A Comparison of All Religions, Fifth Ed

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1886 edition. Excerpt: ...dark Erebus and Tartarus; but neither earth nor air, nor sky was then. Before all, in the infinite circle of Erebus, the black-winged night produced an egg, not brooded on, whence in time sprang love, parent of desire, beating its back with its gilded wings like the whirl of a tempest. Love, joined with dark, unresting chaos, produced heaven, earth, sea, and the deathless race of the Immortal Gods." In like manner Hesiod says:--"In the beginning was chaos, next the earth with its broad bosom, the immovable foundation of all beings, the vast Tartarus, in the depth of its abyss; and love, the most beautiful of the Immortal Gods." So Ovid sings:--"Before the sea and land and all-covering heaven appeared, there was one aspect over the whole of nature. All was rude, unelaborated--a mass, which was called chaos. It was inert weight, the seeds of things in disorder and confusedly intermingled--no sun, no moon, no earth hanging balanced in the air, no ocean embracing continents with its mighty arms. This conflict of the elements God and benign Nature pacified, distinguishing each from each, solid from fluid, earth from air. Whoever that God was, he distributed all things, sending each to its place." But directly after, when speaking of the origin of man, Ovid hesitates whether man was the work of that divine artificer, or whether the earth, retaining in it some seeds of heaven, brought him forth and Prometheus gave him form. An Orphic poet also deduces all things from primeval chaos and the inspiration of love:--"We will first sing a delightful song concerning the ancient chaos; how heaven, earth, and seas were framed out of it, as also concerning that much-wise and sagacious love, oldest of all and self-perfect,...