Here the study of the wisdom of old Egypt teaches us much. One most useful lesson is that stability in human societies can be attained; but that, as the constitution and sentiments of European societies are now very different from the state of things to which the wisdom of Egypt was applied, we must give to our efforts a form and character that will be suitable to our altered circumstances. The method they adopted was that of eliminating the elements of political and social change, by arranging society in the iron frame of caste, and by petrifying all knowledge in the form of immutable doctrine. We cannot do this, and it would not be desirable for us to do it, if we could. The obvious advantages of the Egyptian method were that, under the then existing circumstances, it secured order and quiet; and that it assigned to every man his work, and taught him how to do it. Its disadvantages were that ultimately it repressed all higher moral progress, denied all new truths, and consecrated what had become falsehood and injustice. It was also worked, though with a great immediate gain of power, from thorough organization, yet with a great waste of the highest form of power, for it altogether overlooked natural aptitudes, and, quite irrespectively of them, decided for every man what he was to be, and what he was to do. We cannot suppose, on the one hand, that there are no other methods of securing social order and stability than these; nor, on the other hand, that American democracy and Chinese mandarinism have exhausted all alternatives now possible. This, however, is a problem we shall have to consider for ourselves. Here it will be enough for us to see that, even if it were within our power to attain to stability by the Egyptian application of the Egyptian method, the result would still be subject to the limitation of the rise of new ideas, and even of the propagation, more widely throughout the community, of existing ideas. These are absolutely irresistible. There is nothing under heaven, especially in these days of rapid and universal interchange and propagation of thought, which can arrest their progress. Their elements pervade the moral atmosphere, which acts on our moral being, just as the air, we cannot but breathe, does on our bodily constitution.