Besides that sensual deification of nature, which was the predominant principle in the mythology and popular religion of the ancients, there was another and capital error--magic, which was a dark and abusive application--an illicit perversion of the high powers of nature, when these were really understood, and the mind, penetrating through her sensible and external veil, had caught her true spirit and internal life. This loftier, and, on that account, more dangerous error was not so prevalent in the popular and poetical religion of antiquity, but was chiefly to be found in the secret associations of the Pagan Mysteries.--Although these Mysteries which, in Greece, as well as in Egypt, exerted such a mighty influence on public opinion, on science, and on the whole system of thinking, nay on life itself, disclosed far graver and profounder doctrines than the vulgar mythology of the poets, on all the great questions relative to the human soul, its capacity and original dignity, as well as to the hidden powers of Nature and the whole invisible world; still we must not imagine that the influence of these Mysteries was always salutary, or that their internal constitution and ruling spirit were in their ultimate tendency always entitled to commendation. We may, in my opinion, ascribe to the Egyptians much science, especially in physics, more perhaps than the Greeks in general, and the Pythagoreans in particular, had, as far as we yet know, learned and borrowed from them; but we must not imagine this Egyptian science to have been exempt from a gross alloy of error, and the various abuses of magic. When once the sacred standard and clue of truth are lost, when the due order of things and of doctrines is once inverted, then the mind of man often associates the sublime, the mysterious, and the wonderful, with the mean, the perverse, and the wicked. Amid all those false and whimsical images of Gods, the mere symbols of Nature, but at least very equivocal emblems and hieroglyphs, the temple-sleep of the Egyptians might easily nourish illusions of error and visions of darkness; especially where a magical spirit prevailed, that is to say, an illicit purpose in the application of the high powers of nature--and a will instigated to evil by the arts of the demon. And in all science the matter of greatest moment, and that which determines its value, is its relation to the higher and divine truth; that is to say, whether this science be well employed, or whether, on the contrary, it be converted to a corrupt and destructive use; whether the due order and subordination of inferior Nature, and of every thing earthly, towards God and the things of God, which are the principal, be rightly observed and maintained. But this fundamental truth being once supposed, all science, even that which penetrates the deepest into Nature and her most hidden springs of life, can conduce only to the greater glory of the mighty author of Nature. All these natural secrets, and their true