As men rarely form precise ideas, and still less express them with precision, we call the Gentiles, and still more the Polytheists, idolaters. An immense number of volumes have been written in order to develop the various opinions upon the origin of the worship rendered to the deity. This multitude of books and opinions proves nothing, except ignorance. It is not known who invented coats, shoes, and stockings, and yet we would know who invented idols. What signifies a passage of Sanchoniathon, who lived before the battle of Troy? What does he teach us when he says that _Chaos_--the spirit, that is to say, the breath--in love with his principles, draws the veil from it, which renders the air luminous; that the wind _Colp_, and his wife _Bau_, engendered _Eon_; that _Eon_ engendered _Genos_, that _Chronos_, their descendant, had two eyes behind as well as before; that he became a god, and that he gave Egypt to his son _Thaut_? Such is one of the most respectable monuments of antiquity. Orpheus will teach us no more in his "Theogony," than Damasius has preserved to us. He represents the principles of the world under the figure of a dragon with two heads, the one of a bull, the other of a lion; a face in the middle, which he calls the face of God, and golden wings to his shoulders. But, from these fantastic ideas may be drawn two great truths--the one that sensible images and hieroglyphics are of the remotest antiquity; the other that all the ancient philosophers have recognized a First Principle.