Beyond, an ape poises a pair of scales. For balance is an ostrich
feather. Above are the spirits of fate. At the left Osiris is
enthroned. From a balcony his assessors lean. At the right is the
entrance. There the disembodied, ushered by Truth, appears and, in
homages and genuflections, affirms negatively the decalogue;
protesting before the Master of Eternity that there is no evil in him;
praying the dwellers in Amenti that he may cross the dark way;
declaring to each that he has not committed the particular sin over
which they preside.

"O Eater of Spirits gone out of the windows of Alu! O Master of the
Faces!" he variously calls. "O the One who associates the Splendours!
O the Glowing Feet gone out of the Night! I did not lie. I did not
kill. I have not been anxious. I did not talk abundantly. I made no
one weep. No heart have I harmed."

The assessors listen. "I have not been anxious. I made no one weep. No
heart have I harmed." These abstentions, graces now, were virtues
then, and so efficacious that they perhaps sufficed, as rightly they
should, for absolution.

But while the assessors listen and Osiris looks gravely on, no one
accuses. It is conscience in its nakedness, conscience exposed there
where all may see it, where for the first time perhaps it truly sees
itself, and seeing realizes what there is in it of evil and what of
good, it is that which protests.

Still the assessors listen. Orthodoxy on the part of the respondent is
to them a minor thing. What they require is that he shall have been
merciful to his fellow creatures, true to himself. Only when it is
proven that he has done his duty to man, is he permitted to show that
he has done his duty to gods.

The appeal continues: "I fed the hungry, clothed the naked, I gave
water to them that thirsted. O ye that dwell in Amenti! I am
unpolluted, I am pure."

But is it true? The scales decide. The heart of the respondent is
weighed. If heavy, out it is cast to pass with him again through
life's infernal circles. But, if light as the feather in the balance
and therefore equal with truth, it is restored to the body, which then
resurrects and, in the bark of the Sun, sails the celestial Nile to Ra
and the Land of Light.

That singer gone out of Amenti, actually, like Osiris, rose from the
dead. The picture which a papyrus forty centuries old presents, is the
dream of a vision that Michel Angelo displayed, a sketch for a papal
fresco. Such indeed was t