Although the God of the most ancient people was a dual Unity, in
later ages it came to be worshipped as a Trinity. When mankind
began to speculate on the origin of the life principle, they came
to worship their Deity in its three capacities as Creator,
Preserver, and Destroyer or Regenerator, each of which was female
and male. We have observed that, according to Higgins, when this
Trinity was spoken of collectively, it was called after the
feminine plural.

By the various writers who have dealt with this subject during
the last century, much surprise has been manifested over the fact
that for untold ages the people of the earth have worshipped a
Trinity. Forster, in his Sketches of Hindoo Mythology, says:
"One circumstance which forcibly struck my attention was the
Hindoo belief of a Trinity."

Maurice, in his Indian Antiquities, observes that the idea of
three persons in the Deity was diffused amongst all the nations
of the earth, in regions as distant as Japan and Peru, that it
was memorially acknowledged throughout the whole extent of Egypt
and India, "flourishing with equal vigor amidst the snowy
mountains of Thibet, and the vast deserts of Siberia." The idea
of a Trinity is supposed to have been first elaborated on the
banks of the Indus, whence it was carried to the Greek and Latin
nations. Astrologically the triune Deity of the ancients
portrayed the processes of Nature.

This recondite doctrine as understood by the very ancient people
which originated it, involved a knowledge of Nature far too deep
to be appreciated or understood by their degenerate descendants,