< Soul-ideas of the Ancient Egyptians (continued from page 8-75) >
Magic, so prominent in old Chaldæa and Christian mediaeval countries, traceable to an African or a Turanian source.
The diversity of opinions in Egypt testifies to the inquiring spirit of the people and the absence of dogmatic authority. The future fate of the soul was not so distinctly indicated in their Bible, but that men could speculate from chapter and verse as to what became of the spirits of the dead, in the same way as our theologians do.
But there is this difference. Some of our divines can find, as they consider, Scripture authority for non-immortality of soul. No materialist could quote texts from Egyptian writings in support of such a dogma, since they are at least clear upon continued existence, in some form, after death.
Still, these holy books were not precise, or our interpretation is obscure upon the condition of the soul. While certain passages favour the theory of eternal punishments, others point to a restoration after a course of trial. The phrase “gift of eternal life” occurs repeatedly, as if the gods made a special grant of immortality, according to the idea entertained by Mr. Dale, of Birmingham. At a later period the Pantheistic doctrine of absorption supplanted the original faith with the more philosophical class. Egyptians, like the moderns, indulged in speculation on such subjects, having no thought of the employment of experimental science to determine the question of intellectual being.
It is but natural that we should inquire into the origin of Egyptian soul-ideas, and how the notions of the nineteenth century A.D. were so accordant with those of, say, the thirtieth or even fortieth century B.C.
Some will assume these soul-ideas to be the remnants of an original revelation to the Egyptians, or to some earlier and now forgotten people.
Others suppose they grew with the gradual advance from barbarism. Men saw sunrise follow sunset, plant life spring from plant death, and so associated death of man with a reappearance somewhere. Mummies evidence a belief in the soul’s resurrection, and we have no knowledge of Egypt when these were non-existent. A belief in soul, as independent of body preceded, therefore, that preservation of the body. Whether this was 7,000 or 10,000 years ago, we have no means of determining.
The steady faith, in the vastly remote Pyramid days, that the dead would rise again, must have given hope to the dying and joy to the bereaved, while affording a motive for the exercise of virtue on earth. A gradual decline of morals in Egypt would seem to have accompanied the gradual departure from the simple soul-ideas of more primitive times.
The British National Association of Spiritualists
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Editor's notes