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assume an individual form, was part of the doctrine which saw,
in the manifold varieties of nature, the manifestations of a“single
god.”The belief in the incarnation of the deity was a necessary
consequence of a materialistic pantheism. And it mattered little
whether the incarnation took place under a human or under an
animal shape; the human and the animal god had alike been a
heritage from elements which, diverse though they may have
been in origin, combined to form the Egyptian people, and both
the man and the beast were alike living and therefore divine.
The beast was more mysterious than the man, that was all; the
workings of its mind were more difficult to comprehend, and
the language it spoke was more unintelligible. But on that very
account it was better adapted for the symbolism which literature
and education encouraged, and which became an essential part
of the texture of Egyptian thought.
If, then, we would understand the conception of the divine
formed by the educated Egyptian of the historical age, we
must remember the characteristics of Egyptian thought which lay
behind it. Materialism and symbolism constituted the background
of Egyptian religion. The one presupposed the other, for the
symbol presented the abstract idea in a material and visible
shape, while the materialism of the Egyptian mind demanded
something concrete which the senses could apprehend. The
conception of the ka, with which Egyptian religion begins, is
characteristic of Egyptian religious thought up to the last. It is like
the“materialised spirits”of modern spiritualism, spirits which
are merely matter in an etherialised form. The Egyptian gave not
only shape but substance to his mental and spiritual creations;
like the“ideas”of Plato, they became sensuous realities like the
written symbols which expressed them. Not only were the name [243]
and the thing never dissociated from one another, the name was
looked on as the essence of the thing, and the name included its
expression in both sound and writing. The bird which represented
the idea of“soul”became in time the soul itself.