107 
seemed to the same writer to have entirely concurred. There 
can be little doubt that the circular temples of the Druids 
were erected with reference to the heavenly bodies. I sus- 
pect, however, that the reason lay deeper in the system of 
each nation than Herodotus supposed. The central fire and 
the circulation of the planets around this may be referred to 
hereafter. Suffice at present to say, that there is little doubt 
the Unity of the Godhead* * * § was a fundamental doctrine in both 
religions — a doctrine reserved as strictly esoteric, and only to 
be taught to the fully initiated. 
Caesar (Lib. vi. c. xiii.) informs us that the reason why the 
Druids did not commit their doctrines to writing was as I 
have stated : — “ They appear to me/’ he says, to have enacted 
this law for two reasons, because they neither wished their 
doctrines to he made known to the vulgar , nor their pupils, 
trusting to the aid of letters, to pay less attention to the cul- 
tivation of their memory 
In all this they entirely symbolized with the Pythagoreans, 
whom I regard as almost one fraternity. The following 
account of the doctrine of Pythagoras I find in Higgins’s Celtic 
Druids , p. 126, quoted from the ftev. Dr. Collyer : — f 
“ God is neither the object of sense nor subject to passion; but invisible, 
only intelligible and supremely intelligent. In His body He is like the light, 
and in His soul He resembles Truth. He is the universal spirit that pervades 
and diffuseth itself over all nature. All beings receive their life from Him. 
There is but one only God, who is not, as some are apt to imagine, seated 
above the world, beyond the orb of the universe ; but being Himself all in 
all, He sees all the beings that fill His immensity — the only principle, the 
light of heaven, the father of all. He produces everything, He orders and 
disposes everything. He is the reason, the life, and the motion of all 
beings.” 
If such were the opinions held about God, it is very obvious 
why it was thought necessary to conceal them from the vulgar. 
Socrates probably lost his life from divulging similar senti- 
ments among the Greeks. Origen informs us that the Druids 
were exceedingly addicted to the Pythagorean philosophy .J 
Pythagoras was born, it is said, at Samos, and was perhaps 
a Tyrrhenian Pelasgian. It is a curious coincidence that his 
name might signify, in Welsh, § one of the main objects of his 
life, the unfolding of a system of the universe. He is not to 
* I use the word “God” and “ Godhead,” though not strictly accurate, 
for want of intelligible pantheistic terms. 
t Lecture XII., p. 499. % Higgins’s Celtic Druids, p. 305. 
§ Pyth (world), agorad (opening). 
I 2 
