coming down, let us say, from the Highlands of Syria, between the unexplored Ocean and the Plains of Mesopotamia, we enter the unheard-of and unimagined Valley of the Nile. Green oasis. Sandy desert. Limitless oasis-length. Boundless desert-breadth. If we were first impressed with the marvel of a serene, and infinite splendour; our next wonder-impression will certainly be derived from the perpetual coexistence of fair, fruitful river-banks, and terrible, bounding, and boundless deserts. For, associating this coexistence with that succession which is the tragedy of our being, we shall feel with quite new vividness and force what the wonder is of that tragedy. The abiding environment of Life by Death!

8. But yet another profound impression would the Nile-valley Aspects of Nature make on a primæval, and yet enlarged and impressible Consciousness of Existence. Utterly, for the most part, are the modern northern peoples, and particularly the dwellers in cities, unimpressed with any sense of that daily and yearly wonder which, judging from the most ancient hymns, seems of all others most to have affected the nobler primæval races. Yet we shall be quite unable truly to understand how the central myths of almost all religions and poesies originated, if we cannot, in some degree at least, realise the wonder with which men, when they had attained to the noble and, as it should appear, distinctively human capacity1 of being impressed by the grander

1 For consider the generalising power required in order to be capable of being consciously impressed by the more general phenomena of Nature.

Aspects of Nature, saw the daily and yearly-renewed, sublime spectacle of the birth, the lifecourse, and the death of the life-and-lightgiving Creator actually visible in the Heavens. It is, probably, the Starry Sky1 alone that ordinarily excites in us moderns genuine wonder; an emotion in any degree comparable to that with which the poets of the first Solar Hymns beheld the phenomena of Sunrise, Sunprogress, and Sunset; for the knowledge that has taken from Day its wonder has given it to Night. And in Egypt, as a mountain-walled valley, this primæval wonder of Day would be peculiarly impressive. See the divine Sun, born on the eastern Arabian hills, pass across the valley in a long day of beneficently creative power, and unspeakable serene splendour; see him sink on the hills of the Libyan desert to enter, through gorgeous portals, the Land of the West; and see him, after the darkness and terror of the night, born again on the eastern hills in resplendent strength, for evermore renewed. A wonder of eternal Rebirth!

9. These, then, are the great successive phenomena, general features, and distinctive characteristics of the Aspects of Nature in the Nile-valley—an infinite, serene Splendour; an abiding environment of Life by Death; and a divine spectacle of eternal Rebirth. But the effect of each will not be adequately understood except we consider it in its relation to the others. Take, for instance, as the central impression, that made by the extraordinary, and unparalleled features of a limitless

1 Kant, in his famous conjunction of the Starry Sky and Conscience as alone exciting in him wonder, spoke, without knowing it, not for himself only, but for the men of his time.

oasis sharply, on both sides, bordered by boundless deserts. Evidently, the subjective effect produced by such an Aspect of Nature will-setting aside, at present, the consideration of differences in the subjective element itself-be very much owing to two such other Aspects of Nature as those that coexist with it. The sunrise and sunset, so peculiarly striking in Egypt, and hardly to be named in primæval language except as birth and death, will naturally either suggest the ideal generalisation of the great features of the land, or greatly deepen its effect. And the serenity of the splendour, and beneficence of the might of the Sunstar will necessarily colour all the conceptions given by the physical characteristics of the land, and its daily divine spectacle the conceptions of Life and Death, and eternal Rebirth. Nay, but for this serenity and beneficence, which is, as it were, the fundamental chord, the other Aspects of Nature would be expressed in entirely different ideal generalisations. For it has been suggestively remarked that Sunworship, with its accompanying myths of Death and Rebirth, is only to be found in those more temperate regions where he is welcomed as a friend, not dreaded as a scorching foe.1 And so, Death being found to be followed by Rebirth, environed though Life might be seen to be by Death, both, as successive phenomena of Existence, would be felt to be amid an infinite Splendour.

'D'Orbigny, L'Homme américain, t. 1. p. 242; see also Herodotus, vol. I. p. 216, vol. IV. p. 184, and Baker, Albert Nyanza, vol. 1. p. 144, as cited by Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. 11. p. 260.

SECTION II.

THE WANTS OF MIND AND THE POWERS OF NATURE.

1. BUT, though it may seem clear that there is some relation between such Aspects of Nature and the myth of Osiris, and mythology generally of Osirianism; yet, the more the subject is pondered, the more surprising it appears how such simple facts as those of the Sun's daily and yearly course could, however deep the emotions of delight, wonder, and awe with which they were regarded, have been-if they were indeed as appears -transformed into so splendidly elaborated a myth as that of the birth, life, and death of a God-Man, a vision of departure into Otherworlds of Darkness and of Light, and doctrines of Incarnation, Future Judgment, and Punishment or Reward. The origin, however, of this myth and of these doctrines is a problem that we cannot evade the attempt, at least, to solve. For if, as above suggested, one of the principal causes influencing the formation of the narratives of the Evangelists, and the development of the doctrines of the Apostles and Fathers of Christianity was the contemporary atmosphere of Naturian, and more particularly of Osirian Mythology; then the study of the origin of the Osirian, is the study of one of the profoundest origins of the Christian religion and civilisation. But the explanation of the origin of Christianity we have taken up as standing in the same verifying relation to our Ultimate Law of History as the explanation

1 See above, pp. 296–7.

of the Moon's motions stood to the Law of Gravity. And now that we see how the explanation of the origin of Christianity involves the explanation of the origin of those myths which should seem so importantly to have influenced its development, we should more clearly see how the explanation of the origin of Christianity involves everything implied in a verification of that theory of the Three Ages of Humanity which is the chief deduction from a more complete expression of our Ultimate Law of Man's History. For, in further reflecting on the myths of Naturianism, we see that there can be no thorough explanation of their origin, without an explanation of the origin of that philosophy of Spiritism which they imply. But to explain the origin of Spiritism is to explain the origin of that conception of Causation as a Onesided Determination which distinguishes, according to our Ultimate Law, the First Age of Humanity. And as this conception distinguishes also, though in a more abstract form, the Second Age of Humanity, and more particularly, Christianism; a natural explanation of its origin will evidently be, at once, an explanation of what is, in an intellectual point of view, most essential in Christianism, and a verification of that Law which distinguishes the First and Second Ages of Humanity by a relatively more concrete and more abstract conception of Causation as Onesided Determination. We thus further see that our Law of History is Ultimate, only in the sense of being deducible from a certain ultimate quality of the mind under the action of terrestrial conditions. And Mr. Buckle is, to say the