I. CHALDIEAN PHILOSOPHY. This is a subject of interest to the student of the Bible, in conse quence of the influence which the Babylonian philosophy exerted on the opinions 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 (Roth Hashanah, p. 56). The system of opinion and manner of thinking which the captives met with in Babylon cannot be characterised ex clusively as Chaldman, but was made up of elements whose birth-place was in various parts of the East, and which appear to have found in Babylon a not un congenial soil, where they grew and produced fruit which coalesced into one general system. Of these elements the two principal were the Chakixan and the Medo-Persian or Zoroastrian. It is to the first that the reader's attention is invited in this article.
The Chaldmans, who lived in a climate where the rays of the sun are never darkened, and the night is always 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 there fore the Chaldmans offered their homage 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 re presented 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 diffi culty 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 Chaldmans passed from this early corruption 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 par ticular influence of that heavenly body which at any given time was above the horizon ; and the Chaldman philosophers believed that they found the cause of events in its position, and the means of foretelling events in its movements. These views;and perhaps the extraordinary heat and the pestilential winds which in certain months prevail in the country, and against which there is no pro tection except in the hills, led the Chaldmans to the mountains which gird the land. On these obser
vatories, 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 Chaldxan 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, posi tion, and influence, are consequences of these uni versal laws, by which nature was controlled. This determined the Chaldxans to seek in the heavens the knowledge of the 'original cause which created the world, and of the laws which that cause fol lowed in the formation of things and in the pro duction of phenomena, since in the heavens dwelt the power which brings all things forth.
The stars were masses of light ; the space which held them was filled with light ; no other power appeared to operate therein : accordingly the Chal dreans held light to be the moving power which had produced the stars. It could not be doubted that this power possessed intelligence, and the operations of the mind appear 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 intelligence as a property of light, and the universal spirit or highest intelligence as light itself. The observations of the Chaldteans 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 fountain 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 there fore 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.