r, who was for ages worshipped as the God of
Nature the Aleim, or the life-giving energy throughout the universe.

We have observed that when the profound principles underlying the most
ancient doctrines had been lost or forgotten, and when through the
decay of philosophy, and through the stimulation of the sensual in human
nature, mankind had lost the power to reason abstractly, Destruction,
which was symbolized by darkness or the absence of the sun's rays,
finally became the evil principle, or the Devil. Darkness and cold,
which had formerly been worshipped as the powers which brought forth the
sun, or as mother of the sun, in process of time became the agency which
is ever warring with good and which is constantly destroying that which
the latter brings forth.

We are informed by Forlong that "some derive our term Devil from Niphl
or Nevil, the wind that blasts or obstructs the growth of corn; and it
used sometimes to be written th' evil, which is D'evil or Devil."

It was "this Dualistic heresy which separated the Zend or Persian branch
of the Aryans from their Vedic brethren, and compelled them to emigrate
to the westward."(91)

91) See Rawlinson, Notes on the Early History of Babylon.

The ancient philosophical truth that matter is eternal, and that the
destruction of vegetable life through the agency of cold was one of
the necessary processes of re-generation, or the renewal of life, had
evidently been lost sight of at the time when Seth was dethroned in
Egypt. Wilkinson informs us that "both Seth and Osiris were adored until
a change took place respecting Seth, brought about apparently by foreign
influence." Sethi or Sethos, a ruler whose reign represents the Augustan
age of Egyptian splendor, received his name from this Deity. It is said
that during the twentieth dynasty Seth is suddenly portrayed as the
principle of evil "with which is associated sin." Consequently all the
effigies of this great Goddess were destroyed and all her names and
inscriptions "which could be reached" were effaced.

Bunsen tells us that Schelling, who has made a study of Egyptian
mythology, although totally ignorant of the later historical facts which
by means of hieroglyphical monuments have been obtained, had arrived at
the conclusion that Seth had occupied an important position in the Deity
down to the fourteenth century B.C. "Schelling had on mere speculative
grounds been brought to lay down as a postulate that Typho