
profess--the vanity of the learned to display a various and recondite
erudition--the passion of the ingenious to harmonize conflicting
traditions--and the ambition of every speculator to say something new
upon an ancient but inexhaustible subject, so far from enlightening,
only perplex our conjectures. Scarcely is the theory of to-day
established, than the theory of to-morrow is invented to oppose it. With
one the religion of the Greeks is but a type of the mysteries of the Jews,
the event of the deluge, and the preservation of the ark; with another it
is as entirely an incorporation of the metaphysical solemnities of the
Egyptian;--now it is the crafty device of priests, now the wise invention
of sages. It is not too much to say, that after the profoundest labours
and the most plausible conjectures of modern times, we remain yet
more uncertain and confused than we were before. It is the dark boast
of every pagan mythology, as one of the eldest of the pagan deities, that

"none among mortals hath lifted up its veil!"
After, then, some brief and preliminary remarks, tending to such
hypotheses as appear to me most probable and simple, I shall hasten
from unprofitable researches into the Unknown, to useful deductions
from what is given to our survey--in a word, from the origin of the
Grecian religion to its influence and its effects; the first is the province
of the antiquary and the speculator; the last of the historian and the
practical philosopher.
IX. When Herodotus informs us that Egypt imparted to Greece the
names of almost all her deities, and that his researches convinced him
that they were of barbarous origin, he exempts from the list of the
Egyptian deities, Neptune, the Dioscuri, Juno, Vesta, Themis, the
Graces, and the Nereids [23]. From Africa, according to Herodotus,
came Neptune, from the Pelasgi the rest of the deities disclaimed by
Egypt. According to the same authority, the Pelasgi learned not their
deities, but the names of their deities (and those at a later period), from
the Egyptians [24]. But the Pelasgi were the first known inhabitants of
Greece--the first known inhabitants of Greece had therefore their
especial deities, before any communication with Egypt. For the rest we
must accept the account of the simple and credulous Herodotus with
considerable caution and reserve. Nothing is more natural--perhaps
more certain--than that every tribe [25], even of utter savages, will
invent some deities of their own; and as these deities will as naturally
be taken from external objects, common to all mankind, such as the sun
or the moon, the waters or the earth, and honoured with attributes
formed from passions and impressions no less universal;--so the deities
of every tribe will have something kindred to each other, though the
tribes themselves may never have come into contact or communication.
The mythology of the early Greeks may perhaps be derived from the
following principal sources:--First, the worship of natural objects;-- and
of divinities so formed, the most unequivocally national will obviously
be those most associated with their mode of life and the influences of
their climate. When the savage first intrusts the seed to the bosom of
the earth--when, through a strange and unaccountable process, he

beholds what he buried in one season spring forth the harvest of the
next--the EARTH itself, the mysterious garner, the benign, but
sometimes the capricious reproducer of the treasures committed to its
charge--becomes the object of the wonder, the hope, and the fear,
which are the natural origin of adoration and prayer. Again, when he
discovers the influence of the heaven upon the growth of his
labour--when, taught by experience, he acknowledges its power to blast
or to mellow--then, by the same process of ideas, the HEAVEN also
assumes the character of divinity, and becomes a new agent, whose
wrath is to be propitiated, whose favour is to be won. What common
sense thus suggests to us, our researches confirm, and we find
accordingly that the Earth and the Heaven are the earliest deities of the
agricultural Pelasgi. As the Nile to the fields of the Egyptian-- earth
and heaven to the culture of the Greek. The effects of the SUN upon
human labour and human enjoyment are so sensible to the simplest
understanding, that we cannot wonder to find that glorious luminary
among the most popular deities of ancient nations. Why search through
the East to account for its worship in Greece? More easy to suppose
that the inhabitants of a land, whom the sun so especially favoured--
saw and blessed it, for it was good, than, amid innumerable
contradictions and extravagant assumptions, to decide upon that
remoter shore, whence was transplanted a