rather that of emanations, than parts of a Whole.  Again, if it be true that, according to the Zend Avesta, the conflict of light and darkness will ultimately cease, and Ahriman with his demons be annihilated, it is obvious that this implies a beginning and an end, with a process originating in the one, and consummated in the other.  But such a process, though most actual on the finite scale, and joyfully or painfully real to us, contemplating, as we do only infinitesimal parts of the Universe, and always under the forms of time and space, is yet incongruous and incommensurate with the thought of one All in All, unlimited by time or space, and whose lifetime is an Eternal Now.  Thus true Pantheism takes the Universe, as it is, in its infinity; regards it as without beginning or end; and worships it.  Not that Pantheism denies the existence of evil or is unmoved by the struggle between evil and good, or is uninspired by faith in the reiterated triumph of good wherever the local conflict arises.  But it insists that evil is relative to the finite parts of the Universe in their supposed isolation, and cannot possibly affect the Eternal All.  It allows of no creation or emanation which would put any part of the “wondrous Whole” in opposition to, or separation from, the Eternal.  But from its point of view all change, evolution, progress retrogression, sin, pain, or any other good or evil is local, finite, partial; while the infinite coordination of such infinitesimal movements make one eternal peace.

[Sidenote:  Pantheism in Ancient Egypt]

[Sidenote:  Permanent Effects of Prehistoric Animism.]

[Sidenote:  Isis, according to Plutarch.]

Egyptian Religion need not detain us.  For though, there are clear traces of Pantheistic speculation among the Priests, it can scarcely be contended that such speculations had the same influence on the cultured laity as the teaching of the Rishis had in ancient India.  But the truth seems to be that the oldest popular theology of Egypt was only a variety of Negro animism and fetishism.[9] Yet these grovelling superstitions, as is often the case, evolved in unbroken continuity a higher faith.  For, in the attempt made to adapt this savage cult to the religious needs of various districts, all alike gradually advancing in culture, the number and variety of divinities became so bewildering to the priests, that the latter almost inevitably adopted the device of recognising in parochial gods only so many hints of one all-comprehensive divine energy.  Not that they ever embraced monotheism—­or the belief in one personal God distinct from the Universe.  But if Plutarch be accurate—­as there seems no reason to doubt, in his record of an inscription in a temple of Isis—­they, or at least the most spiritual of them, found refuge in Pantheism.  For the transfigured and glorified goddess was not regarded as the maker of the Universe, but as identical with it, and therefore unknowable, “I am all that hath been, is, or shall be; and no mortal has lifted my veil.”  The prevalence of such Pantheism, at least among the learned and spiritual of ancient Egypt, is, to a considerable extent, confirmed by other Greek writers besides Plutarch.  But the inscription noted by Plutarch gives the sum and substance of what they tell us.