Monde Primitif: Volume 4
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Adams#: Adams 60.1 v.4 Title: Monde primitif : analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne ...
Author: Court de Gébelin, Antoine
Page: title page [3]
John Adams
Page: viij
See Dupuis.
Page: x
Glory to Louis XVI and Maurepas.
Virginia Bible?
Page: xij
Bryant
Page: xxj
Saliva of vast importance in oratory as well as digestion!
Page: 2
See Bryant and Dupuis.
Page: 7
Court! Thou art as great an etymologist as Bryant.
Page: 11
Older than the first Chaldeans!!!
Somewhat paradoxical, this!
Page: 12
Poor Livy!
Page: 51
Curious.
Page: 56
Phallus. I blush to write this word: but the meaning of it is so important in all ancient religions that it cannot be omitted.
Page: 60
Pertinent questions.
Anterior to Egyptian idolatry. A very high antiquity. These epithets "Remote" and "High" are very indeterminate. How remote? How distant? How high? Who is the first writer? What is the first book, record or memoir in which the zodiac is mentioned or implied? Search! Do though hunt, for this rare game!
Page: 69
How extensive!
Khow. The milkmaids at Paddington call "Kiow" still.
Page: 70
All hieroglyphics.
Page: 81
What antiquity?
Page: 125
Very curious!
How simple it is to suppose a shake, a jog, a jerk in the solar system! Nothing easier. Divine power has no limits. What, though it distort the whole plan, or even disarrange the universe?
Page: 135
Chaldeans and Dr.Halley agree.
Page: 142
Very ancient.
Page: 143
Europe was to Asia what America is to Europe in science.
Page: 187
A chapter of absurd superstitions ancient and modern.
Page: 188
Shameful follies.
Page: 189
Pernicious weakness.
Gross stupidity.
Page: 193
Is this a conundrum? Or what?
Page: 196
The sottises of fellow creatures! How rich a pasture for lean cattle!
Page: 197
Total eclipses terrible even in 1806 to the people.
Page: 201
Our cattle show in 1817 will do the same.
Page: 202
Caverns, dens, caves, vaults, cellars, subterranean arches.
Page: 205
Apes make water 12 times a day. Q.
Page: 214
Birth and death of the sun. See Dupuis.
Page: 215
This fear of speaking clearly is a formidable power in society. It is the most humble servant and most trusty instrument of tyranny.
Page: 216
Voltaire, one of the brightest minds of the age.
Page: 217
To encourage, not intimidate.
Page: 220
A curious chicanery.
Page: 221
Sacred ceremonies common to pagans, Jews, and Christians and sometimes fatal to all.
Page: 222
What a crew of monkish drones!
Page: 223
Too charitable.
Page: 227
A memorable history surely in heaven and on Earth!
Difficult to explain! Aye! And not less to believe.
Page: 234
Court! Thy description is grand, doctrine is unsound.
Page: 235
Romans threw 30 giants in the Tiber on Mercury's day.
Why?
Page: 236
Ovid. Very amusing.
Poor Tiber was as ignorant as Ovid.
Page: 238
Glorious conquest indeed!
Page: 241
Admirable.
Page: 244
Such politicians in all ages have adapted ancient customs to their own purposes.
Page: 245
Were not these people sincere believers? They knew no better. Will they be punished for their invincible ignorance?
Page: 250
Ancient festivals made Mahometan most wonderfully. How unenlightened in religion and philosophy is this globe to this day! Will our missionaries increase the light? Are they more enlightened themselves?
Page: 251
Christianization of the Festival of Eggs.
Mahometization of the Festival of Eggs.
Page: 255
A millennium promised very early.
They might as well have let the universe alone. The το πάν was too large for their grasp or ours. It is a very grand and beautiful thing we all know. Let us enjoy it. Be just and fear not.
Page: 256
This egg has never been forgotten.
Page: 259
Not fables but allegories.
Page: 262
See Ocellus and Timaeus.
Begging pardon, Court, the allegory appears almost as nonsensical as the history.
Is it possible that the ancients, philosophers, priests or legislators could ever have all this learned lumber in their heads?
Page: 264
Feast of the dead!
Page: 265
Very curious and very silly. But I have been foolish enough to erect a new monument in place of an old one to my great grandfather. October 1817. Why should I, then, censure the Romans?
Page: 267
Ignorant.
Page: 270
See Sir William Jones on the gods of Greece, Italy, and India. Vol. 3 p.319 and on.
Page: 273
The sun sailed in a vessel. Emblem of Rome. Bryant would say the Ark.
Est are anni. Well enough for the subject.
Page: 274
Laughable.
Lamentable.
Page: 275
Ovid in his Fasti was a kind of Bollandus writing his "Acta Sanctorum." Which calendar was most ridiculously crowded?
Page: 276
The modern Romans have in their calendar a feast of Saint Anna Perenna.
Page: 281
Spiritualized the ancient feasts! Very piously, no doubt, Court!
Page: 289
Agriculture first destroyed equality. Force and address, however, had made inequalities enough long before.
No universal suffrage, it seems. No sans culotte governments.
Page: 291
Harvest home, very natural. So are husking frolics and quilting frolics too.
Page: 292
Oh! for another Hercules in Spain!
See Sir W. Jones
Page: 296
Better to have eaten them.
Page: 297
A little dancing would do no harm to our clergy.
Page: 303
Hobgoblin in black skins. Some knavish priest, to introduce a lucrative superstition.
The Sable Priest must have been learned as well as cunning.
Water for Purification. Moral however. So moral that one would be almost tempted to forgive the grizzly Villain.
Page: 308
Very pretty.
Religion is not the invention of priests or politicians. The fear of God and the hope of a future life spring from the heart of man.
Page: 310
How charming! How benevolent! How patriotic! How pious!
Page: 316
Plutarch! Thou art a Boeotian wizard! Theism is as ancient as the universe!
Page: 317
Very true. More rational than Plutarch.
Page: 319
What stuff! What trash! What chaff! What nonsense!
Such unintelligible monkeries seem to have been from the beginning. It is to be hoped they will not continue forever.
Page: 320
Court! No man will dispute your ingenuity. Be it then agriculture, if you will. But it is only nonsense heaped upon nonsense like Pelion upon Ossa.
See Dupuis upon mysteries. Of all theatrical impostors, the priests were the most sublime and profound. What lurid scenery! What terror, what horror! What vast expense! Which the poor dupes the people were gulled to pay!
Page: 323
Very modest, friend Court; and with great reason.
Attention.
Page: 324
What can be better than this unity, self existence, creation, providence, invisible, omniscient.
Page: 334
A very precious chapter.
Page: 338
Pleasure grounds, delicious gardens, enchanting groves and shrubberies; quite a Mahometan paradise. Very politic!
Page: 339
Morality and sound policy, the end of all. How pleasing the thought. But why, all this pomp, deceit and expense, which led to such horrible abuses?
Page: 341
"The charming philosophical tale of Psyche, or the progress of the soul; than which to my taste a more beautiful, sublime, and well supported allegory, was never produced by the Wisdom and Ingenuity of Man." This is high praise from a high character.
See Sir W. Jones's Works V.3. p.332.
An ingenious allegory of the progress of the human soul towards perfection by the means of divine love founded on the hope of immortality. Gebelin.
Page: 342
The corrupt mysteries of the priests of Cybele a contrast to the pure ceremonies of Isis.
Page: 349
What is Agnus Castus? and Pulicaire?
Page: 362
Whimsical.
Page: 363
Procession astonishing indeed!
Page: 365
A most curious section this.
Page: 372
I shall pass over the following long catalogues of festivals, Roman Latin etc. for the present to the third book p.459
Page: 465
See Dupuis.
Page: 466
Homer's Eolie does not strike me like Claudian's Cavern and Mother of Ages.
Page: 467
Homer's Fables are too much studied.
Page: 472
Pausanias's penetration!
Page: 479
See Jones Bryant, Farmer and Dupuis and compare them.
Page: 504
All this is good.
Page: 507
History of the phallus droll enough.
Page: 511
Phallus again.
Page: 516
Pious moral will.
Page: 535
A false principle.
A false fact.
Page: 536
See Ocellus, Timeus, and Plato, and Priestley's early opinion!
Osiris the sun, the emblem of agriculture, the good principle, God the good who by his λογος his ideas, his intelligence, wrought matter into form and order and produced this grand and elegant world. Not perfect, however, because matter, which was also eternal and necessarily existent as well as form, was not capable of perfection. These metaphysics and this theology appear to be as ancient as Chaldea and India.
Page: 545
A wonderful song, a magazine of mythology, Egyptian, Phrygian, Greek and Roman, Chaldean, Indian and All.
See Dupuis. Passim.
Page: 546
See Dupuis.