COS 



258 



COS 



Cosmogo 

 ny. 



Cosenza bronze, and a Greek medal, were the Only other anti- 

 quities which he saw. The royal tribunal, which sits at 

 Cosenza, brings to the town a number of persons who 

 have causes to decide, besides the governor, the asses- 

 sors of the tribunal, and a crowd of advocates. The 

 annual fair which is held here, and which had its ori- 

 gin in the time of Frederick II. is also of great advan- 

 tage to the town, as it attracts numbers of people from 

 the surrounding provinces. The earthen ware which 

 is made in this place, forms its principal branch of in- 

 dustry. A number of small articles of iron, particular- 

 ly knives, are likewise manufactured here. The people 

 are nevertheless very poor and discontented. The ad- 

 jacent country is beautiful and well cultivated, and pro- 

 duces abundance of corn, fruit, wine, oil, and silk. 

 The grand forest of Sila, which covers a' surface of 400 

 miles, commences near Cosenza, and extends almost to 

 Catanzaro in Calabria Ultra. There are mines of salt 

 in the neighbourhood of Cosenza, but they are not 

 wrought, lest they should interfere with the manufac- 

 ture of sea salt at Naples. Cosenza appears at first to 

 be very populous, but this deception arises from the 

 great number of the inhabitants of the casalis, who 

 daily flock to the town. Swinburne estimates the po- 

 pulation so low as 9000 ; but M . Bartels, who has vi- 

 sited the town more recently, computes the population 

 at 15 or 16,000. East Long." 1 6° 22', North Lat. 39° 22'. 

 See Swinburne's Travels, and Bartels' Voyage dans la 

 Galahrie et la Sicile. (a-) 



COSMEA, a genus of plants of the class Syngene- 

 sia, and order Polygamia Frustranea. See Botany, p. 

 .'308. 



COSMELIA, a genus of plants of the class Pentan- 

 dria, and order Monogynia. See Botany, p. 174, and 

 R. Brown's Prndnmms Plant. Nov. Holl. #c. p 553. 



COSMIBUENA, a genus of plants of the class Pen- 

 tandria, and order Monogynia. See Botany, p. 176. 



COSMOGONY, means' an account of the creation of 

 the world. Various cosmogonies are detailed by differ- 

 ent authors. Moses's is unquestionably th' most an- 

 cient ; and had it no other circumstance to recommend 

 it, its superior antiquity alone would give it a just claim 

 to our attention. It is evidently Moses's intention to 

 give a history of man, and of religion, and an account 

 of creation. In the way in" which he has detailed it, 

 it would have been foreign to his plan, had it not been 

 necessary to obviate that most ancient and most natu- 

 ral species of idolatry, the worship of the heavenly bo- 

 dies. His first care, therefore, is to affirm decidedly, 

 that God created the heavens and the earth ; and then 

 he proceeds to mention the order in which the various 

 objects of creation were called into existence. First of 

 all, the materials, of which the future universe was to 

 be composed, were created. These were jumbled to- 

 gether in one indigested mass, which the ancients cal- 

 led chaos, and which they conceived to be eternal ; but 

 which Moses affirms to have been created by the power 

 of God. The materials of the chaos were either held in 

 solution by the waters, or floated in them, or were sunk 

 under them ; and they were reduced into form, by the 

 spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters. Light 

 was the first distinct object of creation ; fishes were the 

 first living things ; man was last in the order of crea- 

 tion. 



We deem it unnecessary to enter into a more minute 

 detail on a subject, which must be familiar to all our 

 readers ; and we should reckon it presumptuous to 

 amuse them with theories, where every thing is record- 

 ed as a matter of fact, and where the modes and order 



of creation, are ascribed to the will of the Deity, as Cosra«g»- 

 their immediate cause. The account given by Moses n y- 

 is distinguished by its simplicity. That it involves dif- ~ '" 'C mm ' 

 Acuities which our faculties cannot comprehend, is only 

 what might be expected, from a detail of the operations 

 of the omnipotent mind, which can never be fully un- 

 derstood but by the being who planned them. 



Most of the writers who come nearest to Moses ia 

 point of antiquity, have favoured the world with cos- 

 mogonies ; and there is a wonderful coincidence in 

 some leading particulars between their accounts and his. 

 They have all his chaos ; and they all state water to 

 have been the prevailing principle, before the arrange- 

 ment of the universe began. The systems became gra- 

 dually more complicated, as the writers receded farther 

 from the age of primitive tradition ; and they increased 

 in absurdity, in proportion to the degree of philoso- 

 phy which was applied to the subject. The problem 

 of creation has been said to be, " Matter and motion 

 given to form a world ;" and the presumption of man 

 has often led him to attempt the solution of this intri- 

 cate problem. At first, the cosmogonists contented 

 themselves with reasoning on the traditional or histo- 

 rical accounts they had received ; but it is irksome to 

 be shackled by authority ; and after they had acquired 

 a smattering of knowledge, they began to think that 

 they could point out a much better way of forming the 

 world, than that which had been transmitted to them 

 by the consenting voice of antiquity Epicurus was 

 most distinguished in this hopeful work of reformation; 

 and produced a cosmogony on the principle of a fortui- 

 tous concourse of atoms, whose extravagant absurdity 

 has hitherto preserved it from oblivion. From his day 

 to the present, the world has been annoyed with sys- 

 tems of creation, which are at present swallowed up by 

 the geological theories of chemists and mineralogists, 

 whose speculations, in so far as they proceed on the prin- 

 ciple of induction, have sometimes been attended with 

 useful results ; but when applied to solve the problem 

 of creation, will serve, like the systems of their fore- 

 runners, to demonstrate the ignorance and the presump- 

 tion of man. 



The early cosmogonies are chiefly interesting from 

 their resemblance to that of Moses ; which proves that 

 they have either been derived frem him, or from some 

 ancient prevailing tradition respecting the true history 

 of creation. 



The most ancient author next to Moses, of whose 

 writings any fragments remain, is Sanchoniatho the 

 Phenician. His writings were translated by Philo By- 

 blius; and portions of this version are preserved by 

 Eusebius. These writings come to us rather in an 

 apocryphal form ; they contain, however, no internal 

 evidence, which can describe their authenticity : they 

 pretty nearly resemble the traditions of the Greeks, and 

 are, perhaps, the parent stock from which these tradi- 

 tions are derived. Sanchoniatho, according to the most 

 accurate clironology, was about 300 years later than 

 Moses ; and he professes to collect the opinions, tradi- 

 tions, and histories of the Phenicians respecting the 

 cosmogony, and the first ages of the world. According 

 to these accounts, chaos, and a spirit, or air, were the 

 origin of all things. <$>amy.m SsoAoyia rr,y ruv o^ui afflty 

 viroTiSiTat ot,i(u. £o$ad* xtuirvivpcvrailn, 1 rf»W ai^oc £oJ>»3a?, 

 kxi %«.<><; Sateptv, (pie/in. He then proceeds to de- 

 scribe the manner in which creation commenced. The 

 spirit fell in love with its own principles ; in conse- 

 quence of which there was a commixtion ; and the new 

 combination w*s cajled wfrs, Desire or Cupid, Ha*. 



