accepted that a cause requires immediate connection, or at leåst, an intervening medium, in order to operate. This dogma was assailed by John Stuart Mill in his Logic, and in place of it the assertion is made that place has nothing to do with causation. The moon is held to the earth not by the force of gravity, but simply by the earth; not because of the earth's attraction, but because of the earth. Recent investigations, however, tend to establish the existence of an ether that exists as the medium through which heat, light, electricity, and even gravity operate. The retardation of comets is one of the most important facts in support of this view. Granting the existence of this ether, the old dogma reasserts itself in a still more positive manner; for this all-pervasive ether supplies it with all that was necessary to establish its validity.

This dogma being established, it is obvious that it is fatal to the creative power of the Platonic world of ideas. If they have an entirely separate and motionless subsistence, how can they cause sensible phenomena? They cannot act where they are not. The interposition of media does relieve the difficulty, for these media must be either in motion or not in motion. If they are in motion, how can the media be affected by the motionless archetypes? If they are not in motion, how can the changing world of sensibles be affected by motionless media? Obviously, as Aristotle again and again insists, Plato omits the efficient cause, and without this all his creations are of no avail. The great fact of motion, of change, that unexplained element that we denominate force, is the lacking condition, and this Aristotle supplies in the creative mind of God. All secondary forces are in his grand scheme mere names for the different modes of operation of the one unmoved Mover of the world. There can be no special acts of creation according to this view, no pre-existent types that impress themselves somehow on matter, but one eternal and incessant force that creates every instant, in the act of preservation, and whose influence throbs through every pulsation of the world of life, and shows

itself in every change in the world of matter. Even matter itself is a manifestation of this infinite force, and all our thoughts are but forms of its motion. In this way the ideas of Plato lose their independent active existence, and become objects of thought, principles of knowledge; eternal, it is true, but only as the mind of man is eternal, and active only in his activity.

ARTICLE VII.

NOTES ON EGYPTOLOGY.

BY JOSEPH P. THOMPSON, D.D., LL.D., BERLIN.

DR. BRUGSCH'S History of Egypt under the Pharaohs1 will hardly prove what the Germans style an "epoch-making" book; but it certainly does mark an epoch in the science of Egyptology-the transformation of scattered individual monuments and dismembered inscriptions into a consecutive chronological history of the Egyptian empire. Thirty years ago Bunsen made his bold attempt to determine "Egypt's place in Universal History." The materials were not then ready for such an undertaking, and hence Bunsen's was too much a work of speculation to serve as a permanent basis of history. Yet Bunsen had the true notion of what was to be learned in Egypt, and through Egypt for the history of mankind, and though his methods were faulty and his results incomplete, his principles were unquestionably sound. He grasped the conception that the monuments of Egypt were true records of her chronology; that by means of the monuments it would be possible to restore the chronology embodied in the dynasties of Manetho; and that this chronology would furnish a sure foundation for Egyptian history. And he declared his confidence in this system of investigation in

1 Geschichte Aegyptens unter den Pharaonen. Nach den Denkmälern bearbeitet von Dr. Heinrich Brugsch-Bey. Erste deutsche Ausgabe. Mit 2 Karten von Unter und Ober-Aegypten und 4 Genealogischen Tafeln. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs. 1877.

these prophetic words: "We are convinced that it may and will be the lot of our age to disentangle the clue of Egyptian chronology by the light of hieroglyphical science and the aid of modern historical research, even after the loss of so many invaluable records of the old world; and thus to fasten the thread of universal chronology round the apex of those indestructible pyramids, which are no longer closed and mysterious." This prophecy is in part fulfilled in Brugsch-Bey's history, which is based directly upon the monuments, and is built up around a frame of chronology for which the monuments furnish materials vastly more abundant than were known in Bunsen's time. Indeed, since Dr. Brugsch published the first part of his Monumental History of Egypt2 in 1859, researches, discoveries, interpretations, have so increased these materials that in this first German edition the author has been obliged to recast the whole work, and to modify opinions and conclusions then put forth with confidence.

With the candor of the scholar, Dr. Brugsch supplements the deficiencies and corrects the mistakes of his earlier attempt; but even the experience of twenty years does not seem to have taught him the caution which is as necessary to the historical critic as to the scientific investigator. His fancy is too ready to supply some coveted information; his enthusiasm sometimes gets the better of his judgment; and he often weaves into his historical narrative the loose strands of conjecture. These tendencies make it necessary for the reader to exercise the critical caution which is so often

wanting in the author. Time has justified the habitual reserve with which, in former years, these "Notes on Egyptology" in the Bibliotheca Sacra have treated points of chronology and history. Dr. Brugsch has the merit of writing in a clear, direct style, with singleness of purpose, and with a complete mastery of his subject. An octavo of eight hundred pages of Egyptian history as constructed from the

1 Egypt's Place in Universal History, Vol. i. Introduction.

2 Histoire d'Egypte. Premiere Partie, L'Égypte sous les Rois indigènes. 1859.

monuments challenges a close scrutiny of the materials and their authority. How much, then, do we really know of ancient Egypt as authentic history? In other words, to what extent does the reading of the hieroglyphs supply us with trustworthy materials for the history of Egypt? The following facts may be regarded as settled to the acceptation of all Egyptologists.

1. The hieroglyphs are of a mixed character; partly pictorial, partly phonetic; the pictorial signs being divided into special and general, the phonetic into alphabetic and syllabic. The scheme of interpretation based upon this discovery of Champollion le Jeune, in 1823, is confirmed beyond question by the bilingual "Tablet of Canopus," discovered in 1866.1 The mode of decipherment being thus conclusively established, the interpretation of hieroglyphic records and inscriptions is simply a matter of patience and detail. "So great has been the progress made that the purport of all texts, and the entire translation of most, is no longer an object of insurmountable difficulty." 2

2. Menes is an historical person, the first known king of Egypt; that is, he appears not only in traditions and legends, but upon the monuments in dry chronological tables, heading the list of kings. Hence it is evident that the Egyptians regarded him as a real person, distinctly dividing the historical from the mythological, the human from the divine. These stone records give Menes a more certain place in history than can be claimed for Arthur of Britain.

3. The great Pyramid dates from the Fourth Dynasty, as is proved by the names found in its inner chambers, and is an imperishable monument of the strength and grandeur of Egypt in that remote antiquity and within so short a period, say three or four hundred years, after the consolidation of the kingdom by Menes.

4. The dynasties of Manetho were for the most part consecutive; and though it is still an open question whether

1 See a description of this Tablet in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. xxiv. p. 771. 2 Dr. S. Birch in "Transactions of the Second International Congress of Orientalists." Inaugural Address, p. 13.

some dynasties were not contemporaneous, all Egyptologists agree in recognizing them " as representing strata of time."1 The two lists of the first Pharaohs, found in the temple of Abydos, the list found at Sakkarah,2 and a fourth, in a private tomb at Thebes, show conclusively that Manetho's lists must have been compiled from records and monuments which, in his time, were regarded as chronological lists of consecutive dynasties. True or false, this was the notion the Egyptians had of their own royal succession. The question of time, that is, of the duration of these dynasties, in the absence of conclusive dates, is quite distinct from the fact of chronological order, though the order of succession furnishes a proximate rule for the computation of time.

More weighty even than these monumental lists in evidence of consecutive dynasties is the fact that memorials of kings whose capital was in Upper Egypt have been found in Lower Egypt, and vice versa. Professor Richard Owen put this point forcibly in his Address to the Congress of Orientalists at London. "If, for example, statues and laudatory memorials of the kings of a Memphite dynasty were found only in Lower Egypt, and those of kings of an Elephantine dynasty only in Upper Egypt, there would be ground for suspicion that the Egyptian priest had aggrandized the rule of both series of limited monarchs, and had lengthened out their history by making certain dynasties successive which had, in fact, reigned contemporaneously. There were periods, indeed, when Upper and Lower Egypt had respectively their own Pharaohs, but the normal relations of such were hostile. Manetho records such conditions of the monarchy, and notes some of the Theban kings as contemporaries of the Shepherd Kings reigning at Tanis. But a Pharaoh of the lower country permitted not his usually hostile contemporary in the upper country to dedicate to himself monuments at Tanis; nor

1 Dr. S. Birch, "Rede Lecture at Cambridge University." 1876.

2 For an account of the lists of Sakkarah and Abydos, see Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. xxiv. p. 773.

8 Transactions of the Second International Congress of Orientalists, Ethno logical Section, p. 366.