346 Baron Cuviei's Lectures on the Natural Sciences. 



pomorphism was favourable to the progress of the graphic arts. 

 What in fact would sculpture have become, had it been confined 

 to the hideous forms of those emblematical beings in which the 

 priests had personified one of the attributes of the Divinity, had 

 it been forced to represent a god with four heads and an 

 hundred hands, as in India, or with the head of a wolf or a hawk, 

 as in Egypt ? 



A particular tribe, the Hellenes, which extended its rule 

 not only over the Pelasgi, but also over the foreign colonies 

 settled in Greece, ultimately gave its name to the whole coun- 

 try. This tribe, which, under the guidance of Deucalion, set- 

 tled in the neighbourhood of Parnassus, came from the north, 

 and probably from Caucasus, as it was on that mountain that 

 the poets represented Deucalion's father, Prometheus, as chained. 

 Now, the tribes of the Caucasus were certainly acquainted with 

 the doctrines of India through their connections with Colchis, 

 which was long, in a manner, the factory of their commerce in 

 the European seas. The Hellenes were the earliest civilized of 

 all the nations of Greece. It is to them that we owe the worship 

 of Apollo and the introduction of the arts. 



The Greek religion, at the commencement, partook of its In- 

 dian and Egyptian origin. The island of Samothrace, in which 

 were established the most ancient mysteries, had divinities whose 

 significative names still indicate the metaphysical ideas which 

 were connected with them. In Thrace, the part of the conti- 

 nent in the neighbourhood of this isle, Orpheus, instituted reli- 

 gious forms which resemble those of the east. The influence of 

 Cecrops, however, prevailed, and pure anthropomorphism was 

 established. This Orpheus was a priest and a poet at the same 

 time. There are attributed to him a collection of hymns, and 

 some works, in which there occur details respecting plants and 

 stones, but only considered with reference to theurgy. Nearly, 

 at the same epoch, Chiron, it is said, already studied their pro- 

 perties for the purpose of applying them to medicine. 



Chiron and Orpheus are reckoned among the heroes who, un- 

 der the name of ArgonmitcB, went to Colchis to conquer the 

 Golden fleece. It is probable that this expedition is not the re- 

 presentation of a single fact, but rather the expression of the 

 commerce which was established by the way of the Black Sea 



