350 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. 



thousand years of repose he resolved to produce the world. The 

 rays of the divine sun caused a flower to blow on a branch which had 

 grown out of his body : this flower brought forth Bramah, the first- 

 born of Vishnu. He desired to penetrate the secret of his existence, 

 and remained for a thousand years enclosed in the plant, as a punish- 

 ment for his curiosity. After having expiated his offence by this 

 long imprisonment, he was enlightened by the divine spirit, and in- 

 vested with the power of arranging the universe. Such are some of 

 the ancient traditions of the most primitive nations of the world. 



A belief in the existence of deities was the natural consequence 

 of these poetical yet energetic emanations of human ingenuity ; and 

 their separation into good and evil almost immediately follows. All 

 events were included under these two denominations, and attributed 

 to the operations of two opposing principles. 



The Persians have the principal share in the establishment of this 

 hypothesis. After a time a man appeared among them, known by 

 the name of the second Zoroaster, who, restoring the idea of absolute 

 unity in the primitive cause, separated it entirely from matter; and 

 the image of a supreme spirit shone above the soar of mortal ken in 

 all its purity. The sun, which he made the object of his worship, 

 was but a symbol of this God ; and to Zoroaster we must yield the 

 honour of the greatest step ever made by one man towards the per- 

 fection of philosophy. He left to the Persians the tradition of two 

 subordinate principles, Ormusd and Ahriman, both proceeding from 

 the same superior source, but whose favour the first alone, as that of 

 good, preserved. With these also he associated the idea of eternity. 

 From this grand and fundamental conception was derived the doc- 

 trine of emanation. This supreme spirit, of which the infant popula- 

 tion of the world had had but a partial view, appeared in all its bril- 

 liancy, divested of the shackles in which they had bound it. A world 

 of spirits like itself flowed from it, and the universe was peopled with 

 these aerial beings accordingly. The human reason possessed of so 

 refined an idea wished to derive from it a general solution of their 

 theological difficulties. These spirits were distributed into an im- 

 mense hierarchy, which spread in a short time over the whole crea- 

 tion, bearing with it the principle of life ; and thus the primitive 

 monotheism became a sort of pantheism. The soul of man was more 

 especially considered as a portion of this vast system, an important 

 element issuing from the inexhaustible source. Hence, by an easy 

 transition, they were led to conceive the soul as holding direct and 

 constant communication with the head of the immaterial world as 

 forming its ideas by the agency of the supreme spirit, and as acting 

 from the reflection of a similar movement in it. 



Here we find a theory of human knowledge the most simple, but 

 the most exalted, that could offer itself to the untutored imagination. 

 But yet another result is to be traced to these causes. After this tri- 

 umph of spirit over matter the conqueror pushed his advantage, and 

 endeavoured to annihilate his adversary. It was agreed that, as our 

 reason could not admit the existence of that which did not emanate 

 from the divine spirit, therefore that which was not of the nature of 

 that spirit could have no existence, was a mere shadow, a fugitive 



