to a daughter as resplendent as herself, who will go in the same
path formerly trodden by her mother.

The doctrines of the Gothic philosophers, as they appear in the
Eddas, concerning the eternity of matter, the renewal or
succession of worlds, and reincarnation are the same as those
taught by Pythagoras, the Stoics, and other Greek schools of
thought.

Brahme or Vishnu, resting on the bottom of the sea--a goddess
who was symbolized by the self-generating lotus--was in later
ages the mysterious Cow of the Goths.

After the natural truths concealed beneath their religious
symbolism were wholly forgotten, and human nature through the
over-stimulation of the animal instincts had become corrupted,
Adam and Eve, names which doubtless for ages represented the two
fecundating principles throughout Nature, with their sons, Cain,
Abel, and Seth, comprehended the god-idea. The fact has been
observed that just six hundred years from the creation of Adam,
or at the close of the cycle, Noah appears with his three sons to
save or perpetuate the race.

It is now believed that this account of Noah and his three sons
is an allegory beneath which are concealed the religious
doctrines, or perhaps I should say, the philosophical
speculations of an older race. The God of the ancients was
identified with the life of man individually and with that of
mankind collectively. As men die each day, and as every day men
are born, this Deity is said to die and to be renewed each day;