It is useless to turn to the history of Egypt, or of any other country, merely to satisfy an empty curiosity or to feed a barren—and often a mischievous—love of the marvellous. The legitimate aim, and—if it be reached—the precious fruit of such studies, is to enable ourselves to make out the path along which some portion of mankind travelled to the point it reached, and to see how it fared with them by the way; what hindered, and what promoted, their advance; to ascertain what they did, how they did it, and what effects the doing of it had: and all this in order that haply thereby some serviceable light may be thrown on our own path and position. This is the only way in which we can properly either form opinions, or review the grounds of opinions already formed, on many subjects in which we are most concerned: for these are subjects with respect to which the roots of opinion are for us laid in history. First then—What was the cause of this long life, this stability of the religion of Egypt? The primary cause was that, as we have seen, it was thoroughly in harmony with the circumstances and conditions of the Egypt of its time. It had thoroughly and comprehensively grasped those circumstances and conditions. It had, with a wise simplicity, interpreted them, and adapted itself to them. But that was not all. In a manner possible at that time it had made itself the polity and the social life, as well as the religion, of the nation; and having done this—that is, having absorbed and taken up into itself every element of power—it gave to itself a fixed and immutable form. The physical characteristics, too, of the country, while, as we have seen, they made despotism inevitable in the political order, could not have been favourable to any kind of intellectual liberty. Thenceforth, all fermentation, or disposition to change, in political and social matters, and too in manners and customs, and even in art and thought, became impossible: for all these things go together. The natural condition, therefore, of Egypt became one of fixity and equilibrium: there was no tendency to move from the _status quo_, or even to do anything in a way different from that, in which men had done it, or to feel in a manner different from that, in which men had felt for, at least, four thousand years. What were now the instincts of the people were all in the opposite direction. It appeared as if Egypt had never been young, and could never become old; as if it had never had a beginning, and could never have an end. Time could not touch it. Society worked with the regularity of the sun and of the river.