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FORE:Once more, there was a cause of intellectual degeneration at work in the ancient world, which for us has almost ceased to exist. This was the flood of barbarism which enveloped and corrupted, long before it overwhelmed, the Hellenised civilisation of Rome. But if the danger of such an inundation is for ever removed, are we equally secure against the contagion of that intellectual miasma which broods over the multitudinous barbarian populations among whom we in turn are settling as conquerors and colonists? Anyone choosing to264 maintain the negative might point to the example of a famous naturalist who, besides contributing largely to the advancement of his own special science, is also distinguished for high general culture, but whom long residence in the East Indies has fitted to be the dupe of impostures which it is a disgrace even for men and women of fashion to accept. Experience, however, teaches us that, so far at least, there is little danger to be dreaded from this quarter. Instead of being prone to superstition, Anglo-Indian society is described as prevailingly sceptical or even agnostic; and, in fact, the study of theology in its lowest forms is apt to start a train of reflection not entirely conducive to veneration for its more modern developments. For the rest, European enlightenment seems likely to spread faster and farther among the conquered, than Oriental darkness among the conquering race.

FORE:It must not be supposed that the influx of Asiatic religions into Europe was attended by any loss of faith in the old gods of Greece and Italy, or by any neglect of their worship. The researches of Friedl?nder have proved the absolute erroneousness of such an idea, widely entertained as it has been. Innumerable monuments are in existence testifying to the continued authority of the Olympian divinities, and particularly of Jupiter, over the whole extent of the Roman empire. Ample endowments were still devoted to the maintenance of their service; their temples still smoked with sacrifices; their litanies were still repeated as a duty which it would have been scandalous to neglect; in all hours of public and private danger their help was still implored, and acknowledged by the dedication of votive offerings when the danger was overcome; it was still believed, as in the days of Homer, that they occasionally manifested themselves on earth, signalising their presence by works of superhuman power.339 Nor was there anything anomalous in this peaceable co-existence of the old with the new faiths. So far back as we can trace the records both of Greek and Roman polytheism, they are remarkable for their receptive and assimilative capacity. Apollo and Artemis were imported into Greece from Lycia, Heracles and Aphrodite from Phoenicia, Dionysus and Ares probably from220 Thrace. Roman religion under its oldest form included both a Latin or Sabine and an Etruscan element; at a subsequent period it became Hellenised without losing anything of its grave and decorous character. In Greece, the elastic system of divine relationships was stretched a little further so as to make room for the new comers. The same system, when introduced into Roman mythology, served to connect and enliven what previously had been so many rigid and isolated abstractions. With both, the supreme religious conception continued to be what it had been with their Aryan ancestors, that of a heavenly Father Jove; and the fashionable deities of the empire were received into the pantheon of Homer and Hesiod as recovered or adopted children of the same Olympian sire. The danger to Hellenistic polytheism was not from another form of the same type, but from a faith which should refuse to amalgamate with it on any terms; and in the environment created by Roman imperialism with its unifying and cosmopolitan character, such a faith, if it existed anywhere, could not fail in the long-run to supersede and extinguish its more tolerant rivals. But the immediate effect produced by giving free play to men��s religious instincts was not the concentration of their belief on a single object, or on new to the exclusion of old objects, but an extraordinary abundance and complexity of supernaturalism under all its forms. This general tendency, again, admits of being decomposed into two distinct currents, according as it was determined by the introduction of alien superstitions from without, or by the development of native and popular superstition from within. But, in each case, the retrogressive movement resulted from the same political revolution. At once critical and conservative, the city-aristocracies prevented the perennial germs of religious life from multiplying to any serious extent within the limits of their jurisdiction, no less vigilantly than they prohibited the importation of its completed products from abroad. We have now to study the221 behaviour of these germs when the restraint to which they had formerly been subjected was lightened or withdrawn.

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