266 



♦ KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



[July 1, 1886. 



mical character of the pyramids of Ghizeh, of the Birs 

 Nimroud, and of other ancient edifices, was probably a 

 characteristic only given to tombs and temples at a later 

 time, when the worsliip of the heavenly bodies had eitlier 

 rejjlaced other forms of nature -worsliip, or had at any rate 

 taken the chief position in the religion of the nation. We 

 may indeed well believe that daring one and the same era 

 tornbs and temples might be erected with astronomical sig- 

 nificance and interest — some being raised for the special 

 ceremonial belonging to star-worship, while others, being 

 devoted to other forms than the heavenly orbs, had no 

 astronomical characteristics. Thus may we explain, for 

 instance, the obviously astronomical character of the Birs 

 Nimroud, and the absence of any astronomical relations in 

 others of the temple-tombs known as Zikkaratus, in Meso- 

 potamia. Among the pyramids in Egypt and Mexico there 

 are doubtless many which were not connected with the 

 wor.ship of sun or moon, the planets or the stais, but 

 belonged to the worship of other powers, as those that were 

 recognised in the wind and the storm, or in the earth 

 bsneath, or in the waters under the eai'th. 



It is manifest, however, that during the rule of the 

 dynasty to which the pyramids and tombs of Ghizeh 

 belonged, all such powers of nature were for a time subor- 

 dinated to the rule of the heavenly bodies. For, among all 

 the.se structures, from the Great Pyramid down to the 

 smallest of the stone tombs within the Ghizeh cemetery, the 

 orientation is uniformly perfect. It would seem as though 

 the workers in that place of tomb-temples had felt that now 

 at least the true gods had been recognised, and that the full 

 pur-pose of such structures as they planned would be attained 

 if their work were jnu-ified from all reference save to the 

 worship of the heavenly orbs : The sun, the manifest source 

 of light and life ; the moon, whose benignant but scarcely 

 less potent influence they recognised, as month after month 

 she came back in full splendour to their skies ; the planets, 

 whose devious wanderings tliey could not understand, but 

 which they therefore felt to be all the tipter emblenis of 

 mysterious, perhaps even Unknowable power; and the stars, 

 whose unchanging configurations seemed equally apt em- 

 blems of eternal steadfastness. 



What solemnity of meaning, what evidence of might 

 aud governance, must the heavenly bodies have possessed 

 for those Egyptians of old times, that they should have 

 constructed such altar-tombs as the Great Pyramid and its 

 brother the second Pyramid, for the ceremonial observances 

 by which the will of those orbs was to be read aud their 

 inliuence was to be propitiated I So soon as we recognise 

 this meaning in the pyramids, beyond their iatended use 

 as tombs, we understand what befoi-e had seemed most 

 mysterious in these structures. We can see that it was 

 worth men's while to rear these immense masses of stone 

 for the observation and worship of the gods of that age, 

 even though each served only for that one person who was 

 afterwards to occupy it as a tomb. Apart from that full 

 belief in a future material life, a veritable resurrection of the 

 body, for each tenant of that place of tombs, where the 

 dynasty and their chief servants were buried, we see that, 

 even during the lives of Cheops and Chephren, the fortunes 

 of these kings were of such importance to the nation as 

 to be worth insuring. And they might be insured, men 

 believed, by such careful study of the movements of the 

 heavenly bodies, such duly performed ceremonial observances 

 in regard to them, as might avail, (1) to determine the pre- 

 cise influence exerted liy each orb at each moment of either 

 king's life, and (:.') to indicate the time when the combined 

 influences of all tho.se heavenly beings were bestowed mo.st 

 favourably for the success of the undertakings, civil or 

 military, of the ruling dynasty. 



Here, verily, was the most impressive nature-worshi]) the 

 human race has yet known. The glory of the sun by day, 

 the ever changing lustre of the swift-moving moon by night, 

 the planets with their mysterious movements ovei- the dome 

 of the great sky-temple (adorned by multitudinous stars, 

 which the fancy of men grouped into strange figurings of 

 men and animals) — in all this men recognised the visible 

 .symbols of the unseen majesty of their deities. The move- 

 ments which they traced, and in that sense knew, spoke to 

 them of the unknown — nay, of what they deemed, and what 

 therefore was for them, unknowable. Had they known 

 what we know of the grandeur of the solar system, and of 

 the still vaster glories of the star-strewn spaces around us, 

 they might still have retained their belief that in the 

 heavenly orbs they saw gods and goddesses, and in the 

 interminable depths of star-strewn space the domain of the 

 deities. But the interpretation of the movements of those 

 orbs as Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton interpreted them 

 would have been as fatal to their faith as it has been fatal 

 to the doctrines — once reasonable, but now absurd — of 

 judicial astrology. It was because those movements were 

 seemingly inexplicable that they seemed divine. What was 

 unknown and unknowable for them was what the unknow- 

 able ever has been for men — it was their heaven of heavens, 

 the abode of those powers whose combined influence, ever- 

 acting, all-potent, mysterious, represented for them what 

 the idea of Deity represents for us. 



Men could advance no farther in nature-worship than 

 this. No race the world has ever known can do more, if it 

 is to worship outward nature instead of nature's inner soul, 

 than to take the heavens for the temple of the godhead, the 

 heavenly bodies for the powers to be worshipped within 

 that all-enclosing temple. Eg^'ptians, Assyrians, Chinese, 

 Persians, Indians, Mexicans — none among the nations i-ose 

 beyond this. So soon as the thought — i-egaided as impious 

 at first — entered the hearts of men, that the godhead is 

 beyond even the mightiest, the vastest, and the most im- 

 pressive of natural forces, the real unknowable took the 

 place of that which had been but the symbol of the unknow- 

 able. The " power, not ourselves, making for righteousness " 

 took the place of the natural powers men had heretofore 

 worshipped. Nay, it may be said that the power which 

 men began now to recognise was not only a power outside 

 ourselves, but a power outside all that is, though including 

 all that is — the glories of the heavens, the powers that lule 

 in air aud sea, in forest and river, in mountain and 

 in valley, and in the ever-active regions beneath both land 

 and water — -the powers also that rule wherever there is life, 

 and whose most marvellous and mysterious manifestations 

 show themselves in the heart of man himself. 



THE STORY OF CREATION. 



a plain account of evolution. 

 By Edward Clodd. 



IX. -EXISTING LIFE-FORMS {continued). 

 B. Animals. 

 pIE several types upon which all kno>vn 

 a7iimals are constructed are usually classed 

 under the following six primary divisions, 

 called sub-kingdoms : — (See next page.) 



Tabular forms are convenient for clear 

 presentment, but their hard-and-fast divi- 

 sions are apt to be mistaken for real lines 

 separation, and in the foregoing list this caution is the 

 more needful because the relations of the things set forth 



