of these princes
as symbols of the invisible powers which their exploits made them resemble
in the ideas of Asiatics. Yet elsewhere, according to the accounts of Arab
authors, who in this might well be better informed than the Greeks, it
appears from detailed records of ancient oriental history, that this
Zerdust or Zoroaster, whom they make contemporary with the great Darius,
did not look upon these two principles as completely primitive and [72]
independent, but as dependent upon one supreme and single principle. They
relate that he believed, in conformity with the cosmogony of Moses, that
God, who is without an equal, created all and separated the light from the
darkness; that the light conformed with his original design, but that the
darkness came as a consequence, even as the shadow follows the body, and
that this is nothing but privation. Such a thesis would clear this ancient
author of the errors the Greeks imputed to him. His great learning caused
the Orientals to compare him with the Mercury or Hermes of the Egyptians
and Greeks; just as the northern peoples compared their Wodan or Odin to
this same Mercury. That is why Mercredi (Wednesday), or the day of Mercury,
was called Wodansdag by the northern peoples, but day of Zerdust by the
Asiatics, since it is named Zarschamba or Dsearschambe by the Turks and the
Persians, Zerda by the Hungarians from the north-east, and Sreda by the
Slavs from the heart of Great Russia, as far as the Wends of the Luneburg
region, the Slavs having learnt the name also from the Orientals. These
observations will perhaps not be displeasing to the curious. And I flatter
myself that the small dialogue ending the Essays written to oppose M. Bayle
will give some satisfaction to those who are well pleased to see difficult
but important truths set forth in an easy and familiar way. I have written
in a foreign language at the risk of making many errors in it, because that
language has been recently used by others in treating of my subject, and
because it is more generally read by those whom one would wish to benefit
by this small work. It is to be hoped that the language errors will be
pardoned: they are to be attributed not only to the printer and the
copyist, but also to the haste of the author, who has been much distracted
from his task. If, moreover, any error has crept into the ideas expressed,
the author will be the first to correct it, once he has been better
informed: he has given