of the Ancient Egyptians. 45 



no other than the desire to honour the remains of their deceased 

 kindred, which has been common to all the nations of the earth, 

 and the effects of which, whether shewing themselves in em- 

 balming them, in depositing them in splendid catacombs or 

 mausolia, or in simply interring them in grounds appropriated 

 to that purpose, must be held as the natural and becoming ex- 

 pression of those family affections which form the basis of all 

 human society. If, in the operation of embalming, the viscera 

 were extracted, this was not for the purpose of investigating the 

 structure of these organs, but for subjecting these more perish- 

 able parts to an additional preparation for preservation. In 

 fact, there is no evidence whatever that anatomy was a science 

 at all understood by the ancient Egyptians ; and, with regard 

 to comparative anatomy, the branch which has in later times 

 illustrated geology, we have the statement of the Baron himself 

 that Democritus of Abdera was the first who practised it. Even 

 with regard to the science of medicine, which in all countries we 

 find, in some shape or other, preceding anatomy, we have the 

 testimony of Herodotus that it must have been at a low ebb in 

 Egypt, when he tells us, that each of those who practised it ap- 

 plied himself exclusively to cure one disease, or the diseases of 

 one organ. If Galen went to Egypt to see the representation 

 of a skeleton in bronze, we must remember that this occurred 

 long after the Alexandrian school of anatomy, under the pa- 

 tronage of a Macedonian race of kings had been enabled to 

 throw some light, but still only a glimmering and very partial 

 one, on that science, which it has been reserved for Cuvier him- 

 self to bring at last, in all its relations, into the full blaze of 

 day. 



When we reflect how absolutely the determination, in the 

 present age; of the relative position of many of the strata of the 

 earth, has depended on that beautiful comparative anatomy 

 which, under the hands of Baron Cuvier, has become one of the 

 best founded and most splendid monuments of the inductive 

 philosophy, equally remarkable for the happy elucidation of 

 both physical and final causes ; we must at the same time ac-i 

 knowledge how impossible it was that Moses could derive his 

 knowledge of the order of the epochs of creation from a people 



a 



