152 
multitude of deified objects .* Plutarch Sives an iltetotiou of 
this in regard to the worship of the crocodile, telling us, accora 
Sg to the S notions of those days, that as that creature had 
eyes covered over by a tbin transparent membrane, by means 
of which, though living in the water it wd 
he seen, it was taken as a representation of the W 
Omniscient God.f Ex uno disce omnes. The instances wmc 
ttat liigU conceptions of 
the Deity Tike ^these were after-thoughts of a Bioreadvanced 
age which deeper thinkers skilfully fitted m to previous super- 
stitions with a view to redeem them from their grossness. Bu, 
however ingenious such an idea may be, m order to make t 
theory of Sir John Lubbock and his school goon aU four l 
beg to recall those gentlemen from theory to fact, and tr 
specuktion to reason^ ^ ^ &e earl i est gods of 
of animals was the effect of a later religious development ie^ 
suiting in part from pantheistic and in part worn 
movement^ and against which the minds of some of ? the Egy£ 
finris revolted as being opposed to the honour 
Supreme Deity which had been ^ efor %^ uratl ^LTlutoch 
under the higher forms of anthropomorphism. Thus Plmaich 
of the people of Thebes, that 
Whilst other Egyptians paid their proportion of tax imposed U P 011 ^ 
fo™TthmenT!f sacred animals worshipped by them the mhahitaute 
of Thehes refused, because they acknowledged no _mor a jc J 
shipped Him whom they called Kneph, the unmade and Eternal Heity. + 
Professor Rawlinson speaks rightly when he says 
The deity once divided, there was no limit to the 
butes of various kinds, and of different gra es^ 811 ac M to 
respect, which the ignorant could not distinguish from actual worship. § 
* Wilkinson’s Egypt, vol. i. p. 327 (small edrimn). 
t Quoted in Cudworth’s Intellectual System. • 
§ Rawlinson’s Herodotus , App. to Book II. p. 250. 
