astronomic
universe, this grand blending of the deepest of moral doctrines
with the most august of physical sciences, plainly betrays the
brain and hand of that hereditary hierarchy whose wisdom was the
wonder of the ancient world. Osburn thinks the localization of
Amenthe in the west may have arisen in the following way. Some
superstitious Egyptians, travelling westwards, at twilight, on the
great marshes haunted by the strange gray white ibis, saw troops
of these silent, solemn, ghostlike birds, motionless or slow
stalking, and conceived them to be souls waiting for the funeral
rites to be paid, that they might sink with the setting sun to
their destined abode.21

That such a system of belief was too complex and elaborate to have
been a popular development is evident. But that it was really held
by the people there is no room to doubt. Parts of it were publicly
enacted on festival days by multitudes numbering more than a
hundred thousand. Parts of it were dimly shadowed out in the
secret recesses of temples, surrounded by the most astonishing
accompaniments that unrivalled learning, skill, wealth, and power
could contrive. Its authority commanded the allegiance, its charm
fascinated the imagination, of the people. Its force built the
pyramids, and enshrined whole generations of Egypt's embalmed
population in richly adorned sepulchres of everlasting rock. Its
substance of esoteric knowledge and faith, in its form of exoteric
imposture and exhibition, gave it vitality and endurance long. In
the vortex of change and decay it sank at last. And now it is only
after its secrets have been buried for thirty centuries that the
exploring genius of modern times has brought its hidden
hieroglyphics to light, and taught us what were the doctrines
originally contained in the altar lore of those priestly schools
which once dotted the plains of the Delta and studded the banks of
eldest Nile, where now, disfigured and gigantic, the solemn

"Old Syhinxes lift their countenances bland Athwart the river sea
and sea of sand."

21 Monumental History of Egypt, vol. i. ch. 8.

CHAPTER VI.

BRAHMANIC AND BUDDHIST DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.

IN the Hindu views of the fate of the human soul, metaphysical
subtlety and imaginative vastness, intellect and fancy, slavish
tradition and audacious speculation, besotted ritualism and
heaven storming spirituality, are mingled together on a scale of
grandeur and intensity wholly without a pa