and driven into the sea. According to the Gothic traditions as
recorded in the Eddas, there once existed a beautiful world,
which was destroyed by fire. Another was created, which, with
all its inhabitants save a giant and his three sons, who were
saved in a ship, were destroyed by water. With this triad, which
originally sprang from a mysterious cow, the new world began.
This new world, which represents the present system, will in time
be devoured by flames; but another earth will arise from the
ocean,--an earth far more beautiful than this, upon which all
kinds of grain and delicious fruits will grow without
cultivation. Veda and Vile will be there, for the conflagration
will have been powerless to destroy them. While the flames are
devouring all things, two human beings, a female and a male, will
be concealed under a hill, where they will feed upon dew, and
will propagate so abundantly that the earth will soon be peopled
with a new race of beings. During the catastrophe, the sun will
be devoured by a wolf, but before her death she will give birth
to a daughter as resplendent as herself, who will go in the same
path formerly trodden by her mother.
The doctrines of the Gothic philosophers, as they appear in the
Eddas, concerning the eternity of matter, the renewal or
succession of worlds, and reincarnation are the same as those
taught by Pythagoras, the Stoics, and other Greek schools of
thought.
Brahme or Vishnu, resting on the bottom of the sea--a goddess
who was symbolized by the self-generating lotus--was in later
ages the mysterious Cow of the Goths.
After the natural truths concealed beneath their religious
symbolism were wholly forgotten, and human nature through the
over-stimulation of the animal instincts had become corrupted,
Adam and Eve, names which doubtless for ages represented the two
fecundating principles throughout Nature, with their sons, Cain,
Abel, and Seth, comprehended the god-idea. The fact has been
observed that just six hundred years from the creation of Adam,
or at the close of the cycle, Noah appears with his three sons to
save or perpetuate the race.
It is now believed that this account of Noah and his three sons
is an allegory beneath which are concealed the religious
doctrines, or perhaps I should say, the philosophical
speculations of an older race. The God of the ancients was
