Christianity is essentially a person in close personal relation to his creatures; emanation is the denial of personality both for God and for man. The emanation theory is to be contrasted, on the other hand, with the theory of evolution. The two theories are alike in so far as both recognize the existence of individuals as due to a necessary process of differentiation and a scale of existence. They differ, however, fundamentally in this respect, that, whereas evolution regards the process as from the indeterminate lower towards the determinate higher, emanation regards it as from the highest to the indefinitely lower.
There is considerable superficial similarity between evolution and emanation, especially in their formal statements. The process of evolution from the indeterminate to the determinate is often expressed as a progress from the universal to the particular. Thus the primordial matter assumed by the early Greek physicists may be said to be the universal substance out of which particular things arise. The doctrine of emanation also regards the world as a process of particularization. Yet the resemblance is more apparent than real. The universal is, as Herbert Spencer remarked, a subjective idea, and the general forms, existing ante res, which play so prominent a part in Greek and medieval philosophy, do not in the least correspond to the homogeneous matter of the physical evolutionists. The one process is a logical operation, the other a physical. The theory of emanation, which had its source in certain moral and religious ideas, aims first of all at explaining the origin of mental or spiritual existence as an effluence from the divine and absolute spirit. In the next place, it seeks to account for the general laws of the world, for the universal forms of existence, as ideas which emanate from the Deity. By some it was developed into a complete philosophy of the world, in which matter itself is viewed as the lowest emanation from the absolute. In this form it stands in sharp antithesis to the doctrine of evolution, both because the former views the world of particular things and events as essentially unreal and illusory, and because the latter, so far as it goes, looks on matter as eternal, and seeks to explain the general forms of things as we perceive them by help of simpler assumptions. In certain theories known as doctrines of emanation, only mental existence is referred to the absolute source, while matter is viewed as eternal and distinct from the divine nature. In this form the doctrine of emanation approaches certain forms of the evolution theory (see Evolution).
The doctrine of emanation is correctly described as of oriental origin. It appears in various forms in Indian philosophy, and is the characteristically oriental element in syncretic systems like Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. None the less it is easy to find it in embryo in the speculations of the essentially European philosophers of Greece. Plato, whose philosophy was strongly opposed to the evolution theory, distinctly inclines to the emanation idea in his doctrine that each particular thing is what it is in virtue of a pre-existent idea, and that the particulars are the lowest in the scale of existence, at the head of, or above, which is the idea of the good. The view of Xenocrates is based on the same ideas. Or again, we may compare the Stoic doctrine of ἀπόρροιαι (literally “emanations”) from the divine essence. It is, however, only in the last eclectic period of Greek philosophy that the emanation doctrine was definitely established in the doctrines, e.g. Plotinus.
See especially articles Evolution, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism.
EMANUEL I. [Portuguese Manoel] (1469–1521), fourteenth
king of Portugal, surnamed the Happy, knight of the Garter
and of the Golden Fleece, was the son of Duke Ferdinand of Vizeu
and of Beatrice of Beja, grandchildren of John I. of Portugal.
He was born at Alcochete on the 3rd of May 1469, or, according
to Barbosa Machado, on the 1st of June. His early education
was directed by a Sicilian named Cataldo. In 1495 he became
king in succession to his cousin John II. In 1497 he married
Isabella, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, who had
previously been married to Alphonso, the heir of John II. She
died in the next year in giving birth to a son named Miguel,
who until his death two years later was considered heir to the
entire Iberian Peninsula. Emanuel’s next wife was Maria,
another daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, whom he married in
1500. Two of their children, John and Henry, later became kings
of Portugal. Maria died in 1516, and in 1518 her niece Leonora,
a sister of the emperor Charles V., became Emanuel’s third wife.
Emanuel’s reign is noteworthy for the continuance of the Portuguese
discoveries and the extension of their chain of trading-posts,
Vasco da Gama’s opening an all-sea route to India, Cabral’s
landing in Brazil, Corte-Real’s voyage to Labrador, the exploration
of the Indian seas and the opening of commercial relations
with Persia and China, bringing Portugal international prominence,
colonial pre-eminence and a hitherto unparalleled degree
of national prosperity. His intense religious zeal variously
manifested itself in his persecutions of the Jews, whom at the
beginning of his reign he had been disposed to tolerate, his
strenuous endeavours to promote an international crusade
against the Turks, his eager missionary enterprise throughout
his new possessions, and his erection of twenty-six monasteries
and two cathedrals, including the stately monastic church of
the Jeronymos at Belem (see Lisbon). His jealously despotic
character was accentuated by the enormous increase the Indies
furnished to his personal wealth, and exemplified in his assumption
of new titles and in a magnificent embassy to Pope Leo X.
He died at Lisbon on the 13th of December 1521.
The best authorities for the history of Emanuel’s reign are the contemporary 16th-century Chronica d’el Rei D. Manoel, by Damião de Goes, and De rebus Emanuelis, by J. Osorio. El Rei D. Manoel, by M. B. Branco (Lisbon, 1888), is a valuable but ill-arranged biography. See also the Ordenações do S. R. D. Manoel (Coimbra University Press, 1797). For further bibliography see Barbosa Machado, Bibliographica Lusitana, vol. iii. pp. 161–166.
EMBALMING (Gr. βάλσαμον, balsam; Ger. Einbalsamiren;
Fr. embaumement), the art of preparing dead bodies, chiefly by the
use of medicaments, in order to preserve them from putrefaction
and the attacks of insects. The ancient Egyptians carried the
art to great perfection, and embalmed not only human beings,
but cats, crocodiles, ichneumons, and other sacred animals.
It was at one time suggested that the origin of embalming in
Egypt was to be traced to a want of fuel for the purpose of cremation,
to the inadvisability or at some times impossibility of burial
in a soil annually disturbed by the inundation of the Nile, and to
the necessity, for sanitary reasons, of preventing the decomposition
of the bodies of the dead when placed in open sepulchres.
As, however, the corpses of the embalmed must have constituted
but a small proportion of the aggregate mass of animal matter
daily to be disposed of, the above explanation would in any case
be far from satisfactory; and there is no doubt (see Mummy)
that embalming originated in the idea of preserving the body
for a future life. According to W. H. Prescott, it was a belief
in a resurrection of the body that led the ancient Peruvians to
preserve the air-dried corpses of their dead with so much solicitude
(see Conquest of Peru, bk. i. chap. iii.). And J. C. Prichard
(Egyptian Mythology, p. 200) properly compared the Egyptian
practice with the views which rendered “the Greeks and Romans
so anxious to perform the usual rites of sepulture to their departed
warriors, namely, ... that these solemnities expedited the
journey of the soul to the appointed region, where it was to receive
judgment for its former deeds, and to have its future doom
fixed accordingly.” It has been supposed by some that the
discovery of the preservation of bodies interred in saline soils
may have been the immediate origin of embalming in Egypt.
In that country certain classes of the community were specially
appointed for the practice of the art. Joseph, we are told in
Gen. l. 2, “commanded his servants the physicians to embalm
his father.”
Herodotus (ii. 86) gives an account of three of the methods of embalming followed by the Egyptians. The most expensive of these, which cost a talent of silver (£243: 15s.), was as follows. The brains were in part removed through the nostrils by means of a bent iron implement, and in part by the injection of drugs. The intestines having been drawn out through an incision in the left side, the abdomen was cleansed with palm-wine, and filled with myrrh, cassia and other materials, and the opening was sewed up. This done, the body was steeped seventy days
