Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/267

 thought was terribly aggravated, I believe, by the early development of Art, and the forms which it assumed in Egypt. That Power which the Egyptians recognized without any mythological adjunct, to whom no temple was ever raised, "who was not graven in stone," "whose shrine was never found with painted figures," "who had neither ministrants nor offerings," and "whose abode was unknown," must practically have been forgotten by the worshippers at the magnificent temples of Memphis, Heliopolis, Abydos, Thebes or Dendera, where quite other deities received the homage of prayer and praise and sacrifice.

A highly cultured and intelligent people like the Egyptians, it is true, did not simply acquiesce in the polytheistic view of things, and efforts are visible from the very first to cling to the notion of the Unity of God. The "self-existent" or "self-becoming" One, the One, the One of One, "the One without a second," "the Beginner of becoming, from the first," "who made all things, but was not made," are expressions which we meet constantly in the religious texts, and they are applied to this or that god, each in his turn being considered as the supreme God of gods, the Maker and Creator of all things. But the conclusion which seems to have remained was, that all gods were in fact but names of the One who resided in them all. But this God is no other than Nature. Both individuals and entire nations may long continue to hold