THE ANCIENT CHAOS? 4(J? 



human soul is an emanation from the divine 

 nature. (Enfield, vol. i. p. 54.) 



The Egyptian Magi also maintained, that be- 

 fore the regular forms of Nature arose, an eternal 

 chaos existed ; but that the passive and formless 

 mass was reduced to order by the agency of a 

 self-active, intellectual, and eternal ^Ether, which 

 gradually developed all that we behold of the ex- 

 ternal universe. (Idem, pp. 89, and 132.) The 

 sum of the Phoenician Cosmogony, as related by 

 Cumberland, on the authority of Sanchoniathon, 

 is, that the elements of all things originally existed 

 in a fluid and chaotic state, until called forth by 

 the energy of a self-active principle, in obedience 

 to the laws of an immutable necessity. It is there- 

 fore evident that the generation of all things from 

 Chaos was a fundamental tenet in most of the 

 ancient Theogonies, as described by Ovid : 



" Ante mare, et terras, et quod tegit omnia coelum, 

 Unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe 

 Quern dixere Chaos, rudis indigestaque moles, 

 Nee quicquam nisi pondus iners congestaque eodem 

 Non bene juncturam, discordia semina rerum." 



(Met. Lib. 1. v. 5.) 



Whatever may have been the origin of this 

 widely diffused tradition, it contains at least a 

 nucleus of truth ; for it is certain, that all the 

 forms of nature with which we are acquainted, 

 have actually emerged from a fluid state. The 

 primitive mountains of the globe have been formed 

 from a state of fusion by fire and the sediment- 



