ries, are but the mistaken disciples of this
ancient school: we say mistaken, because, in spite of their
pretensions, the thread of the occult science is broken.

"From this time the physical theologians seem to have divided into
several classes; one class, grounding itself on these principles
resulting from observation; that nothing can be annihilated in the
world; that the elements are indestructible; that they change their
combinations but not their nature; that the life and death of beings are
but the different modifications of the same atoms; that matter itself
possesses properties which give rise to all its modes of existence; that
the world is eternal,* or unlimited in space and duration; said that the
whole universe was God; and, according to them, God was a being, effect
and cause, agent and patient, moving principle and thing moved, having
for laws the invariable properties that constitute fatality; and this
class conveyed their idea by the emblem of Pan (the great whole); or of
Jupiter, with a forehead of stars, body of planets, and feet of animals;
or of the Orphic Egg,** whose yolk, suspended in the center of a liquid,
surrounded by a vault, represented the globe of the sun, swimming in
ether in the midst of the vault of heaven;*** sometimes by a great
round serpent, representing the heavens where they placed the moving
principle, and for that reason of an azure color, studded with spots
of gold, (the stars) devouring his tail--that is, folding and unfolding
himself eternally, like the revolutions of the spheres; sometimes by
that of a man, having his feet joined together and tied, to signify
immutable existence, wrapped in a cloak of all colors, like the face
of nature, and bearing on his head a sphere of gold,**** emblem of the
sphere of the stars; or by that of another man, sometimes seated on the
flower of the lotos borne on the abyss of waters, sometimes lying on a
pile of twelve cushions, denoting the twelve celestial signs. And here,
Indians, Japanese, Siamese, Tibetans, and Chinese, is the theology,
which, founded by the Egyptians and transmitted to you, is preserved in
the pictures which you compose of Brama, of Beddou, of Somona-Kodom of
Omito. This, ye Jews and Christians, is likewise the opinion of which
you have preserved a part in your God moving on the face of the waters,
by an allusion to the wind*5 which, at the beginning of the world, that
is, the departure of the sun from the sig