File:William H. Seward's travels around the world (1873) (14784488402).jpg

Identifier: williamhsewardst01sewa (find matches)
Title: William H. Seward's travels around the world
Year: 1873 (1870s)
Authors: Seward, William Henry, 1801-1872 Seward, Olive Risley, 1844-1906
Subjects: Voyages around the world
Publisher: New York, D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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rned from this study that in that age mankind were no lessperplexed than they now are with the problem of the origin ofgood and evil; that, incapable of tracing the beneficent andinjurious natural forces to a first and just Creator of both, theydeified and worshipped those natural forces themselves, magnifyingand blessing the good, and deprecating and propitiating the evil.In ancient times, nations were more isolated than now, but theperplexity of the human mind concerning good and evil was asuniversal then as it is now. Each nation improved and adoptedany supposed discovery of another. The mythologies of Greeceand Rome, supposed to clear up the mysterious origin of good andevil, were borrowed from Egypt, and it seems probable that thosewhich still linger in Hindostan and China were brought from thesame primitive source. Finally, we have learned here that themonastic and ascetic systems, which yet prevail in every part ofAsia, and which still have a strong foothold among Christian na-
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■r --: H .f^v;wwi-:,;:_;_:■.:■-■■■■;&!,■ ;4> ;-r?m.v-;v.--: ..■;■!.■•■■ •>■&.<■.. v -,?■■■•■■$,, .. i .I, :: • v.. MP* TEMPLE OF DENDERA. 531 tions, existed here, under a theology which has untimely perished,leaving neither priest nor votary on the face of the globe. Thereare more reflections of a less general character. When the chil-dren of Israel insisted that Moses should set up a golden calf fortheir worship, did they do more than adopt the Egyptian dedica-tion of the ox and the cow to Osiris and Isis? Was the Egyptianapotheosis of the crocodile and the serpent the germ of the ideaof the evil serpent which tempted our first parents to their fall inEden ? Was it the germinal idea of the brazen serpent whichMoses lifted up? Has the capacity of man for religious knowl-edge its limit, beyond which it cannot go, and is each of its varioussystems, although perverted, based on some intuitive idea orabused revelation? Kenne

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