8 
Deity. Aristotle, in one place, draws this contrast between 
the dark polytheism of his own day and the purer knowledge 
of older races. He observes 
It has been handed down to us from very ancient times that the stars are 
gods, besides that Supreme Deity which contains the whole nature. But 
all other things were fabulously added, for the better persuasion of the 
multitude, and for the utility of human life and political ends, to keep men 
in obedience to civil laws — as, for example, that these gods are of human 
form or like to animals.* 
When Plato, therefore, called the Deity “ the Architect of 
the World,” the “ Creator of nature,” “The first God;” — 
when Pythagoras spoke of Him as “ All in All,” “ Light of all 
powers,” “ The beginning of all things ”; — and when Thales 
declared, “ God is the oldest of all things, because He is 
Himself unmade,” t we are not to regard these sayings as 
sudden flashes of genius, or as gradual developments of truth 
unknown to preceding ages. On the contrary, they cropped 
up among the perversions of later heathenism, just like 
granite peaks among the ranges of more modern rocks, testi- 
fying of an underlying basis of truth, which savoured much 
more of primeval civilization than barbarism. 
The same great fact may be traced in the mythology of 
ancient Egypt. The nature of the idolatry which marked the 
monumental era of that country is too well known to be 
noted. They worshipped monkeys, beetles, and crocodiles. 
Yet Plutarch, in his book upon Isis and Osiris, alludes more 
plainly to an underlying and earlier national belief in one 
Supreme God. He says, “ The end of all the religious rites 
and mysteries of the goddess Isis was the knowledge of that 
First God who is the Lord of all things.” Speaking also of 
the worship of the crocodile, he shows that at first it was 
merely meant to be symbolical of this one Supreme and 
Invisible God ; because the Egyptians believed the crocodile 
to be the only animal living in the water, which, by having 
its eyes covered with a thin transparent membrane, could 
lie still beneath the surface, capable of seeing, yet itself 
invisible , — “ a faculty,” says he, “ which belongs only to the 
first God — to see all things. Himself not being seen.” J This 
is extremely interesting, and shows how the purer and more 
refined faith preceded the later and more degraded. 
Pass from Egypt to India, the idolatry of which is extrava- 
* Aristotle, Met , lib. 14, cap. viii. p. 483. 
f Preserved in Laertius, lib. i. 35. 
X Cud worth’s Intellectual System , vol. i. p. 565. 
