Ethnographical Memoir on the Nations of Slavonian Race. 61 



as it does with certain forebodings, deeply imprinted on the human mind, 

 has given rise to all that is imposing and most powerfully impressive in the 

 celebrated religions of the pagan world. This characteristic dogma, or its 

 absence, may be said to distinguish into two classes all the forms of heathen 

 superstition. Among the Hindoos it has been traced in the early scrip- 

 tures of that people ; it became gradually more and more disclosed among 

 them, and attained its full expansion in the philosophy of the Sanc'hya 

 school. In Persia the same doctrine was the foundation of Dualism, 

 the theological system of the ancient Magi, and the fated contests between 

 the good and evil principle of which the successive cycles or periods and 

 the final consummation were predestined. Among the Greeks, destiny, 

 1} £ifjLapfikrr]or »/ ireTrpujiivr] was the supreme law of the universe : the gods 

 were only blind agents or instruments for bringing to pass the decrees of 

 uncontroulable necessity. We find this doctrine laid down explicitly by 

 the most profound of the Greek dramatists : — 



" Who then is ruler of necessity? 

 The triple fates, and unforgetting furies ? 

 Must Jove then yield to his superior power ? 

 In no way shall he 'scape his destined fate." 



The deep interest diffused over the finest productions of Grecian tragedy 

 has its foundation in this principle. Thence the compassion, mixed with 

 a sentiment of mysterious dread which is excited by the calamities of the 

 Labdacidae, Wherever this doctrine is inlaid, in all such mythological 

 systems we find traces of a sublime morality, grounded on awful sanctions^ 

 the idea of a pure and irrefragable law, which once transgressed, entails 

 woes interminable on the unfortunate victims of Nemesis. The doctrine 

 of a future state, and that a state of moral retribution, forms a necessary 

 part of such a system. It is essential to, and integrally contained in it. 

 Even in the mythological systems of the northern European nations, 

 we trace the doctrine of fated revolutions, of destructive cataclysms, and 

 the restoration of a golden age promised in some remote period of time 

 I need scarcely refer to the passages in the Edda, the poetical collectiot 

 of our old ancestors, the Northmen, in which this anticipation is con- 

 veyed. The doctrine of the Celtic nations, whose sacred bards uttered 

 long rliapsodies over the tombs of warriors, are imperfectly known to us ; 

 but the poet Lucan, at a time when information was not difficult to obtain 

 respecting them, since druids were among the friends or hospites of Roman 

 senators, ascribes to the Ccltae a belief in futurity, or rather in the fated 

 repetition in cycles of the same events, like the doctrine conveyed in the 

 Timaeus of Plato. This at least we are led to conjecture, from the terms 

 in wliich the intimation is expressed : — 



" If dying mortals' doomB they sing aright, 

 No ghosts descend to dwell in dreadful night, 

 No. 2.— Vol. i. K* 



