Greatly as the perception of such a connexion was abused by philosophers in the last stages of Paganism, and wild as were the theories and fanciful as were the notions to which this valuable discovery gave rise among German enthusiasts and philosophers, the fact itself remains incontrovertible. It has not been shaken by Lobeck's criticism, which is of a negative rather than a reconstructive character, but is corroborated by the discovery of authentic facts in Egypt and Babylon. It is, indeed, a connexion of a general, pervading, and original character.

In order to exhibit the whole bearing of it in detail, I propose to comprise in Eight Theses the conclusions to which I have been led, as applicable to general history and its present framework.

I. That there is an historical connexion between Greek mythology, the primeval records of the Bible, and the oldest religion of Egypt and Asia.

II. That the religion of Egypt is merely the mummy of the original religion of Central Asia. The mythology of the Egyptians is the deposit of the oldest mythological belief of mankind, which took a new colouring westward in Upper Mesopotamia, and was petrified in the valley of the Nile by the influence of an African sky, and by the overpowering force of solar symbolism.

III. Primeval Asia, on the whole, is the startingpoint of an intellectual movement, by the action of which we are ourselves consciously and unconsciously affected.

IV. As regards the Greeks in particular, this investigation will corroborate the fact, that the Hellenes were, on the one hand, no more the inventors of their mythology, than Shakspeare was of the materials of his tragedies and dramatised Epos: on the other, that they did not leave anything in the state they found it, but that they remodelled the whole with the creative power of the spirit. The starting-point of their marvellous fictions in

all the oldest myths are those ideas about gods and nature, and the expression of them current in Arian Asia, subsequently overlaid by Semitic and especially by Phoenician influences, which were circulated through the Pelasgi and Ionians. But they no more took their gods and the histories of their gods from Bactria, than did the Egyptians from Chaldea; still less did either of them adopt the notions of the emigrating Bactrians settled in the Indus country, to say nothing of the Brahminical Indians of the country on the Ganges. But whatever hints the Hellenes adopted, they remodelled rather than simply developed them. This process of transformation was the work of a seemingly sportive godlike child, in whose breast the secret of the soul and the charm of beauty was slumbering.

V. Neither Greeks nor Christians borrowed any portion of their science or philosophy from Asia, or even from Egypt.

VI. Moses adopted no part of the Egyptian customs or symbols: what was common to them both came from primitive Asia. The religion of the Bible contains no mythology. It is a grand, momentous, and happy reserve of Judaism, which shows itself in its horror of mythology. Any personification of the divine ideas is as foreign to the whole tenour of it as is the canonisation of human beings. The historical root of the religion of Abraham and of Moses lies in the Aramaic and Kanaanitish, but this element is a merely outward one.

VII. The popular sentiment reflected in Abraham, in Moses, and in the primitive religion from the creation to the flood, and the expression of it, is rooted in the mythological life of the East in the earliest times.

VIII. The personal history of the patriarchs commences with Abraham. But many ancient traditions out of the mythical circle of the same tribes from whose degeneracy the Hebrews were withdrawn for higher purposes, and for their own benefit and that of man

kind, were interwoven with the lives and actions of this the greatest and most influential man of the olden times, and with the history of his son and grandson, Isaac and Jacob. The idolatrous customs and images of the people, from the Exodus to the Babylonian captivity, are connected with these natural elements of the tribe and country, not with Egypt.

III.

THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF THESE EIGHT THESES.

It is a very mistaken course pursued by Spencer, and latterly by Hengstenberg, which led them to look for an Egyptian origin in the religious institutions and symbols of the Jews. Every argument adduced in support of it is a fallacy. It is, however, a still greater error to suppose that Jewish tradition was a misunderstanding of those Aramaic and Palestinian elements. To say with Dupuis, and some modern German critics (though they have applied the argument in a very different way), that the history of the Patriarchs was derived from asterisms or mythological fables, and that Jahveh (Jehovah) is a mere Moloch under a new name, is as uncritical a proposition as it is offensive frivolity.

Before the Egyptian monuments were deciphered, it was impossible to deal with the above connexion by sound research. Even on the Semitic side there was still a great want of authentic information, which has been acquired in the last twenty or thirty years. The problem, therefore, for us to solve is, the extent to which that connexion went, and how it may be explained historically and philosophically. The first step is to take up the question about the Phoenician tradition and San

khuniathon, and combine it with the Bible, as well as Egypt and Babylon.

But as regards the relation between Egyptian mythology and the primitive Asiatic, a certain historical connexion follows from the very fact of the linguistic affinities. If Asia gave language to Egypt, it must also have given it some germ of religion, in language, in symbols, and ideas.

I maintain, therefore, that the Egyptian system of mythology is based upon primitive Asiatic notions and thoughts symbolically expressed; and, on the other hand, that nothing Asiatic is Egyptian, any more than the river flows out of the ocean; and that Egypt did not exercise the slightest influence upon Pelasgo-Hellenic mythology. The legends in the classics about colonies from Egypt, in so far as they have any historical foundation, are explainable just as are the expressions in the Bible that Kanaan, who was driven back out of Lower Egypt, was the son of Kham. At a much later and strictly historical period, the tide of emigration, which flowed back out of Lower Egypt, had an indirect effect upon Hellas. Not, indeed, in consequence of the Semitic races themselves, who were expelled, having come to Greece directly, or from Crete and the other islands into which they had emigrated; but because the inhabitants who were expelled by them from the islands, and who were originally of a cognate race with the Hellenes, migrated to the continent of Greece, imbued with sacerdotal Semitic ideas, symbols, and customs, or such as were tinged with a Semitic colouring. In this way, perhaps, we may at last arrive at an explanation of the name of the Pelasgi, which so obviously resembles the indigenous names of the Southern Kanaanites (Pelesheth, Philistines, Palestinians). The Pelasgi in Asia Minor were assuredly not Philistines in Greece and Italy, that is to say, Palestinians or Semites; but it is possible that the Iranian inhabitants who were driven.

out by them may have been called Pelasgi, as the Saxons were called Britons.

At all events, from our point of view, we must admit the religious influence of that wonderfully active Semitic race, the Phoenicians, who seem to have exerted no less energy in spreading their religious customs, than they did in their commercial transactions.

I must, on the other hand, entirely repudiate all historical connexion between the Helleno-Italic mythology and the Indians, or even their patriarchs the Iranians of Bactria. The siren of Indomania has in the last forty years beguiled the world more even than the siren of Hebræomania. The historical investigator of the Origines cannot, even upon geographical grounds, admit the influence of India, that is of the Indian element in the strict sense, which must be distinguished from the early Bactro-Median. India is a comparatively modern colony of Bactria. But there is, in truth, not one single fact which favours the notion of the influence even of the Bactrian country; they are all, on the contrary, directly against it. We must, nevertheless, draw the line very strictly against the zealous attempts which have been recently revived, with the usual exaggeration in which reactionists generally indulge, to deduce the mythological systems of the Hellenes from Hellenic sources. No one is his own father, least of all the Hellene, the master, but at the same time, the child of the ancient world.