ESSENES—from _Asa_, a healer. A sect of Jews said by Pliny to have lived near the Dead Sea “_per millia sæculorum_” for thousands of ages. Some have supposed them to be extreme Pharisees; and others—which may be the true theory—the descendants of the _Benim nabim_ of the _Bible_, and think they were “Kenites” and “_Nazarites_.” They had many Buddhistic ideas and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests of the _Great Mother_ at Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also so denominated. Eusebius, and after him De Quincey, declared them to be the same as the early Christians, which is more than probable. The title “brother,” used in the early Church, was Essenean: they were a fraternity, or a _koinobion_ or community like the early converts. It is noticeable that only the Sadducees, or Zadokites, the priest-caste and their partisans, persecuted the Christians; the Pharisees were generally scholastic and mild, and often sided with the latter. James the Just was a Pharisee till his death; but Paul or _Aher_ was esteemed a schismatic. EVOLUTION.—The development of higher orders of animals from the lower. Modern, or so-called _exact_ science, holds but to a one-sided physical evolution, prudently avoiding and ignoring the higher or spiritual evolution, which would force our contemporaries to confess the superiority of the ancient philosophers and psychologists over themselves. The ancient sages, ascending to the UNKNOWABLE, made their starting-point from the first manifestation of the unseen, the unavoidable, and from a strict logical reasoning, the absolutely {xxxi} necessary creative Being, the Demiurgos of the universe. Evolution began with them from pure spirit, which descending lower and lower down, assumed at last a visible and comprehensible form, and became matter. Arrived at this point, they speculated in the Darwinian method, but on a far more large and comprehensive basis. In the _Rig-Veda-Sanhita_, the oldest book of the World[33] (to which even our most prudent Indiologists and Sanscrit scholars assign an antiquity of between two and three thousand years B.C.), in the first book, “Hymns to the Maruts,” it is said: “_Not-being_ and _Being_ are in the highest heaven, in the birthplace of Daksha, in the lap of Aditi” (_Mandala_, i., Sûkta 166). “In the first age of the gods, Being (the comprehensible Deity) was born from Not-being (whom no intellect can comprehend); after it were born the Regions (the invisible), from them Uttânapada.” “From Uttânapad the Earth was born, the Regions (those that are visible) were born from the Earth. Daksha was born of Aditi, and Aditi from Daksha” (Ibid.).