[80] See in _L'Oiseau_ the chapter-headed _L'Épuration_. With his genius for history and poetry Michelet has well understood the sentiment which gave birth to these primitive forms of worship, forms which have too long provoked unjust contempt. The whole of this beautiful chapter should be read; we shall only quote a few lines: "In America the law protects these public benefactors. Egyptian law does still more for them--it respects them and loves them. Although they no longer enjoy their ancient worship, they receive the friendly hospitality of man as in the time of Pharaoh. If you ask an Egyptian fellah why he allows himself to be besieged and deafened by birds, why he patiently suffers the insolence of the crow perched upon the horn of the buffalo, on the hump of a camel, or fighting upon the date-trees and shaking down the fruit, he will say nothing. Birds are allowed to do anything. Older than the Pyramids, they are the ancients of the country. Man's existence depends upon them, upon the persevering labour of the ibis, the stork, the crow and the vulture." [Illustration: FIG. 44.--Horus; from a bronze in the Posno collection. (Height 38 inches.)] The worship of the hawk, the vulture, and the ibis, had, then, preceded by many centuries that of the gods who correspond to the personages of the Hellenic pantheon. Rooted by long custom in the minds of the people, it did not excite the ire of the wise men of Heliopolis or Thebes. The doctrine of emanation and of successive incarnations of the deity, permitted their theology to explain and to accept anything, even those things which at a later epoch seemed nothing more than the grossest creations of popular superstition. These objects of veneration were therefore enabled to maintain their places by the side of the superior gods, to represent them in written characters and in plastic creations, and, in the latter case, to be blended with the forms of man himself. To us, accustomed as we are to the types created by Greek anthropomorphism, these figures are surprising; but to the Egyptians they seemed perfectly natural, for they offered the characteristic features of the animals which they had loved, respected, and adored ever since the birth of their civilization. [Illustration: FIG. 45.--Thoth. Louvre. Enamelled clay. Actual size.]