FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143  
144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   >>   >|  
f these three poets a perceptible difference is recognizable, which reflects the changes that verbal recitations necessarily and imperceptibly undergo.] [Footnote 161: "Metaphysics," bk. i. ch. iv.] Now whether this "first principle," called "_Love_," "the cause of motion and of union" in the universe, was regarded as a personal Being, and whether, as the ancient scholiast taught, Hesiod's love was "the heavenly Love, which is also God, that other love that was born of Venus being junior," is just now of no moment to the argument. The more important inference is, that amongst the gods of Pagan theology but _one_ is self-existent, or else none are. Because the Hesiodian gods, which are, in fact, all the gods of the Greek mythology, "were either all of them derived from chaos, love itself likewise being generated out of it; or else love was supposed to be distinct from chaos, and the active principle of the universe, from whence, together with chaos, all the theogony and cosmogony was derived."[162] Hence it is evident the poets did not teach the existence of a multiplicity of unmade, self-existent, independent deities. [Footnote 162: "Cudworth," vol. i. p. 287.] The careful reader of Cudworth will also learn another truth of the utmost importance in this connection, viz., _that the theogony of the Greek poets was, in fact, a cosmogony_, the generation of the gods being, in reality, the generation of the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the various powers and phenomena of nature. This is dimly shadowed forth in the very names which are given to some of these divinities. Thus Helios is the sun, Selena is the moon, Zeus the sky--the deep blue heaven, Eos the dawn, and Erse the dew. It is rendered still more evident by the opening lines of Hesiod's "Theogonia," in which he invokes the muses: "Hail ye daughters of Jupiter! Grant a delightsome song. Tell of the race of immortal gods, always existing, Who are the offspring of the earth, of the starry sky, And of the gloomy night, whom also the ocean nourisheth. Tell how the gods and the earth at first were made, And the rivers, and the mighty deep, boiling with waves, And the glowing stars, and the broad heavens above, And the gods, givers of good, born of these." Where we see plainly that the generation of the gods is the generation of the earth, the heaven, the stars, the seas, the rivers, and other things p
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143  
144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
generation
 

existent

 

heaven

 

rivers

 

heavens

 
derived
 
cosmogony
 

Cudworth

 
evident
 

theogony


Footnote

 

universe

 
Hesiod
 

principle

 
rendered
 

opening

 
invokes
 
Theogonia
 

shadowed

 

powers


phenomena

 

nature

 

reflects

 

Selena

 

divinities

 

Helios

 

recognizable

 

difference

 

boiling

 

glowing


mighty

 
plainly
 

things

 

givers

 

nourisheth

 
immortal
 

Jupiter

 
delightsome
 

existing

 
gloomy

starry
 

offspring

 
perceptible
 
daughters
 

Because

 

Hesiodian

 
motion
 

regarded

 
called
 

mythology