DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7416#0038
28
of the Latians.1 The licentious imaginations of the poets gave
a progenitor even to the personification of the supreme boundary
oiipctvog; which progenitor, they called AKMflN, the indefatiga-
ble ;| ia title by which they seem to have meant perpetual motion,
the primary attribute of the primary Being.3
39- The allegory of Eftmg or Saturn devouring his own children
seems to allude to the rapid succession of creation and destruction
before the world had acquired a permanent constitution ; after
which Time only swallowed the stone : that is, exerted its destroy-
ing influence upon brute matter; the generative spirit, or vital
principle of order and renovation, being beyond its reach.; In con-
junction with the Earth, he is said to have cut off the genitals of his
father, Heaven ;4 an allegory, which evidently signifies that Time,
in operating: upon Matter, exhausted the generative powers of
Heaven; so that no new beings were created.
40. The notion of the supreme Being having parents, though
employed by the poets to embellish their wild theogonies, seems
to have arisen from the excessive refinement of metaphysical theo-
logy : a Being purely mental and absolutely immaterial, having no
sensible quality, such as form, consistence, or extension, can only
exist, according to our limited notions of existence, in the modes
of his own action, or as a mere abstract principle of motion. These
modes of action, being turned into eternal attributes, and personi-
fied into distinct personages, Time and Matter, the means of
their existing, might, upon the same principle of personification,
be turned into the parents of the Being to which they belong.
Such refinement may, perhaps, seem inconsistent with the sim-
plicity of the early ages : but we shall find, by tracing them to
their source, that many of the gross fictions, which exercised the
1 Dc Lingua Latina, lib. iv. s. 10.
1 AKa/iaros, aica/iav, aic/iav, &c.
3 See Phurnut. de Nat. Deor. c. 1;
* Hesiod. Theog. 100.
of the Latians.1 The licentious imaginations of the poets gave
a progenitor even to the personification of the supreme boundary
oiipctvog; which progenitor, they called AKMflN, the indefatiga-
ble ;| ia title by which they seem to have meant perpetual motion,
the primary attribute of the primary Being.3
39- The allegory of Eftmg or Saturn devouring his own children
seems to allude to the rapid succession of creation and destruction
before the world had acquired a permanent constitution ; after
which Time only swallowed the stone : that is, exerted its destroy-
ing influence upon brute matter; the generative spirit, or vital
principle of order and renovation, being beyond its reach.; In con-
junction with the Earth, he is said to have cut off the genitals of his
father, Heaven ;4 an allegory, which evidently signifies that Time,
in operating: upon Matter, exhausted the generative powers of
Heaven; so that no new beings were created.
40. The notion of the supreme Being having parents, though
employed by the poets to embellish their wild theogonies, seems
to have arisen from the excessive refinement of metaphysical theo-
logy : a Being purely mental and absolutely immaterial, having no
sensible quality, such as form, consistence, or extension, can only
exist, according to our limited notions of existence, in the modes
of his own action, or as a mere abstract principle of motion. These
modes of action, being turned into eternal attributes, and personi-
fied into distinct personages, Time and Matter, the means of
their existing, might, upon the same principle of personification,
be turned into the parents of the Being to which they belong.
Such refinement may, perhaps, seem inconsistent with the sim-
plicity of the early ages : but we shall find, by tracing them to
their source, that many of the gross fictions, which exercised the
1 Dc Lingua Latina, lib. iv. s. 10.
1 AKa/iaros, aica/iav, aic/iav, &c.
3 See Phurnut. de Nat. Deor. c. 1;
* Hesiod. Theog. 100.