On the Theogony. 41 



cation of the powers of nature necessarily assumes the character of a phy- 

 sical pantheism : but as nature ever presents tlie struggle of antagonist 

 powers of production and destruction^ dualism, or the doctrine of two con- 

 flicting divine principles, results j represented in the struggles of the Egyp- 

 tian Typhon (apparently the Greek Typhoeus), of the Persian Ahriman, and 

 of the Scandinavian Lok, against the more beneficent powers ; but with 

 these physical allegories many other very incongruous materials become 

 blended. 



The purely physical system appears in no country to have long sub- 

 sisted in a state of unmixed simplicity ; and many causes must have 

 concurred in producing this effect. The various representations and cere- 

 monies produced before the eyes of the people, to captivate their imagina- 

 nations by their pomp, although originally symbolical in their character, 

 could hardly have been so understood by the rude vulgar. Fables would 

 speedily be introduced, to afford a more popular explanation of such 

 hieroglyphic emblems, and the prolific nature of fables has ever been 

 proverbial. The kings of the earth would also (as we have several 

 examples), in these early periods of society, endeavour to strengthen 

 their power, by assuming the names, and pretending to act under the im- 

 mediate influence of the deities already recognised, and to be incarnations, 

 as it were, of those deities. Hence the systems of idolatry would in every 

 nation very speedily present a confused intermixture of physical allegory, 

 fabulous mythology, and hero worship ; and this confusion must have been 



destructive power, which in the Egyptian system is assigned to Tyijhon, as a perfectly 

 distinct being. Osiris, identified by his rites, &c. with the Greek Dionysian Bacchus, 

 presided over the sun ; and Isis (said by Sir Wm. Jones to be the Indian Isi) is as 

 the great female soul of nature, sometimes considered as mother earth — sometimes 

 as the moon, naturally enough taken as the female consort of the solar deity. We 

 find, in the same manner, Bacchus and Ceres represented as the solar and lunar 

 deities by Virgil, although the latter name is more usually considered as an equiva- 

 lent to mother earth. — 



" Vos, O clarissima mundi 

 Lumina, labentem coelo qui ducitis annum. 

 Liber et alma Ceres !" — Georgic. i. fi. 



The great cause of the confusion which we shall find, in attempting to distinguish 

 and trace out accurately the relations of these various mythological characters, 

 seems principally to arise from the multiplicity of titles, sometimes considered as 

 mere aliasen of the same principle, taken in its widest sense; sometimes as individual 

 personifications of the several particular attributes of that general principle. Thus 

 Isis, as the great female soul of nature, is justly called Myrionymus, possessing ten 

 thousand names : and thus we recognize the earth under the various mythological 

 appellations of Ceres, (taken also as wc have Just seen for the moon,) Vesta, (taken 

 also as fire,) Cybclc, Obs. Rhea, Dindymenc, Berecynthia, and Magna Mater. The 

 great confusion hence resulting will be readily understood. Macrobius, in the 

 Saturnalia, has to this cft'cct several chapters, shewing that all the masculine deities 

 may be referred to Apollo as identical. 



