354 otYMPic dialogue. 



people on the earth have been unnecefTarily fplitting 

 their brains. 



Numa.~] I am perfuaded that thou wouldft lofe no- 

 thing by it. 



Jupiter.'] One always gains by the plain truth, 

 friend Numa ! — Thou knoweft that none of us Olym- 

 pians, how long foever we have been here, and how 

 far foever our light may reach, can point out a period 

 when this immenfe whole began to be, the very being 

 whereof is the moll convincing proof that it never did 

 begin : whereas it may be affirmed with greater cer- 

 tainty, that of all the vilible parts of it, not one has 

 always been as it is at prefent. Thus, for exam- 

 ple, the earth, which we once dwelt upon, had already 

 undergone feveral great revolutions, fome notice* 

 whereof have been partly preferred by tradition among 

 the people of remoter! antiquity. Of this fort is the 

 report current with the nations of the north, in com- 

 mon with the Indians and ./Egyptians : that there was a 

 time when the earth was inhabited by deities. In faft 

 the inhabitants of the earth in that firft period, if they 

 can be properly called men, were a kind of men, who, 

 in comparifon of the prefent, were as the Jupiter 

 Olympius of Phidias is to the fig-wood priapufes 

 which the countrymen fet up as the keepers of their 

 gardens ; fo far did they excel in majefty and beauty 

 of form, in bodily ftrength and vigour of mind,' the 

 men of later ages. The earth, with them and through 

 them, was in a ftate of perfection worthy of its inha- 

 bitants : but, fome thoufand years afterwards great re- 

 volutions enfued. A part of the polterity of its primi- 

 tive inhabitants degenerated in the various climates, in 



which 



