But when we have made this summary there is one thing which should also be borne in mind with regard to the religion of Egypt. Ancient Egypt, which appears at first sight such a single and united empire, was in reality (and in this respect it was something like the Chinese empire) deeply infected with a sort of feudalism, in virtue of which the different divisions (nomes) of the country did in reality constitute something like different states. And each state tried to preserve its sense of independence by having some special divinity or group of divinities which it held in peculiar honour. So that the Egyptian pantheon itself is infected by this republican spirit. Almost each single god is supreme somewhere; elsewhere he may be almost overlooked. [Sidenote: Animal-gods.] The origin of the strangely intimate connection between these Egyptian gods, and certain animals held to be sacred to them, and in some cases to be incarnations of them, is a very difficult question to determine. Two explanations are given by different writers. One is that the animal-worship was a remnant of the religion of an inferior race who inhabited Egypt in times far back, and who were conquered but not exterminated by immigrants from Asia, who brought a higher civilization and a more spiritual religion with them, which, however, did not actually supersede the old, but incorporated some of its baser elements into itself. Other writers look upon the animal-worship as but another form of the unending parable from nature, which, as we have seen, pervades the whole Egyptian mythology. The animals, according to this view, being not less than the nature-gods worshipped as revelations of a divine order, manifesting itself through the many appearances of the outside world; their obedient following of the laws imposed on their natures through instinct making them better witnesses to the Divine Will than self-willed, disobedient man was found to be. This is one of the problems which must be left to be determined by further researches into unwritten history, or perhaps by a fuller understanding of Egyptian symbols. That a great deal of symbolical teaching was wrapped up in the Egyptians’ worship of animals may be gathered by the lesson which they drew from the natural history of the sacred beetle, whose habit of burying in the sand of the desert a ball of clay, full of eggs, which in due course of time changed into chrysalises and then into winged beetles, furnished them with their favourite emblem of the resurrection of the body and the continued life of the soul through the apparent death-sleep--an emblem which was wanting to no temple, and without which no body was ever buried. Thinking of this, we must allow that their eyes were not shut to the teaching of the ‘visible things’ which in the ages of darkness yet spoke a message from God.