Origine de tous les cultes ou religion universelle

...finally, the eternal force that moves all of nature with an internal motion, similar to the motion that characterizes life. All these different Tableaux scenes or depictions, set before the eyes of man, formed the great and magnificent spectacle with which I surround him at the moment when I suppose he is about to create Gods for himself, or give that name to the eternal causes of the marvelous effects that are constantly reproduced before his eyes. I say that Nature herself had indicated them to him by speaking this picturesque language and by showing him these enchanting scenes. I then prove that he heard her, and that he was not mistaken about the omnipotence and the variety of these partial causes that compose the universal cause. To prove this, I have opened the books in which man has, since the highest antiquity, recorded his reflections on Nature, and I have shown that none of these scenes was forgotten. Therefore, this is what he sang, this is what he adored, and this is the meaning we must give to the learned allegories he provided as a sacred veil over all these scenes. I have shown that he was struck by the action of the Heavens upon the Earth, and by the relationships that united them to one another, and that he established in the universal cause the distinction between the passive cause and the active cause. This placed the Heavens and the Earth, Uranus the personification of the Sky and Ghe the personification of the Earth, at the head of all Cosmogonies narratives about the origin of the universe: this is the subject of my second Chapter. I provide the subdivision of these two great causes into their principal parts, from which arises the genealogy of the Gods, children of the first two causes, or of Heaven and Earth. This is the material of the third and fourth Chapters, in which I have reconstructed all ancient science, and especially sacred Astronomy. I also give an account of the principles according to which the active part is thought to modify and subdue the other. From the division of causes, I pass to that of principles, which are divided into the principle of Light and good, and the principle of Darkness and evil. This comprises the famous system of the two principles, God and the Devil, which forms the basis of all Religions. This is the subject of my fifth Chapter. The Universe being thus organized and subdivided into its principal parts, I give it a soul, which produces all its movements and which spreads activity and life into all the bodies where it manifests itself. This immense soul, being supremely intelligent,

becomes the source of a countless multitude of intelligences in all the active parts of Nature, which contribute to the universal action of the great Whole, a living, animated, and intelligent being: finally, a single God, who reunites all causes within himself and who contains all effects under his power. Man comes next, who, by abstractions of his mind, separates Divinity, intelligence, and life from the world, and from the world itself, to give birth to a God and an intellectual World. There my method ends, where Nature ends.

The system thus organized becomes the instrument that serves me to solve all sacred enigmas and to decompose all the monuments of religious worship of all Peoples.

I first test my method on the great Poems, whose remains compose the confused mass of Egyptian and Greek Mythology. The principal ones are the Poem of the labors of Hercules, of Theseus, of Jason; the journeys or travels of Bacchus, of Osiris, and of Isis, all of which are solar or lunar Poems, in which the Sun or the Moon are the heroes, and the Heavens are the theater. I then seek to recognize the Sun again under other forms and under other names, such as under those of Ammon, Pan, Apis, Omphis, Mnevis, Mithra, and Thor. In general, I find it under all the forms borrowed from the Ram, the Goat, or the Ox. I find it later in a more elegant form, clothed in all the graces of youth, under the names of Apollo, Adonis, Horus, and Arys. Then, degraded by time, it offers the beard of old age under the names of Serapis, Aesculapius, and Pluto, and then it is entwined with the mysterious Serpent, which brings back the Winters. I also examine the origin of the worship of Animals, Plants, and other sacred Symbols, and that of hieroglyphic Writing.

After this trial, which justifies the quality of my method by its success, I penetrate into the sanctuary of the Priests, and I pull back the veil under which they hid their mysteries. Here is a complete treatise on all mysteries in general, and another equally complete one on the Christian Religion.