It is clear that the doctrine of the Osiris in its developed form is inconsistent with the idea of the _ka_. But it is also clear that without the idea of the _ka_ it would never have been formed. Both presuppose an individuality separate from the person to which it belongs, and yet at the same time material, an individuality which continues after death and manifests itself under the same shape as that which characterised the person in life. The popular conception of the ghost, which reproduces not only the features but even the dress of the dead, is analogous. Fundamentally the Osiris is a _ka_, but it is a _ka_ which represents not only the outward shape, but the inner essence as well. The whole man is there, spiritually, morally, intellectually, as well as corporeally. The doctrine of the Osiris thus absorbs, as it were, the old idea of the _ka_, and spiritualises it, at the same time confining it to the life after death. But if the conception of a double, unsubstantial and yet materialised, underlay the belief in the Osiris, the practice of embalming was equally responsible for it. The continued existence of the double was dependent on the continued existence of the body, for the one presupposed the other, and it was only the mummified body which could continue to exist. As long as the double was believed to haunt the tomb, and there receive the food and other offerings which were provided for it, the connection between it and the mummy presented no difficulties. But when the Egyptian came to look forward to the heaven of Osiris, first on this nether earth and then in the skies, the case was wholly altered. The mummy lay in the tomb, the immortal counterpart of the man himself was in another and a spiritual world. The result was inevitable: the follower of Osiris soon assured himself that one day the mummified body also would have life and action again breathed into it and rejoin its Osiris in the fields of paradise. Had not the god carried thither his divine body as well as its counterpart? and what the god had done those who had become even as he was could also do.