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universe, whether in its physical or in its moral aspect. This is surely a great and noble conception.

You will not be surprised to learn that Maat is spoken of as a mythical personage. She is called mistress of heaven, ruler of earth and president of the nether world, which indeed is recognized as her special domain. She is called the daughter of Ra, but she might as truly have been called his mother. Each of the great gods is said to be neb maut, literally, "lord or master of Maat;" but it is equally said that "she knows no lord or master." If she is brought into closer connection with Thoth than with other gods, this is because Thoth is essentially the "Measurer;" and if certain texts speak of the winds as proceeding from either Thoth or Maat, it is not because these personages are wind-gods, but because the cardinal points from which the winds come are naturally the domain of the god who has measured and mapped out the universe, and because the winds themselves are obedient to Law.

Such were the gods of Egypt. They were not the ghosts of ancestors or other dead men, or representatives of abstract principles, as ancient and modern philosophers have supposed, nor were they impure spirits or foul demons, as an uncritical though not unnatural interpretation of their Scriptures led the early Christian missionaries to imagine. "All the gods of the nations are nought," says the Psalmist; but the Greek and Latin translators used the word "dæmonia," which

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in Christian times never meant anything but "devils." The gods of the Egyptian, as well as those of the Indian, Greek or Teutonic mythologies, were the "powers" of nature, the "strong ones," whose might was seen and felt to be irresistible, yet so constant, unchanging and orderly in its operations, as to leave no doubt as to the presence of an ever living and active Intelligence.1

1 Much in this Lecture will be new, and perhaps appear doubtful, to my learned colleagues in Egyptology, especially to those whose studies have not led them into the field of Indo-European philology. From the time of Champollion, the Egyptian language and literature have been almost exclusively illustrated from Semitic, not to say purely Hebrew, sources. This is a fatal mistake, though perhaps inevitable at first. I have for years been humbly endeavouring to bring the Science of Language to bear upon Egyptian philology, and I trust this Lecture will at least induce some eminent scholars to study the Egyptian by the light of other mythologies. M. Lefébure has already done most valuable work in this direction. M. Grébaut, though confining himself entirely to Egyptian mythology, has, in his "Hymne à Ammon-Ra," published in the Bibliothèque de l'ecole des hautes études, and in an article of the Mélanges d'Archéologie, tome II. p. 247, demonstrated several important truths, and he has very nearly approached the true conception of Maat. As regards the identification of certain deities, I have very nearly been anticipated by M. Naville, who in his admirable work on the " Litany of the Sun," p. 38, is inclined to consider Isis and Nephthys chacun caractérisait plus particulièrement l'un des horizons; peut comme personnifiant des êtres dont être l'étoile du matin et celle du soir, ou encore le crépuscule du matin et celui du soir; les deux formules de la litanie se comprendraient alors facilement." But he puts Isis at the west, and Nephthys at the east.

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COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN

WORLD.

Sepulchral Rites.

A BELIEF in the persistence of life after death, and the observation of religious practices founded upon this belief, may be discovered in every part of the world, in every age, and among men representing every degree and variety of culture. Classical scholars are familiar with the terms of Inferiæ and Parentalia, names given by the Romans to the propitiatory offerings which they presented to the manes of their departed ancestors. The Greeks had their évayíoμaтa. The worship of the Fravashis by the Iranians, and that of the Pitris by the Hindu, are evidences of the antiquity in the Indo-European family of this form of religion, many traces of which remain to this day in the practices of European nations. And the celebration of rites in honour of their ancestors is perhaps the most ancient institution of the oldest civilization now in existence, that of China.

any

The habits of savages without a history are not in themselves evidence which can in any way be depended upon. To take for granted that what the savages now are, perhaps after millenniums of degradation, all other people must have been, and that modes of thought through which they are now passing have been passed through by others, is a most unscientific assumption, and you will seldom meet with it in essay or book without also finding proof that the writer did not know how to deal with historical evidence. Authorities are sure to be quoted which the historian knows to be worthless, and evidence in itself irreproachable will be completely misunderstood. The universality of a belief or practice, even among savages, would of course, if proved, be a very weighty fact, tending to prove that the belief or practice in question had its origin either in reason or in tradition. It is, however, impossible to exaggerate the value of Sir Henry Maine's protest against "the very slippery testimony concerning savages which is gathered from travellers' tales." "Much," he says, "which I have personally heard in India bears out the caution which I gave as to the reserve with which all speculations on the antiquity of human usage should be received. Practices represented as of immemorial antiquity and universally characteristic of the infancy of mankind, have been described to me as having been for the first time

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resorted to in our days through the mere pressure of external circumstances or novel temptations."1

Far more important than any single instance from the descriptions of modern savages is the ancient tomb "If the fossil memorials," says Sir of Aurignac. Charles Lyell, "have been correctly interpreted—if we have before us at the northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral vault, with skeletons of human beings consigned by friends and relatives to their last restingplace-if we have also at the portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on their way to a land of spirits, while among the funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic deer, the cave lion, the cave bear and woolly rhinoceros-we have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and, more interesting still, a belief in a future state, to times long anterior to those of history or tradition."2

But if from pre-historic we pass to historic times, we at once meet on Egyptian ground with an entire system

1 "Village Communities," p. 17.

Antiquity of Man," p. 193, 1863. I leave the words of the I was not aware at the time above passage as they were delivered. that the evidence of M. Lartet had been contested, and that Sir Charles Lyell had in his last edition admitted this evidence to be doubtful. See the article of Mr. W. B. Dawkins, on "The Date of the Interment in the Aurignac Cave," in Nature, Vol. IV. p. 208.