e non sit utile; multaque, quae tametsi falsa sint, aliter
existimare populum expediat."--St. AUGUSTINE, _De Civil. Dei._--We must
regret, with the learned Valloisin, that the sixteen books of Varro, on
the religious antiquities of the ancients, have been lost; and the regret
is enhanced by the reflection that they existed until the beginning of the
fourteenth century, and disappeared only when their preservation for less
than two centuries more would, by the discovery of printing, have secured
their perpetuity.

[7] Strabo, Geog., lib. i.

[8] Maurice, Indian Antiquities, vol. ii. p. 297.

[9] Div. Leg., vol. i. b. ii. Sec. iv. p. 193, 10th Lond. edit.

[10] The hidden doctrines of the unity of the Deity and the immortality of
the soul were taught originally in all the Mysteries, even those of Cupid
and Bacchus.--WARBURTON, apud Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 309.

[11] Isoc. Paneg., p. 59.

[12] Apud Arrian. Dissert., lib. iii. c. xxi.

[13] Phaedo.

[14] Dissert. on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, in the Pamphleteer,
vol. viii. p. 53.

[15] Symbol. und Mythol. der Alt. Voelk.

[16] In these Mysteries, after the people had for a long time bewailed the
loss of a particular person, he was at last supposed to be restored to
life.--BRYANT, _Anal. of Anc. Mythology_, vol. iii. p. 176.

[17] Herod. Hist., lib. iii. c. clxxi.

[18] The legend says it was cut into _fourteen_ pieces. Compare this with
the _fourteen_ days of burial in the masonic legend of the third degree.
Why the particular number in each? It has been thought by some, that in
the latter legend there was a reference to the half of the moon's age, or
its dark period, symbolic of the darkness of death, followed by the
fourteen days of bright moon, or restoration to life.

[19] Mysteres du Paganisme, tom. i. p. 6.

[20] Notes to Rawlinson's Herodotus, b. ii. ch. clxxi. Mr. Bryant
expresses the same opinion: "The principal rites in Egypt were confessedly
for a person lost and consigned for a time to darkness, who was at last
found. This person I have mentioned to have been described under the
character of Osiris."--_Analysis of Ancient Mythology_, vol. iii. p. 177.

[21] Spirit of Masonry, p. 100.

[22] Varro, according to St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, vi. 5), says that
among the ancients there were three kinds of theology--a _mythical_, which
was used by the poets; a _physical_, by the philosophers, and a _civil_,
by the people.

[23] "Tous les