i5o ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



allegorlfed ; and in later times even hiftorical fads ; and there Is a 

 late French writer who has made Romulus, the firft King of Rome, 

 to be a fymbol of the fun. But that thofe Dsmon Kings of Egypt 

 were real perfonages as much as Menes, their firft human King, 

 neither Herodotus nor Diodorus Siculus appear to have the leaft 

 doubt; nor Piutarch hiraielf, as he has told us in exprefs terms, 

 that they were DrEmons, and held a middle place betwixt Gods and 

 men. So that I hold the reign of the Go:is in Egypt to be as 

 much a part of the antient hiftory ot that country, as the reigns of 

 their human Kings, and attefted in the fame manner by the books 

 9f the priefts. 



That fuch beings as Dxmons do exlft, is, I think, evident frona 

 theory, though it were not attefted by hiftory ; for it is impoffible 

 to fuppofe, that the great interval betwixt an intelledual creature 

 fuch as man, and the fupreme intelligence, fhould not be filled up 

 by intelligences fuperior to man, but inferior by infinite degrees to 

 the fupreme. Some of thefe we may fuppofe to be cloathed with 

 fuch bodies as ours, which was the cafe of the tgyptian Dsemon 

 Kings. Others we may fuppofe to be, like the Dsemons mentioned 

 by Hefiod, cloathed with aerial bodies, ai^a, ^ta-a-ccy^f^svoi, as he ex- 

 preffes it*, and who, he fays, were the guardians and benefadtors of 

 men ; and others we may fuppofe with no bodies at all, but to be 

 pure immaterial fubftances. If in this way the immenfe interval 

 betwixt God and man was not filled up, there would be a great 

 gap in the fyftem of the univerfe ; and things would not be con- 

 neded together, the higher with the lower, which niuft be the cafe 

 in every perfed fyftem, fuch as that of the univerfe certainly is ; 

 and fo far as we can obferve on the earth, every thing is conneded 

 with every thing, as I have elfewhere obfervedfj arid the more we 

 obferve of the variety of nature, the more we ought to be convinc- 

 ed 



• Ilefiodi, Ojtira et Dks. 



\ Page i8. and 19. of this volume. 



