Very different hypotheses have been framed to explain the Greek polytheism. They have failed _because_ they were hypotheses. When the Abbé Banier[22] detects the real characters of profane history in the gods of the Pantheon; and when De Gebelin[23] sees in them only emblematical shadows, personifying the successive inventions of the sciences and arts, we are reminded of the observation of Dr. Reid; (Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man:) “that there never was an hypothesis invented by an ingenious man, which although destitute of direct evidence, did not serve to account for a variety of phenomena, and had not therefore an indirect evidence in its favour.” Even the Alchemists have laid claim to the heathen mythology; the pagan stories have been analysed into chemical arcana: the golden fleece becomes a recipe for the discovery of the philosopher’s stone inscribed on a ram’s-skin, and Medea restores her father to life by means of the grand elixir.[24] But it were an unreasonable scepticism to argue from these visionary theories, that the ancient fabulous philosophy is a mass of inscrutable and unmeaning superstition. The affinity between the different systems of paganism rests on irrefutable proof.[25] This affinity points to a common origin. The light of history directs us to Ægypt. The astronomical genius of that nation led them to symbolize their idols by the celestial signs. These idols were the deified memories of men. As to their individuality, we are assisted by certain resemblances in heathen theology to Mosaic scripture. This parallel may have been urged too closely and too fancifully; as by Huet, in his “Demonstratio Evangelica:” who affirms that all the deities of the Ægyptians, Indians, Americans, Greeks, and Italians, are only Moses in disguise; and by Theophilus Gale, in his “Court of the Gentiles;” who draws a parallel between the god Pan, and the Messias, Abel, and Israel; and who derives not only both the mythic or fabulous, and the physical theology of the heathens, but all human letters and sciences from the Hebrew language and scriptures, and the philosophies of Joseph, Moses, and Solomon. Mistakes may have arisen from trusting too much to a specious analogy; as where Tubal-cain, the artificer of brass and iron, is identified with Vulcan.[26] The conjectures of Hebraic etymologists, also, as of Bochart, in the Phaleg and Canaan of his Geographia sacra, must be acknowledged to be often vague and inconclusive. But so plain are the general traces of corrupted scripture-history, that Celsus, in his books against the Christians, attacks the biblical records as plagiarisms from the pagan mythology; and asserts that Paradise is borrowed from the gardens of Alcinous, and the flood of Noah from that of Deucalion; which Origen refutes by the greater antiquity of the Jewish traditions.