43 



has reached our times ; and yet he must have found it in 

 some Greek writer ; I had almost said the Septuagint. The 

 Hellenes, and even the Pelasgians, had a traditionary cosmo- 

 gony transmitted to them from the son of Noah, from whom 

 they both descended, namely, Japhet, the Hellenes through 

 liis son Java7i, and tlie Pclasgi through Magog ; but this 

 tradition was corrupted more or less by its mixture Avith the 

 Phenician, which introduced polytheism. 



Hesiod, v. 105, tells us the Gods had evermore existed ;: 

 yet in the next following line he tells us they were produced by 

 the earth and the starry heaven. It is impossible he should 

 thus contradict himself, as he evidently would if he meant 

 the same Gods; he must then have meant that Gods of 

 subsequent origin had been generated by the heaven and 

 the earth. He admits that chaos, or an universal confusion, 

 preceded all things ; but how it was disembroiled and its 

 heterogeneous ingredients were separated from each other, 

 he does not expressly mention. This defect Ovid in some 

 measwrc supplies, for he tells us the chaos was disembroiled 

 by a God, and the principle of attraction, hanc Deus et melior. 

 litem natura diremit* This meliov natura does not mean a. 

 nature better than God, but better than that which they 

 had in their disunited chaotic state. What this new nature 

 or rather principle was, Ovid does not mention ; but Hesiod 

 does, V. 120, and calls it Eros, Cupid, the connecting principle, 



g2 or. 



* So the best editions have it, and not aut melior natura. 



