The symbolical language of ancient art and mythology : an inquiry / by Richard Payne Knight.
- Richard Payne Knight
- Date:
- 1892
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The symbolical language of ancient art and mythology : an inquiry / by Richard Payne Knight. Source: Wellcome Collection.
97/458
![but allowed the inhabitants to be as absurd and^ extravagant as they pleased, and even to enforce their absurdities and ex- travagances, wherever they had any pre-existing laws in their favor. An Egyptian magistrate would put one of his fellow- subjects to death for killing a cat or a monkey ; and though the religious fanaticism of the Jews was too sanguinary and violent to be left entirely free from restraint, a chief of the synagogue could order any one of his congregation to be whipped for neglecting or violating any part of the Mosaic Ritual.^” 62. The principle underlying the system of Emanations was, that all things were of one substance; from which they were fashioned, and into which they were again dissolved, by the operation of one plastic spirit universally diffused and expand- ed 228 polytheist of ancient Greece and Rome candidly thought, like the modern Hindu, that all rites of worship and forms of devotion were directed to the same end, though in different modes and through different channels. Even they who worship other godsy says Krishna, the incarnate Deity, in an ancient Indian poem, worship me^ although they know it not.”^^* WHY DIVINE HONORS WERE PAID TO ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 63. By this universal expansion of the creative Spirit, every production of earth, water, and air, participated in its essence; which was continually emanating from, and reverting back to its source in various modes and degrees of progression and re- gression, like water to and from the ocean. Hence not only men, but all animals, and even vegetables, were supposed to be impregnated with some particles of the Divine nature ; from which their various qualities and dispositions, as well as their powers of propagation were thought to be derived. These appeared to be so many different emanations of the Divine power operating in different modes and degrees, according to Tertullian: Apol. c. xxiv. See Acts of the Apostles, v. 40. Aristotle : Metaphys. i. 3, c. iii. Virgil: AEneid, vi. 724-734. “ First of all, the Inmost Spirit sustains the heaven and Earth and Ocean, the illu- minated orb of the Moon, and the Ti- tanical Stars [planets] ; and the Mind, diffused through all the members, gives emergy to the whole frame and mingles itself intimately with the great body. Thence proceed the race of men and beasts, and the living souls of birds, and the monstrous brutes which the Ocean breeds beneath its marble sur- face. They all possess a fiery potency, and in their seed is a celestial prin- ciple,—so far as they are not clogged by noxious bodies, their limbs impeded by earthy substance, and all their members moribund. Hence they fear and desire, grieve and rejoice ; nor do they, thus enclosed in darkness and a gloomy prison, behold the heavenly air.” See also Plutarch, in Rom. p. 76 et Cicero: De Divinit. lib. ii. c. 49. Bkagavat-Gita, ix. 97](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24885320_0097.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
