318 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP. XIII. 



Egyptian Deity * was supposed to have lived on 

 earth, and to have been deified after death, as with 

 the Greeks and other people. 



Pythagoras also borrowed from the Egyptians 

 his notion respecting emanation. He held that the 

 Deity was the soul which animated all nature, — 

 the anima mundi, or soul of the universe, — not an 

 external influence, but dwelling within it, as the 

 soul of man within the human body ; and from 

 this universal soul all other Gods, as well as the 

 souls of men and other animals, and even of plants, 

 directly proceeded. Plutarch, indeed, attempts to 

 show that the worship of animals in Egypt was 

 borrowed from this ideat, when he says, " On the 

 whole, we ought to approve the conduct of those 

 who do not reverence these creatures for their own 

 sakes, but who, looking upon them as the most 

 lively and natural mirrors wherein to behold the 

 divine perfections, and as the instruments and 

 workmanship of the Deity, are led to pay their 

 adoration to tliat God who orders and directs all 

 things. Concluding, on the whole, that whatever 

 is endued with soul and sensation is more excel- 

 lent than that which is devoid of those perfec- 

 tions — even than all the gold and precious stones 

 in the universe, though collected into one mass. 

 For it is not in the brilliancy of colour, in the ele- 

 gance of form, or in the beauty of surface, that 

 the Divinity resides. So far from it, those things 

 which never had life, and have not the power of 



* Vide supra, p. 167. 



\ Vide infra, beginning of CIi. xiv., on the Sacred Animals. 



