TO HENRY COLMAN. - John Adams, The Works of John Adams, vol. 10 (Letters 1811-1825, Indexes) [1854]
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The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations, by his Grandson Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1856). 10 volumes. Vol. 10.
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TO HENRY COLMAN.
Quincy, 13 June, 1817.
When I have heard you say, and you have repeatedly said it to me, that you were determined to read “The Origin of all Worships,” I certainly sympathized with you; but whether that sympathy had in it more of congratulation or of compassion, I cannot say.
When you have once read Dupuis, you will find yourself irresistibly impelled to read Court de Gebelin’s Primitive World, and then Bryant’s Analysis of Ancient Mythology, and then Sir William Jones’s works, and then Herodotus, and all the Greek historians, and then over again your Eustace, and Simond, and last, not least, Hugh Farmer’s four volumes, containing all his works, namely, his Temptation and his Worship of Human Spirits, his Miracles, and his Demons. To these you will wish to add Sir John Malcolm’s recent History of Persia, and the millions of authorities quoted by all these writers.
And, when you shall have done all this, you will find yourself precisely where you are now, an adorer of the Christian religion in its purity, mourning over the knavery and folly of your species, and, above all, deploring the corruptions and heathenish superstitions and idolatries introduced into the religion of Jesus by his professed disciples and “most holy priests.”
Were your life as useless as mine, which, I am confident, it never can be, you might waste your time, as I have done agreeably enough, in these enigmatical amusements. It is curions that Gebelin, Bryant, Jones, and Dupuis, and Farmer should have composed their systems without any knowledge of each other. Had they been united in a council, they might have been agreed; for, it seems to me, that a consistent plan might be extracted from them all, compared together.
That you may be long continued in your benevolent studies and labors, is the prayer of your friend.
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