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Before Greece
the domain of intellect belonged to the priests. They were the
intellectual class of Egypt. Their power was tremendous. Kings
were subject to it. Great men must have built up that mighty
organization, great minds, keen intellects, but what they learned
of old truth and what they discovered of new truth was valued
as it increased the prestige of the organization. And since Truth
is a jealous mistress and will reveal herself not a whit to any
but a disinterested seeker, as the power of the priesthood grew
and any idea that tended to weaken it met with a cold reception,
the priests must fairly soon have become sorry intellectualists,
guardians only of what seekers of old had found, never using
their own minds with freedom.
There was another result no less inevitable:
all they knew must be kept jealously within the organization.
To teach the people so that they would begin to think for themselves,
would be to destroy the surest prop of their power. No one except
themselves must have knowledge, for to be ignorant is to be afraid,
and in the dark mystery of the unknown a man cannot find his
way alone. He must have guides to speak to him with authority.
Ignorance was the foundation upon which the priest-power rested.
In truth, the two, the mystery and those who dealt in it, reinforced
each other in such sort that each appears both the cause and
the effect of the other. The power of the priest depended upon
the darkness of the mystery; his effort must ever be directed
toward increasing it and opposing any attempt to throw light
upon it. The humble role played by the reason in the ancient
world was assigned by an authority there was no appeal against.
It determined the scope of thought and the scope of art as well,
with an absolutism never questioned.
We know of one man, to be sure, who set himself
against it. For a few years the power of the Pharaoh was pitted
against the power of the priests and the Pharaoh won out. The
familiar story of Akhenaton, who dared to think for himself and
who built a city to enshrine and propagate the worship of the
one and only God, might appear to point to weakness in the great
priestly body, but the proof is, in point of fact, rather the
other way about. The priests were men deeply learned and experienced
in human nature. They waited. The man of independent thought
had only a very brief reign --did his contests with the priests
wear him out, one wonders? --and after his death nothing of what
he had stood for was allowed to remain. The priests took possession
of his successor. They erased his very name from the monuments.
He had never really touched their power.
But whatever their attitude to this autocrat
or that, autocratic government never failed to command the priests'
allegiance. They were ever the support of the throne as well
as the power above it. Their instinct was sure: the misery of
the people was the opportunity of the priest. Not only an ignorant
populace but one subjugated and wretched was their guarantee.
With men's thoughts directed more and more toward the unseen
world, and with the keys to it firmly in their own grasp, their
terrific power was assured.
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