Onolatry ((Jr. woe, an ass. and Xarpiia, woishijii), a form of animal worship, of which there are obscure- traces in some ancient authors, chiefly as a slander ujion the Jews (Walch, De cultu usinino, Schleus. 1769). See Ass.
Ononiacritiis, a celebrated religious poet of an- cient Greece, lived at Athens in the time of tiie Pisis- tratidiE. He collected and expounded — according to Herodotus — the prophecies or oracles of Musieus ; but is said to have been banished from the citj' by Hip- parchus, about B.C. 516, on account of interpolating somctliing of his own in these oracles. He then, we are told, followed the Pisistratidaj into Persia, and while tliere was employed by them in a very dishonor- able way. They got him to repeat to Xerxes all the ancient sayings that seemed to favor his meditated in- vasion of Greece. Some critics, among whom is Aris- totle, have inferred from a passage in Patisanias that Onomacritus is the author of most of the so-called Or- phic hymns. More certain, however, is the view wliich represents him as the inveiitorof the great Orphic myth of Dionysus Zagreus, and the founder of Orphic religious societies and theology. Pausanias states tliat " (Ono- macritus established orgies in honor of Dionysus, and in his poems represented the Titans as the authors of the sufferings of Dionysus." See Miiller, Geschichte der Griech. IJferatur bis avf das Zeitalter Alexandei-'s (Breslau, 1841) ; Grote, History of Greece, etc. — Cham- bers.
Onqiienira, Isaac ben-Moses, a rabbi who lived in the house of Don Joseph Nasi at Constantinople about the middle of the 10th century, published iT^I^X nibj"Ii2, Terrible as Bannered Hosts, (with reference
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to the Song of Solomon vi, 4), an ethical poem, with an extensive "commentary (Constantinople, 1571; Berlin, 1701):— a twoluld commentary on Nachshon ben-Za- dok's work, no^X"! O, Revelator Arcanum (Constan- tinople, 156(3) :— he edited Don Joseph Nasi's rrniQ "(3 "DT^, a treatise written against such as disbelieve in religious philosophy, but believe in astrology (ibid. 1577) :_and a treatise written against the Christians. See Fiirst, Bihl. Jud. iii, 48; De Kossi, Bibliotheca Jitdaica Andchristidna, p. 41 sq. (I'arma, 1800); by the same author, Dizionai-io storico deijli autori Ebrei, p. 252 (Germ, transl. by Hamberger); Buxtorf, Bill, rahbinica, p. 170 ; Hottinger, Bibl. Orienialis, p. 22 ; Bartolocci, Bibliotheca magna rabbinica, iii, 889 ; Wolf, Bibl. Ilebr. i, 646 ; Griitz, Geschichle d. Juden, ix, 426 ; Wertheimer, Wieiie?- Jahrhuch, 1856; Jocher, Allge- vidiics Gdehrten-Lexikon, iii, 1077. (B. P.)
Ontology (from Greek ijv and Xoyoc;, i. e. the science ofbeiiHj) is, strictly speaking, a synonyme of metaphysics (q. v.), but neither the one name nor the other was used by Aristotle. He called the science now designated by them philosojyhia piima, and defined it as tTrnrTiifxr] rov ovrog ij ovtoq — Scientia Entis qualenus Entis — that is, the science of the essence of things ; the science of the attributes and conditions of being in general, not of being in any given circumstances, not as physical or mathematical, but as being.
The science of ontology is regarded as comprehend- ing investigations of every real existence, either beyond the sphere of the present world, or in any other way incapable of being the direct object of consciousness, or which can be deduced immediatelj' from the possession of certain feelings or principles and faculties of the hu- man soul (comp. Butler, Lectures on Ancient Philosophij, vol. ii). Watts thus defines it : " Ontology is a discourse of being in general, and the various or most universal modes or affections, as well as the several kinds or di- visions of it. The wotd being here includes not only whatsoever actually is, but whatsoever can be" (Cw Ontdlogij, ch. ii). The name ontology seems to have been first made current in philosophy by Wolf. He divided metaphysics into four parts : Ontology, psychol- ogy, rational cosmologj''. and theology. It was chietiy occupied with abstract intjuiries into possibility, neces- sity, and contingency, substance, accident, cause, etc., without reference to the laws of our intellect by which we are constrained to believe in them. Kant denied that we have any knowledge of substance or cause as really existing. But there is a science of principles and causes, of the principles of being and knowing. In this view of it, ontology corresjionds to metaphysics. Ontology may be treated of in two diiferent methods, according as its exponent is a believer in to uv or in Tu iJVTa, in one or in many fundamental princi|iles of things. In the former, all objects whatever are regard- ed as phenomenal modifications of one and the same substance, or as self-determined effects of one and the same cause. The necessary result of this method is to reduce all metaphysical philosophy to a rational the- ology, the one substance or cause being identified with the Ahsdlute or the Deity. According to the latter metiiod, which professes to treat of different classes of beings independently, metaphysics will contain three co-ordinate branches of inquiry— rational cosmology, rational psychology, and rational theology. The first aims at a knowledge of the real essence, as distinguish- ed from the phenomena of the material world ; the sec- ond discusses the nature and origin, as distinguished from the faculties and affections; the third aspires to comprehend (Jod himself, as cognizable « priori in his essential nature, apart from the indirect and relative indications furnished by his works, as in Natural The- ology (q. v.), or by his AVord, as in Revealed Religion (q. v.). These throe oljects of metaphysical inquirv — (iod, the world, the mind — correspond to Kant's three ideas of the Pure Reason ; and the object of his Kjttilc