FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108  
109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   >>   >|  
sed by the calls of hunger, and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his companions. The youth could no longer recognize the once familiar aspect of his native country, and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete language confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual inquiries produced the amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a pagan tyrant."[123] This legend was received as authentic throughout the Christian world before the end of the sixth century, and was afterwards introduced by Mahomet as a divine revelation into the Koran, and from hence was adopted and adorned by all the nations from Bengal to Africa who professed the Mahometan faith. Some vestiges even of a similar tradition have been discovered in Scandinavia. "This easy and universal belief," observes the philosophical historian of the Decline and Fall, "so expressive of the sense of mankind, may be ascribed to the genuine merit of the fable itself. We imperceptibly advance from youth to age, without observing the gradual, but incessant, change of human affairs; and even, in our larger experience of history, the imagination is accustomed, by a perpetual series of causes and effects, to unite the most distant revolutions. But if the interval between two memorable eras could be instantly annihilated; if it were possible, after a momentary slumber of two hundred years, to display the new world to the eyes of a spectator who still retained a lively and recent impression of the old, his surprise and his reflections would furnish the pleasing subject of a philosophical romance."[124] _Prejudices arising from our peculiar position as inhabitants of the land._--The sources of prejudice hitherto considered may be deemed peculiar for the most part to the infancy of the science, but others are common to the first cultivators of geology and to ourselves, and are all singularly calculated to produce the same deception, and to strengthen our belief that the course of nature in the earlier ages differed widely from that now established. Although these
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108  
109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Jamblichus

 
surprise
 

peculiar

 

belief

 

philosophical

 

series

 
distant
 
revolutions
 

effects

 
mankind

instantly

 

annihilated

 

memorable

 

perpetual

 

interval

 

expressive

 

imagination

 

observing

 
gradual
 

imperceptibly


advance

 

incessant

 

change

 

history

 
ascribed
 

genuine

 
experience
 

affairs

 

larger

 
accustomed

spectator

 

common

 

cultivators

 

geology

 

singularly

 

science

 
considered
 

hitherto

 

deemed

 

infancy


calculated

 

produce

 

widely

 

differed

 
established
 
Although
 

earlier

 

deception

 
strengthen
 

nature