[175] Thus, our author coincides with lord Monboddo, who showed that language is the slow product of necessity among men linked in society. See his work _Of the Origin and Progress of Language_, with the motto of Horace: “Mutum ac turpe pecus ―― ―― ―― ―― Donec Verba quibus voces sensusque notarent Nominaque invenere.” [176] See note, p. 6, n. 2. § XIII.――THE RELIGION OF THE PHILOSOPHERS. In the eleventh chapter, entitled “Of the religion of the Wise,” we find it repeated that Philosophers were divided into two great classes: “the Eastern and the Western.” The first are the _Hushangians_, teachers of the Greeks until the time of Plato and Aristotle; it is believed that their philosophy, modified and refined, returned from Greece to Asia, and was received by the Muhammedan scholars to be adapted to their own creed. Then took place a singular mixture and confusion of Siderism, Judaism, Christianity, Muhammedism, and all sorts of philosophic opinions. The cosmology of the Hushangians was preserved. Seven special prophets, Ismâil, Jesus, Joseph, Enoch, Aaron, Moses, and Abraham, inhabit the seven heavens,[177] to begin from that of the Moon, which is the lowest, and rising upwards. If, in general, ten spheres are assumed,[178] they are made the dwellings of so many intelligences. These ideas, so ancient, as we have seen, were not disowned by eminent men in much later times. The great Kepler, and after him Reaumur, believed that intelligences or souls directed the movements of celestial bodies. Philosophers, struck with the marvellous order of nature, were adverse to admitting any mechanism――the very name of which frightened them; they therefore called all occult powers souls or spirits. The same idea is adopted in morality: whatever is praiseworthy is _angelic_, whatever blamable, _satanic_. _From goodness arises an angel; from badness, a Satan_: so said the prophet. Such simple and truth-like ideas were either originally disguised under the vest of fiction; or existing traditions of various origin were afterwards more or less ingeniously interpreted as allegories. Thus, the ordinary names, expressions, tenets, traditions, and practices of the Arabian prophet received symbolic, allegoric, mystic interpretations. The _Kabah_ (the square temple of Mecca), the holy centre of a living, circumambulating world, becomes an emblem of the sun; its famous _black stone_, hollowed by the kisses of the pious, represents Venus, the bright star on the borders of heaven; _paradise_, its milk, honey, wine, _Tuba_ (tree of beatitude), _Hur_ and _Kasur_ (nymphs and palaces) allude to intellectual delights; _hell_, its _Zakum_ (tree of nature), and torments, are explained as unavoidable consequences of depravity. Such interpretations of the Muhammedans seem often to be like their bridge _Sirat_, which connects heaven and hell, _sharp as a razor and thin as a hair_.