neous (like) units are differently situated in relation to an incident force? If an incident force produces in like units motion like in quantity and direction, how can it ever make the homogeneous, heterogeneous? Yet only from motion, like in quantity and direction, both, can there follow "local integration" or "segregation." If the law of the instability of the homogeneous holds, segregation can never result, for it contradicts that law.

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Further, segregation must, we are told, ultimately result in equilibration." "All motion is motion under resistance," and must finally come to an end.1

This argument, too, has its peculiar fallacy. It is given as an à priori proof, deduced from the law of persistence. But whence comes the principle that all motion must be motion under resistance? From experience! Based on a fact, inferred from "experience of muscular tension." Equilibration is given us as a law of the universe, "admitting of à priori proof!"2 That is, a principle established by induction is assumed as if deductively proved.

We have reached an equilibrium. Are we at the end, in eternal, universal quiescence? By no means. Evolution was integration. In integration motion was dissipated. That motion has been lurking in some unknown place called the "environment," awaiting the nod of the system-builder. It comes back now, assails this equilibrium, disturbs its stability and brings on the process of dissolution. "Action and reaction being equal and opposite, the momentum, producing dispersion, must be as great as the momentum acquired by aggregation." So the universe is again reduced to the nebulous form, from which it starts anew in the process of evolution. Thus we have "alternate eras of evolution and dissolution" throughout all eternity.

These are the "first principles " of Spencer's philosophy the fundamental data of consciousness implied-the à priori laws of the universe deduced - which make up the mould of general philosophy," through which each "special philoso

1 p. 515.

2 p. 514.

8 p. 535.

phy" is to be run. What shall we say of such "first principles"? What can we say of them, but that, by their very self-contradictions they are condemned? To be self-consistent the evolutionist must deny the possibility of an à priori philosophy. If he affirms it, either his philosophy will destroy his evolution, or his evolution will destroy his philosophy. Spencer would save his theory of evolution, and the consequence is, that all his attempts at deductive proof constitute a mass of inconsistencies. They are not the production of a mind which starts from itself and works outward, but rather of a mind which, working backward, strives in vain to reconcile the postulates dictated by a predetermined conclusion with the primary postulates of consciousness.

If we were compelled to accept the theory of evolution as philosophy, we would rather go back twenty-four hundred years, and accept it in its simpler form. Spencer adds almost nothing new to the principles of the Ionian mechanicist. But the Tò ǎTepov of Anaximander is more philosophical than the nebulous matter of Spencer. The voûs of Anaxagoras more consistent with the necessary laws of thought, than Spencer's "unknowable force."

Rather than attend, with Spencer, the "redistribution of matter and motion," we would take our stand with the Grecian evolutionists, and affirm, that "intelligence is of all things, the subtlest and purest, and has entire knowledge of all. It knows all things, both those that are mixed and those that are separated; and the things which ought to be, and the things which were, and those which will be, all are arranged by Intelligence."

1

ARTICLE V.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE MOSAIC AND PAGAN

SACRIFICES.1

A COMPARISON of the Mosaic ritual with pagan superstitions, with particular reference to the subject of sacrifices, would seem to promise some aid towards a more correct view of the import of Jewish sacrifices. In entering, as it is now proposed to do, on such a comparison, one has to lament that the materials for it are not more abundant; or rather, that they do not exist in such a form that the most advantageous use can be made of them. Without promising, however, any thing like a complete description of the almost endlessly diverse and complicated systems of pagan worship, we will venture on this comparison.

The idea of sacrifice seems to be more prominent, and to have assumed a more precise and definite shape, among the Hindoos than among any other Oriental people. The Hindoo worship is rich in sacrificial rites to an almost unexampled degree; but we are spared the necessity of an enumeration and comparison of the nearly countless parts of this ritual, by the fact that one species of sacrifice in use among the Hindoos has a prominence superior to all others; so much so, as to render a reference to these others superfluous. The sacrifice we have now in view, is that one which is spoken of in the religious books of the Hindoos as the king of sacrifices, and to which they give the name of Aswamehda, or sacrifice of horses. All others rank as subordinate to this, are of altogether inferior importance and efficacy. It may, therefore,

1 Bähr's Symbolik, Vol. ii. pp. 217-268, has furnished the material for this Article, and it is hoped that no reader will fail to observe that Bähr alone is responsible for the theories set forth in it. As some inconvenience has already been occasioned by the forgetfulness of this fact, special attention to it is now asked.

be justly supposed to embody in itself, in the purest and most complete form, the Hindoo conception of sacrifice. It is consequently a matter of special moment to gain, if possible, a proper idea of its nature.

We are fortunately not left to gather the nature and import of this sacrifice by inference from the ritual with which it is connected. On the contrary, we find in the sacred books of the Hindoos positive statements in regard to it, sufficiently ample and explicit to remove all ambiguity.

According to the sacred books, then, the horse, which in the Aswamehda is offered in sacrifice, is the Viradsch, that is, the life principle pervading the whole universe, and in which the Divine Being reveals himself. For this reason the name Viradsch is sometimes translated, as, for instance, by Von Hanmer, "the universally revealed original Being.' Every part of the horse symbolizes some particular component of the world as existing in space and time. The head is the symbol of the morning; the eye, of the sun; the open mouth represents fire, or the natural heat which pervades the whole. world; the breath is the symbol of the atmosphere; the body, considered as a whole, of the year; the individual limbs are the months; the feet are the sign of day and night; the bones of the fixed stars; while the neighing of the horse is the symbol of human speech. In the sacrifice of the horse, the gushing forth of the blood was meant to signify the development of the divine life-principle, the manifestation of the Divine Being in the creation, the giving to the world his own life; in other words, a revelation of the Divine Being. This sacrifice, then, may be regarded as a symbolical representation of the cosmogony.

In agreement with this statement, we find the creation of the world set forth in the Hindoo books as a sacrifice, in which each of the gods takes part, and each receives as his share a portion of the sacrificed victim. The divinity, in the act of creation, completes himself; the ideal becomes the real; the divinity allows the unity of its essence to be divided, just as a sacrifice is divided, and to be distributed into as many por

tions as there are individuals to be created. Thus surrendering, as it were, the infinity of its own being in its manifestation under the form of a finite existence, the divinity may be said to sacrifice itself. The gods, by whose direct agency this sacrifice is performed, and who, as has been said, distribute among themselves the parts into which the victim, the original being, is divided, are the real finite existences, the individual substances of which the universe is made up.

According to Hindoo conceptions, therefore, as may be plainly enough inferred from what has just been said, the origin and first appointment of sacrifices are to be traced to Brahma, who, in the original act of creation, gave the first example of sacrifice. In the religious pictures and sculptures of the Hindoos, Brahma is represented in the act of sacrificing; his wife, Sarasvati, the personified wisdom of the world, by whom its various parts are skilfully adjusted to each other, aids in the service. With a similar significance, life is sometimes. represented as issuing forth from Siva; that is to say, Siva is sacrificing himself. The libations which accompanied the great sacrifice already described, were meant to be symbolical of this same act. The Hindoos, then, as we judge, regarded sacrifice, on the one hand, as the passing of the universal life into the individual and finite; and on the other hand, as the absorption of the individual into the universal life, the original ground of all being. The finite, in thus surrendering its life to the divinity, does, in that very act, and in the highest possible sense, receive life. The original ground of all being then only attains to an actual existence when it produces finite beings, thus imparting to them a portion of itself; and the finite, when its existence in that form terminates, is only absorbed into the infinite, and in that change reaches the highest form of life of which it is capable. Hence men, animals, plants-whatever is used in sacrificedo, by virtue of that act, reach the highest possible form of existence. They thereby become identified with the gods.

It is not unworthy of special note here, that the sacrifice in which, as we have seen, the Hindoos are wont to represent