"But the people of Egypt are not able to comprehend Deity except through visible forms; and, in order to convey an impression of the abstract notions men form of the attributes of Deity, it will always be necessary, perhaps, to distinguish them by some fixed representation; hence the figures of Osiris under the various forms in which he is worshipped, of Pthah, of Amun, Neith, and other gods and goddesses, were invented by the ancient priests as the signs of the various attributes of the Deity. And as the subtlety of speculation expanded the simple principles of our mythology, the divine nature was divided and subdivided, until any thing which seemed to bear any analogy to it was deified, received a figure or form as a god, and was admitted into the Pantheon of the kingdom, to a share of the worship of the people." "And this nicety of philosophical speculation," I said, "must have given rise to the several grades of deities in Egypt." "Yes; the gods of the first, second, and third orders: each with its system of priesthood and rituals." "In all this, I see you give no divine honors to departed heroes," I remarked. "No. Our gods are none of them deified men. They are not like Bacchus, and Hercules, and other of the ancient and Syriac deities, who were human heroes. Our mythology is a pure spiritualism: its object, Divinity, worshipped by emblems, symbols, signs, figures, and representative attributes." "It is a pantheism, then, rather than a polytheism," I remarked. "You speak justly, Sesostris," he said. "The figures of our gods, which you see hewn in marble, painted on temples, standing colossal monoliths in the entrance of the city, are but vicarious forms, not intended to be looked upon as real divine personages. Not a child in Egypt believes that a being exists, with the head of a bird joined to the human form--as the statue of Thoth, with the ibis head, in front of the temple; or under the form of a Cynocephalus, having the horns of the moon upon his head; or as the goddess Justice, without a head; or a bird with the head of a woman; or a god with a ram-headed vulture's head, or that of a hawk, like the deity Horus; or Anubis, with the head of a dog. Why these unnatural forms were chosen as emblems of these gods, the priests fancifully explain, and perhaps in many cases truly. They are all, simply personifications of divine attributes." "Abuses," I remarked, when he had thus eloquently spoken, "must naturally flow from such representations, and these emblems, among the people, soon assume the importance of the divine personages to which they appertain. The mass of the population must be idolaters."