Of Hamitic nations, Egypt is the most interesting to us; indeed, it is the only ancient nation of this type concerning which we have much knowledge. In the original mythology of Egypt, as will be presently shown, there is little trace of dualism. The evil spirit of the later system is of foreign origin. The traces of dualism in original Semitic faiths are scarcely more distinct. It does not appear in the remains of the Phoenician system, nor in the mythology of the Assyrians and Babylonians, -a scanty knowledge of which has been painfully gleaned from the inscriptions by Rawlinson and othIn Hebraism it exists, if at all, very obscurely, until borrowed from a Persian source. We may proceed at once, then, to the great family of nations, known variously as the Japetic, Aryan, or Indo-European race.

ers.

All

In our day, Comparative Philology has furnished History with a telescope, through which, piercing far beyond her former ken, she discerns the movements of the early world. In the mountains of Armenia, probably, once dwelt the people from which is descended the great Indo-European race. records of this period, if any ever existed, have disappeared; but Philology, collating their different languages and dialects, is able to trace unerringly a hundred scattered and varying nations back to a common origin, and even to reconstruct in some measure the ancient Aryan civilization. Our remote grandsires ancestors at the same time of the Celt and Hindoo, the Persian and the Greek-dwelt together as shepherds and herdsmen, a peaceful nation. Their wealth lay mainly in their flocks and herds, to the animals of which they gave substantially the same names which we employ to-day. With the axe, the vigorous Aryan shepherd cleared the mountain-side, or, armed with the sword, faced enemies and wild beasts. He had the plough to till his clearing, and in a comfortable house, barred securely against the weather and hostile intrusion, the housewife at her loom spun the produce of the flocks. With the neighboring town or village they held easy communication by the high-road, or, if the shepherd chose, he could launch his boat on the stream, and make his way with the oar and rudder. They possessed a well-organized family life, a political structure somewhat elaborate, and VOL. LXIX. - 5TH S. VOL. VII. NO. I.

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they distinguished the more prominent members of the state by conventional titles of honor. They exhibited a considerable degree of cultivation in their language and philosophy, and had social and religious institutions of an elevated type. The Indo-European race at length began to flow forth from its original seat, in different lines of migration. One proceeded eastward, and established a colony on the banks of the Indus; others went northward and westward. The Allophylian tribes, for the most part debased and given over to rude and sensual superstitions, everywhere gave way before the more vigorous and intelligent invaders. The Western and Northern emigrants finally possessed themselves of nearly the whole of Europe. Again, in the fifteenth century of our own era, the swelling Aryan tide broke its way across the Atlantic barrier, and in the New World is repeating the history of the Old, by sweeping from the face of the earth the Allophylian aborigines of America, as it exterminated kindred peoples in the East.

The fortunes of Indo-European nations have been various. Some have disappeared, some have sunk into deep barbarism; in some has been developed the civilization of Greece and Rome, of France and England. Of their religious systems, many are well understood; others, superseded by some foreign faith, are less thoroughly known; and part have passed away with the tribes who professed them, leaving no trace behind.

Beginning with the rudest of these systems, which are yet more refined than the Allophylian superstitions, we find in the Celtic mythology no trace of dualism. We know it chiefly through Roman reports, which are so meagre as to give us hardly any true idea concerning it. Of the faith of the Lithuanians we know more. They long resisted the encroachments of Christianity and civilization, but succumbed at last to the prowess of the Teutonic knights. Their language has endured to this day, and Müller asserts the dialect of the Lithuanian recruit at Berlin to be more like the Sanscrit of the Vedas, than French is like Italian. The old Lithuanian mythology bears plain traces of its Eastern origin. They worshipped a Triad, the first God of which presided over the firmament and thunder. Before his sacred oak the eternal fire was kept

burning. "Pikollos," the third God, whose symbol was three skulls, was the cause of death and all evil. The rude painters and poets of the forest represented him as a pale and graybearded old man.

A more elaborate system was that of the Wends and the Slavonians, which was professed in its purest form on the Isle of Rügen and the coasts of the Baltic. Here a more refined dualism is traceable, in which the good principle was identified with light, the evil with darkness. To the first, "the White God," was opposed a wicked spirit known as "Zernebog," represented under the figure of a lion, to whom appeasing sacrifices were offered. In the background of this system. looms the almost ever-present shadow of a great Supreme God, — dim, unapproachable, and unworshipped.

We have full knowledge of the Scandinavian mythology. It bears an Eastern birth-mark, but is pervaded everywhere with the rude and vigorous spirit of the race which professed it. The sublime "All-father" yields the foreground, as usual, in this case to a group of fantastic divinities, restless and enterprising as their Sea-king worshippers. The contest between the two principles is a prominent feature of the system, and involves every member of the pantheon. Of the regular Gods, or Aesir, Odin was the chief, to whom was ascribed every virtue of which the Norsemen had an idea. This rude, but in the main noble personage, with his subordinates, is opposed by the evil race of frost-giants, who people a dismal region bordering upon the home of the Gods. Chief of this evil race is "Utgardelok," who, however, plays a much less. conspicuous part than "Loki." Loki and Utgardelok were probably at first identical, but in the Norse system, as we know it, the conceptions are sharply distinguished, and sometimes even opposed. Loki is the most busy and prominent actor in the mythology. Though classed among the Aesir, he is yet the son of a frost-giant, and the cause of evil. How near was his resemblance to the Devil may be inferred from the fact, that the converted Norsemen transferred the name Loki to the evil spirit of their new faith. The numerous legends of this grotesque spirit are pervaded with what may be the naïveté of a simple race, or perhaps a grim humor. He is

handsome, agile, and crafty,—a scandal to the Gods, and the traducer of Gods and men. He delights in bringing his fellow-Aesir into awkward positions, and then extricating them by his superior skill. When the Aesir are dispirited, Loki, like a jester, is sent for to perform ludicrous antics. He has many children, to some of whom he stands as father, to others as mother. He was believed to scatter evil as a sower scatters grain; and in Jutland, when the peasants saw in the air a tremulous, wavy motion, they said Loki was sowing his oats. In one of his legends, which may serve as a specimen, he cuts off the beautiful hair of Sif, the wife of the god Thor. Thor threatens to break all his bones if he does not make good her loss with hair of gold. This Loki manages to accomplish, and then in his pride wagers his head with the dwarf Brock that he cannot make anything so precious. Brock tries and succeeds, but Loki refuses to surrender his head, and slips away. When captured, after long pursuit, he overcomes his captors by his eloquence, and escapes with no heavier penalty than having his mouth sewed up. After a variety of adventures, his career at last comes to a close. Through his wiles Balder is slain, the favorite of the Gods. Loki accomplishes many dexterous escapes, but is captured at length disguised as a salmon. He is bound to a rock, and a venomous snake placed above his head, whose poison drips toward his face. By his side Sigyn,* his spouse, watches continually, and interposes a cup to catch the drops as they fall. When the cup is full she turns to empty it, and meanwhile the venom drips upon his face, which makes him shake the earth in his agony. Thus will he lie bound until Ragnarok, the destruction of the world. In this restless and fantastic conception we may discern many correspondences to the dark figure so prominent in the faith of the descendants of the Norsemen.

To the Greeks, Homer and Hesiod occupied a relation similar to that in which the Bible stands to Christendom. Throughout Grecian history, we may observe an anxiety in most of the wiser men to reconcile speculations and discoveries with these venerated documents.

*It seems a piece of injustice, that from the name of this faithful wife we should derive our English term sin.

In the case of this Hellenic scripture, however, it was only the ignorant who ascribed to it much authority. The philosophy of Greece, in its earlier period, was full of latent scepticism, and sometimes, in some vehement Xenophanes, denounced the popular faith in bitter terms. Plutarch attributes a belief in dualism to all the more prominent of the Greek sages, but certainly without reason, if we are to understand by dualism two antagonistic personal principles. The Pythagoreans, indeed, asserted a principle of resistance in the universe, and ascribed to it falsehood and deceit; but they referred both this and an opposite principle back to one essence, the ground of all things. It does not appear that personality was attributed to either. The Ionians believed in a certain. living energy, which produced from itself all mundane phenomena, called by one fire, by another air, by another water. Sorrow and Vice, as well as Joy and Virtue, had their root in this. Plato is nowhere more obscure than in treating of the origin of evil. Most generally it appears to be referred to "original matter," the basis of the sensible world. Plato employs various expressions to designate this basis. It is "the nurse," "the receptacle," sometimes simply Tode, or TÔUTO, Sometimes "the other" (Oάтeρov). It is not earth, air, fire, or water, but, according to the Timæus," an invisible species (eidos), a formless, universal receiver, which in the most obscure way receives the immanence of the intelligible." From this "matter" the divine intelligence shaped the universe. Plato, however, speaks with great vacillation of the relation between this " Corporeal" and the "Intelligent." At one time the former is a hinderance to the Intelligent, again it is its servile instrument; now it is a concurrent cause of good, now the ground of all evil; now purely negative, and, again, the positive substratum which supports all higher intellectual development. The "Phædrus" contains a splendid allegory, in which Plato describes the anterior state of the soul, and its fall, through which it became involved in the miseries of the earthly lot; but no evil spirit is mentioned as the agent of the fall. In the " Laws," indeed, Plato appears to speak of an "evil soul," as elsewhere, perhaps; but the expression is probably figurative, and ought