Produced by Steven Gibbs, Christine P. Travers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained. Some printed caracters could not be reproduce in this file and have been described [TN: description].] THE TEMPLE OF NATURE; OR, THE ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. T. Bensley, Printer, Bolt Court, Fleet Street, London. THE TEMPLE OF NATURE; OR, THE ORIGIN OF SOCIETY: A POEM, WITH PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES. BY ERASMUS DARWIN, M.D. F.R.S. AUTHOR OF THE BOTANIC GARDEN, OF ZOONOMIA, AND OF PHYTOLOGIA. Unde hominum pecudumque genus, vitaeque volantum, Et quae marmoreo fert monstra sub aequore pontus? Igneus est illis vigor, & caelestis origo. VIRG. AEn. VI. 728. LONDON: PRINTED FOR J. JOHNSON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, BY T. BENSLEY, BOLT COURT, FLEET STREET. 1803. PREFACE. The Poem, which is here offered to the Public, does not pretend to instruct by deep researches of reasoning; its aim is simply to amuse by bringing distinctly to the imagination the beautiful and sublime images of the operations of Nature in the order, as the Author believes, in which the progressive course of time presented them. The Deities of Egypt, and afterwards of Greece, and Rome, were derived from men famous in those early times, as in the ages of hunting, pasturage, and agriculture. The histories of some of their actions recorded in Scripture, or celebrated in the heathen mythology, are introduced, as the Author hopes, without impropriety into his account of those remote periods of human society. In the Eleusinian mysteries the philosophy of the works of Nature, with the origin and progress of society, are believed to have been taught by allegoric scenery explained by the Hierophant to the initiated, which gave rise to the machinery of the following Poem. PRIORY NEAR DERBY, Jan. 1, 1802. ORIGIN OF SOCIETY. CANTO I. PRODUCTION OF LIFE. CONTENTS.