150 THEOllY OF THE EA11TH. 



nations, in fact, which appear to have been the 

 most anciently civilized of the Caucasian Race, 

 and having a remarkable similarity, not only in 

 their temperament, and in the climate and na- 

 ture of the countries which they occupied, but 

 also in their political and religious constitution, 

 but whose testimony this almost identical consti- 

 tution ought to render equally suspected^. 



These three nations agreed in having each a 

 hereditary caste, to which the care of religion, 

 laws, and science, was exclusively consigned. In 

 all of them, this caste had its allegorical language 

 and secret doctrines ; and in all it reserved to it- 

 self the privilege of reading and explaining the 

 sacred books, the whole doctrines of which had 

 been revealed by the gods themselves. 



W"e can easily conceive what history would ne- 

 cessarily come to in such hands ; but, without 

 having recourse to any great efforts of reason, we 

 may learn it from the fact itself, by examining 

 what it has come to in the only one of these 



* This mutual resemblance in their institutions is carried 

 to such an extent as to make it very natural to suppose that 

 these nations had a common origin. It should not be for- 

 gotten, that many ancient authors thought that the Egyp- 

 tian institutions came from Ethiopia ; and that Syncellus, 

 p. 151. says positively that the Ethiopians came from the 

 banks of the Indus in the time of King Amenophtis. 



