CHAPTER III.

DIGRESSION ON HINDU THEOLOGY AND EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

_Comparative Theology of India; its Phase of Sorcery; its

Anthropocentric Phase._

VEDAISM _the Contemplation of Matter, or Adoration of Nature,

set forth in the Vedas and Institutes of Menu.--The Universe

is God.--Transmutation of the World.--Doctrine of

Emanation.--Transmigration.--Absorption.--Penitential

Services.--Happiness in Absolute Quietude._

BUDDHISM _the Contemplation of Force.--The supreme impersonal

Power.--Nature of the World--of Man.--The Passage of every

thing to Nonentity.--Development of Buddhism into a vast

monastic System marked by intense Selfishness.--Its practical

Godlessness._

EGYPT _a mysterious Country to the old Europeans.--Its

History, great public Works, and foreign Relations.--Antiquity

of its Civilization and Art.--Its Philosophy, hieroglyphic

Literature, and peculiar Agriculture._

_Rise of Civilization in rainless Countries.--Geography,

Geology, and Topography of Egypt--The Inundations of the Nile

lead to Astronomy._

_Comparative Theology of Egypt.--Animal Worship, Star

Worship.--Impersonation of Divine Attributes--Pantheism.--The

Trinities of Egypt.--Incarnation.--Redemption.--Future

Judgment.--Trial of the Dead.--Rituals and Ceremonies._

At this stage of our examination of European intellectual development,

it will be proper to consider briefly two foreign influences--Indian and

Egyptian--which affected it.

[Sidenote: Of Hindu philosophy.]

From the relations existing between the Hindu and European families, as

described in the preceding chapter, a comparison of their intellectual

progress presents no little interest. The movement of the elder branch

indicates the path through which the younger is travelling, and the goal

to which it tends. In the advanced condition under which we live we

notice Oriental ideas perpetually emerging in a fragmentary way from the

obscurities of modern metaphysics--they are the indications of an

intellectual phase through which the Indo-European mind must pass. And

when we consider the ready manner in which these ideas have been adopted

throughout China and the entire East, we may, perhaps, extend our

conclusion from the Indo-European family to the entire human race. From

this we may also infer how unphilosophical and vain is the expectation

of those who would attempt to restore the aged populations of Asia to

our state. Their intellectual condition has passed onward, never more to

return. It remains for them only to advance as far as they may in their

own line and to die, leaving their place to others of a different

constitution and of a renovated blood. In life there is no going back;

the morose old man can never resume the genial confidence of maturity;

the youth can never return to the idle and useless occupations, the

frivolous amusements of boyhood; even the boy is parted by a long step

from the innocent credulity of the nursery.

[Sidenote: The phase of sorcery, and anthropocentric phase.]

The earlier stages of the comparative theology of India are now

inaccessible. At a time so remote as to be altogether prehistoric the

phase of sorcery had been passed through. In the most ancient records

remaining the Hindu mind is dealing with anthropocentric conceptions,

not, however, so much of the physical as of the moral kind. Man had come

to the conclusion that his chief concern is with himself. "Thou wast

alone at the time of thy birth, thou wilt be alone in the moment of

death; alone thou must answer at the bar of the inexorable Judge."

[Sidenote: Comparative theology advances in two directions--Matter,

Force.]

[Sidenote: Vedaism contemplates matter, Buddhism force.]

From this point there are two well-marked steps of advance. The first

reaches the consideration of material nature; the second, which is very

grandly and severely philosophical, contemplates the universe under the

conceptions of space and force alone. The former is exemplified in the

Vedas and Institutes of Menu, the latter in Buddhism. In neither of

these stages do the ideas lie idle as mere abstractions; they introduce

a moral plan, and display a constructive power not equalled even by the

Italian papal system. They take charge not only of the individual, but

regulate society, and show their influence in accomplishing political

organizations, commanding our attention from their prodigious extent,

and venerable for their antiquity.

I shall, therefore, briefly refer, first, to the older, Vedaism, and

then to its successor, Buddhism.

[Sidenote: Vedaism is the adoration of Nature.]

Among a people possessing many varieties of climate, and familiar with

some of the grandest aspects of Nature--mountains the highest upon

earth, noble rivers, a vegetation incomparably luxuriant, periodical

rains, tempestuous monsoons, it is not surprising that there should have

been an admiration for the material, and a tendency to the worship of

Nature. These spectacles leave an indelible impression on the thoughts

of man, and, the more cultivated the mind, the more profoundly are they

appreciated.

[Sidenote: The Vedas and their doctrines.]

[Sidenote: The Veda doctrine of God,]

[Sidenote: and of the world.]

The Vedas, which are the Hindu Scriptures, and of which there are four,

the Rig, Yagust, Saman and Atharvan, are asserted to have been revealed

by Brahma. The fourth is, however, rejected by some authorities and

bears internal evidence of a later composition, at a time when

hierarchical power had become greatly consolidated. These works are

written in an obsolete Sanscrit, the parent of the more recent idiom.

They constitute the basis of an extensive literature, Upavedas, Angas,

&c., of connected works and commentaries. For the most part they consist

of hymns suitable for public and private occasions, prayers, precepts,

legends, and dogmas. The Rig, which is the oldest, is composed chiefly

of hymns, the other three of liturgical formulas. They are of different

periods and of various authorship, internal evidence seeming to indicate

that if the later were composed by priests, the earlier were the

production of military chieftains. They answer to a state of society

advanced from the nomad to the municipal condition. They are based upon

an acknowledgment of a universal Spirit pervading all things. Of this

God they therefore necessarily acknowledge the unity: "There is in truth

but one Deity, the Supreme Spirit, the Lord of the universe, whose work

is the universe." "The God above all gods, who created the earth, the

heavens, the waters." The world, thus considered as an emanation of God,

is therefore a part of him; it is kept in a visible state by his energy,

and would instantly disappear if that energy were for a moment

withdrawn. Even as it is, it is undergoing unceasing transformations,

every thing being in a transitory condition. The moment a given phase is

reached, it is departed from, or ceases. In these perpetual movements

the present can scarcely be said to have any existence, for as the Past

is ending the Future has begun.

[Sidenote: Its transformation.]

In such a never-ceasing career all material things are urged, their

forms continually changing, and returning as it were, through revolving

cycles to similar states. For this reason it is that we may regard our

earth, and the various celestial bodies, as having had a moment of

birth, as having a time of continuance, in which they are passing onward

to an inevitable destruction, and that after the lapse of countless ages

similar progresses will be made, and similar series of events will occur

again and again.

[Sidenote: It is the visi-semblance of God.]

But in this doctrine of universal transformation there is something more

than appears at first. The theology of India is underlaid with

Pantheism. "God is One because he is All." The Vedas, in speaking of the

relation of nature to God, make use of the expression that he is the

Material as well as the Cause of the universe, "the Clay as well as the

Potter." They convey the idea that while there is a pervading spirit

existing everywhere of the same nature as the soul of man, though

differing from it infinitely in degree, visible nature is essentially

and inseparably connected therewith; that as in man the body is

perpetually undergoing changes, perpetually decaying and being renewed,

or, as in the case of the whole human species, nations come into

existence and pass away, yet still there continues to exist what may be

termed the universal human mind, so for ever associated and for ever

connected are the material and the spiritual. And under this aspect we

must contemplate the Supreme Being, not merely as a presiding intellect,

but as illustrated by the parallel case of man, whose mental principle

shows no tokens except through its connexion with the body; so matter,

or nature, or the visible universe, is to be looked upon as the

corporeal manifestation of God.

[Sidenote: The nature of mundane changes.]

Secular changes taking place invisible objects, especially those of an

astronomical kind, thus stand as the gigantic counterparts both as to

space and time of the microscopic changes which we recognize as

occurring in the body of man. However, in adopting these views of the

relations of material nature and spirit, we must continually bear in

mind that matter "has no essence independent of mental perception; that

existence and perceptibility are convertible terms; that external

appearances and sensations are illusory, and would vanish into nothing

if the divine energy which alone sustains them were suspended but for a

moment."

[Sidenote: Of the soul of man.]

[Sidenote: Its final absorption in God.]

[Sidenote: Of purifying penances,]

[Sidenote: and transmigration of souls.]

As to the relation between the Supreme Being and man, the soul is a

portion or particle of that all-pervading principle, the Universal

Intellect or Soul of the World, detached for a while from its primitive

source, and placed in connexion with the bodily frame, but destined by

an inevitable necessity sooner or later to be restored and rejoined--as

inevitably as rivers run back to be lost in the ocean from which they

arose. "That Spirit," says Varuna to his son, "from which all created

beings proceed, in which, having proceeded, they live, toward which they

tend, and in which they are at last absorbed, that Spirit study to know:

it is the Great One." Since a multitude of moral considerations assure

us of the existence of evil in the world, and since it is not possible

for so holy a thing as the spirit of man to be exposed thereto without

undergoing contamination, it comes to pass that an unfitness may be

contracted for its rejoining the infinitely pure essence from which it

was derived, and hence arises the necessity of its undergoing a course

of purification. And as the life of man is often too short to afford the

needful opportunity, and, indeed, its events, in many instances, tend

rather to increase than to diminish the stain, the season of

purification is prolonged by perpetuating a connexion of the sinful

spirit with other forms, and permitting its transmigration to other

bodies, in which, by the penance it undergoes, and the trials to which

it is exposed, its iniquity may be washed away, and satisfactory

preparation be made for its absorption in the ocean of infinite purity.

Considering thus the relation in which all animated nature stands to us,

being a mechanism for purification, this doctrine of the transmigration

of the soul leads necessarily to other doctrines of a moral kind, more

particularly to a profound respect for life under every form, human,

animal, or insect.

[Sidenote: The religious use of animal life.]

The forms of animal life, therefore, furnish a grand penitential

mechanism for man. Such, on these principles, is their teleological

explanation. In European philosophy there is no equivalent or

counterpart of this view. With us animal life is purposeless. Hereafter

we shall find that in Egypt, though the doctrine of transmigration must

of course have tended to similar suggestions, it became disturbed in its

practical application by the base fetich notions of the indigenous

African population. Hence the doctrine was cherished by the learned for

philosophical reasons, and by the multitude for the harmony of its

results with their idolatries.

[Sidenote: Of proper modes of devotion.]

From such theological dogmas a religious system obviously springs having

for its object to hasten the purification of the soul, that it may the

more quickly enter on absolute happiness, which is only to be found in

absolute rest. The methods of shortening its wanderings and bringing it

to repose are the exercises of a pious life, penance, and prayer, and

more especially a profound contemplation of the existence and attributes

of the Supreme Being. In this profound contemplation many holy men have

passed their lives.

[Sidenote: Minor Vedic doctrine.]

Such is a brief statement of Vedic theology, as exhibited in the

connected doctrines of the Nature of God, Universal Animation,

Transmutation of the World, Emanation of the Soul, Manifestation of

Visible Things, Transmigration, Absorption, the uses of Penitential

Services, and Contemplation for the attainment of Absolute Happiness in

Absolute Rest. The Vedas also recognize a series of creatures superior

to man, the gods of the elements and stars; they likewise personify the

attributes of the Deity. The three Vedic divinities, Agni, Indra, and

Surya, are not to be looked upon as existing independently, for all

spirits are comprehended in the Universal Soul. The later Hindu trinity,

Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, is not recognized by them. They do not

authorize the worship of deified men, nor of images, nor of any visible

forms. They admit the adoration of subordinate spirits, as those of the

planets, or of the demigods who inhabit the air, the waters, the woods;

these demigods are liable to death. They inculcate universal

charity--charity even to an enemy: "The tree doth not withdraw its shade

from the woodcutter." Prayers are to be made thrice a day, morning,

noon, evening; fasting is ordained, and ablution before meals; the

sacrificial offerings consist of flowers, fruits, money. Considered as a

whole their religious tendency is selfish: it puts in prominence the

baser motives, and seeks the gratification of the animal appetites, as

food, pleasure, good fortune. They suggest no proselyting spirit, but

rather adopt the principle that all religions must be equally acceptable

to God, since, if it were otherwise, he would have instituted a single

one, and, considering his omnipotence, none other could have possibly

prevailed. They contain no authorization of the division of castes,

which probably had arisen in the necessities of antecedent conquests,

but which have imposed a perpetual obstacle to any social progress,

keeping each class of society in an immovable state, and concentrating

knowledge and power in a hierarchy. Neither in them, nor, it is

affirmed, in the whole Indian literature, is there a single passage

indicating a love of liberty. The Asiatics cannot understand what value

there is in it. They have balanced Freedom against Security; they have

deliberately preferred the latter, and left the former for Europe to

sigh for. Liberty is alone appreciated in a life of action; but the life

of Asia is essentially passive, its desire is for tranquillity. Some

have affirmed that this imbecility is due to the fact that that

continent has no true temperate zone, and that thus, for ages, the weak

nations have been in contact with the strong, and therefore the hopeless

aspirations for personal freedom have become extinct. But nations that

are cut off from the sea, or that have accepted the dogma that to

travel upon it is unholy, can never comprehend liberty. From the general

tenor of the Vedas, it would appear that the condition of women was not

so much restrained as it became in later times, and that monogamy was

the ordinary state. From the great extent of these works, their various

dates and authorship, it is not easy to deduce from them consistent

principles, and their parts being without any connexion, complete copies

are very scarce. They have undergone mutilation and restoration, so that

great discordances have arisen.

[Sidenote: The Institutes of Menu.]

In the Institutes of Menu, a code of civil and religious law, written

about the ninth century before Christ, though, like the Vedas, betraying

a gradual origin, the doctrine of the Divine unity becomes more

distinctly mixed up with Pantheistic ideas. They present a description

of creation, of the nature of God, and contain prescribed rules for the

duty of man in every station of life from the moment of birth to death.

Their imperious regulations in all these minute details are a sufficient

proof of the great development and paramount power to which the

priesthood had now attained, but their morality is discreditable. They

indicate a high civilization and demoralization, deal with crimes and a

policy such as are incident to an advanced social condition. Their

arbitrary and all-reaching spirit reminds one of the papal system; their

recommendations to sovereigns, their authorization of immoralities,

recall the state of Italian society as reflected in the works of

Machiavelli. They hold learning in the most signal esteem, but concede

to the prejudices of the illiterate in a worship of the gods with

burnt-offerings of clarified butter and libations of the juices of

plants. As respects the constitution of man, they make a distinction

between the soul and the vital principle, asserting that it is the

latter only which expiates sin by transmigration. They divide society

into four castes--the priests, the military, the industrial, the

servile. They make a Brahmin the chief of all created things, and order

that his life shall be divided into four parts, one to be spent in

abstinence, one in marriage, one as an anchorite, and one in profound

meditation; he may then "quit the body as a bird leaves the branch of a

tree." They vest the government of society in an absolute monarch,

having seven councillors, who direct the internal administration by a

chain of officials, the revenue being derived from a share of

agricultural products, taxes on commerce, imposts on shopkeepers, and a

service of one day in the month from labourers.

[Sidenote: Both the Vedas and Institutes are pantheistic.]

In their essential principles the Institutes therefore follow the Vedas,

though, as must be the case in every system intended for men in the

various stages of intellectual progress from the least advanced to the

highest, they show a leaning toward popular delusions. Both are

pantheistic, for both regard the universe as the manifestation of the

Creator; both accept the doctrine of Emanation, teaching that the

universe lasts only for a definite period of time, and then, the Divine

energy being withdrawn, absorption of everything, even of the created

gods, takes place, and thus, in great cycles of prodigious duration,

many such successive emanations and absorptions of universe occur.

[Sidenote: Disappearance of the philosophical classes, and consequent

prominence of anthropocentric ideas.]

The changes that have taken place among the orthodox in India since the

period of the Institutes are in consequence of the diminution or

disappearance of the highly philosophical classes, and the comparative

predominance of the vulgar. They are stated by Mr. Elphinstone as a

gradual oblivion of monotheism, the neglect of the worship of some gods

and the introduction of others, the worship of deified mortals. The

doctrine of human deification is carried to such an extent that Indra

and other mythological gods are said to tremble lest they should be

supplanted by men. This introduction of polytheism and use of images has

probably been connected with the fact that there have been no temples to

the Invisible God, and the uneducated mind feels the necessity of some

recognizable form. In this manner the Trinitarian conception of Brahma,

Vishnu, and Siva, with fourteen other chief gods, has been introduced.

Vishnu and Siva are never mentioned in the Institutes, but they now

engross the public devotions; besides these there are angels, genii,

penates, and lares, like the Roman. Brahma has only one temple in all

India, and has never been much worshipped. Chrishna is the great

favourite of the women. The doctrine of incarnation has also become

prevalent; the incarnations of Vishnu are innumerable. The opinion has

also been spread that faith in a particular god is better than

contemplation, ceremonial, or good works. A new ritual, instead of the

Vedas, has come into use, these scriptures being the eighteen Puranas,

composed between the eighth and sixteenth centuries. They contain

theogonies, accounts of the creation, philosophical speculations,

fragmentary history, and may be brought to support any sectarian view,

having never been intended as one general body, but they are received as

incontrovertible authority. In former times great efficacy was attached

to sacrifice and religious austerities, but the objects once

accomplished in that way are now compassed by mere faith. In the

Baghavat Gita, the text-book of the modern school, the sole essential

for salvation is dependence on some particular teacher, which makes up

for everything else. The efficacy which is thus ascribed to faith, and

the facility with which sin may be expiated by penance, have led to

great mental debility and superstition. Force has been added to the

doctrine of a material paradise of trees, flowers, banquets, hymns; and

to a hell, a dismal place of flames, thirst, torment, and horrid

spectres.

[Sidenote: The philosophical schools.]

If such has been the gradual degradation of religion, through the

suppression or disappearance of the most highly cultivated minds, the

tendency of philosophy is not less strikingly marked. It is said that

even in ancient times not fewer than six distinct philosophical schools

may be recognized: 1, the prior Mimansa; 2, the later Mimansa, or

Vedanta, founded by Vyasa about 1400 B.C. having a Vedanta literature of

prodigious extent; 3, the Logical school, bearing a close resemblance to

that of Aristotle, even in its details; 4, the Atomic school of Canade;

5, the Atheistical school of Capila; 6, the Theistical school of

Patanjali.

[Sidenote: The rise of Buddhism.]

This great theological system, enforced by a tyrannical hierarchy, did

not maintain itself without a conflict. Buddhism arose as its

antagonist. By an inevitable necessity, Vedaism must pass onward to

Buddhism. The prophetic foresight of the great founder of this system

was justified by its prodigious, its unparalleled and enduring

success--a success that rested on the assertion of the dogma of the

absolute equality of all men, and this in a country that for ages had

been oppressed by castes. If the Buddhist admits the existence of God,

it is not as a Creator, for matter is equally eternal; and since it

possesses a property of inherent organization, even if the universe

should perish, this quality would quickly restore it, and carry it on to

new regenerations and new decays without any external agency. It also is

endued with intelligence and consciousness. The Buddhists agree with the

Brahmins in the doctrine of Quietism, in the care of animal life, in

transmigration. They deny the Vedas and Puranas, have no castes, and,

agreeably to their cardinal principle, draw their priests from all

classes like the European monks. They live in monasteries, dress in

yellow, go barefoot, their heads and beards being shaved; they have

constant services in their chapels, chanting, incense, and candles;

erect monuments and temples over the relics of holy men. They place an

especial merit in celibacy; renounce all the pleasures of sense; eat in

one hall; receive alms. To do these things is incident to a certain

phase of human progress.

[Sidenote: Life of Arddha Chiddi.]

Buddhism arose about the tenth century before Christ, its founder being

Arddha Chiddi, a native of Capila, near Nepaul. Of his epoch there are,

however, many statements. The Avars, Siamese, and Cingalese fix it B.C.

600; the Cashmerians, B.C. 1332; the Chinese, Mongols, and Japanese,

B.C. 1000. The Sanscrit words occurring in Buddhism attest its Hindu

origin, Buddha itself being the Sanscrit for intelligence. After the

system had spread widely in India, it was carried by missionaries into

Ceylon, Tartary, Thibet, China, Japan, Burmah, and is now professed by a

greater portion of the human race than any other religion. Until quite

recently, the history of Arddha Chiddi and the system he taught have,

notwithstanding their singular interest, been very imperfectly known in

Europe. He was born in affluence and of a royal family. In his

twenty-ninth year he retired from the world, the pleasures of which he

had tasted, and of which he had become weary. The spectacle of a

gangrened corpse first arrested his thoughts. Leaving his numerous

wives, he became a religious mendicant. It is said that he walked about

in a shroud, taken from the body of a female slave. Profoundly impressed

with the vanity of all human affairs, he devoted himself to

philosophical meditation, by severe self-denial emancipating himself

from all worldly hopes and cares. When a man has brought himself to this

pass he is able to accomplish great things. For the name by which his

parents had called him he substituted that of Gotama, or "he who kills

the senses," and subsequently Chakia Mouni, or the Penitent of Chakia.

Under the shade of a tree Gotama was born; under the shade of a tree he

overcame the love of the world and the fear of death; under the shade of

a tree he preached his first sermon in the shroud; under the shade of a

tree he died. In four months after he commenced his ministry he had five

disciples; at the close of the year they had increased to twelve

hundred. In the twenty-nine centuries that have passed since that time,

they have given rise to sects counting millions of souls, outnumbering

the followers of all other religious teachers. The system still seems to

retain much of its pristine vigour; yet religions are perishable. There

is no country, except India, which has the same religion now that it had

at the birth of Christ.

[Sidenote: The organization of Buddhism.]

Gotama died at the advanced age of eighty years; his corpse was burnt

eight days subsequently. But several years before this event his system

must be considered as thoroughly established. It shows how little

depends upon the nature of a doctrine, and how much upon effective

organization, that Buddhism, the principles of which are far above the

reach of popular thought, should have been propagated with so much

rapidity, for it made its converts by preaching, and not, like

Mohammedanism, by the sword. Shortly after Gotama's death, a council of

five hundred ecclesiastics assembled for the purpose of settling the

religion. A century later a second council met to regulate the monastic

institution; and in B.C. 241, a third council, for the expulsion of

fire-worshippers. Under the auspices of King Asoka, whose character

presents singular points of resemblance to that of the Roman emperor who

summoned the Council of Nicea, for he, too, was the murderer of his own

family, and has been handed down to posterity, because of the success of

the policy of his party, as a great, a virtuous, and a pious

sovereign--under his auspices missionaries were sent out in all

directions, and monasteries richly endowed were everywhere established.

The singular efficacy of monastic institutions was rediscovered in

Europe many centuries subsequently.

[Sidenote: Contest between the Brahmans and Buddhists.]

In proclaiming the equality of all men in this life, the Buddhists, as

we have seen, came into direct collision with the orthodox creed of

India, long carried out into practice in the institution of castes--a

collision that was embittered by the abhorrence the Buddhists displayed

for any distinction between the clergy and laity. To be a Brahmin a man

must be born one, but a Buddhist priest might voluntarily come from any

rank--from the very dregs of society. In the former system marriage was

absolutely essential to the ecclesiastical caste; in the latter it was

not, for the priestly ranks could be recruited without it. And hence

there followed a most important advantage, that celibacy and chastity

might be extolled as the greatest of all the virtues. The experience of

Europe, as well as of Asia, has shown how powerful is the control

obtained by the hierarchy in that way. In India there was, therefore, no

other course for the orthodox than to meet the danger with bloody

persecutions, and in the end, the Buddhists, expelled from their native

seats, were scattered throughout Eastern Asia. Persecution is the mother

of proselytes.

[Sidenote: Buddhism is founded on the conception of Power or Force.]

[Sidenote: It does not recognize a personal God,]

The fundamental principle of Buddhism is that there is a supreme power,

but no Supreme Being. From this it might be inferred that they who adopt

such a creed cannot be pantheists, but must be atheists. It is a

rejection of the idea of Being, an acknowledgment of that of Force. If

it admits the existence of God, it declines him as a Creator. It asserts

an impelling power in the universe, a self-existent and plastic

principle, but not a self-existent, an eternal, a personal God. It

rejects inquiry into first causes as being unphilosophical, and

considers that phenomena alone can be dealt with by our finite minds.

Not without an air of intellectual majesty, it tolerates the Asiatic

time-consecrated idea of a trinity, pointing out one not of a corporeal,

but of an impersonal kind. Its trinity is the Past, the Present, the

Future. For the sake of aiding our thoughts, it images the Past with his

hands folded, since he has attained to rest, but the others with their

right hands extended in token of activity. Since he has no God, the

Buddhist cannot expect absorption; the pantheistic Brahmin looks forward

to the return of his soul to the Supreme Being as a drop of rain returns

to the sea. The Buddhist has no religion, but only a ceremonial. How can

there be a religion where there is no God?

[Sidenote: nor a providential government,]

[Sidenote: but refers all events to resistless law.]

[Sidenote: Doubts the actual existence of the visible world.]

In all this it is plain that the impersonal and immaterial predominates,

and that Gotama is contemplating the existence of pure Force without any

association of Substance. He necessarily denies the immediate

interposition of any such agency as Providence, maintaining that the

system of nature, once arising, must proceed irresistibly according to

the laws which brought it into being, and that from this point of view

the universe is merely a gigantic engine. To the Brahman priesthood such

ideas were particularly obnoxious; they were hostile to any

philosophical system founded on the principle that the world is governed

by law, for they suspected that its tendency would be to leave them

without any mediatory functions, and therefore without any claims on the

faithful. Equally does Gotama deny the existence of chance, saying that

that which we call chance is nothing but the effect of an unknown,

unavoidable cause. As to the external world, we cannot tell how far it

is a phantasm, how far a reality, for our senses possess no trustworthy

criterion of truth. They convey to the mind representations of what we

consider to be external things, by which it is furnished with materials

for its various operations; but, unless it acts in conjunction with the

senses, the operation is lost, as in that absence which takes place in

deep contemplation. It is owing to our inability to determine what share

these internal and external conditions take in producing a result that

the absolute or actual state of nature is incomprehensible by us.

Nevertheless, conceding to our mental infirmity the idea of a real

existence of visible nature, we may consider it as offering a succession

of impermanent forms, and as exhibiting an orderly series of

transmutations, innumerable universes in periods of inconceivable time

emerging one after another, and creations and extinctions of systems of

worlds taking place according to a primordial law.

[Sidenote: Of the nature of man.]

[Sidenote: Of transmigration and penance,]

[Sidenote: and the passage to nonentity.]

Such are his doctrines of a Supreme Force, and of the origin and

progress of the visible world. With like ability Gotama deals with his

inquiry into the nature of man. With Oriental imagery he bids us

consider what becomes of a grain of salt thrown into the sea; but, lest

we should be deceived herein, he tells us that there is no such thing as

individuality or personality--that the Ego is altogether a nonentity. In

these profound considerations he brings to bear his conception of force,

in the light thereof asserting that all sentient beings are homogeneous.

If we fail to follow him in these exalted thoughts, bound down to

material ideas by the infirmities of the human constitution, and inquire

of him how the spirit of man, which obviously displays so much energy,

can be conceived of as being without form, without a past, without a

future, he demands of us what has become of the flame of a lamp when it

is blown out, or to tell him in what obscure condition it lay before it

was kindled. Was it a nonentity? Has it been annihilated? By the aid of

such imagery he tries to depict the nature of existence, and to convey a

vivid idea of the metamorphoses it undergoes. Outward things are to him

phantasms; the impressions they make on the mind are phantasms too. In

this sense he receives the doctrine of transmigration, conceiving of it

very much as we conceive of the accumulation of heat successively in

different things. In one sense it may be the same heat which occupies

such objects one after another, but in another, since heat is force and

not matter, there can be no such individuality. Viewed, however, in the

less profound way, he is not unwilling to adopt the doctrine of the

transmigration of the soul through various forms, admitting that there

may accumulate upon it the effect of all those influences, whether of

merit or demerit, of good or of evil, to which it has been exposed. The

vital flame is handed down from one generation to another, it is

communicated from one animated form to another. He thinks it may carry

with it in these movements the modifications which may have been

impressed on it, and require opportunity for shaking them off and

regaining its original state. At this point the doctrine of Gotama is

assuming the aspect of a moral system, and is beginning to suggest means

of deliverance from the accumulated evil and consequent demerit to which

the spirit has been exposed. He will not, however, recognize any

vicarious action. Each one must work out for himself his own salvation,

remembering that death is not necessarily a deliverance from worldly

ills, it may be only a passage to new miseries. But yet, as the light of

the taper must come at last to an end, so there is at length, though it

may be after many transmigrations, an end of life. That end he calls

Nirwana, a word that has been for nearly three thousand years of solemn

import to countless millions of men;--Nirwana, the end of successive

existences, that state which has no relation to matter, or space, or

time, to which the departing flame of the extinguished taper has gone.

It is the supreme end, Nonentity. The attaining of this is the object to

which we ought to aspire, and for that purpose we should seek to destroy

within ourselves all cleaving to existence, weaning ourselves from every

earthly object, from every earthly pursuit. We should resort to monastic

life, to penance, to self-denial, self-mortification, and so gradually

learn to sink into perfect quietude or apathy, in imitation of that

state to which we must come at last, and to which, by such preparation,

we may all the more rapidly approach. The pantheistic Brahman expects

absorption in God; the Buddhist, having no God, expects extinction.

[Sidenote: Philosophical estimate of Buddhism.]

India has thus given to the world two distinct philosophical systems:

Vedaism, which takes as its resting-point the existence of matter, and

Buddhism, of which the resting-point is force. The philosophical ability

displayed in the latter is very great; indeed it may be doubted whether

Europe has produced its metaphysical equivalent. And yet, if I have

correctly presented its principles, it will probably appear that its

primary conception is not altogether consistently carried out in the

development of the details. Great as was the intellectual ability of its

author--so great as to extort our profoundest, though it may be

reluctant admiration--there are nevertheless moments in which it appears

that his movement is becoming wavering and unsteady--that he is failing

to handle his ponderous weapon with self-balanced power. This is

particularly the case in that point at which he is passing from the

consideration of pure force to the unavoidable consideration of visible

nature, the actual existence of which he seems to be obliged to deny.

But then I am not sure that I have caught with precision his exact train

of thought, or have represented his intention with critical correctness.

Considering the extraordinary power he elsewhere displays, it is more

probable that I have failed to follow his meaning, than that he has

been, on the points in question, incompetent to deal with his task.

The works of Gotama, under the title of "Verbal Instructions," are

published by the Chinese government in four languages--Thibetan, Mongol,

Mantchou, Chinese--from the imperial press at Pekin, in eight hundred

large volumes. They are presented to the Lama monasteries--a magnificent

gift.

[Sidenote: Displacement of its higher ideas by base ones.]

[Sidenote: Its anthropocentric phase remains, its philosophical

declining.]

In speaking of Vedaism, I have mentioned the manner in which its more

elevated conceptions were gradually displaced by those of a base grade

coming into prominence; and here it may be useful in like manner to

speak of the corresponding debasement of Buddhism. Its practical working

was the introduction of an immense monastic system, offering many points

of resemblance to the subsequent one of Europe. Since its object was

altogether of a personal kind, the attainment of individual happiness,

it was not possible that it should do otherwise than engender extreme

selfishness. It impressed on each man to secure his own salvation, no

matter what became of all others. Of what concern to him were parents,

wife, children, friends, country, so long as he attained Nirwana!

[Sidenote: Its legends and miracles.]

Long before Buddhism had been expelled from India by the victorious

Brahmins, it had been overlaid with popular ornaments. It had its

fables, legends, miracles. Its humble devotees implicitly believed that

Mahamia, the mother of Gotama, an immaculate virgin, conceived him

through a divine influence, and that thus he was of the nature of God

and man conjoined; that he stood upon his feet and spoke at the moment

of his birth; that at five months of age he sat unsupported in the air;

that at the moment of his conversion he was attacked by a legion of

demons, and that in his penance-fasting he reduced himself to the

allowance of one pepper-pod a day; that he had been incarnate many times

before, and that on his ascension through the air to heaven he left his

footprint on a mountain in Ceylon; that there is a paradise of gems, and

flowers, and feasts, and music for the good, and a hell of sulphur, and

flames, and torment for the wicked; that it is lawful to resort to the

worship of images, but that those are in error who deify men, or pay

respect to relics; that there are spirits, and goblins, and other

superhuman forms; that there is a queen of heaven; that the reading of

the Scriptures is in itself an actual merit, whether its precepts are

followed or not; that prayer may be offered by saying a formula by rote,

or even by turning the handle of a mill from which invocations written

on paper issue forth; that the revealer of Buddhism is to be regarded as

the religious head of the world.

The reader cannot fail to remark the resemblance of these ideas to some

of those of the Roman Church. When a knowledge of the Oriental forms of

religion was first brought into Europe, and their real origin was not

understood, it was supposed that this coincidence had arisen through the

labours of Nestorian, or other ancient missionaries from the West, and

hopes were entertained that the conversion of Eastern Asia would be

promoted thereby. But this expectation was disappointed, and that which

many good men regarded as a preparation for Christianity proved to be a

stumbling-block in its way. It is not improbable that the

pseudo-Christianity of the Chinese revolters, of which so much has

recently been said, is of the same nature, and will end with the same

result.

[Sidenote: The great diffusion of Buddhism.]

[Sidenote: Its practical godlessness.]

Decorated with these extraneous but popular recommendations, Buddhism

has been embraced by two-fifths of the human race. It has a prodigious

literature, great temples, many monuments. Its monasteries are scattered

from the north of Tartary almost to the equinoctial line. In these an

education is imparted not unlike that of the European monasteries of the

Middle Ages. It has been estimated that in Tartary one-third of the

population are Lamas. There are single convents containing more than two

thousand individuals; the wealth of the country voluntarily pours into

them. Elementary education is more widely diffused than in Europe: it is

rare to meet with a person who cannot read. Among the priests there are

many who are devout, and, as might be expected, many who are impostors.

It is a melancholy fact that, in China, Buddhism has led the entire

population not only into indifferentism, but into absolute godlessness.

They have come to regard religion as merely a fashion, to be followed

according to one's own taste; that as professed by the state it is a

civil institution necessary for the holding of office, and demanded by

society, but not to be regarded as of the smallest philosophical

importance; that a man is entitled to indulge his views on these matters

just as he is entitled to indulge his taste in the colour and fashion of

his garments; that he has no more right, however, to live without some

religious profession than he has a right to go naked. The Chinese cannot

comprehend how there should be animosities arising on matters of such

doubtful nature and trivial concern. The formula under which they live

is: "Religions are many; reason is one; we are brothers." They smile at

the credulity of the good-natured Tartars, who believe in the wonders of

miracle-workers, for they have miracle-workers who can perform the most

supernatural cures, who can lick red-hot iron, who can cut open their

bowels, and, by passing their hand over the wound, make themselves whole

again--who can raise the dead. In China, these miracles, with all their

authentications, have descended to the conjurer, and are performed for

the amusement of children. The common expressions of that country betray

the materialism and indifferentism of the people, and their consequent

immorality. "The prisons," they say, "are locked night and day, but they

are always full; the temples are always open, and yet there is nobody in

them." Of the dead they say, with an exquisite refinement of euphemism,

"He has saluted the world." The Lazarist Huc, on whose authority many of

these statements are made, testifies that they die, indeed, with

incomparable tranquillity, just as animals die; and adds, with a bitter,

and yet profoundly true sarcasm, they are what many in Europe are

wanting to be.

* * * * *

From the theology of India I turn, in the next place, to the

civilization of Egypt.

[Sidenote: Egypt a mysterious country to Europe.]

[Sidenote: Its reported wonders.]

The ancient system of isolation which for many thousand years had been

the policy of Egypt was overthrown by Psammetichus about B.C. 670. Up to

that time the inhabitants of that country had been shut out from all

Mediterranean or European contact by a rigorous exclusion exceeding that

until recently practised in China and Japan. As from the inmates of the

happy valley, in Rasselas, no tidings escaped to the outer world, so, to

the European, the valley of the Nile was a region of mysteries and

marvels. At intervals of centuries, individuals, like Cecrops and

Danaus, had fled to other countries, and had attached the gratitude of

posterity to their memories for the religion, laws, or other

institutions of civilization they had conferred. The traditions

connected with them served only to magnify those uncertain legends met

with all over Asia Minor, Greece, Italy, Sicily, of the prodigies and

miracles that adventurous pirates reported they had actually seen in

their stealthy visits to the enchanted valley--great pyramids covering

acres of land, their tops rising to the heavens, yet each pyramid

nothing more than the tombstone of a king; colossi sitting on granite

thrones, the images of Pharaohs who lived in the morning of the world,

still silently looking upon the land which thousands of years before

they had ruled; of these, some obedient to the sun, sainted his approach

when touched by his morning rays; obelisks of prodigious height, carved

by superhuman skill from a single block of stone, and raised by

superhuman power erect on their everlasting pedestals, their faces

covered with mysterious hieroglyphs, a language unknown to the vulgar,

telling by whom and for what they had been constructed; temples, the

massive leaning and lowering walls of which were supported by countless

ranges of statues; avenues of sphinxes, through the shadows of which,

grim and silent, the portals of fanes might be approached; catacombs

containing the mortal remains of countless generations, each corpse

awaiting, in mysterious embalmment, a future life; labyrinths of many

hundred chambers and vaults, into which whoso entered without a clue

never again escaped, but in the sameness and solitude of those endless

windings found his sepulchre. It is impossible for us to appreciate the

sentiment of religious awe with which the Mediterranean people looked

upon the enchanted, the hoary, the civilized monarchy on the banks of

the Nile. As Bunsen says, "Egypt was to the Greeks a sphinx with an

intellectual human countenance."

[Sidenote: Its history: the old empire; the Hycksos; the new empire.]

[Sidenote: Opening of the Egyptian ports.]

Her solitude, however, had not been altogether unbroken. After a

duration of 1076 years, and the reign of thirty-eight kings, illustrated

by the production of the most stupendous works ever accomplished by the

hand of man, some of which, as the Pyramids, remain to our times, the

old empire, which had arisen from the union of the upper and lower

countries, had been overthrown by the Hycksos, or shepherd kings, a race

of Asiatic invaders. These, in their turn, had held dominion for more

than five centuries, when an insurrection put an end to their power, and

gave birth to the new empire, some of the monarchs of which, for their

great achievements, are still remembered. In the middle period of this

new empire those events in early Hebrew history took place--the visit

of Abram and the elevation of Joseph--which are related with such

simplicity in the Holy Scriptures. With varied prosperity, the new

empire continued until the time of Psammetichus, who, in a civil war,

having attained supreme power by the aid of Greek mercenaries, overthrew

the time-honoured policy of all the old dynasties, and occasioned the

first grand impulse in the intellectual life of Europe by opening the

ports of Egypt, and making that country accessible to the blue-eyed and

red-haired barbarians of the North.

[Sidenote: This compels Egypt to become a maritime state,]

[Sidenote: and brings on collisions with the Babylonians.]

[Sidenote: Opening of the Suez Canal.]

[Sidenote: Circumnavigation of Africa.]

[Sidenote: History of the Great Canal.]

It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the influence of this event upon

the progress of Europe. An immense extension of Greek commerce by the

demand for the products of the Euxine as well as of the Mediterranean

was the smallest part of the advantage. As to Egypt herself, it entailed

a complete change in her policy, domestic and foreign. In the former

respect, the employment of the mercenaries was the cause of the entire

emigration of the warrior caste, and in the latter it brought things to

such a condition, that, if Egypt would continue to exist, she must

become a maritime state. Her geographical position for the purposes of

commerce was excellent; with the Red Sea on the east and the

Mediterranean on the north, she was the natural entrepôt between Asia

and Europe, as was shown by the prosperity of Alexandria in later ages.

But there was a serious difficulty in the way of her becoming a naval

power; no timber suitable for ship-building grew in the country--indeed,

scarcely enough was to be found to satisfy the demands for the

construction of houses and coffins for the dead. The early Egyptians,

like the Hindus, had a religious dread of the sea, but their

exclusiveness was, perhaps, not a little dependent on their want of

material for ship-building. Egypt was therefore compelled to enter on a

career of foreign conquest, and at all hazards possess herself of the

timber-growing districts of Syria. It was this urgent necessity which

led to her collisions with the Mesopotamian kings, and drew in its train

of consequence the sieges, sacks, and captivities of Jerusalem, the

metropolis of a little state lying directly between the contending

powers, and alternately disturbed by each. Of the necessity of this

course of policy in the opinion of the Egyptian kings, we can have no

better proof than the fact that Psammetichus himself continued the siege

of Azotus for twenty-nine years; that his son Necho reopened the canal

between the Nile at Bubastes and the Red Sea at Suez--it was wide enough

for two ships to pass--and on being resisted therein by the priests, who

feared that it might weaken the country strategically, attempted the

circumnavigation of Africa, and actually accomplished it. In those times

such expeditions were not undertaken as mere matters of curiosity.

Though this monarch also despatched investigators to ascertain the

sources of the Nile, and determine the causes of its rise, it was

doubtless in the hope of making such knowledge of use in a material or

economical point of view, and therefore it may be supposed that the

circumnavigation of Africa was undertaken upon the anticipated or

experienced failure of the advantages expected to arise from the

reopening of the canal; for the great fleets which Necho and his father

had built could not be advantageously handled unless they could be

transferred as circumstances required, either by the circumnavigation or

by the canal, from one sea to the other. The time occupied in passing

round the continent, which appears to have been three years, rendered

the former method of little practical use. But the failure experienced,

so far from detracting from the estimation in which we must hold those

kings who could thus display such a breadth of conception and vigour of

execution, must even enhance it. They resumed the policy of the

conqueror Rameses II., who had many centuries before possessed the

timber-growing countries, and whose engineers originally cut the canal

from the Nile to the Red Sea, though the work cost 120,000 lives and

countless treasuries of money. The canal of Rameses, which, in the

course of so many centuries, has become filled up with sand, was thus

cleaned out, as it was again in the reign of the Ptolemies, and again

under the khalifs, and galleys passed from sea to sea. The Persians,

under Darius Hystaspes, also either repaired it, or, as some say,

attempted a new work of the kind; but their engineering must have been

very defective, for they were obliged to abandon their enterprise after

carrying it as far as the bitter lakes, finding that salt water would be

introduced into the Delta. The Suez mouth of the canal of Rameses was

protected by a system of hydraulic works, to meet difficulties arising

from the variable levels of the water. It was reserved for the French

engineer Lesseps in the nineteenth century to cut the direct canal from

the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, an exploit which the Pharaohs and

Ptolemies had considered to be impossible.

[Sidenote: Attempts of the Asiatics on the south Mediterranean shore.]

[Sidenote: Egypt overthrown by Cambyses.]

The Egyptian policy continued by Pharaoh Hophra, who succeeded in the

capture of Sidon, brought on hostilities with the Babylonian kings, who

were now thoroughly awakened to what was going on in Egypt--a collision

which occasioned the expulsion of the Egyptians from Syria, and the

seizure of the lower country by Nebuchadnezzar, who also took vengeance

on King Zedekiah for the assistance Jerusalem had rendered to the

Africans in their projects: that city was razed to the ground, the eyes

of the king put out, and the people carried captive to Babylon, B.C.

568. It is a striking exemplification of the manner in which national

policy will endure through changes of dynasties, that after the

overthrow of Babylon by the Medes, and the transference of power to the

Persians, the policy of controlling the Mediterranean was never for an

instant lost sight of. Attempts were continually made, by operating

alternately on the southern and northern shores, to push westward. The

subsequent history of Rome shows what would have been the consequences

of an uncontrolled possession of the Mediterranean by a great maritime

power. On the occasion of a revolt of Egypt, the Persian King Cambyses

so utterly crushed and desolated it, that from that day to this, though

twenty-four centuries have intervened, it has never been able to recover

its independence. The Persian advance on the south shore toward Carthage

failed because of the indisposition of the Phoenicians to assist in

any operations against that city. We must particularly remark that the

ravaging of Egypt by Cambyses was contemporaneous with the cultivation

of philosophy in the southern Italian towns--somewhat more than five

hundred years before Christ.

[Sidenote: The Fall of Tyre.]

Among the incidents occurring during the struggles between the Egyptian

and Babylonian kings there is one deserving to be brought into

conspicuous prominence, from the importance of its consequences in

European history. It was the taking of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. So long

as that city dominated in the Mediterranean, it was altogether

impossible for Greek maritime power to be developed. The strength of

Tyre is demonstrated by her resistance to the whole Babylonian power for

thirteen years, "until every head was bald and every shoulder peeled."

The place was, in the end, utterly destroyed. It was made as bare as the

top of a rock on which the fisherman spreads his nets. The blow thus

struck at the heart of Tyrian commerce could not but be felt at the

utmost extremities. "The isles of the sea were troubled at her

departure." It was during this time that Greece fairly emerged as a

Mediterranean naval power. Nor did the inhabitants of New Tyre ever

recover the ancient position. Their misfortunes had given them a rival.

A re-establishment in an island on the coast was not a restoration of

their supremacy. Carrying out what Greece instinctively felt to be her

national policy, one of the first acts of Alexander's Asiatic campaign,

two hundred and fifty years subsequently, was the siege of the new city,

and, after almost superhuman exertions, its capture, by building a mole

from the mainland. He literally levelled the place to the ground; a

countless multitude was massacred, two thousand persons were crucified,

and Tyrian influence disappeared for ever.

[Sidenote: Foreign epochs in Greek history.]

In early Greek history there are, therefore, two leading foreign events:

1st, the opening of the Egyptian ports, B.C. 670; 2nd, the downfall of

Old Tyre, 573. The effect of the first was chiefly intellectual; that of

the second was to permit the commencement of commercial prosperity and

give life to Athens.

[Sidenote: Antiquity of civilization and art in Egypt.]

At the dawn of European civilization, Egypt was, therefore, in process

of decadence, gradually becoming less and less able to resist its own

interior causes of destruction, or the attempts of its Asiatic rivals,

who eventually brought it to ruin. At the first historical appearance of

the country of the Nile it is hoary and venerable with age. The

beautiful Scripture pictures of the journey of Abram and Sarai, in the

famine, the going down of Joseph, the exodus of the Israelites, all

point to a long-settled system, a tranquil and prosperous state. Do we

ask any proof of the condition of art to which the Egyptians had

attained at the time of their earliest monuments? The masonry of the

Great Pyramid, built thirty-four hundred years before Christ, has never

yet been surpassed. So accurately was that wonder of the world planned

and constructed, that at this day the variation of the compass may

actually be determined by the position of its sides; yet, when Jacob

went into Egypt, that pyramid had been built as many centuries as have

intervened from the birth of Christ to the present day. If we turn from

the monuments to their inscriptions, there are renewed evidences of

antiquity. The hieroglyphic writing had passed through all its stages of

formation; its principles had become ascertained and settled long before

we gain the first glimpse of it; the decimal and duodecimal systems of

arithmetic were in use; the arts necessary in hydraulic engineering,

massive architecture, and the ascertainment of the boundaries of land,

had reached no insignificant degree of perfection. Indeed, there would

be but very little exaggeration in affirming that we are practically as

near the early Egyptian ages as was Herodotus himself. Well might the

Egyptian priests say to the earliest Greek philosophers, "You Greeks are

mere children, talkative and vain; you know nothing at all of the past."

[Sidenote: Prehistoric life of Egypt.]

Traces of the prehistoric, premonumental life of Egypt are still

preserved in the relics of its language, and the well-known principles

of its religion. Of the former, many of the words are referable to

Indo-Germanic roots, an indication that the country at an early period

must have been conquered from its indigenous African possessors by

intrusive expeditions from Asia; and this is supported by the remarkable

principles of Egyptian religion. The races of Central Asia had at a

very early time attained to the psychical stage of monotheism. Africa is

only now emerging from the basest fetichism; the negro priest is still a

sorcerer and rain-maker. The Egyptian religion, as is well known,

provided for the vulgar a suitable worship of complex idolatry, but for

those emancipated from superstition it offered true and even noble

conceptions. The coexistence of these apparent incompatibilities in the

same faith seems incapable of any other explanation than that of an

amalgamation of two distinct systems, just as occurred again many ages

subsequently under Ptolemy Soter.

[Sidenote: Influence of Egypt on the knowledge and art of Europe.]

As a critical attention is being bestowed by modern scholars upon

Egyptian remains, we learn more truly what is the place in history of

that venerable country. It is their boast that the day is not distant

when there will be no more difficulty in translating a page of

hieroglyphics than in translating one of Latin or Greek. Even now, what

a light has been thrown on all branches of ancient literature, science,

art, mythology, domestic life, by researches which it may be said

commenced only yesterday! From Egypt, it now appears, were derived the

prototypes of the Greek architectural orders, and even their ornaments

and conventional designs; thence came the models of the Greek and

Etruscan vases; thence came many of the ante-Homeric legends--the

accusation of the dead, the trial before the judges of hell; the reward

and punishment of every man, from the Pharaoh who had descended from his

throne to the slave who had escaped from his chain; the dog Cerberus,

the Stygian stream, the Lake of Oblivion, the piece of money, Charon and

his boat, the fields of Aahlu or Elysium, and the islands of the

blessed; thence came the first ritual for the dead, litanies to the sun,

and painted or illuminated missals; thence came the dogma of a queen of

heaven. What other country can offer such noble and enduring edifices to

the gods; temples with avenues of sphinxes; massive pylons adorned with

obelisks in front, which even imperial Rome and modern Paris have not

thought it beneath them to appropriate; porticoes and halls of columns,

on which were carved the portraits of kings and effigies of the gods?

On the walls of the tombs still remain Pthah, the creator, and Neph, the

divine spirit, sitting at the potters wheel, turning clay to form men;

and Athor, who receives the setting sun into her arms; and Osiris, the

judge of the dead. The granite statues have outlived the gods!

[Sidenote: The hieroglyphics.]

Moreover, the hieroglyphics furnish intrinsic evidence that among this

people arose the earliest attempts at the perpetuation and imparting of

ideas by writing. Though doubtless it was in the beginning a mere

picture-writing, like that of the Mexicans, it had already, at the first

moment we meet with it, undergone a twofold development--ideographic and

phonetic; the one expressing ideas, the other sounds. Under the

Macedonian kings the hieroglyphics had become restricted to religious

uses, showing conclusively that the old priesthood had never recovered

the terrible blows struck against it by Cambyses and Ochus. From that

time forth they were less and less known. It is said that one of the

Roman emperors was obliged to offer a reward for the translation of an

obelisk. To the early Christian the hieroglyphic inscription was an

abomination, as full of the relics of idolatry, and indicating an

inspiration of the devil. He defaced the monuments wherever he could

make them yield; and in many cases has preserved them for us by

plastering them over to hide them from his sight.

In those enigmatical characters an extensive literature once existed, of

which the celebrated books of Hermes were perhaps a corruption or a

relic; a literature embracing compositions on music, astronomy,

cosmogony, geography, medicine, anatomy, chemistry, magic, and many

other subjects that have amused the curiosity of man. Yet of those

characters the most singular misconceptions have been entertained almost

to our own times. Thus, in 1802, Palin thought that the papyri were the

Psalms of David done into Chinese, Lenoir that they were Hebrew

documents; it was even asserted that the inscriptions in the temple of

Denderah were the 100th Psalm, a pleasant ecclesiastical conceit,

reminding one who has seen in Egyptian museums old articles of brass and

glass, of the stories delivered down from hand to hand, that brass was

first made at the burning of Corinth, and glass first discovered by

shipwrecked mariners, who propped their kettle, while it boiled, on

pieces of nitre.

[Sidenote: Antiquity of the Egyptian monarchy.]

[Sidenote: Causes of the rise of civilization.]

Thousands of years have passed since the foundation of the first

Egyptian dynasty. The Pyramids have seen the old empire, the Hycksos

monarchs, the New Empire, the Persian, the Macedonian, the Roman, the

Mohammedan. They have stood while the heavens themselves have changed.

They were already "five hundred years old when the Southern Cross

disappeared from the horizon of the countries of the Baltic." The

pole-star itself is a newcomer to them. Humboldt, referring to these

incidents, remarks that "the past seems to be visibly nearer to us when

we thus connect its measurement with great and memorable events." No

country has had such a varied history as this birthplace of European

civilization. Through the darkness of fifty centuries we may not be able

to discern the motives of men, but through periods very much longer we

can demonstrate the conditions of Nature. If nations, in one sense,

depend on the former, in a higher sense they depend on the latter. It

was not without reason that the Egyptians took the lead in Mediterranean

civilization. The geographical structure of their country surpasses even

its hoary monuments in teaching us the conditions under which that

people were placed. Nature is a surer guide than the traces of man,

whose works are necessarily transitory. The aspect of Egypt has changed

again and again; its structure, since man has inhabited it, never. The

fields have disappeared, but the land remains.

Why was it that civilization thus rose on the banks of the Nile, and not

upon those of the Danube or Mississippi? Civilization depends on climate

and agriculture. In Egypt the harvests may ordinarily be foretold and

controlled. Of few other parts of the world can the same be said. In

most countries the cultivation of the soil is uncertain. From seed-time

to harvest, the meteorological variations are so numerous and great,

that no skill can predict the amount of yearly produce. Without any

premonition, the crops may be cut off by long-continued droughts, or

destroyed by too much rain. Nor is it sufficient that a requisite amount

of water should fall; to produce the proper effect, it must fall at

particular periods. The labour of the farmer is at the mercy of the

winds and clouds.

With difficulty, therefore, could a civilized state originate under such

circumstances. So long as life is a scene of uncertainty, the hope of

yesterday blighted by the realities of to day, man is the maker of

expedients, but not of laws. In his solicitude as to his approaching

lot, he has neither time nor desire to raise his eyes to the heavens to

watch and record their phenomena; no leisure to look upon himself, and

consider what and where he is. In the imperious demand for a present

support, he dares not venture on speculative attempts at ameliorating

his state; he is doomed to be a helpless, isolated, spell-bound savage,

or, if not isolated, the companion of other savages as care-worn as

himself. Under such circumstances, however, if once the preliminary

conditions and momentum of civilization be imparted to him, the very

things which have hitherto tended to depress him produce an opposite

effect. Instead of remaining in sameness and apathy, the vicissitudes to

which he is now exposed urge him onward; and thus it is that, though the

civilization of Europe depended for its commencement on the sameness and

stability of an African climate, the conquests of Nature which mark its

more advanced stage have been made in the trying life of the temperate

zone.

[Sidenote: Agriculture in a rainless country.]

There is a country in which man is not the sport of the seasons, in

which he need have no anxieties for his future well-being--a country in

which the sunshines and heats vary very little from year to year. In the

Thebaid heavy rain is said to be a prodigy. But, at the time when the

Dog-star rises with the sun, the river begins to swell; a tranquil

inundation by degrees covering the land, at once watering and enriching

it. If the Nilometer which measures the height of the flood indicates

eight cubits, the crops will be scanty; but if it reaches fourteen

cubits, there will be a plentiful harvest. In the spring of the year it

may be known how the fields will be in the autumn. Agriculture is

certain in Egypt, and there man first became civilized. The date-tree,

moreover, furnishes to Africa a food almost without expense. The climate

renders it necessary to use, for the most part, vegetable diet, and but

little clothing is required.

[Sidenote: Rainless countries of the West.]

The American counterpart of Egypt in this physical condition is Peru,

the coast of which is also a rainless district. Peru is the Egypt of

civilization of the Western continent. There is also a rainless strand

on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It is an incident full of meaning in the

history of human progress, that, in regions far apart, civilization thus

commenced in rainless countries.

In Upper Egypt, the cradle of civilization, the influence of atmospheric

water is altogether obliterated, for, in an agricultural point of view,

the country is rainless. Variable meteorological conditions are there

eliminated.

[Sidenote: Inundations of the Nile.]

[Sidenote: Gradual rise of the whole country.]

Where the Nile breaks through the mountain gate at Essouan, it is

observed that its waters begin to rise about the end of the month of

May, and in eight or nine weeks the inundation is at its height. This

flood in the river is due to the great rains which have fallen in the

mountainous countries among which the Nile takes its rise, and which

have been precipitated from the trade-winds that blow, except where

disturbed by the monsoons, over the vast expanse of the tropical Indian

Ocean. Thus dried, the east wind pursues its solemn course over the

solitudes of Central Africa, a cloudless and a rainless wind, its track

marked by desolation and deserts. At first the river becomes red, and

then green, because the flood of its great Abyssinian branch, the Blue

Nile, arrives first; but, soon after, that of the White Nile makes its

appearance, and from the overflowing banks not only water, but a rich

and fertilizing mud, is discharged. It is owing to the solid material

thus brought down that the river in countless ages has raised its own

bed, and has embanked itself with shelving deposits that descend on

either side toward the desert. For this reason it is that the inundation

is seen on the edge of the desert first, and, as the flood rises, the

whole country up to the river itself is laid under water. By the middle

of September the supply begins to fail and the waters abate; by the end

of October the stream has returned to its usual limits. The fields are

left covered with a fertile deposit, the maximum quantity of which is

about six inches thick in a hundred years. It is thought that the bed of

the river rises four feet in a thousand years, and the fertilized land

in its width continually encroaches on the desert. Since the reign of

Amenophis III. it has increased by one-third. He lived B.C. 1430. There

have accumulated round the pedestal of his Colossus seven feet of mud.

[Sidenote: Geological age of Egypt.]

In the recent examinations made by the orders of the Viceroy of Egypt,

close by the fallen statue of Rameses II., at Memphis, who reigned,

according to Lepsius, from B.C. 1394 to B.C. 1328, a shaft was sunk to

more than 24 feet. The water which then infiltrated compelled a resort

to boring, which was continued until 41 feet 4-1/2 inches were reached.

The whole consisted of Nile deposits, alternate layers of loam and sand

of the same composition throughout. From the greatest depth a fragment

of pottery was obtained. Ninety-five of these borings were made in

various places, but on no occasion was solid rock reached. The organic

remains were all recent; not a trace of an extinct fossil occurred, but

an abundance of the residues of burnt bricks and pottery. In their

examination from Essouan to Cairo, the French estimated the mud deposit

to be five inches for each century. From an examination of the results

at Heliopolis, Mr. Horner makes it 3·18 inches. The Colossus of Rameses

II. is surrounded by a sediment nine feet four inches deep, fairly

estimated. Its date of erection was about 3215 years ago, which gives

3-1/2 inches per century. But beneath it similar layers continue to the

depth of 30 feet, which, at the same rate, would give 13,500 years, to

A.D. 1854, at which time the examination was made. Every precaution

seems to have been taken to obtain accurate results.

[Sidenote: Its geography and topography.]

The extent of surface affected by the inundations of the Nile is, in a

geographical point of view, altogether insignificant; yet, such as it

was, it constituted Egypt. Commencing at the Cataract of Essouan, at

the sacred island of Philæ, on which to this day here and there the

solitary palm-tree looks down, it reached to the Mediterranean Sea, from

24° 3´ N. to 31° 37´ N. The river runs in a valley, bounded on one side

by the eastern and on the other by the Libyan chain of mountains, and of

which the average breadth is about seven miles, the arable land,

however, not averaging more than five and a half. At the widest place it

is ten and three-quarters, at the narrowest two. The entire surface of

irrigated and fertile land in the Delta is 4500 square miles; the arable

land of Egypt, 2255 square miles; and in the Fyoom, 340 square miles, an

insignificant surface, yet it supported seven millions of people.

Here agriculture was so precise that it might almost be pronounced a

mathematical art. The disturbances arising from atmospheric conditions

were eliminated, and the variations, as connected with the supply of

river-water, ascertained in advance. The priests proclaimed how the

flood stood on the Nilometer, and the husbandman made corresponding

preparations for a scanty or an abundant harvest.

In such a state of things, it was an obvious step to improve upon the

natural conditions by artificial means; dykes, and canals, and

flood-gates, with other hydraulic apparatus, would, even in the

beginning of society, unavoidably be suggested, that in one locality the

water might be detained longer; in another, shut off when there was

danger of excess; in another, more abundantly introduced.

[Sidenote: Control of agriculture by the government.]

There followed, as a consequence of this condition of things, the

establishment of a strong government, having a direct control over the

agriculture of the state by undertaking and supporting these artificial

improvements, and sustaining itself by a tax cheerfully paid, and

regulated in amount by the quantity of water supplied from the river to

each estate. Such, indeed, was the fundamental political system of the

country. The first king of the old empire undertook to turn the river

into a new channel he made for it, a task which might seem to demand

very able engineering, and actually accomplished it. It is more than

five thousand years since Menes lived. There must have preceded his

times many centuries, during which knowledge and skill had been

increasing, before such a work could even have been contemplated.

[Sidenote: Topographical changes occasioned by the Nile.]

I shall not indulge in any imaginary description of the manner in which,

under such favourable circumstances, the powers of the human mind were

developed and civilization arose. In inaccessible security, the

inhabitants of this valley were protected on the west by a burning sandy

desert, on the east by the Red Sea. Nor shall I say anything more of

those remote geological times when the newly-made river first flowed

over a rocky and barren desert on its way to the Mediterranean Sea; nor

how, in the course of ages, it had by degrees laid down a fertile

stratum, embanking itself in the rich soil it had borne from the

tropical mountains. Yet it is none the less true that such was the slow

construction of Egypt as a habitable country; such were the gradual

steps by which it was fitted to become the seat of man. The pulse of its

life-giving artery makes but one beat in a year; what, then, are a few

hundreds of centuries in such a process?

[Sidenote: The inundations lead to the study of astronomy.]

The Egyptians had, at an early period, observed that the rising of the

Nile coincided with the heliacal rising of Sirius, the Dog-star, and

hence they very plausibly referred it to celestial agencies. Men are

ever prone to mistake coincidences for causes; and thus it came to pass

that the appearance of that star on the horizon at the rising of the sun

was not only viewed as the signal, but as the cause of the inundations.

Its coming to the desired position might, therefore, be well expected,

and it was soon observed that this took place with regularity at periods

of about 360 days. This was the first determination of the length of the

year. It is worthy of remark, as showing how astronomy and religious

rites were in the beginning connected, that the priests of the

mysterious temple of Philæ placed before the tomb of Osiris every

morning 360 vases of milk, each one commemorating one day, thus showing

that the origin of that rite was in those remote ages when it was

thought that the year was 360 days long. It was doubtless such

circumstances that led the Egyptians to the cultivation of historical

habits. In this they differed from the Hindus, who kept no records.

[Sidenote: The philosophy of star-worship.]

The Dog-star Sirius is the most splendid star in the heavens; to the

Egyptian the inundation was the most important event upon earth.

Mistaking a coincidence for a cause, he was led to the belief that when

that brilliant star emerged in the morning from the rays of the sun, and

began to assert its own inherent power, the sympathetic river, moved

thereby, commenced to rise. A false inference like this soon dilated

into a general doctrine; for if one star could in this way manifest a

direct control over the course of terrestrial affairs, why should not

another--indeed, why should not all? Moreover, it could not have escaped

notice that the daily tides of the Red Sea are connected with the

movements and position of the sun and moon, following those luminaries

in the time of their occurrence, and being determined by their

respective position as to amount at spring and at neap. But the

necessary result of such a view is no other than the admission of the

astrological influence of the heavenly bodies; first, as respects

inanimate nature, and then as respects the fortune and fate of men. It

is not until the vast distance of the starry bodies is suspected that

man begins to feel the necessity of a mediator between him and them, and

star-worship passes to its second phase.

To what part of the world could the Egyptian travel without seeing in

the skies the same constellations? Far from the banks of the Nile, in

the western deserts, in Syria, in Arabia, the stars are the same. They

are omnipresent; for we may lose sight of the things of the earth, but

not of those of the heavens. The air of fate-like precision with which

their appointed movements are accomplished, their solemn silence, their

incomprehensible distances, might satisfy an observer that they are far

removed from the influences of all human power, though, perhaps, they

may be invoked by human prayer.

[Sidenote: Principles of Egyptian theology.]

Thus star-worship found for itself a plausible justification. The

Egyptian system, at its highest development, combined the adoration of

the heavenly bodies--the sun, the moon, Venus, &c., with the deified

attributes of God. The great and venerable divinities, as Osiris, Pthah,

Amun, were impersonations of such attributes, just as we speak of the

Creator, the Almighty. It was held that not only has God never appeared

upon earth in the human form, but that such is altogether an

impossibility, since he is the animating principle of the entire

universe, visible nature being only a manifestation of him.

[Sidenote: God. Trinities and their persons.]

These impersonated attributes were arranged in various trinities, in

each of which the third member is a procession from the other two, the

doctrine and even expressions in this respect being full of interest to

one who studies the gradual development of comparative theology in

Europe. Thus from Amun by Maut proceeds Khonso, from Osiris by Isis

proceeds Horus, from Neph by Saté proceeds Anouké. While, therefore, it

was considered unlawful to represent God except by his attributes, these

trinities and their persons offered abundant means of idolatrous worship

for the vulgar. It was admitted that there had been terrestrial

manifestations of these divine attributes for the salvation of men. Thus

Osiris was incarnate in the flesh: he fell a sacrifice to the evil

principle, and, after his death and resurrection, became the appointed

judge of the dead. In his capacity of President of the West, or of the

region of the setting stars, he dwells in the under world, which is

traversed by the sun at night.

[Sidenote: Incarnations; fall of man; redemption.]

[Sidenote: The future judgment.]

The Egyptian priests affirmed that nothing is ever annihilated; to die

is therefore only to assume a new form. Herodotus says that they were

the first to discover that the soul is immortal, their conception of it

being that it is an emanation from or a particle of the universal soul,

which in a less degree animates all animals and plants, and even

inorganic things. Their dogma that there had been divine incarnations

obliged them to assert that there had been a fall of man, this seeming

to be necessary to obtain a logical argument in justification of

prodigies so great. For the relief of the guilty soul, they prescribed

in this life fasts and penances, and in the future a transmigration

through animals for purification. At death, the merits of the soul were

ascertained by a formal trial before Osiris in the shadowy region of

Amenti--the under world--in presence of the four genii of that realm,

and of forty-two assessors. To this judgment the shade was conducted by

Horus, who carried him past Cerberus, a hippopotamus, the gaunt guardian

of the gate. He stood by in silence while Anubis weighed his heart in

the scales of justice. If his good works preponderated, he was dismissed

to the fields of Aahlu--the Elysian Fields; if his evil, he was

condemned to transmigration.

[Sidenote: The trial of the dead.]

[Sidenote: Origin of the Greek Hades.]

But that this doctrine of a judgment in another world might not decline

into an idle legend, it was enforced by a preparatory trial in this--a

trial of fearful and living import. From the sovereign to the meanest

subject, every man underwent a sepulchral inquisition. As soon as any

one died, his body was sent to the embalmers, who kept it forty days,

and for thirty-two in addition the family mourned, the mummy, in its

coffin, was placed erect in an inner chamber of the house. Notice was

then sent to the forty-two assessors of the district; and on an

appointed day, the corpse was carried to the sacred lake, of which every

nome, and, indeed, every large town, had one toward the west. Arrived on

its shore, the trial commenced; any person might bring charges against

the deceased, or speak in his behalf; but woe to the false accuser. The

assessors then passed sentence according to the evidence before them: if

they found an evil life, sepulture was denied, and, in the midst of

social disgrace, the friends bore back the mummy to their home, to be

redeemed by their own good works in future years; or, if too poor to

give it a place of refuge, it was buried on the margin of the lake, the

culprit ghost waiting and wandering for a hundred years. On these

Stygian shores the bones of some are still dug up in our day: they have

remained unsepulchred for more than thirty times their predestined

century. Even to wicked kings a burial had thus been denied. But, if the

verdict of the assessors was favourable, a coin was paid to the boatman

Charon for ferriage; a cake was provided for the hippopotamus Cerberus;

they rowed across the lake in the baris, or death-boat, the priest

announcing to Osiris and the unearthly assessors the good deeds of the

deceased. Arriving on the opposite shore, the procession walked in

solemn silence, and the mummy was then deposited in its final

resting-place--the catacombs.

[Sidenote: Ceremonies, creeds, oracles, prophecy.]

From this it may be gathered that the Egyptian religion did not remain a

mere speculative subject, but was enforced on the people by the most

solemn ceremonies. Moreover, in the great temples, grand processional

services were celebrated, the precursors of some that still endure.

There were sacrifices of meat-offerings, libations, incense. The

national double creed, adapted in one branch to the vulgar, in the other

to the learned, necessarily implied mysteries; some of these were

avowedly transported to Greece. The machinery of oracles was resorted

to. The Greek oracles were of Egyptian origin. So profound was the

respect paid to their commands that even the sovereigns were obliged to

obey them. It was thus that a warning from the oracle of Amun caused

Necho to stop the construction of his canal. For the determination of

future events, omens were studied, entrails inspected, and nativities

were cast.