w been framed and fitted
up as the destined abodes of different orders of being, celestial,
terrestrial, and infernal, the question next arises, How or by whom were
produced the various organized forms which these orders of being were
designed to animate? Though hosts of subtle essences or souls flowed
forth from Brahm, all of these remain inactive till united to some form
of materialism. From this necessity the gods themselves are not
exempted. While the souls of men, and other inferior spirits, must be
encased in tabernacles fashioned out of the grosser elements, the souls
of the gods, and all other superior spirits, must be made to inhabit
material forms, composed of one or other of the infinitely attenuated
and invisible rudimental atoms that spring direct from the principle of
consciousness.

"Interminable as are the incoherencies, inconsistencies, and
extravagancies of the Hindoo sacred writings, on no subject, perhaps, is
the multiplicity of varying accounts and discrepancies more astonishing
than on the present. Volumes could not suffice to retail them all.
Brahma's first attempts at the production of the forms of animated
beings were as eminently unsuccessful as they were various. At one time
he is said to have performed a long and severe course of ascetic
devotions, to enable him to accomplish his wish; but in vain; at
another, inflamed by anger and passion at his repeated failures, he sat
down and wept; and from the streaming tear drops sprang into being, as
his first boon, a progeny of ghosts and goblins, of an aspect so
loathsome and dreadful, that he was ready to faint away. At one time,
after profound meditation, different beings spring forth: one from his
thumb, another from his breath, a third from his ear, a fourth from his
side. But enough of such monstrous legends."[26]

There now, reader, you have the original of the Development Theory, with
Vestiges of Creation enough to make half a dozen new infidel
cosmogonies, besides the genuine original of Pantheism, from its native
soil. Our western Pantheists will doubtless reverence their venerable
progenitors; and, should the remainder of the family find their way
here in a year or two, via Germany, the public will be better prepared
to give a fitting reception to such distinguished visitors, including
their suite of divine bulls and holy monkeys, their lustrations of cow
dung, ecstatic hook swingings, burning of widows, and drowning of
children, and oth