14 



OPINIONS OF THE GEEEKS. 



Ch. II. 



general catastrophes, it would next be inferred that the 



human 



And 



extermination 



only be reconciled with divine justice, by the supposition that 



man 



of purity and innocence. 



A very large portion of Asia, inhabited by the earliest 



nations whose 



come 



is, has been 

 Of the geo- 



always subject to tremendous earthquakes, 

 graphical boundaries of these, and their effects, I shall speak 

 in the proper place. Egypt has, for the most part, been 

 exempt from this scourge, and the Egyptian doctrine of great 

 catastrophes was probably derived in part, as before hinted, 

 from early geological observations, and in part from Eastern 



nations. 



cosmogonies 



in the 



In the Egyptian and Eastern 

 Greek version of them, no very definite meaning can, in 

 general, be attached to the term ' destruction of the world ;' 

 for sometimes it would seem almost to imply the annihilation 

 of our planetary system, and at others a mere revolution of 

 the surface of the earth.* 



>/ 



Greeks. — Anaximander. In the 8th book 



of Plutarch's Symposiacon or 



Convivial Conversations,' 



the question is raised why the Pythagoreans were averse 

 to eating fish, and it is considered whether the prejudice 

 may have had an B gyptian, or a Syrian, or an ancient Greek 



One of the party alludes to the doctrine of Anaxi- 



mander that ' Men were in the b< 



and after they had been nourished and had become able to 



shift for themselves, they were cast out and took to the land. 



source. 



* It is not inconsistent with the 

 Hindoo mythology to suppose that Py- 

 thagoras might have found in the East 

 not only the system of universal and 

 violent catastrophes and periods of 

 repose in endless succession, but also 

 that of periodical revolutions, effected 

 by the continued agency of ordinary 

 causes. For Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, 



Destroying powers of the Deity. The 

 coexistence of these three attributes, 

 all in simultaneous operation, might 

 well accord with the notion of perpetual 

 but partial alterations finally bringing 

 about a complete change. But the fic- 

 tion expressed in the verses before 

 quoted from Menu of eternal vicissitudes 

 in the vigils and slumbers of Bramah 



causes, l^or ±5ranma, visnnu, ana Diva, ^ L — '*e f 



the first, second, and third persons of seems accommodated to the system 



the Hindoo triad, severally represented great general catastrophes followed J 



the Creative, the Preserving, and the new creations and periods of repose. 



A 



)' 



