celestial orb called the world, (a revolution
composed of twelve months or signs, divided each into a thousand parts),
and the two systematic periods, of winter and summer, composed each of
six thousand. These expressions, wholly equivocal and badly explained,
having received an absolute and moral, instead of a physical and
astrological sense, it happened that the annual world was taken for the
secular world, the thousand of the zodiacal divisions, for a thousand of
years; and supposing, from the state of things, that they lived in
the age of evil, they inferred that it would end with the six thousand
pretended years.*

* We have already seen this tradition current among the
Tuscans; it was disseminated through most nations, and shows
us what we ought to think of all the pretended creations and
terminations of the world, which are merely the beginnings
and endings of astronomical periods invented by astrologers.
That of the year or solar revolution, being the most simple
and perceptible, served as a model to the rest, and its
comparison gave rise to the most whimsical ideas. Of this
description is the idea of the four ages of the world among
the Indians. Originally these four ages were merely the
four seasons; and as each season was under the supposed
influence of a planet, it bore the name of the metal
appropriated to that planet; thus spring was the age of the
sun, or of gold; summer the age of the moon, or of silver;
autumn the age of Venus, or of brass; and winter the age of
Mars, or of iron. Afterwards when astronomers invented the
great year of 25 and 36 thousand common years, which had for
its object the bringing back all the stars to one point of
departure and a general conjunction, the ambiguity of the
terms introduced a similar ambiguity of ideas; and the
myriads of celestial signs and periods of duration which
were thus measured were easily converted into so many
revolutions of the sun. Thus the different periods of
creation which have been so great a source of difficulty and
misapprehension to curious enquirers, were in reality
nothing more than hypothetical calculations of astronomical
periods. In the same manner the creation of the world has
been attributed to different seasons of the year, just as
these different seasons have served for the fictitious