176 APPLICATION OF PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES. Even of this negative state a corresponding condition occurred in the Buddhism of India, of which I have previously spoken; and, indeed, so complete is the parallel between the course of mental evolution in Asia and Europe, that it is difficult to designate a matter of minor detail in the philosophy of the one which can not be pointed out in that of the other. It was not without reason, therefore, that the Alexandrian philosophers, who were profoundly initiated in the detail of both systems, came to the conclusion that such surprising coincidences could be only accounted for upon the admission that there had been an ancient revelation, the vestiges of which had descended to their time. In this, however, they judged erroneously; the true explanation consisting in the fact that the process of development of the intellect of man, and the final results to which he arrives in examining similar problems, are in all countries the same. tical application explained. It does not fall within my plan to trace the application of these philosophical principles to practice in daily life, yet the subject is of such boundless interest that perhaps the reader will excuse a single paragraph. It may seem to superficial observation that, whatever might be the doctrinal resemblances of these philosophies, their application was Variation of prac- very different. In a general way, it may be asserted that the same doctrines which in India led to the inculcation of indifference and quietism, led to Stoic activity in Greece and Italy. If the occasion permitted, I could, nevertheless, demonstrate in this apparent divergence an actual coincidence; for the mode of life of man is chiefly determined by geographical conditions, his instinctive disposition to activity increasing with the latitude in which he lives. Under the equinoctial line he has no disposition for exertion, his physiological relations with the climate making quietism most agreeable to him. The philosophical formula which, in the hot plains of India, finds its issue in a life of tranquillity and repose, will be interpreted in the more bracing air of Europe by a life of activity. Thus, in later ages, the monk of Africa, willingly persuading himself that any intervention to improve Nature is a revolt against the providence of God, spent his worthless life in weaving baskets and mats, or in solitary meditation in the caves of the desert of Thebais; but the monk of Europe encountered the labors of agriculture and social activity, and thereby aided, in no insignificant manner, in the civilization of England, France, and Germany. These things, duly considered, lead to the conclusion that human life, in its diversities, is dependent upon and determined by primary conditions in all countries and climates essentially the same. DIGRESSION ON THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES OF ROME. PREPARATION FOR RESUMING THE EXAMINATION OF THE INTELLECTUAL PROGRESS OF EUROPE. Religious Ideas of the primitive Europeans.-The Form of their Variations is determined by the Influence of Rome.—Necessity of Roman History in these Investigations. Rise and Development of Roman Power, its successive Phases, territorial Acquisitions.—Becomes Supreme in the Mediterranean.-Consequent Demoralization of Italy.—Irresistible Concentration of Power.-Development of Imperialism.-Eventual Extinction of the true Roman Race. Effect on the intellectual, religious, and social Condition of the Mediterranean Countries.—Produces homogeneous Thought. — Imperialism prepares the Way for Monotheism.- Momentous Transition of the Roman World in its religious Ideas. Opinions of the Roman Philosophers.—Coalescence of the new and old Ideas.—Seizure of Power by the Illiterate, and consequent Debasement of Christianity in Rome. FROM the exposition given in the preceding pages of the intellectual progress of Greece, we now turn, agreeably to the plan laid Transition from down, to an examination of that of all Europe. The move- Greece to Europe. ment in that single nation is typical of the movement of the entire continent. The first European intellectual age-that of Credulity-has already, in part, been considered in Chapter II., more especially so far as Greece was concerned. I propose now, after some necessary remarks in conclusion of that topic, to enter on the description of the second European age European age-that of Inquiry. of Inquiry. For these remarks, what has already been said of Greece prepares the way. Mediterranean Europe was philosophically and socially in advance of the central and northern countries. The wave of civilization passed from the south to the north; in truth, it has hardly yet reached its extreme limit. The adventurous emigrants who in remote times had come from Asia left to the successive generations of their descendants a legacy of hardship. In the struggle for life, all memory of an Oriental parentage was lost; knowledge died away; religious ideas became debased; and the diverse populations sank into the same intellectual condition that they would have presented had they been proper autochthons of the soil. The religion of the barbarian Europeans was in many respects like that of the American Indians. They recognized a Great Religion of the Spirit-omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. In the earliest old Europeans. M 178 THEIR PRIESTHOOD AND WORSHIP. times they made no representation of him under the human form, nor had they temples; but they propitiated him by sacrifices, offering animals, as the horse, and even men, upon rude altars. Though it was believed that this great spirit might sometimes be heard in the sounds of the forests at night, yet, for the most part, he was too far removed from human supplication, and hence arose, from the mere sorcerous ideas of a terrified fancy, as has been the case in so many other countries, star worship-the second stage of comparative theology. The gloom and shade of dense forests, a solitude that offers an air of sanctity, and seems a fitting resort for mysterious spirits, suggested the establishment of sacred groves and holy trees. Throughout Europe there was a confused idea that the soul exists after the death of the body; as to its particular state there was a diversity of belief. As among other people also, the offices of religion were not only directed to the present benefit of individuals, but also to the discovery of future events by various processes of divination and augury practiced among the priests. Although the priests had thus charge of the religious rites, they do Their priest- not seem to have been organized in such a manner as to be hood, able to act with unanimity, or to pursue a steady system of policy. A class of female religious officials-prophetesses-joined in the ceremonials. These holy women, who were held in very great esteem, prepared the way for the reception of Mariolatry. In the stead of temples, rock-altars, cromlechs, and other rustic structures were used among the Celtic nations by the Druids, who were at the same time priests, magicians, and medicine-men. Their religious doctrines, which recall in many particulars those of the Rig-Veda, were perpetuated from generation to generation by the aid of songs. The essential features of this system were its purely local form and its want of a well-organized hierarchy. Even the Celts offer no exception, though they had a subordination from the arch-Druid downward. This was the reason of the weakness of the old faith, and eventually the cause of its fall. When the German nations migrated to the south in and objects of their warlike expeditions, they left behind them their conseadoration. crated groves and sacred oaks, hallowed by immemorial ages. These objects the devotee could not carry with him, and no equivalent substitutes could be obtained for them. In the civilized countries to which they came they met with a very different state of things; a priesthood thoroughly organized and modeled according to the ancient Roman political system; its objects of reverence tied to no particular locality; its institutions capable of universal action; its sacred writings easy of transportation any where; its emblems movable to all countries-the cross on the standards of its armies, the crucifix on the bosom of its saints. In the midst of the noble architecture of Italy and the splendid remains of those Romans who had once given laws to the world, in the man Christianity midst of a worship distinguished by the magnificence of its Influence of Roceremonial and the solemnity of its mysteries, they found a upon them. people whose faith taught them to regard the present life as offering only a transitory occupation, and not for a moment to be weighed against the eternal existence hereafter-an existence very different from that of the base transmigration of Druidism or the drunken Paradise of Woden, where the brave solace themselves with mead from cups made of the skulls of their enemies killed in their days upon earth. ry in this in The European age of inquiry is therefore essentially connected with Roman affairs. It is distinguished by the religious direction it took. In place of the dogmas of rival philosophical schools, we have Importance of now to deal with the tenets of conflicting sects. The whole Roman histohistory of those unhappy times displays the organizing and vestigation. practical spirit characteristic of Rome. Greek democracy, tending to the decomposition of things, led to the Sophists and Skeptics. Roman imperialism, ever constructive, sought to bring unity out of discords, and draw the line between orthodoxy and heresy by the authority of councils like that of Nicea. Following the ideas of St. Augustine in his work, "The City of God," I adopt, as the most convenient termination of this age, the sack of Rome by Alaric. This makes it overlap the age of Faith, which had, as its unmistakable beginning, the foundation of Constantinople. Greek intellectual life displays all its phases completely, but not so with that of the Romans, who came to an untimely end. They were men of violence, who disappeared in consequence of their own conquests and crimes. The consumption of them by war bore, however, an insignificant proportion to that fatal diminution, that mortal adulteration occasioned by their merging in the vast mass of humanity with which they came in contact. I approach the consideration of Roman affairs, which is thus the next portion of my task, with no little diffidence. It is hard to rise to a point of view sufficiently elevated and clear, where the extent of dominion is so great geographically, and the reasons of policy are obscured by the dimness and clouds of so many centuries. Living in a Great dificulty social state the origin of which is in the events now to be of treating it. examined, our mental vision can hardly free itself from the illusions of historical perspective, or bring things into their just proportions and position. Of a thousand acts, all of surpassing interest and importance, how shall we identify the master ones? how shall we discern with correctness the true relation of the parts of this wonderful phenomenon of empire, the vanishing events of which glide like dissolving views into each other? Warned by the example of those who have permitted the shadows of their own imagination to fall upon the scene, and have mistaken them for a part thereof, I shall endeavor to apply the test of com 180 THE LEGENDARY TIMES. mon sense to the facts of which it will be necessary to treat; and, believing that man has ever been the same in his mode of thought and motives of action, I shall judge of past occurrences in the same way as of those of our own times. In its entire form the Roman power consists of two theocracies, with Triple form of a military domination intercalated. The first of these theocRoman power. racies corresponds to the fabulous period of the kings; the military domination to the time of the republic and earlier Cæsars; the second theocracy to that of the Christian emperors and the popes. times. The first theocracy is so enveloped in legends and fictions that it is impossible to give a satisfactory account of it. The biographies of the kings offer such undeniable evidence of being mere romances, that, since the time of Niebuhr, they have been received by historians in that light. The first theocra- But during the reigns of the pagan emperors it was not cy and legendary safe in Rome to insinuate publicly any disbelief in such honored legends as those of the wolf that suckled the foundlings; the ascent of Romulus into heaven; the nymph Egeria; the duel of the Horatii and Curiatii; the leaping of Curtius into the gulf on his horse; the cutting of a flint with a razor by Tarquin; the Sibyl and her books. The modern historian has, therefore, only very little reliable material. He may admit that the Romans and Sabines coalesced; that they conquered the Albans and Latins; that thousands of the latter were transplanted to Mount Aventine and made plebeians, these movements being the origin of the castes which long afflicted Rome, the vanquished people constituting a subordinate class; that at first the chief occupation was agriculture, the nature of which is not only to accustom men to the gradations of rank, such as the proprietor of the land, the overseer, the laborer, but also to the cultivation of religious sentiment, and even the cherishing of superstition; that, besides the more honorable occupations in which the rising state was engaged, she had, from the beginning, indulged in aggressive war, and was therefore perpetually liable to reprisal-one of her first acts was the founding of the town of Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, on account of piracy; that, through some conspiracy in the army, indicated in the legend of Lucretia, since armies have often been known to do such things, the kings were expelled, and a military domination, fancifully called a republic, but consisting of a league of some powerful families, arose. Early Roman history. Throughout the regal times, and far into the republican, the chief domestic incidents turn on the strife of the upper caste or patricians with the lower or plebeians, manifesting itself in the latter asserting their right to a share in the lands conquered by their valor; by the extortion of the Valerian law; by the admission of the Latins and Hernicans to conditions of equality; by the transference of the election of tribunes from the centuries to the tribes; by the repeal of the law prohibiting the |