habit of confounding in
one legend a series of incidents which have happened at various epochs;
nor must we forget that the superstitions of a savage tribe are
transmitted through all the progressive stages of society, till they
exert a powerful influence on the mind of the philosopher. He may find,
in the monuments of former changes on the earth's surface, an apparent
confirmation of tenets handed down through successive generations, from
the rude hunter, whose terrified imagination drew a false picture of
those awful visitations of floods and earthquakes, whereby the whole
earth as known to him was simultaneously devastated.

_Egyptian Cosmogony._--Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests,
we gather much information from writers of the Grecian sects, who
borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of
the former successive destruction and renovation of the world.[8] We
learn from Plutarch, that this was the theme of one of the hymns of
Orpheus, so celebrated in the fabulous ages of Greece. It was brought by
him from the banks of the Nile; and we even find in his verses, as in
the Indian systems, a definite period assigned for the duration of each
successive world.[9] The returns of great catastrophes were determined
by the period of the Annus Magnus, or great year,--a cycle composed of
the revolutions of the sun, moon, and planets, and terminating when
these return together to the same sign whence they were supposed at some
remote epoch to have set out. The duration of this great cycle was
variously estimated. According to Orpheus, it was 120,000 years;
according to others, 300,000; and by Cassander it was taken to be
360,000 years.[10]

We learn particularly from the Timaeus of Plato, that the Egyptians
believed the world to be subject to occasional conflagrations and
deluges, whereby the gods arrested the career of human wickedness, and
purified the earth from guilt. After each regeneration, mankind were in
a state of virtue and happiness, from which they gradually degenerated
again into vice and immorality. From this Egyptian doctrine, the poets
derived the fable of the decline from the golden to the iron age. The
sect of Stoics adopted most fully the system of catastrophes destined at
certain intervals to destroy the world. Those they taught were of two
kinds;--the Cataclysm, or destruction by water, which sweeps away the
whole human race, and annihilates all the animal and vegetab