VI

OF THE CUSTOMS AND OPINIONS OF ALL THE ANCIENT NATIONS

NATURE BEING every where the same, men must necessarily have adopted the same truths, and fallen into the same errors, in regard to those things which are the immediate objects of sense, and the most striking to the imagination. They must have attributed the noise and effects of thunder to some superior being inhabiting the air. The people bordering upon the ocean, seeing great tides inundate their coasts at the time of full moon, must naturally have imputed to the moon, the various effects which attended her different phases.

Among animals, the serpent must have appeared to them endowed with superior intelligence; because seeing it sometimes cast its skin, they had reason to think it became young again. It might, then, by repeating this change, always remain youthful, and it was therefore believed immortal: so was it in Egypt and Greece the symbol of immortality. The larger serpents which were found near fountains, terrified the timorous from approaching them; and hence they were soon imagined to be the guardians of hidden treasures. Thus a serpent was the fabled guard of the golden apples of the Hesperides; another watched over the golden fleece; and in celebrating the mysteries of Bacchus, the image of a serpent was carried, which seemed to guard a golden grape.

The serpent thus passing for the most subtle of animals, hence arose that ancient Indian fable, that God having created man, gave him a drug, which insured him a healthful and long life; but that man entrusted this divine present with his ass, who, upon the road, becoming thirsty, was seduced to a neighboring fountain by a serpent, who pretended to hold his burden while he was drinking: thus it was that man by his negligence lost immortality, and the serpent gained it by his subtlety. Hence innumerable tales of asses and serpents.

Serpents were found, indeed, to be mischievous animals; but as they were supposed to possess something divine, nothing less than a deity was imagined capable of destroying them. Thus the serpent Python was killed by Apollo, and the great serpent Ophioneus waged far for a length of time against the gods, before the Greeks had framed their Apollo. We find it related in a fragment of Phericides, that this fable of the great serpent, the enemy to the gods, was one of the most ancient among the Phenicians.

We have already found that dreams must have introduced the same superstition all over the earth. If whilst awake, I am uneasy for my wife or son’s health, and in my sleep I see them in the agonies of death; should they die a few days after, it is not to be doubted that the gods sent me this warning. Is my dream not accomplished? it was a fallacious representation, which the gods were pleased to terrify me with. Thus in Homer, Jupiter sends a fallacious dream to Agamemnon, chief of the Greeks. Indeed all dreams, true or false, the superstitious supposed to come from heaven. In the like manner oracles were supposed to be ordained upon earth.

Does a woman apply to the magi to know whether her husband will die within the year or not? one of them answers yes, the other no. It is certain that one of them must be in the right; if her husband lives, she says nothing of the matter; if he dies, she proclaims all over the city that the magi, who foretold his death, was a divine prophet. There are men in all countries who prognosticate events, and who discover the most latent things. With the Egyptians these men were called the seers, as Manethian relates after Joseph, in his discourse against Appion.

There were seers in Chaldea and Syria. Every temple had its oracles; those of Apollo gained such great credit, that Rollin, in his Ancient History, records the oraculous predictions of Apollo to Croesus. The god divines that the king will dress a tortoise in a brass pan; and replies to the question Croesus puts to him concerning the length of his reign, that it will end when a mule mounts the throne of the Persians. Rollin does not enquire whether these predictions, worthy only of Nostradamus, were not made after the predicted event had happened. He does not in the least question the foreknowledge of the priests of Apollo, but believes that God allowed Apollo to speak truth. This probably was to confirm the Pagans in their religion.

The origin of good and evil is a more philosophical question, which all the great polished nations have agreed on, from Judea to Greece.

The first theologues of all nations must have put the same question which we do from the age of fifteen, Why is there any evil upon earth?

It was taught in India, that Adimo, the daughter of Brama, brought forth from her navel, the just from her right side and the unjust from her left; and that it was from this left side that we originally deduced physical and moral evil. The Egyptians had their Typhon, who was the enemy of Osiris. The Persians imagined that Arimanes pierced the egg, which Aromase laid, and communicated to it sin. We know the Pandora of the Greeks: this is the finest of all the allegories which antiquity has handed down to us.

The allegory of Job was certainly wrote in Arabic, as the Hebrew and Greek versions have retained several Arabic terms. This book, which is of great antiquity, represents Satan, who is the Arimanes of the Persians, and the Typhon of the Egyptians, as wandering over the earth and asking permission of the lord to afflict Job. Satan seems indeed to be in subordination to the lord; but it afterwards appears that Satan is a very powerful being, capable of inflicting disorders, and destroying the animal world.

So many people really agreed, without knowing it, in the belief of two principles, that so much of the universe as was then known was in some measure Manichean.

Every people must have allowed expiations, for where was the man who had not been guilty of great injuries against society? and where was the man whose natural instinct did not prompt him to remorse? Water cleansed their body and vestments of filth, fire purified metals; it was therefore necessary that water and fire should purify souls: nor were there any temples without holy water and sacred fire.

Men plunged themselves into the Ganges, into the Indus, and into the Euphrates, when it was new moon, and particularly during the eclipses. This immersion expiated their sins. If they did not purify themselves in the Nile, it was only for fear that the penitents might have been devoured by crocodiles. But the priests who purified themselves for the people, plunged themselves into large tubs of water, where they also bathed those criminals who came to ask pardon of the gods.

The Greeks had in all their temples sacred baths, as well as sacred fires, which were universal symbols with all men of the purity of souls. In a word, superstition seems to have been established in all nations and among all people, except the men of letters in China.