ce of a far earlier feud and league--even
that traditionally recorded in the Mythic age of Erechtheus and
Eumolpus, but could not entirely put an end to the struggles of
Eleusis for independence, or prevent the outbreak of occasional
jealousy and dissension.

[49] Kneph, the Agatho demon, or Good Spirit of Egypt, had his symbol
in the serpent. It was precisely because sacred with the rest of the
world that the serpent would be an object of abhorrence with the Jews.
But by a curious remnant of oriental superstition, the early
Christians often represented the Messiah by the serpent--and the
emblem of Satan became that of the Saviour.

[50] Lib. ii., c. 52, 4.

[51] And this opinion is confirmed by Dionysius and Strabo, who
consider the Dodona oracle originally Pelasgic.

[52] Also Pelasgic, according to Strabo.

[53] "The Americans did not long suppose the efficacy of conjuration
to be confined to one subject--they had recourse to it in every
situation of danger or distress.------From this weakness proceeded
likewise the faith of the Americans in dreams, their observation of
omens, their attention to the chirping of birds and the cries of
animals, all which they supposed to be indications of future events."
--Robertson's History of America, book iv.

Might not any one imagine that he were reading the character of the
ancient Greeks? This is not the only point of resemblance between the
Americans (when discovered by the Spaniards) and the Greeks in their
early history; but the resemblance is merely that of a civilization in
some respects equally advanced.

[54] The notion of Democritus of Abdera, respecting the origin of
dreams and divination, may not be uninteresting to the reader, partly
from something vast and terrible in the fantasy, partly as a proof of
the strange, incongruous, bewildered chaos of thought, from which at
last broke the light of the Grecian philosophy. He introduced the
hypothesis of images (eidola,), emanating as it were from external
objects, which impress our sense, and whose influence creates
sensation and thought. Dreams and divination he referred to the
impressions communicated by images of gigantic and vast stature, which
inhabited the air and encompassed the world. Yet this philosopher is
the original of Epicurus, and Epicurus is the original of the modern
Utilitarians!

[55] Isaiah lxvi. I.

[56] This Lucian acknowledges unawares, when, in deriding the popular
religio