The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

6 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

we have to read into the story, how scanty is the evidence, how
disconnected are the facts. The conclusions we form must to a
large extent be theoretical and provisional, liable to be revised
and modified with the acquisition of fresh material or a more
skilful combination of what is already known. We are compelled
to interpret the past in the light of the present, to judge the
men of old by the men of to-day, and to explain their beliefs
in accordance with what seem to us the common and natural
opinions of civilised humanity.
I need not point out how precarious all such attempts must
necessarily be. There is nothing harder than to determine the real
character of the religion of a people, even when the religion is
still living. We may describe its outward characteristics, though
even these are not unfrequently a matter of dispute; but the
religious ideas themselves, which constitute its essence, are far
more difficult to grasp and define. Indeed, it is not always easy
for the individual himself to state with philosophical or scientific
precision the religious beliefs which he may hold. Difficult as
it is to know what another man believes, it is sometimes quite
[004] as difficult to know exactly what one believes one's self. Our
religious ideas and beliefs are a heritage which has come to us
from the past, but which has also been influenced and modified
by the experiences we have undergone, by the education we have
received, and, above all, by the knowledge and tendencies of
our age. We seldom attempt to reduce them into a harmonious
whole, to reconcile their inconsistencies, or to fit them into a
consistent system. Beliefs which go back, it may be, to the ages
of barbarism, exist with but little change by the side of others
which are derived from the latest revelations of physical science;
and our conceptions of a spiritual world are not unfrequently an
ill-assorted mixture of survivals from a time when the universe
was but a small tract of the earth's surface, with an extinguisher-
like firmament above it, and of the ideas which astronomy has
given us of illimitable space, with its millions of worlds.