d these gods
received a worship analogous to their attributes, real or imaginary;
which worship was divided into two branches, according to their
characters. The good god receives a worship of love and joy, from which
are derived all religious acts of gaiety, such as festivals, dances,
banquets, offerings of flowers, milk, honey, perfumes; in a word,
everything grateful to the senses and to the soul.* The evil god, on
the contrary, received a worship of fear and pain; whence originated
all religious acts of the gloomy sort,** tears, desolations, mournings,
self-denials, bloody offerings, and cruel sacrifices.

* All the ancient festivals respecting the return and
exaltation of the sun were of this description: hence the
hilaria of the Roman calendar at the period of the passage,
Pascha, of the vernal equinox. The dances were imitations
of the march of the planets. Those of the Dervises still
represent it to this day.

** "Sacrifices of blood," says Porphyry, "were only offered
to Demons and evil Genii to avert their wrath. Demons are
fond of blood, humidity, stench." Apud. Euseb. Proep. Ev.,
p. 173.

"The Egyptians," says Plutarch, "only offer bloody victims
to Typhon. They sacrifice to him a red ox, and the animal
immolated is held in execration and loaded with all the sins
of the people." The goat of Moses. See Isis and Osiris.

Strabo says, speaking of Moses, and the Jews, "Circumcision
and the prohibition of certain kinds of meat sprung from
superstition." And I observe, respecting the ceremony of
circumcision, that its object was to take from the symbol of
Osiris, (Phallus) the pretended obstacle to fecundity: an
obstacle which bore the seal of Typhon, "whose nature," says
Plutarch, "is made up of all that hinders, opposes, causes
obstruction."

"Hence arose that distinction of terrestrial beings into pure and
impure, sacred and abominable, according as their species were of the
number of the constellations of one of these two gods, and made part
of his domain; and this produced, on the one hand, the superstitions
concerning pollutions and purifications; and, on the other, the
pretended efficacious virtues of amulets and talismans.

"You conceive now," continued the orator, addressing himself to the
Persians, the Indians, the Jews, the Christians, the Mussulmans, "you
conceive the origin of th