460 VIEWS OF THE ANCIENTS. 



sequence of which has been that not one of their 

 philosophical systems has been able to gain a 

 permanent footing in the world, nor to resist the 

 force of that universal common sense by which 

 all partial and contradictory theories are, sooner 

 or later, swept away. 



It was from beholding everywhere the trans- 

 forming and life-giving power of the sun, as dis- 

 played in the generation and growth of organized 

 bodies, that all the early nations of the earth 

 were led to regard that glorious luminary as the 

 supreme Lord of creation, and as the special ob- 

 ject of religious adoration. In accordance with 

 the views of Macrobius, it has been fully esta- 

 blished by the learned researches of Bryant, 

 Dupuis, Sir William Jones, and many other dis- 

 tinguished oriental scholars, that all the deities 

 of the ancient world are resolvable into the 

 powers of nature, and that they were mytholo- 

 gical personations of the sun or solar fire, by 

 which everything is produced.'* 



* The primitive solar worship is strikingly illustrated in the 

 following passage, (translated from one of the Vedas, or ancient 

 Hindoo scriptures, by Sir W. Jones,) which also contains the 

 germ of what is called the oriental theory of emanations, referred 

 to in a note to page 105, b. i. : " Let us adore the supremacy 

 of that divine sun, the god -head who illuminates all, from 

 whom all proceed, to whom all must return, whom we invoke 

 to direct our understandings aright, in our progress towards his 

 holy seat." (Asiatic Researches, vol. i.) 



It may also be worthy of notice, that in the ancient Sanscrit, 

 the seven days of the week are called after the heavenly bodies; 

 Sunday after the sun, to which that day was consecrated ; Monday 

 after the moon, Tuesday after Mars, Wednesday after Mercury, 



