--The supreme impersonal
Power.--Nature of the World--of Man.--The Passage of every
thing to Nonentity.--Development of Buddhism into a vast
monastic System marked by intense Selfishness.--Its practical
Godlessness._

EGYPT _a mysterious Country to the old Europeans.--Its
History, great public Works, and foreign Relations.--Antiquity
of its Civilization and Art.--Its Philosophy, hieroglyphic
Literature, and peculiar Agriculture._

_Rise of Civilization in rainless Countries.--Geography,
Geology, and Topography of Egypt--The Inundations of the Nile
lead to Astronomy._

_Comparative Theology of Egypt.--Animal Worship, Star
Worship.--Impersonation of Divine Attributes--Pantheism.--The
Trinities of Egypt.--Incarnation.--Redemption.--Future
Judgment.--Trial of the Dead.--Rituals and Ceremonies._

At this stage of our examination of European intellectual development,
it will be proper to consider briefly two foreign influences--Indian and
Egyptian--which affected it.

[Sidenote: Of Hindu philosophy.]

From the relations existing between the Hindu and European families, as
described in the preceding chapter, a comparison of their intellectual
progress presents no little interest. The movement of the elder branch
indicates the path through which the younger is travelling, and the goal
to which it tends. In the advanced condition under which we live we
notice Oriental ideas perpetually emerging in a fragmentary way from the
obscurities of modern metaphysics--they are the indications of an
intellectual phase through which the Indo-European mind must pass. And
when we consider the ready manner in which these ideas have been adopted
throughout China and the entire East, we may, perhaps, extend our
conclusion from the Indo-European family to the entire human race. From
this we may also infer how unphilosophical and vain is the expectation
of those who would attempt to restore the aged populations of Asia to
our state. Their intellectual condition has passed onward, never more to
return. It remains for them only to advance as far as they may in their
own line and to die, leaving their place to others of a different
constitution and of a renovated blood. In life there is no going back;
the morose old man can never resume the genial confidence of maturity;
the youth can never return to the idle and useless occupations, the
frivolous amusements of boyho