putting a force on the gods.
Greece differed from the nation- already mentioned in having no order of priests : any one might assume the office, and discharge the duties w hich the priest per- formed, and "there is no trace of a priestly discipline propagated by instruction through generations, nor i- there any trace of an abiding connection between the
priests of different cities" (K.Ottfried Mllller, Prokg. p. 249, 250). At Rome the religious institutions took stronger root, in conformity with the regard for prec- edent, the formality and the superstition which char- acterized the early Roman people. The public prie-t-
l ! were originally in patrician hands, and the priests
long monopolized the knowledge of the calendar and the legal formula'. Moreover, the private rites of families -eem to have been thought of more impor- tance than was the case among the Greeks. Hut there wa- no caste, there were no hereditary public priestly I politic becoming a vastly more inviting field, drew to itself the attention and efforts of all men who aspired to influence. The magistrates themselves observed the Bigns in the heavens and regulated the
meeting of public bodies in accordance w ith thl ir own wishes, under pretence of religious scruple-. North
POLYTHEISM
of Rome lay the Etruscans, belonging to another race, who had a gloomy religion, in which the art of divina- tion played a more important part than in that of any other nation of which we have knowledge. Here the leading men held the office of priests, and the princi- pal priesthoods were hereditary. Beyond the Alps, in Gaul, the Druids formed a great corporation, at the head of which was a kind of pope ; while Julius Caesar was struck by the want of a compact priestly class in Germany, and says that the race was not given to sacrifices. Of the nations inhabiting this continent, the Mexicans had a very numerous body of priests, some five thousand of whom are said to have belonged to the great temple at the capital. Over the hierarchy of priests two chiefs selected from leading families pre- sided, whose position gave them high authority in state affairs. Under these chiefs a third, with his subordi- nates, had superintendence over the lower priests and the seminaries. There were also monks in Mexico, as well as in other adjoining countries, who have been compared with the similar bodies in Buddhist coun- tries. In Peru, owing to the sacred dignity of the Incas, the priests, unless they pertained to the race of the Children of the Sun, had less independent weight than the similar class in Mexico, and the simplicity of the religion may have conduced to the same result. A remarkable institution of this country was that of the virgins of the sun, who, like the Roman vestals, had to keep alive the sacred symbol of fire.
(2.) The objects of worship were either invisible, or distant and yet visible, or something near at hand, in which a divine power was thought to reside. In the first case especially there was a longing in the pagan mind for some representation or image which might keep the presence of the deity in mind, and thus give a sense of protection to the worshipper. Image-worship, idolatry, arose from a desire, it seems probable, of feeling the nearness of the unseen power, or from conceiving that the divine power is lodged in or belongs to the object present before the eyes as being inherent or represented by it. Image-worship has been diffused over the heathen world, but some nations have rejected it. The religion of Ormuzd re- jected images and even temples with a kind of fanat- ical hatred. We believe that there are no traces of it in the Vedas. The Romans at first had only symbols and not forms in the houses of their gods. The prob- ability is therefore that through the whole of the Indo- European race idol-worship was not known at the first; but in Egypt, in Greece, in the Hamitic and in some of the Shemitic peoples, on this continent, in Af- rica, and over the world, no earlier period can be traced than one in which either image symbol or fetich-wor- ship was a part of the religions. As for direct wor- ship of nature, one would suppose that images would not be needed by the pagan religious sentiment. The heavenly bodies especially are so great a part of the time in sight that no memorial of them would be need- ed. Thus we find that in Babylonia and Assyria, where sun and star worship, as distinguished from the wor- ship of sun and star gods, prevailed, idols were com- mon. Yet we find images of Bel, Nebo, and Merodach (Mercury and Jupiter) spoken of by the prophets (Isa. xlvi, 1 ; Jer. 1, 2), while the Phoenician and Canaanite sun-god Baal is represented by pillars (of stone and wood? 2 Kings x, 2G, 27), and Asherah, probably the same as Astarte, by wooden posts (groves in our ver- sion, passim). It seems not unlikely that in pro- portion to the pagan mind's separation of a divinity from the object out of which it grew, the tendency to represent it by images, and especially "after the fig- ure of man " (Isa. xliv, 13), would become more con- trolling, but to this there seem to be exceptions. As for the direct worship of other objects of nature, as trees and animals, especially snakes, there is no rea- son why this kind of worship should need images.