40 On the Theogony. 



name iti oue instance, and a near resemblance in the other : for it is assuredly 

 very likely that the title Israel, b«ntyi, a prince with God, which, from the 

 genius of those languages, would equally denote God the Prince, may have 

 been applied by the Phoenicians to their sovereign deity ; and IHID, TtT, 

 which really is the epithet of an only begotten, may easily have been con- 

 founded with Judah, or IHUDE, min», though the latter is derived from a 

 different root, signifying praise. 



Interesting, however, as would be the comparison of the Theogony 

 which we are now about to examine, with other kindred forms of supersti- 

 tion, our present limits, and the nature of this article, must prevent our 

 doing more than thus briefly indicating the sources from which the mate- 

 rials of such a comparison may be derived ; and occasionally pointing out, 

 as we proceed in our survey of tlie Hesiodean system, some of the more 

 striking points of resemblance j leaving it to otliers wlio may have more 

 leisure and ability, to pursue in its detail a question, assuredly not among 

 the least important of those connected with the history and aberrations of 

 the human mind. At present we shall confine ourselves to a few prelimi- 

 nary observations concerning the general nature of the subject, which 

 appear to us calculated to throw a material common light over the topics 

 which the Theogony of Hesiod must necessarily bring before our minds. 



This Theogony, like all tlie other ancient mythologies to which we have 

 alluded, will be found to have its original foundation very manifestly laid 

 in the attempt to personify, or rather deify, the various physical powers 

 and operations of the material universe j and, more especially, the produc- 

 tive and prolific energies of nature. Chaos, the rude and unformed original 

 state of matter, (for the ancients appear in no case to have attained to the 

 ideas of a proper creation,) is the great original and eternal principle ; 

 hence springs the earth, the prolific mother of all* whence the heaven 

 (naturally confounded with the immediate circumambient atmosphere) 

 emanates; and by a natural analogy, suggested by the fertilizing influences 

 of its shovvers,t is assumed as the male, as the earth is as the female uni- 

 versal parent, although the former character often very naturally passes 

 over to the solar deity — the Osiris of the Egyptian systems. % This deifi- 



* Thus Lucretius : — 



" Linquitur ut raerito maternum nomen adepta 

 Terra sit, e terra quoniam sint cuncta creata." — L. v. 796. 

 t Thus Virgil : — 



" Turn pater omnipotens foecundis imbribus aether 

 Conjugis in gremium la;tus descendit, et omnes 



Magnus alit raagno commistus corpore foetus." — Georgic. L. ii. v. 324. 

 The reader will find an host of passages of a similar tendency in Prichard's Egypt. 

 Myth. p. 41, &c. 



X Osiris, (otherwise spelt Isiris,) as the gi-eat masculine soul of nature, agrees in 

 character and name with the Indian Siva, whose epithet as the god of production is 

 Iswara : but Siva, also, in his form of Rudra, typifies the antagonist principle, or 



