Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé

by F. Barham Zincke

They knew that they could make the morality they required instinctive. If they could not have done this the whole business would have been with them, as it proved with so many other people, a more or less well-meant, but still only a melancholy fiasco. They did, however, thoroughly succeed in their great attempt, and this is what we have now to look into.

First we must get hold of the fact that morality is instinctive. The moral sentiments are instincts engendered in our suitably prepared physical and mental organization by the circumstances and conditions of the life of the community; this is the spontaneous self-acting cause; and then, secondarily,—this, however, has ultimately the same source and origination—by the deliberate and purposed arrangements established by governing mind, that is, by laws and religion, the formal embodiments of that mind. They are instincts precisely in the sense in which we apply the word to certain physio-psychal phenomena of the lower animals. They are formed among mankind in the same way, with, as we have just said, the additional cause of the foreseen and intended action of those regulations, which are suggested by the working of human societies, and which are devised, and designedly introduced, by an exercise of the reasoning faculties. They are transmitted in the same way, act in the same way, and are modified, extinguished, and reversed in the same way. Whatever, for instance, may be predicated of the maternal instinct in a hen may be predicated of the maternal sentiment in the human mother, and vice versâ, due allowance having been made for modifying conditions, for there are other instincts in the human mother, (for instance, that of shame at the dread of the discovery of a lapse from virtue,) which may enable her to overpower and extinguish the maternal sentiment—a state to which the hen, through the absence of other counteracting instincts, and from defects of reason, can never be brought. This is true of all the moral sentiments from the bottom to the top of the scale. The necessities of human life, and chiefly the working of human society, have originated every one of them. This accounts for every phenomenon belonging to them that men have observed and commented on, and endeavoured to explain; as, for instance, for their endless diversity, and yet for their substantial identity; for their universality; for their apparent foundation in utility; for their apparent origination in the will of the Creator; for their apparent innateness; and for their apparent non-innateness. They are diverse, they are identical, they are universal, they are founded on utility, they originate in the will of the Creator, they are innate, they are non-innate, in the sense in which instincts generated by the necessities of human life, and the working of human societies (everywhere endlessly modified by times and circumstances, yet substantially the same), must possess every one of these qualities. A volume might be written on the enlargement and proof of this statement. The foregoing paragraph will, however, I trust, make my meaning sufficiently clear.

By an instinct I mean an impulse, apparently spontaneous and involuntary, and not the result of a process of reasoning at the time, disposing one to feel and act in a certain regular manner. Observation and experience have taught us that dispositions of this kind in any individual may have been either created in himself, or received transmissively from his parents, having in the latter case been congenital. On the ground of this distinction instincts may be divided into the two classes of those which have been acquired, which are generally called habits, and of those that have been inherited, which are generally called instincts. This division, however, has respect only to that which is unessential and accidental, because that which brings any feeling, or act, into either class is that it originated in an impulse that arises, on every occasion that properly requires its aid, regularly, and without any apparent process, or effort, of reason. It is founded on an apparent difference in origination, but primarily the origination in both members of the division must have been the same. In this particular these moral conditions may be illustrated by an incident, or accident, of the property men have in things; an estate is not the less property because its possessor acquired it, nor is another the more so because he inherited it from his predecessors. And just as we distinguish between the unessential circumstances that a property has been acquired by a self-made man, or that it has been inherited, so do we between these two divisions of instinct. It is, however, clear that a habit is merely an acquired instinct, and an instinct an inherited habit. That the thing spoken of should be habitual, that it originated in a certain regular impulse, and not in a conscious exercise of the reasoning faculties at the time; and that the impulse to which it is attributable arises regularly whenever required, and produces, on like occasions, like acts and feelings, are the essential points.

How the dispositions were acquired in cases where they are not hereditary, though a most interesting and important inquiry, and one upon which the old Egyptians would have had a great deal to tell us, is not material to the point now before us. In whatever way the dispositions may have been acquired, the feelings and acts resulting from them are instinctive. As a matter of fact, instincts may be acquired in many ways, as, for instance, through the action of fear, hope, law, religion, training, and even of imitation. A generalization which would include far the greater part of these causes is one I have already frequently used—that of the working of society. Perhaps still more of them may be summed up in the one word knowledge. What a man knows is always present to him, and always putting constraint upon him, disposing him to act in one definite way, conformably to itself, and regularly, instead of in any one of ten thousand other possible ways. This, sooner or later, issues in the habit which is inchoate instinct, and at last in the instinct which is hereditary habit. The hereditary habit, however, is still reversible.

It was just because the Egyptians observed a multitude of these social, family, and self-regarding instincts in the lower animals, who possessed each those necessary for itself, without the aid of speech or law, or other human manifestations of reason, that they made them the symbols of the attributes of divinity.

That they had designedly studied the whole of this subject of instinct carefully and profoundly, and that their study of it had been most successful and fruitful, are as evident to us at this day as that they built the Pyramids and Karnak. We see the attractiveness the study had for them in the fact that they had trained cats to retrieve wounded water-fowl, and lions to accompany their kings in war, and assist them in the chase; and that they recorded in their sculptures and paintings that they had thus triumphed over nature, obliterating her strongest instincts, and implanting in their place what they pleased. This tells us, as distinctly as words could, the interest they took in the subject, and the importance they attached to it; and that they had formulated the two ideas, first that instincts can be created and reversed, and then that everything depends upon them. All this had been consciously thought out, and worked out by them; and was as clear to their minds as the axioms of political economy are to our modern economists.

The Egyptians then deliberately undertook to make instinctive a sense of social order, and of submission to what was established, and a disposition to comply with all the ordinary duties of morality as then understood, and which were set forth in the forty-two denials of sin the mummy would have to make at the day of judgment. All this they effected chiefly by their system of castes; and by the logical and practical manner in which they had worked out, and constructed, their doctrine of the future life; and had brought it to bear on the conduct, the thoughts, and the sentiments of every member of the community: and they effected it most thoroughly and successfully.

And now we must advance a step further, and note some of the incidents that belonged to, and consequences that ensued on, what they did. We must bear in mind that their times were not as our times. The means they had to work with, the materials they had to work upon, and the manner in which they were obliged to deal with their means and their materials, necessitated the construction of an inelastic and iron system. This was necessary then and there. Like all the oriental systems, it altered not, and could not alter; and being thus inexpansive and unaccommodating, it besides, in its institution of castes, involved injustice at home; and, in its being for Egyptians alone, exclusiveness towards the rest of the world, which was, in a sense, the denial of the humanity of all who were not Egyptians. Being settled once for all, it abrogated human freedom. It rejected and excluded all additional light and knowledge; it denied all truth, excepting that to which it had itself already attained: that is to say, however good it may have been for its own time, it eventually, when brought into contact with a differently circumstanced, and advancing world, made immorality, injustice, falsehood, thraldom of every kind, and ignorance, essential parts of religion. This it was that caused its overthrow.

Let us separate from the list just given of the elements of its eventual weakness, one which was peculiar to those early times, and the history of which is very distinct and interesting: it is that of national exclusiveness. We can see clearly enough how this instinct of repulsion arose. Those were times when the difficulties in the way of forming a nation were great. Tribes and cities that had always been hostile to one another, and populations composed of conquerors and the conquered, were the materials that had to be compacted in a homogeneous body, animated by one soul. Not cementing, but the most violently dissevering, traditions alone exist. No community of interests is felt. The instincts of submission to law have not been formed; every man is for doing what is right in his own eyes, or at most in the eyes of the few, who feel and think as he does. Communications are difficult. A common literature does not exist to inspire common sentiments. It seems almost impossible, under such circumstances, out of such elements, to form a nation: but unless this be done, all good perishes. On no other condition can anything good be maintained. This is the one indispensable condition. Here, then, is a case in which the feeling of exclusiveness, if it can be created, will go very far towards bringing about what is needed. It can bind together; it is the sentiment of sundering difference from others, the corollary to which is the sentiment of closest unity among themselves. It is then good and desirable: it must by all means be engendered and cherished. The governing and organizing mind of the community sees this. Efforts therefore are made to establish it as a national instinct.

In Egypt these efforts were made with complete success. At first Egypt had been a region of independent cities: the instincts that had arisen out of that state of things had to be obliterated. A feeling also of intense dislike to their Hyksos neighbours had to be created. All this was done. They were brought to feel that they were a peculiar people, separate from the rest of the world. That they were not as other people. They had no fellow-feeling towards them. They shrank from them. They hated them. It was quite agreeable to their feelings to ravage, to spoil, to oppress, to put to the sword, to degrade, to insult, to inflict the most cruel sufferings on, to make slaves of, to sacrifice to their gods, those who were not Egyptians. This moral sentiment—in us it would be destructive of morality—had originated in, and been fed by, their circumstances; and had been shaped and strengthened by their institutions deliberately designed for this purpose. It had become habitual. It was, taking the word literally, an Egyptian instinct. We can imagine a very different condition of the moral atmosphere of the world: such, indeed, as it is about ourselves in the Europe of the present day. The sentiment of nationality has everywhere been formed. It can maintain itself without any assistance. What is needed is not something that will separate peoples, but something that will bring them to act together. The instinct of exclusiveness, of repulsion, will lead only to troubles, to hostile tariffs, to wars. No good, but only evil, can come of it. Whatever will promote friendliness and intercourse, and prevent their interruption, must be cherished. The old instinct of exclusiveness has now become a mistake, an anachronism, a nuisance, a sin. Everybody sees that what is wanted is the sentiment of universal brotherhood. This, therefore, in its turn, comes to be generally understood, and to some extent to be acted on. That is to say, a moral instinct has been reversed: the old one, which did good service in its day, is dying out; and that which has come to be needed, and so is superseding it, is its direct opposite.