grace, at the same time spiritual and corporal, invisible in its essence, and visibly manifested, such was the centre to which the leading tenets of all nations tended, such the point of reunion-the vital principle of universal worship.*

It would be impossible to understand this primitive worship, without viewing each part in relation to the whole. This order of mystical ideas typified by corporal communion, was connected with a deep religious symbolism, according to which all the elements of the material were only the representatives of the invisible world. An immense colossal spiritualism rises before us; even in the first ages of the world. Originating in the dogmas of tradition it shewed itself in all the ancient systems of the human race. At the epoch subsequent to the deluge, we see for example, in India, the ruins of a primitive science perfectly spiritual in its essence. These indeed are only ruins; but yet they are nobler than our creations. Dimly seen through the vista of former ages, these intellectual pyramids would

* Vide Note VI.

appear by their enormous proportions to overshadow the systems of modern invention. Spirituality was then the primitive state: it bore the venerable character of age when materialism received its birth. If man had been but the creature of mere sensation, it would have been impossible, judging by all the known laws of the human mind, that, in the interval which separates the period of which we now speak, from that which the traditions of all nations point out as the birth of our species, he could have raised himself, from a state scarcely superior to that of apes, to a spiritualism which embraced the universe, and disposed in harmonious and corresponding Cycles the various orders of ideas. With these facts before us, do you suppose that man, abandoned to himself, a wandering savage, commenced his career by spirituality? Such an hypothesis is an evident absurdity. Look at the savages, who are already in a more favourable position from being born in a sort of society, and receiving there, some degree of education: though initiated, by the language they are taught, in some general spiritual ideas, they remain, in every other respect, the slaves

of the grossest materialism. The animal stupidity from which they cannot free themselves by their own energy, furnishes an irrefragable argument against this fanciful philosophy, not less contrary, in other respects, to the necessary progress of the human mind. For, as Hume remarks, it would be absurd that, in the intellectual order, man should have invented palaces before cottages, Two things are then certain: man commenced by spiritualism, and man, excluded from all communication with other intelligences, would have commenced by materialism. Hence arises the necessity of a primitive revelation, which indeed would be the most philosophical conception, even though it had not been the universal belief. * The more deeply we shall examine the character of the ancient world, viewing it in relation with the established laws of the human mind, the more this great truth will become evident. The truly catholic philosophy, to which at the present day all the labours of the learned are contributing, sometimes unconsciously, will in developing itself, scatter to the winds, the

* Vide note vii

sterile dust of abstractions, and exhibit the ancient faith crowned with all the rays of science. Already the science even of the infidel school, astonished at its own discoveries, which overthrow at the same time the fanciful theories of idiology and materialism, has begun to suspect that there are more things between heaven and earth than its philosophy has dreamed of. *

* Shakspeare.

CHAPTER III.

Developement of the Primitive Religion-personal presence of the Deity-Christian Communion.

Though the primitive religion recognised, as we have seen, a certain intercourse between God and man, yet the human race aspired to a more perfect union. The recollection of an original society still more perfect had been preserved, and the same tradition had perpetuated the hope, that a more endearing union would be established by the Saviour universally expected. Thus the belief of a God, present only by grace, could never satisfy the yearning desire of man for a closer union with his Creator. It was partly to the energy of this desire that idolatry owed its existence; for every vicious practice is but the perversion of a sentiment originally good, as