Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/125

 this power is unconscious activity—universal life, it may be. This unconscious power then appears under an outward form, and first of all in that of an animal. An animal is itself something devoid of consciousness, it leads a dull, still life within itself, as compared with human caprice or free-will, so that it may appear as if it had within itself this unconscious power which works in the whole.

Especially peculiar and characteristic, however, are the forms under which the priests or scribes so frequently appear in plastic representations and paintings with animal masks; and the same is the case with the embalmers of mummies. This duplicate form,—an external mask concealing another form underneath it,—intimates that the consciousness is not merely sunken in dull, animal life, but also knows itself to be separated from it, and recognises in it a further signification.

In the political state of Egypt, too, we find the struggle of Spirit seeking to extricate itself from immediateness. Thus history frequently mentions the conflicts of the kings with the priestly caste, and Herodotus speaks of these even from the earliest times. King Cheops caused the temple of the priests to be shut up, while other kings reduced the priestly caste to complete subjection and excluded them from all power.

This opposition is no longer Oriental; we see here the human free-will revolting against religion. This emergence from a state of dependence is a trait which it is essential to take into account.

It is especially, however, in naive and highly pictorial representations in artistic forms that this struggling on the part of Spirit and its emergence from Nature, are expressed. It is only necessary to think of the image of the Sphinx, for example. In Egyptian works of art everything, indeed, is symbolical; the significance in them reaches even to the minutest details; even the number of pillars and of steps is not reckoned in