438 



NA TURE 



[March 8, 1900 



the powers of evil, and who rose again to become King of 

 the Underworld and judge of the dead. He represented 

 the idea of one who, though a god, had been a man who 

 had suffered and died, and who was, therefore, in full 

 sympathy with human beings in their own time of trial 

 and death. As his flesh had not seen corruption, so was 

 he the cause of mortals being born again, and the 

 righteous who followed his ensample might, with the help 

 of the gods, secure a resurrection to everlasting life, and 

 dwell with him in his kingdom. 



In this way Osiris, from being the example of a man 

 raised from the dead, became himself the cause of the 

 resurrection and the bestower of eternal life, and it is 

 needless to say that his ever-increasing popularity finally 

 raised him to the position of the quasi-national God. He 

 gradually assumed the attributes of the cosmic deities 

 and even of the creator ; and thus making himself his 

 father's equal, he reigned beside him in Heaven as the 

 divine source of all things. It is sufficiently evident that 

 the growth of such conceptions must have been gradual, 

 and that prior to their formulation the condition of the 

 disembodied spirit must have been largely problematic. 

 It was then, no doubt, regarded as a spook which it was 

 as well to banish from the precincts of the living ; and 

 those mutilations and cremations of corpses which were 

 originally practised may have been intended to coerce 

 the spirit into an abandonment of his old habitation. 

 With the belief in a resurrection a new order of ideas 

 arose, and, far from a desire to destroy the body, every 

 means was sought for its preservation. The outcome of 

 the new dogma was that wonderful system of mummific- 

 ation with which we are familiar, but the adoption of 

 which, in view of the strongly expressed declaration that 

 immortality was confined to the spiritual body, is some- 

 what inexplicable. It may be that the pirimary concep- 

 tion of the resurrection was that of the physical body, 

 and that the spiritualisation of the tenet was a subsequent 

 modification ; in which case the later retention of the 

 practice would be due to the ever observable reluctance 

 of man to change the procedures associated with the 

 crises of his existence. Another explanation may be 

 found in the fact that the spiritual body derived its 

 existence from the physical body through the prayers 

 and ceremonies of the funeral rites. There are various 

 pictures representing the departed soul as hovering in 

 proximity to the mummied corpse, of which, possibly, it 

 could but gradually acquire the characteristics. Were 

 that the case, the necessity for a prolonged retention 

 intact of the senseless clay is intelligible in order to 

 afford ample time for the intended assimilation whereby 

 the mortal put on immortality. Be this as it may, by 

 whatever process the spiritual body acquired its existence, 

 it was called upon to answer for the deeds done in the 

 flesh : the heart, as the seat of being, was literally 

 weighed in the balance, and woe to its possessor were it 

 found wanting. Then the deceased had to declare him- 

 self innocent of forty-two specific transgressions contained 

 in a catalogue which is so skilfully compiled to include 

 every possible wickedness, that it must have been very 

 difficuh to sin outside it. Either, then, the gods failed 

 to verify their facts, or, unless they differed considerably 

 from the men and women of to-day, the number of 

 the Egyptian elect must have been infinitesimal. The 

 NO. 1584. VOL. 61] 



final admittance to Elysium was further hindered by a 

 series of perplexing interrogatories — floor and threshold 

 — hasp and socket each in turn propounded its riddle to 

 the aspiring soul ; an ordeal apparently purposeless until 

 it is understood that it was the business of the priesthood 

 to furnish the replies which were needed to pass the 

 purified spirit to the presence of that Osiris with whom 

 he had at last become identified. 



When we find the ecclesiastical body purveying such 

 wares for the spiritual well-being of their flock, it is 

 evident that the line of demarcation between religion and 

 magic is faint. Indeed, as one reads the documents 

 cited by Dr. Budge, it is by no means easy to determine 

 the category to which certain practices and invocations 

 should be relegated. In a sense the whole religion was 

 so theurgic that it might pass for a sublimated magic ; 

 whilst much of what is classed as magic consisted in 

 such invocations of divine beings, and aspirations for 

 assimilation to them, as to contain the essence of genuine 

 religion. It may be taken that the fundamental doctrine 

 of magic is contained in the formula, " whatever is above 

 is below, and whatever is below is above." The idea 

 being that all existing things are created after divine 

 prototypes, and that by an accurate perception of the 

 one a knowledge of the other is obtainable. The germ 

 of such an idea evidently existed in Egypt, the Supreme 

 God having produced the universe in accordance with 

 his previous mental conception. The premises being ad- 

 mitted they might serve either as the means by which a 

 partial comprehension of the creator was obtainable, and 

 as inciting the student to thankfulness and adoration ; or 

 they might place in his hands a means not only of 

 invoking the gods, but of compelling them to his will. 

 It must always be borne in mind that ideas, whether 

 religious or not, are not the outcome of unreasoning 

 invention, but are the result of a certain sequence of 

 thought, however wanting it may be in logical acumen.. 

 The association of a certain evil with a certain 

 precursory series of facts may have been arrived at 

 on the post-hoc propter-hoc principle; but that this 

 is so only proves the insufficiency and inadequacy 

 of the observations upon which the association was- 

 reached, and not that it was arbitrarily devised. In 

 many cases the mental position from which a belief 

 or a custom was reached is so alien to our own 

 that we are unable to reconstruct the train of thought 

 by which it was arrived at ; but in some cases 

 we have been provided with a key to the mystery,, 

 and that is especially the case where names are 

 in question. A spirit appearing before the gods had 

 to be known and named by them. Nameless, he 

 was non-existent, and consequently we find that,. 

 to the Egyptian, the name was as much a part of a man's, 

 being as his soul. Just as possession of the soul would, 

 place the entire individual in the possessor's power, so 

 the name of god or devil gave a control which made the 

 spirit your humble servant. The names of beings or 

 things were words of power to conjure with, and, as has 

 been stated, it was by the utterance of his own name that 

 God brought all things into existence. It was but doing 

 on a supreme scale what man on a lesser might perform ; 

 and when the potency of the uttered word was admitted, 

 the transition to the efficacy of the written charm and. 



