If Brahmanism and Buddhism occupy the opposite poles of the same axis of
thought,--if the system of Confucius stands opposed, on another axis, to
that of Zoroaster,--we find a third development of like polar antagonisms
in the systems of ancient Egypt and Greece. Egypt stands for Nature;
Greece for Man. Inscrutable as is the mystery of that Sphinx of the Nile,
the old religion of Egypt, we can yet trace some phases of its secret. Its
reverence for organization appears in the practice of embalming. The
bodies of men and of animals seemed to it to be divine. Even vegetable
organization had something sacred in it: "O holy nation," said the Roman
satirist, "whose gods grow in gardens!" That plastic force of nature which
appears in organic life and growth made up, in various forms, as we shall
see in the proper place, the Egyptian Pantheon. The life-force of nature
became divided into the three groups of gods, the highest of which
represented its largest generalizations. Kneph, Neith, Sevech, Pascht, are
symbols, according to Lepsius, of the World-Spirit, the World-Matter,
Space and Time. Each circle of the gods shows us some working of the
mysterious powers of nature, and of its occult laws. But when we come to
Greece, these personified laws turn into men. Everything in the Greek
Pantheon is human. All human tendencies appear transfigured into glowing
forms of light on Mount Olympus. The gods of Egypt are powers and laws;
those of Greece are persons.

The opposite tendencies of these antagonist forms of piety appear in the
development of Egyptian and Hellenic life. The gods of Egypt were
mysteries too far removed from the popular apprehension to be objects of
worship; and so religion in Egypt became priestcraft. In Greece, on the
other hand, the gods were too familiar, too near to the people, to be
worshipped with any real reverence. Partaking in all human faults and
vices, it must sooner or later come to pass that familiarity would breed
contempt. And as the religion of Egypt perished from being kept away from