ed fruit of the cosmical and
theological conceptions of the childhood-condition of humanity, we
propose to epitomize the results of his inquiry as to the _theological_,
opinions of the Greeks, supplying additional confirmation of his views
from other sources.

And first, he proves most conclusively that Orpheus, Homer, and
Hesiod,[160] who are usually designated "the theologians" of Greece, but
who were in fact the depravers and corrupters of pagan theology, do not
teach the existence of a multitude of _unmade, self-existent, and
independent deities_. Even they believed in the existence of _one_
uncreated and eternal mind, _one Supreme God_, anterior and superior to
all the gods of their mythology. They had some intuition, some
apperception of the _Divine_, even before they had attached to it a
sacred name. The gods of their mythology had all, save one, a temporal
origin; they were generated of Chaos and Night, by an active principle
called _Love_. "One might suspect," says Aristotle, that Hesiod, and if
there be any other who made _love_ or _desire_ a principle of things,
aimed at these very things (viz., the designation of the efficient cause
of the world); for Parmenides, describing the generation of the
universe, says:

'First of all the gods planned he _love_;'

and further, Hesiod:

'First of all was Chaos, afterwards Earth,
With her spacious bosom,
And _Love_, who is pre-eminent among all the immortals;'

as intimating here that in entities there should exist some _cause_ that
will impart motion, and hold bodies in union together. But how, in
regard to these, one ought to distribute them, as to the order of
priority, can be decided afterwards.[161]

[Footnote 160: We do not concern ourselves with the chronological
antecedence of these ancient Greek poets. It is of little consequence to
us whether Homer preceded Orpheus, or Orpheus Homer. They were not the
real creators of the mythology of ancient Greece. The myths were a
spontaneous growth of the earliest human thought even before the
separation of the Aryan family into its varied branches.

The study of Comparative Mythology, as well as of Comparative Language,
assures us that the myths had an origin much earlier than the times of
Homer and Orpheus. They floated down from ages on the tide of oral
tradition before they were systematized, embellished, and committed to
writing by Homer, and Orpheus, and Hesiod. And between the systems o