crozier is precisely the staff of Bootes or Osiris.
(See plate.)
All the Lamas wear the mitre or cap in the shape of a cone,
which was an emblem of the sun.
At these words, the doctors of all the groups began to look at each
other with astonishment; but no one breaking silence, the orator
proceeded:
"Three principal causes concur to produce this confusion of ideas:
First, the figurative expressions under which an infant language was
obliged to describe the relations of objects; expressions which, passing
afterwards from a limited to a general sense, and from a physical to a
moral one, caused, by their ambiguities and synonymes, a great number of
mistakes.
"Thus, it being first said that the sun had surmounted, or finished,
twelve animals, it was thought afterwards that he had killed them,
fought them, conquered them; and of this was composed the historical
life of Hercules.*
* See the memoir of Dupuis on the Origin of the
Constellations, before cited.
"It being said that he regulated the periods of rural labor, the seed
time and the harvest, that he distributed the seasons and occupations,
ran through the climates and ruled the earth, etc., he was taken for a
legislative king, a conquering warrior; and they framed from this the
history of Osiris, of Bacchus, and others of that description.
"Having said that a planet entered into a sign, they made of this
conjunction a marriage, an adultery, an incest.* Having said that the
planet was hid or buried, when it came back to light, and ascended to
its exaltation, they said that it had died, risen again, was carried
into heaven, etc.
* These are the very words of Plutarch in his account of
Isis and Osiris. The Hebrews say, in speaking of the
generations of the Patriarchs, et ingressus est in eam.
From this continual equivoke of ancient language, proceeds
every mistake.
"A second cause of confusion was the material figures themselves,
by which men first painted thoughts; and which, under the name of
hieroglyphics, or sacred characters, were the first invention of the
mind. Thus, to give warning of the inundation, and of the necessity of
guarding against it, they painted a boat, the ship Argo; to express the
wind, they painted the wing of a bird; to designate the season, or the
month, they painted the bird of passage, the insect, or the animal which
made its appearance at that period; to describe the winte
|