In Egypt these efforts were made with complete success. At first Egypt had been a region of independent cities: the instincts that had arisen out of that state of things had to be obliterated. A feeling also of intense dislike to their Hyksos neighbours had to be created. All this was done. They were brought to feel that they were a peculiar people, separate from the rest of the world. That they were not as other people. They had no fellow-feeling towards them. They shrank from them. They hated them. It was quite agreeable to their feelings to ravage, to spoil, to oppress, to put to the sword, to degrade, to insult, to inflict the most cruel sufferings on, to make slaves of, to sacrifice to their gods, those who were not Egyptians. This moral sentiment—in us it would be destructive of morality—had originated in, and been fed by, their circumstances; and had been shaped and strengthened by their institutions deliberately designed for this purpose. It had become habitual. It was, taking the word literally, an Egyptian instinct. We can imagine a very different condition of the moral atmosphere of the world: such, indeed, as it is about ourselves in the Europe of the present day. The sentiment of nationality has everywhere been formed. It can maintain itself without any assistance. What is needed is not something that will separate peoples, but something that will bring them to act together. The instinct of exclusiveness, of repulsion, will lead only to troubles, to hostile tariffs, to wars. No good, but only evil, can come of it. Whatever will promote friendliness and intercourse, and prevent their interruption, must be cherished. The old instinct of exclusiveness has now become a mistake, an anachronism, a nuisance, a sin. Everybody sees that what is wanted is the sentiment of universal brotherhood. This, therefore, in its turn, comes to be generally understood, and to some extent to be acted on. That is to say, a moral instinct has been reversed: the old one, which did good service in its day, is dying out; and that which has come to be needed, and so is superseding it, is its direct opposite. And now we must follow this sentiment of national exclusiveness and repulsion into the neighbouring country of Israel. There we find that it had been quite as necessary, probably even more necessary than in Egypt. It had been engendered by the same process, and for the same purpose. Between these two peoples the feeling was reciprocated with more than its normal intensity. Their history accounts for this. But now it was to be abrogated in both, and its abrogation in Egypt was to come from Israel. And what we have to do here is to note the steps by which this great moral revolution was brought about.