great social unity; and that of its fragments were the Greek nations which we see in remotest historical narrations, nestled, in their independence, now among the hills of Arcady, now on the Eurotas, now on the Alpheus, now about the Cyclopic architecture of Argos, now in the Olympic vales of Thessaly, and again on every hill-side and by every stream of Middle Greece; all being alike only in this, that all are independent of each other, all free from sacerdotal rule.
But their antagonism to one another and to the sacerdotal rule is not brutal or furious. They respect each other; they respect the old traditions. The Titans are still served. Ceres has her Eleusis; Neptune, his Isthmus and Ægæan recess; Pluto, his Pheræ; the Furies are worshipped at Athens. The peculiarity of Grecian freedom is, that it respects every thing, consecrates every thing that lives. It worships life as divine, wherever manifested. The very word theos, which represents something out, proves manifestation to the apprehension of man, to have been inseparable, in their opinion, from the idea of God; and their own active character and plastic genius received its impulse from this religious intuition. "As a man's god, so is he." Certainly, as a nation's god, so is it.
Some things were gained by those Titanic and Giant wars, which distinguished Greece, in all future time, from all other nations. The religion, henceforth, was an enacted poetry, and not a sacerdotal rule, as in Asia, or a state pageant and formula, as in Rome. They had diviners, soothsayers, and priests, elected for the year; but never a priesthood, in the full sense of the word. In the heroic ages, and on public occasions, the kings, and, in all times, fathers of families, conducted religious rites. The various worships also dwelt, side by side, with mutual respect. Each tribe, each city, had its own divinities. They were mutually tolerated, mutually reverenced. Hence, the human instincts and divine ideas which each divinity represented were thrown into a common stock. Hence, Homer made of the gods of the several tribes a community acting together; and explained the variations of man's mortal life, by their antagonisms and harmonies. Hence, Hesiod conceived the idea of a Theogony, in which we see a vain attempt to make into one
