And, in either stage, their curiosity and interest aroused by the phenomena around them--the credulous inventions of ignorance gave way to the eager explanations of philosophy.

Often, in the superstition of one age, lies the germe that ripens into the inquiry of the next.
XIII.

Pass we now to some examination of the general articles of faith among the Greeks; their sacrifices and rites of worship.
In all the more celebrated nations of the ancient world, we find established those twin elements of belief by which religion harmonizes and directs the social relations of life, viz., a faith in a future state, and in the providence of superior powers, who, surveying as judges the affairs of earth, punish the wicked and reward the good [41].

It has been plausibly conjectured that the fables of Elysium, the slow Cocytus, and the gloomy Hades, were either invented or allegorized from the names of Egyptian places.

Diodorus assures us that by the vast catacombs of Egypt, the dismal mansions of the dead-- were the temple and stream, both called Cocytus, the foul canal of Acheron, and the Elysian plains [42]; and, according to the same equivocal authority, the body of the dead was wafted across the waters by a pilot, termed Charon in the Egyptian tongue.