14 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XIII. 



twined round it, accompanied by a scorpion, the 

 symbol of the Goddess Selk. From this the idea 

 of the caduceus of Mercury may have been derived, 

 signifying, as some suppose, prudence. In the 

 opinion of many writers, as Eusebius, Psellus, and 

 others, Hermes Trismegistus was a priest and phi- 

 losopher, who lived a little after the time of Moses, 

 and taught his countrymen mensuration, theology, 

 medicine, and geography, upon which subjects he 

 wrote forty-two books. According to others, he 

 was a cotemporary of Osiris; but this fable is con- 

 tradicted by the fact of no Egyptian individual 

 having been raised to the order of Gods. It is pos- 

 sible that the works of some philosopher (perhaps 

 of the same name, the Egyptians having the custom 

 of forming the names of individuals from those of 

 their Gods) may have been ascribed in after times, 

 through the ignorance of the Greeks, to a Deity, 

 wlio was, in fact, no other than the abstract qua- 

 lity of the understanding, the supposed cause of 

 that success which the human mind obtained on the 

 various subjects they ascribed to him.* 



Their motive for separating this Hermes from 

 Thoth it is difficult to ascertain. It was probably 

 one of those subtle distinctions which philosophy 

 had established, and religion had deified as a sepa- 

 rate attribute of the divine wisdom, as modern in- 

 quiries have shown the difference between the 

 understanding and the reasoning faculty. 



*' The princi})al books of this Hermes," ac- 

 cording to Clemens t of Alexandria, " forty-two 



* Vide S2iprd,p.9. f Clem. Alex. Strom, lib. vi. p. 196. 



