Chap. XL AN TIENT METAPHYSICS. 



-jj 



all lived in cities, which is certainly a life not fo healthy as the 

 country life, and that tlie land -was overficved, for fome months in 

 the year, by the river, dur'ir.o which time they may he faid to have 

 lived in the water ; this :ilci is a luilGcient proof, that, in the prac- 

 tice of this great art of the political fyftem, they muft have excelled 

 all the world. 



As to Morals, I think, in that refpedl too, they muft have exceed- 

 ed all the civilized nations of which we have heard : For, in the 

 firft place, they were, as Herodotus tells us, the moft religious of 

 men. Now it is impoffible that religion, efpecially when it is fuch 

 a religion as the Egyptian, whicii, as I have obferved, had nothing 

 barbarous or inhuman in it, fliould not improve the morals of men. 

 Befides that, they had not thefe two great difeafes of the political 

 fyftem, which produce fo much dilorder in it, and are the fource 

 of the greateft part of the vices and crimes among men ; I mean 

 •wealth and uidlgence : For, as they had no foreign commerce, they 

 could not accumulate wealth in that way. Their whole wealth was 

 their land ; and it was divided in fuch a way, that, I think, it was 

 not poftible that any man fhould acquire wealth by the polleflion of 

 it : For the land all belonged to the King, to the Priefts, or to the 

 Soldiers. Now thefe orders of men pofTeffed no lands themfelves 

 (for, otherwife, they muft have gone out of the clafs in which they 

 were placed by the conftitution, and have become farmers), but had 

 the rents paid by the farmers, or herdfmen, who pofTefled them, and 

 who paid their rents to the King and to the other two clafles of "men- 

 not however to the individuals of thefe clafles, but to the whole of them 

 to be divided among them. The Egyptians, therefore, may be faid to 

 have enjoyed that blefting, which yfgi/r prayed for, of neither poverty 

 nor wealth. Neither had they, as I have obferved, any foreign com- 

 merce, by v.'hich we know that vices a? well as dilcafes are import- 

 ed into a country ; and even the commerce in their own country 

 was carried on, not by money, as among us, but in the antient pri- 



Vol. IV, G g mitive 



