Issued under the direction of the Department of No. 1. The Ethical Significance of Feeling, Pleasure, No. 2. The Dualism of Fact and Idea in Its Social Im- No. 3. Some Phases in the Development of the Subjective No. 4. The Respective Standpoints of Psychology and No. 5. The Relation of Inference to Fact in Mill's Logic. No. 6. The Woman Movement from the Point of View No. 7. The Origin of Subjectivity in Hindu Thought. No. 8. The Nature of the Relationship between Ethics $.54 .53 .54 .54 .53 .54 .54 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS 5832 ELLIS AVENUE CHICAGO, ILLINOIS STONEHENGE, Trilithons (B and C) from the South West. (From Stonehenge, Tursachan and Cromlechs, by Col. Sir Henry James. 1867.) Frontispiece to The Open Court. A MONTHLY MAGAZINE Devoted to the Science of Religion, the Religion of Science, and the Extension of the Religious Parliament Idea. VOL. XXXV (No. 3) MARCH, 1921 Copyrigh by The Open Court Publishing Company, 1921. NO. 778 THE AFFINITY OF DRUIDISM WITH OTHER RELIGIONS. THE BY DUDLEY WRIGHT. HE Druidical religion and philosophy were so like to the Pythagorean system that some writers have arrived at the conclusion that the one was borrowed or adapted from the other, but the borrower is assumed generally to be Pythagoras and not the Druids. Dr. Abraham Rees, in his Cyclopædia, is of opinion that Pythagoras himself learned and adopted some of the opinions of the Bards, and imparted to these some of his own thoughts and discoveries. Milton states that: "the studies of learning in the deepest sciences have been so eminent among us that writers of good antiquity have been persuaded that even the school of Pythagoras and the Persian wisdom took beginning from the philosophy of this island." Borlase, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, expresses the belief that long before Greece could boast of her wise men, Britain was famous for learning, philosophy, and wisdom, and that the Greek philosophers were really beholden to our Bards whom they copied in many particulars. In the opinion of Toland, no heathen priesthood ever attained the perfection of the Druidical, which he describes as being "far more exquisite than any other system, as having been much better calculated to beget ignorance and an implicit disposition in the people, no less than to procure power and profit to the priests." Both the Druidic and Pythagorean alphabets were Etruscan in character. The three Orders of Druidism correspond to the three Orders of Pythagorics, Pythagoreans, and Pythagorists. Each cultivated the study of theosophy, metaphysics, ethics, physics, th magnitude and form of the earth, the motions of the heavens and stars, medicine and magic. Pythagoras enjoined the rule of con |