Wisdom of the Egyptians II. The Soul-doctrine By Franz Lambert 1 Translation from the German Black Letter to English by Robert Hutwohl This document incorporates live notes. Click on an endnote number to jump to its corresponding endnote; click on the superscripted endnote numeral to return. IF death meets a dear creature close to a modern, cultivated, scientifically educated species, it knows that a chemical process has begun to destroy the body and that all psychic manifestations that come about in that body are destroyed for all time. True, there may be an inner conviction in him that there will be a reunion, no doubt an unconscious suspicion of a survival after death, like an old, half-faded legend, which begins to speak quietly in him; he must reject this truth with resignation, for nothing of the sort has been “scientifically proven,” and he explains the fact of the inner conviction as nervous exhaustion or as a reflex movement of pain and excitement. The view of death was different for the people who lived at the frontiers of prehistoric times, and who were not vaccinated by modern education. There was still the naive conviction, which observed, and drew from the observed conclusions, the correctness of which was guided by sound innate intuition. But death, and the questions that arise from it, may have given the first occasion to reflect upon the different, each inwardly conscious manifestations of the psyche, and thus to create a division that arises precisely from these such questions from the practical knowledge of life experience, for to construct abstract theories and hypotheses was, as the remnants of the monumental literature testify, not in the sensory direction of this remarkable people. Unfortunately, the Nile Valley has preserved very little written material about the psyche of living people; there are no accounts of facts and occurrences that touch on the realm of the supernatural; only the case of possession, from which the prince’s daughter Bentrosch was ill, is the only, but very instructive report of this kind that has come down to us. It is therefore necessary to complete the picture, the