This will show us, too, why it did not spread. This religion, and this system, which were so admirably adapted to the existing conditions and natural circumstances of Egypt, were not adapted to the conditions and circumstances of other countries. If the world had been composed, physically and morally, only of so many possible Egypts, so that the discovery of new regions might have issued only in the addition of new Egypts to those already known, then the temples of Abydos, Memphis, Heliopolis, and Karnak would still be crowded with the devout worshippers of the gods of old Egypt, and so would the temples of thousands of other cities. The ideas in the minds of these worshippers would still be the ideas which had existed in the minds of Sethos and Rameses, and the Egyptians of their day—neither better nor worse—and they would have been propagated, and would continue to be propagated, to the other Egypts of the world. But, fortunately, the world is not a repetition of Egypts, nor of anything else; and so an insuperable barrier existed, in the very nature of things, to prevent the outflow of Egyptianism into other lands. But what was it that overthrew it in its own home, where it was so strong? We may infer that it will probably be something, not that was spontaneously generated within, but that came from without. And so it was. But what was that something? It was not force. That the Persians had tried, and it had been powerless. Nor could the dominion of foreign laws and customs at the summit of society overthrow it: that has, elsewhere, sapped and undermined domestic institutions; but in Egypt it, too, was powerless, as was demonstrated by ages of Greek and Roman rule. Nor did the religion of old Egypt fall because it had aimed in a wrong direction. By their religion I mean their philosophy of the whole, their purposed organization of the entire domain of experience, and observation, and thought, including in its range the invisible as well as the visible world. Its object had been the moral improvement of man. Though, of course, from this statement some very damaging deductions must be made; for it had not aimed equally at the moral improvement of all, that is to say, of every man because he was a man. It had failed here because it had had another co-ordinate aim, necessary for those times: the maintenance of the social, intellectual, and material advantages of a part of the community at the expense of the rest. This was, though necessary, immoral or, at all events, demoralizing. Still, however, it made the present only a preparation for the higher and the better life. The things that are now seen it regarded as the ladder, by which man mounts to the things that are not yet seen, which alone are eternal realities. Of these aims and doctrines of the religion every man’s understanding and conscience approved. Without this approval the religion could not have maintained itself.