Essays Upon Some Controverted QuestionsHuxley, Thomas Henry
Religion
Essays Upon Some Controverted Questions
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Science
stolen," "I have not done fraud to man;" to the ninth, "I have not told
falsehoods in the tribunal of truth," and, further, "I have not calumniated
the slave to his master." I find nothing exactly similar to the tenth
commandment; but that the inward disposition of mind was held to be of no
less importance than the outward act is to be gathered from the praises of
kindliness already cited and the cry of "I am pure," which is repeated by
the soul on trial. Moreover, there is a minuteness of detail in the
confession which shows no little delicacy of moral appreciation--"I have
not privily done evil against mankind," "I have not afflicted men," "I have
not withheld milk from the mouths of sucklings," "I have not been idle," "I
have not played the hypocrite," "I have not told falsehoods," "I have not
corrupted woman or man," "I have not caused fear," "I have not multiplied
words in speaking."
Would that the moral sense of the nineteenth {193} century A.D. were as far
advanced as that of the Egyptians in the nineteenth century B.C. in this
last particular! What incalculable benefit to mankind would flow from
strict observance of the commandment, "Thou shalt not multiply words in
speaking!" Nothing is more remarkable than the stress which the old
Egyptians, here and elsewhere, lay upon this and other kinds of
truthfulness, as compared with the absence of any such requirement in the
Israelitic Decalogue, in which only a specific kind of untruthfulness is
forbidden.
If, as the story runs, Moses was adopted by a princess of the royal house,
and was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, it is surely
incredible that he should not have been familiar, from his youth up, with
the high moral code implied in the "Book of Redemption." It is surely
impossible that he should have been less familiar with the complete legal
system, and with the method of administration of justice, which, even in
his time, had enabled the Egyptian people to hold together, as a complex
social organisation, for a period far longer than the duration of old Roman
society, from the building of the city to the death of the last Cæsar. Nor
need we look to Moses alone for the influence of Egypt upon Israel. It is
true that the Hebrew nomads who came into contact with the Egyptians of
Osertasen, or of Ramses, stood in much the same relation to them, in point
of culture, as a Germanic tribe did to the Romans of Tiberius or of Marcus
Antoninus, or as Captain Cook's Omai did to the English of George the
Third. But, {194} at the same time, any difficulty of communication which
might have arisen out of this circumstance was removed by the long
pre-existing intercourse of other Semites, of every grade of civilisation,
with the Egyptians. In Mesopotamia and elsewhere, as in Phenicia, Semitic
people had attained to a social organisation as advanced as that of the
Egyptians; Semites had conquered and occupied Lower Egypt for centuries. So
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