164 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XII. 



some may have been selected as emblems of certain 

 Deities, from various reasons : but the result ought 

 to have been anticipated, and an enhghtened priest- 

 hood sliould have guarded men's minds against so 

 dangerous a fallacy. For, as Plutarch observes *, 

 " The Egyptians, — at least, the greater part of 

 them, — by adoring the animals themselves, and 

 reverencing them as Gods, have not only filled 

 their religious worship with many contemptible 

 and ridiculous rites, but have even given occasion 

 to notions of the most dangerous consequence, 

 driving the weak and simple-minded into all the 

 extravagance of superstition." 



It was likewise unjust and inconsistent that the 

 priesthood should have a creed peculiar to them- 

 selves, and the people be left in utter ignorance of 

 the fundamental doctrines of their religion ; that in 

 proportion as their ideas were raised towards the 

 contemplation of the nature of a God, tlie other 

 classes, tyrannically forbidden to participate in 

 those exalted studies, should be degraded by a be- 

 lief totally at variance with the truths imparted to 

 the initiated ; and whilst these last were acquainted 

 with the existence of one Deity in Unity, and the 

 operations of the Creative power, that the unin- 

 structed should be left and even taught to worship 

 a multiplicity of Deities, whose only claims to ador- 

 ation were grounded upon fable. 



The office of the Gods was, perhaps, in early 

 times more simply defined, their numbers smaller, 

 their attributes less complicated; but the weakness 



* Plut. de Is. s. 71. 



