cidental properties of matter, its
successive forms and its extension, that is to say, of time and space
unbounded, the physical theologians lost themselves in a chaos of
subtile reasoning and scholastic controversy.*

* Consult the Ancient Astronomy of M. Bailly, and you will
find our assertions respecting the knowledge of the priests
amply proved.

"In the first place, the action of the sun on terrestrial bodies,
teaching them to regard his substance as a pure and elementary fire,
they made it the focus and reservoir of an ocean of igneous and luminous
fluid, which, under the name of ether, filled the universe and nourished
all beings. Afterwards, having discovered, by a physical and attentive
analysis, this same fire, or another perfectly resembling it, in the
composition of all bodies, and having perceived it to be the essential
agent of that spontaneous movement which is called life in animals and
vegetation in plants, they conceived the mechanism and harmony of the
universe, as of a homogeneous whole, of one identical body, whose parts,
though distant, had nevertheless an intimate relation;* and the world
was a living being, animated by the organic circulation of an igneous
and even electrical fluid,** which, by a term of comparison borrowed
first from men and animals, had the sun for a heart and a focus.***

* These are the very words of Jamblicus. De Myst. Egypt.

** The more I consider what the ancients understood by ether
and spirit, and what the Indians call akache, the stronger
do I find the analogy between it and the electrial fluid. A
luminous fluid, principle of warmth and motion, pervading
the universe, forming the matter of the stars, having small
round particles, which insinuate themselves into bodies, and
fill them by dilating itself, be their extent what it will.
What can more strongly resemble electricity?

*** Natural philosophers, says Macrobius, call the sun the
heart of the world. Som. Scrip. c. 20. The Egyptians, says
Plutarch, call the East the face, the North the right side,
and the South the left side of the world, because there the
heart is placed. They continually compare the universe to a
man; and hence the celebrated microcosm of the Alchymists.
We observe, by the bye, that the Alchymists, Cabalists,
Free-masons, Magnetisers, Martinists, and every other such
sort of visiona