Lecture II. Egyptian Religion. 29
to fuse them into a harmonious whole, and to explain away their
apparent divergencies and contradictions. Either the assertion is
made that the creed of the present has come down unchanged
from the past, or else it is maintained that the doctrines and rites
of the past have developed normally and gradually into those of
the present.
But the Egyptian made no such endeavour. He never realised
that there was any necessity for making it. It was sufficient that
a thing should have descended to him from his ancestors for it
to be true, and he never troubled himself about its consistency
with other parts of his belief. He accepted it as he accepted the
inconsistencies and inequalities of life, without any effort to work
them into a harmonious theory or form them into a philosophic
system. His religion was like his temples, in which the art and
architecture of all the past centuries of his history existed side by
side. All that the past had bequeathed to him must be preserved,
if possible; it might be added to, but not modified or destroyed.
It is curious that the same spirit has prevailed in modern Egypt.
The native never restores. If a building or the furniture within it
goes to decay, no attempt is made to mend or repair it; it is left
to moulder on in the spot where it stands, while a new building
or a new piece of furniture is set up beside it. That the new and
the old should not agree together—should, in fact, be in glaring
contrast—is a matter of no moment. This veneration for the
past, which preserves without repairing or modifying or even [030]
adapting to the surroundings of the present, is a characteristic
which is deeply engrained in the mind of the Egyptian. It had its
prior origin in the physical and climatic conditions of the country
in which he was born, and has long since become a leading
characteristic of his race.
Along with the inability to take a general view of the beliefs
he held, and to reduce them to a philosophic system, went an
inability to form abstract ideas. This inability, again, may be
traced to natural causes. Thanks to the perpetual sunshine of the