POPULAR BELIEFS, ETC. 381 



ing over the problems of mind and matter. On the other 

 side of the Mediterranean we hear the same interrogatories 

 resounding from the region of civilization's dawn, in Egypt, 

 and in far-off India and China other races have found them- 

 selves confronted by the self-same mysteries, and, with 

 equal courage, have demanded from the depths of Nature 

 their solution. These sublime questions have stared with 

 equal steadiness in the face of Greek, Egyptian, Phoenician, 

 Chaldsean, Jew, Persian, Arabian, and Hindoo. Perennial 

 problems, omnipresent as mind itself, they have reappeared 

 upon American shores ; and we find that the sacred books 

 of the Aztecs yield us a cosmogony and a theogony no less 

 sublime than those of India, Persia, and Greece. 



Problems which, in all ages, have stood foremost in the 

 conflict of the human mind with the vast unknown, would 

 mock at the attempt to grapple with them in the brief 

 compass of a chapter or two ; but we can not pass them 

 by without taking a few bearings upon their salient points. 

 Waiving entirely the questions which arise in reference to 

 moral and intelligent existences, let us attempt to bring 

 together a body of considerations bearing upon the doc- 

 trine of periodical destructions and renovations in the ma- 

 terial universe. It will thus, I think, be made to appear 

 that the existing order of things is not eternal^ and that a 

 crisis is approaching which will demand the interposition 

 of a power superior to Nature. 



Dr. Reid, the Scottish metaphysician, asserts that God 

 has implanted in the mind of man an original principle by 

 which he believes in and expects the continuance of the 

 course of Nature. This, evidently, is an error, since our 

 expectation of the continued recurrence of natural phenom- 

 ena in the same order is based upon our past experience, 

 an*d is, consequently, an induction instead of a necessary 

 truth. The fact is, that in all ages of the world, and among 



