These are ideas and practices which must recall very strikingly much of what we know about the religion of the ancient Egyptians; and in Peru, particularly, were found other practices which might be thought to point to Egypt as their source. Is it at all possible that they really may have come thence? There is a theory about man's story in the world which would answer "yes," and it is a theory which seems to be gaining adherents.
According to this theory, explorers, belonging to the date of the ancient sun-worship in Egypt, pushed out from that country adventurously in search of certain definite objects. Chief among those objects were gold and pearls. And they were sought and prized not only because of their rarity and beauty, but far more because they were considered to have certain magical qualities, to be great "life-givers." The theory then is that the explorers—who were sun-worshippers, who offered human sacrifices, made stone-works, understood irrigation and were distinguished by other practices and beliefs—travelled widely in search for these "life-givers." Traces of their sojourn, it is claimed, are to be found in India, in the chain of islands which is called Indonesia, thence onwards through other islands of the Pacific, until finally we find them on the American continent, in Mexico and Peru, and in various places in North America. Their traces are in the north of Europe also. These traces consist chiefly in large stone works. One or other, and in some places many, of the distinctive elements of the civilisation and religion of ancient Egypt are to be found among the peoples who live where the ancient stone works are. Very commonly they have the belief that there was once among them a ruling family who were "children of the sun," whose forefather actually was the sun himself, to whom, according to some legends, they would return at death. It was the belief that the Spaniards were the sun children, or sun-gods, come again, which greatly assisted them in their conquest of Mexico, and perhaps of Peru also. In the latter country there still existed, at the time of its conquest, the custom common among some of the Pharaohs of Egypt, for the ruler to take his own sister for his queen. Besides its interest, this is a theory which gives a plausible account of facts, such as the stone working and the widely spread belief in the sun children, which are otherwise very difficult to explain. But it is not to be taken as proved, nor even as generally accepted.
In Peru, exceptionally, the Spaniards found a distinct race, the Incas, supposed to be descended from the sun, still ruling, and ruling with a singular benevolence. But throughout the whole of the rest of the continent, North and South, the natives had made very little progress along any lines of civilisation. Here and there was some cultivation, chiefly of the Indian corn; but generally the people were hunters, going nearly naked in the warmer regions, clad in the skins of beasts in the colder climates, poorly armed with bows and arrows.
Thus obscure and scanty is the story of this great newly found world of the Spaniards. In the East, on the other hand, were lands whose stories dated, with actual records, thousands of years back. There was one, that wonderland of China, with earliest annals between two and three thousand years before Christ—by no means the oldest annals of humanity, but incomparably older than those of any other empire that still exists.
The permanence of China
That has been the chief wonder of the Chinese Empire, its permanence. And it is wonder that only grows, the more we realise the nature of that empire and the principles by which the society which has held it so long together has been guided. Again and again conquerors have forced their way in upon it from the north—rude, uncivilised tribes invading a highly civilised land. Again and again the chiefs of the invaders have established themselves on the throne of China. They and their sons for many generations have governed the land. But the country generally, with its vast extent and its large population, has gone on its way very little troubled by the change of rulers. Those military conquerors have in fact been themselves conquered by the higher civilisation in which they have found themselves.
The Chinese themselves appear to have come into the country from the west. Although they always have been a people who held soldiers and the military caste in very low esteem, they gradually pushed out the original natives until their empire had boundaries even more extensive than its present wide limits. It is one of the many wonders of this most singular nation, that though it relied so little on force of arms it gained a very marked respect from all the other peoples of the East.
Confucius
Since the empire grew to be so vast, it is not surprising that the great men far from the centre became very independent, so that the social conditions in the sixth century before Christ have been likened to those feudal conditions which we saw prevailing in Europe at a much later date. Chinese rulers of provinces have been written of as "feudal dukes." And just at that time, when the country was in the disturbed state which such conditions made inevitable, there arose two great teachers of whom the younger, Confucius, exercised a very extraordinary influence over all China, an influence that has force even to-day.
He expounded sage maxims for man's conduct towards his fellow-men, maxims not necessarily of his own invention but taken from wise men before him. "Do good," he enjoined, "not only to those who do good to you, but to those who do you injury." It had been said even before him. But to "do unto others as you would they should do unto you" may be taken as the principal basis of his own teaching, and the Christian goes no further, in respect of man's "duty to his neighbour." But about man's duty towards God Confucius had nothing to say. Obedience and piety of the son towards the father were, according to him, "the beginning of virtue, that which distinguishes man from the brutes."