intellectual; but, of whatever nature they are, they must be such as those of which man has cognizance; and if moral and mental they must, if material they may, cause the idea to be human and personal.

The moral and intellectual idea is no less anthropomorphic than the sensible representation, but it is higher and better. As man's knowledge changes, his idea of God changes as he mounts the scale of existence, his consciousness becomes clearer and more luminous; and his continuous idealization of his better self is an ever-improving reflex of the divine essence. The savage invests God with bodily attributes; in a more civilized state man withdraws the bodily attributes, but imposes the limitations of his own mental nature; and in his philosophic elevation he recognizes in God intelligence only, though still with anthropomorphic conditions.

But as his mind thus ascends, his sentiment descends. His affections can only attach themselves to what is sensible. He can love what is individual, but not what is general. Abstractions interest his mind, but deaden his heart. If he says, "I love virtue," he means, “I love the man who is virtuous." Thus, in proportion as the intelligence divests the Deity of one attribute after another, the ties binding the heart to the Divine Ideal are ruptured, and the affections steadily decline into indifference. The more thoroughly human is the God idealized, the more ardently is He loved and adored. If the idea be divested of every attribute, and consist of mere negations, latria is at an end; for it ceases to be objective, and one of the indispensable conditions of worship is withdrawn.

As man is constituted he is intelligent and sentimental, and a religion which develops reason at the expense of affection, or which on the other hand is emotional and at the same time is irrational, cannot satisfy all his instincts.

CHAPTER X.

THEOCRACIES.

Three modes of life, the hunting, the pastoral, and the agricultural.-Difficulty of passing from one mode to another.-Requisites of the agricultural mode: 1. Community of land.-Rise of castes.-Territorial aristocracies and theocracies; 2. Government-democratic, then feudal, then monarchic.-Theocratic government; 3. Ethics must be based on authority.-Province of prophetism-of theocracies to codify laws.-Theocratic codes very minute.-Their object, the destruction of individuality.-This not peculiar to theocracies.-Benefits of theocracies.

MAN

ANKIND has passed through three modes of life, each characteristic of a phase of intellectual and religious development.'

These are the Venatic, the Pastoral, and the Agricultural modes.

These divisions are not however absolute, for, perhaps, there never was a time when people did not make some rude attempts at tillage and domestication of animals. Among the refuse of lacustrine villages, which belong to a remote period, the discovery of grain and bones gnawed by dogs proves that, as far back as man can be traced, there are indications of his having attempted both.

So, also, agricultural races have indulged occasionally in the pursuit of game, or have set apart a caste to hunt and fish and fight, while the bulk of the people tilled the soil; and others, like the Lapps, may have altered their bent according to their geographical situation.

1 Flottard: Études sur la Théocratie; Paris, 1861. A useful book, to which I am indebted.

Some races perish from incapacity to adapt themselves to altered circumstances, as the red-skins, who are dying out with the game on which they subsist.

The tribes living solely by the chase and by fishing are the most savage and grovelling. Continually suffering from famine, obliged by the scarcity of game to live dispersed, exposed to the rigor of the seasons, to privation, fatigue, and misery, their habitual condition is one of isolation.

He is subject

The pastoral tribes are less wretched. The shepherd finds in his flocks nourishment and clothing; he has time for observation and reflection. Nevertheless the condition of the pastor is often barbarous, for the demands of his flocks and herds force him into isolation. And as pasture fails, he is forced to remove from spot to spot. to famines, when the springs fail and the grass is burnt up by scorching suns, or when epidemics break out among his cattle. The Hebrews, rich in flocks and herds, were frequently compelled by want to seek corn in Egypt; and the Bedouins of our own day live in misery and barbarism. "They are a pastoral population," says Mr. Palgrave, "condemned to savage life, with all its concomitants of ignorance and vice, by the circumstances of their condition, or fostered into insolence and open rapine by the weakness and negligence of those who should have kept them within due bounds. .... The Bedouin does not fight for his home, he has none; nor for his country, that is anywhere; nor for his honor, he never heard of it; nor for his religion, he owns and cares for none. His only object in war is the temporary occupation of some bit of miserable pasture-land or the use of a brackish well." 1

The agricultural race is that which is essentially the civilizing race; and when a people is forced by circum

1

Palgrave: Central and Eastern Arabia, p. 34; London, 1865.

stances to discontinue its former vagabond life, and when it shows adaptability to bend to circumstances, it has entered on the road leading to civilization.

But the transition is singularly difficult. The instincts, sympathies, and habits of the nomad revolt against innovation and change of state. The labor of tillage is odious to him, and it is only after long experience that he learns to love it. Accustomed to live in tents, he must confine himself within, stone walls. From being able to wander in freedom, he is obliged to remain chained to one spot. All notions of restraint on his free action upon the impulse of the moment are repugnant to his nature. Long apprenticeship can alone eradicate from his mind the idea that murder and brigandage are the paths to glory, and supplant them with the idea of submission to law and self-devotion to the common weal.

Probably religion alone was capable of effecting this radical change-of subduing the irritable and suspicious independence of the primitive races, and of casting into the midst of them the germ of definite alliance, an interest, an idea, a belief held in common, around which institutions might consolidate. Those peoples who, like the Indians, the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Jews, had an intelligent sacerdotal caste to govern them, passed rapidly into powerful nationalities. Those, on the contrary, among whom a theocracy was unable to obtain foothold, have remained in barbarism.

For the prosecution of agriculture security is essential, and that could only be attained by the establishment of a government; and government, to become permanent, was obliged to call to its aid the religious sentiment of the people. The great founders of civilization, those who gave a race the twist from nomadic to a sedentary life, were prophets, men of minds above the ordinary level, who saw the

necessity of a radical change in the mode of life, and who had courage to enforce this change as a religious duty. Mohammed was both a religious and a political regenerator of Arabia. Zarathustra acted the same double office for Iran. Moses aimed at not merely recasting the belief of the Israelites, but at changing their ancestral and traditional pastoral life to one of agriculture. The priests and kings of Egypt formed but one order; the early kings of Greece, like those of Rome, were monarchs and pontiffs at the same time. Agamemnon, before the old men of the Greek army, sacrificed to Zeus.' The Eupatrides of Athens, and the Patricians of Rome, possessed the magistracy and the priesthood, the interpretation of the civil and the religious laws. Traces of this confusion of religious and political power remain to this day. The emperors of Germany are vested, on the day of their coronation, in a cassock and white alb. The kings of France in the Middle Ages wore at their coronation nearly all the vestments proper to a priest. The kings of Poland were buried in sacerdotal garb.

Agricultural and sedentary life necessitated some protective organization, and this was either sacerdotal or political, or most generally the two combined. Before entering into the forms of organization, it will be necessary to consider the exigencies of a community disposed to abandon its roving habits, and to build cities and cultivate lands.

Three conditions are necessary: 1. The possession of a fertile country; 2. The establishment of a strong and stable government; 3. The elaboration of ethical law.

From these three conditions three sorts of institutions, corresponding to the requirements of property, security, and morality, have arisen: 1. Landed communities; 2. Government; 3. Magistracies.

1 Iliad, iii., 275.