2. Exilian Period. This is of great interest to the
sin. hnt of the Bible, in consequence of the influence
which the Babylonian philosophy exerted on the opiu-
PHILOSOPHY
139
PHILOSOPHY
ions and manner of thinking of the Israelites during their captivity in Babylon — an influence of a general and decided character, which the rabbins themselves admit, in alleging that the names of the angels and of the months were derived by the house of Israel from Babylon (Rosh Uashanah, p. 56). The system of opin- ion and manner of thinking which the captives met with in Babylon cannot be characterized exclusively as Ghaldsean, but was made up of elements whose birth- place was in various parts of the East, and which ap- pear to have found in Babylon a not uncongenial soil, where they grew and produced fruit which coalesced into one general sYstem. Of these elements the two principal were the Ghaldsean and the Medo-Persian or Zoroastrian. It is to the first that the reader's atten- tion is invited in this article.
The Chaldseans, who lived in a climate where the rays of the sun are never darkened, and the night is al- ways clear and bright by means of the light of the moon and stars, were led to believe that light was the soul of nature. Accordingly it was by the light of the sun and stars that the universal spirit brought forth all things; and therefore the Chaldseans offered their hom- age to the Supreme Being in the heavenly bodies, where he appeared to them in a special manner to dwell. As the stars form separate bodies, imagination represented them as distinct existences, which had each their peculiar functions, and exerted a separate influence in bringing forth the productions of nature. The idea of a universal spirit disappeared, as being too abstract for the people, and not without difficulty for cultivated minds; and worship was offered to the stars as so many powers that governed the world. It is easy to see how the Chaldseans passed from this early cor- ruption of the primitive religion of the Bible to a low and degrading polytheism.
As light was regarded as the only moving power of nature, and every star had its own influence, so natural phenomena appeared the result of the particular influ- ence of that heavenly body which at any given time was above the horizon; and the Chaldaean philosophers believed that they found the cause of events in its po- sition, and the means of foretelling events in its move- ments. These views, and perhap.-. the extraordinary heat and the pestilential winds which in certain months prevail in the country, and against which there is no protection except in the hills, led the Chaldseans to the mountains which gird the land. On these observato- ries, which nature seems to have expressly formed for the purpose, they studied the positions and movements of the heavenly host. They thought they saw that similar phenomena were constantly accompanied by the same conjunction of the stars, which seemed to observe regular movements and a similar course. On this the Ghaldsean priests came to the conviction that natural events are bound together, and that sacrifices do not interrupt their course; that they all have a common origin, which works according to unknown principles and laws, whose discovery is so important as to deserve their best attention. The heavenly bodies themselves are obedient to these laws; their formation, position, and influence are consequences of these universal laws, by which nature was controlled. This determined the Chaldseans to seek in the heavens the knowledge of the original cause which created the world, and of the lav/s which that cause followed in the formation of things and in the production of phenomena, since in the heav- ens dwelt the power which brings all things forth.
The stars were masses of light; the space which held them were filled with light ; no other power appeared to operate therein: accordingly the Chaldseans held light to be the moving power which had produced the stars. It could not be doubted that this power pos- sessed intelligence, and the operations of the mind ap- pear to have so much resemblance to the subtlety and fleetness of light that men who had only imagination for their guide had no hesitation to represent intelli-
gence as a property of light, and the universal spirit of highest intelligence as light itself. The observations of the Chaldaeans had taught them that the distances of the stars from the earth are unequal, and that light decreases in its approach to the earth, on which they concluded that light streams forth from an endless foun- tain far removed from the earth, in doing which it fills space with its beams, and forms the heavenly bodies in different positions and of different magnitudes. The creative spirit was therefore set forth by them under the image of an eternal, inexhaustible fountain of light; they thought this fountain was to the universe what the sun is to the regions lighted and warmed by his beams.
As light becomes less in propagating itself, its foun- tain must be of an inconceivable subtlety and purity, and, accordingly, in its loftiest condition, intelligent. As its beams are removed from their source they lose their activity, and by the gradual waning of their influ- ence sink from their original perfection ; they therefore produced different existences and intelligences, in pro- portion as they became more distant from the fountain of light ; at last, passing from one element into another, they lost their lightness, were pressed together, and made dense, till they became corporeal, and produced chaos. There accordingly was between the Supreme Being and the earth a chain of intermediate existences, whose perfections decreased as they were more remote from the First Great Cause. This Supreme Being had communicated in a distinguished degree his primary radiations, intelligence, power, productiveness ; all other emanations had, in proportion to their distance from the highest intelligence, a less and less share in these per- fections; and thus were the different regions of light, from the moon to the dwelling-place of the Supreme, filled with various orders of spirits.