A MATERIAL WORLD. 



29 



for a concourse of unintelligent atoms can never produce intelligence ; but if 

 it be intelligent in every atom, then are we perpetually meeting with unintel- 

 ligent compounds resulting from intelligent elements. If, again, matter be 

 essentially eternal, but at the same time essentially unintelligent, both sepa- 

 rately and collectively, then, an intellitrent principle being traced in the world, 

 and even in man himself, we are put into possession of two coeternal inde- 

 pendent principles, destitute of all relative connexion and common medium 

 of action. 



The SECOND HYPOTHESIS to wliich I have adverted is not less crowded with 

 difficulties and absurdities ; but it has a more imposing appearance, and has 

 hence, in many periods and among many nations, been more popular, and 

 was perpetually leading away a multitude of the philosoplmrs from the pre- 

 ceding system. According to this hypothesis, the universe is an emanation 

 or extension of the essence of the Creator. Now, under tliis belief, however 

 modified, the Creator himself is rendered material ; or, in other words, mat- 

 ter itself, or the visible substance of the world, is rendered the Creator; and 

 we merely shift the burden, without getting rid of it. Th^re can be no diffi- 

 culty in tracing this doctrine to its source. It runs, as I have already ob- 

 served, through the whole texture of that species of materialism which con- 

 stitutes the two grand religions of the East — Brahmism and Buddhism ; and 

 was undoubtedly conveyed by Pythagoras, and, perhaps, antecedently, by 

 Orpheus (if such an individual ever existed, which Cicero* seems to have 

 disbelieved, from a passage of Aristotle, not to be found, however, in any of 

 his writings that have descended to us), into different parts of Greece, in con- 

 sequence of their communications with the gymnosophists. From Pythago- 

 ras it descended to Plato and Xenophanes, and, under different modifications, 

 became a tenet of the academic and eleatic schools. I have already quoted 

 the principle on which it is founded, from M. Anquetil du Perron's transla- 

 tion of the Oupnek'-hat, or Abridgment of the Veids ;t the passage at large 

 is as follows, and developes the entire doctrine as well as the principle : 

 " The whole universe is the Creator, proceeds from the Creator, exists in 

 him, and returns to him. The ignorant assert that the universe, in the begin- 

 ning, did not exist in its Author, and that it was created out of nothing. O 

 ye, whose hearts are pure ! how could something arise out of nothing 1 This 

 First Being alone, and without likeness, was the all in the beginning: 

 he could multiply himself under different forms ; he created fire from his 

 essence, which is light," &c. So, in another passage of the Yagur Veid, 

 "Thou art Brahma! thou art Vishnu! thou art Kodra ! thou art Prajapat ! 

 thou art Deionta! thou art air ! thou art Andri ! thou art the moon ! thou art 

 substance ! thou art Djam ! thou art the earth ! thou art the world ! O lord of 

 the world! to thee humble adoration! O soul of the world! thou who super- 

 intendest the actions of the world ! who destroyest the world ! who createst 

 the pleasures of the world! O life of the world! the visible and invisible 

 worlds are the sport of thy power ! Thou art the sovereign, universal soul ! 

 to thee humble adoration! thou, of all mysteries the most mysterious! 

 O thou who art exalted beyond all perception or imagination! thou who hast 

 neither beginning nor end ! to thee humble adoration !"| 



As this doctrine became embraced by many of the Greek and Roman phi- 

 losophers, it is not to be wondered at that it captivated still more of their 

 poets ; and hence we find it, with perhaps the exception of Empedocles and 

 Lucretius, more or less pervading all of them, from Orpheus to Virgil. It is 

 in reference to this that Aratus opens his Phenomena with that beautiful 

 passage which is so forcibly appealed to by St. Paul in the course of his ad- 

 dress to the Athenians on Mar's Hill,§ of which I will beg your acceptance of 

 the following version : — 



From God we spring, whom man can never trace, 

 Though seen, heard, tasted, felt in every place ; 



♦ De Nat. Deor. 1. i. 



} See Tranal. of Luor. i. p. 282. 



t Tom. 5. Paris, 1802 

 ^ Acta, xvii, 29. 



