menon, which presents itself, is the confluence, under the Roman empire, of the Eastern and Western world. Without any minute analysis of causes, it is a fact, that from the most remote antiquity a very different character has been stamped on these two branches of the human race. Climate, soil, natural constitution, habits, institutions, even the physical geography of countries, may have caused the difference. But to illustrate it generally, and with those qualifications, which must be implied in speaking of human nature in masses and large descriptions, it consisted in this: that in the East man is everywhere impressed with the religious instinct mentioned above; that is, with a profound abiding consciousness of a real, living, controlling power existing above him in a distinct personality. In the West, this instinct is deficient, and at times seems wholly lost. The eye of the East is always turned upward, and fixed on a Being like to, but greater than itself. The eye of the West has no such vision, and either sees nothing, or wanders about capriciously upon any chance object that occurs. The East contemplates persons; the West studies things. Persons and Things form the two great divisions of the universe; and according as men's minds are bent on one or the other, not only their religion, but their politics, morals, arts, manners, and philosophy will take their peculiar form and complexion. Thus religion in the East was a worship and adoration in the West, it became speculation and theory, or an engine of government, whether political or moral. In the East, philosophy was employed in imagining a spiritual hierarchy of angels and spirits, demons, and æons. In the West, it analysed ideas, or generalised the laws of nature. Morals in the East were founded on religion. The whole code of ethics resolved itself into obedience to God, imitation of God, union with God. In the West, it is a scheme of calculation, a balance-sheet of pleasures and profits, or a deduction from intellectual relations. Government in the East absorbs the whole body of the state in the person of its head. The many are lost in the few, or rather in the one; and if the obedience of the subject is voluntarily rendered under the influence of the predominating idea, by the same influence the caprice of the ruler is itself subjected to a spiritual authority above him.* The West is the land of democracies. In the East, belief rests on testimony, and education is carried on by authority. In the West, truth is argued out, and tested by its accordance with the reason or opinion of the hearer. Even where authority prevails, and ordinary men are willing to submit to it, its moral influence is not sufficient, but, as in the system of Romanism, requires to * See this point eloquently illustrated in Burke's Speeches on Warren Hastings. be be supported by a physical arm. Even the arts partake of the same distinctive character. In the East, in all their greatest works, these were employed to realise before men the presence of some gigantic power, which they were bound to obey. Architecture was thus their chief province; and where painting and sculpture were introduced, they were made vehicles for suggesting mysteries, or were tied down by rigid laws,* which still maintained the principle of slavery even in the exercise of fancy. To raise a pyramid as a tomb for a single coffin; to excavate mountains into temples; to bridge over seas for the passage of troops; or cut a canal through an isthmus, were all efforts embodying one common idea, the idea of power. In the West, art performs very different functions, except when imbued with the spirit of the church. It pleases the eye, ministers to comfort, spreads luxuries, facilitates independent exertions, increases the power of the individual, instead of exhibiting a power above him; is regulated by no fixed laws; embodies no moral institutions; is pervaded by no high sentiment; is destitute of unity and grandeur; is, in fact, a mere plaything, or tool. Before the creations of Eastern art the individual is lost and overpowered. Before those of the West he is raised into self importance, and triumphs in his own superiority. Hence, also, the different spectacle which history presents on each side. There, vast massive empires, spreading over immense regions, consolidating a variety of races, preserving their outward form and principles of polity throughout the changes not only of years but of dynasties, so that the history of the East three thousand years back is its history to-day- -a form of government absolute and fixed, transmitted, unchanged, from hand to hand through internal usurpations and foreign conquests -a religion dogmatic, mystical, and hierarchical-a code of laws exalting the human will on one side, as much as they abased it on the other—and a system of subordination in society, making of one class gods, and of others slaves: this is the general sketch of the history of the East. In the West, it is very different. Here, Society, instead of exhibiting a tendency to concretion and centralization, is every day breaking up and crumbling to pieces. Each separate locality begets a distinct national character, and a separate civil polity. History is full of migration and colonization. Changes, not merely of persons but of principles, creep on, converting monarchies into democracies, and democracies into monarchies. Military prowess-birth-wealthintellect, succeed each other as elements of power and authority. Laws accumulate on laws-races exterminate races-religion, from a vast, imperative external system kept sacred from violation *Laws of Plato. by by its followers, dwindles into a plaything for the reason, or an instrument of human selfishness. The basis of society, if basis it can be called, is no longer immutable law, but expediency or passion. The future is everything, and the past nothing. The unity of the body is lost in individual will; and the active, spontaneous, self-seeking element in the human mind developes itself with an energy tending to subvert all external control-to sweep away laws in politics-forms in common life-hereditary institutions, and even fundamental axioms in morals and religion-till it sinks down for a time exhausted in the ruin which it has made, and gives scope for the Eastern principle to assert a temporary sway. This was the condition of the western world at the commencement of the second century. Human intellect in Greece, let loose from all restraint of authority, had run through its natural career of dogmatism, doubt, and scepticism.* School after school had risen and fallen; and philosophy, in mere weariness and despair, was thankful for any authority which might excuse it from doubting any more. In Rome the human will had run through a similar course in the political convulsions of democracy, and willingly succumbed to the tyranny of the emperors, as the only safeguard against its own excesses. The calamities, also, of the civil wars, heightened by the subsequent atrocities and commotions, to which the empire was exposed under many of the emperors, and even the numerous natural prodigies of famine, pestilence, and earthquakes prevalent at that period, contributed to encourage, as Thucydides observes of Greece, the general tendency to superstition. In many cases, indeed, this tendency developed itself in the form of fatalism, or, what is nearly akin to fatalism, a belief in chance.† The superstition is the same in each. In each there is the same sense of an overruling power, before whose caprice man is wholly helpless; and whether this power be a person, or a law, or the negation of all law, the effect is the same of crushing man's energies and reason. In the mean time, the foundation of Alexandria had opened a passage for the dogmatism of the East into the heart of Italy and Greece. The Grecian cities of Asia Minor had been permeated by the same spirit, through their connexion with Syria and Pergamus. Even before this, the invasion of Persia by Alexander had effected a singular fusion of western and oriental ideas, and * See this strongly described, Just. Martyr, Dialog. cum Tryp. p. 217. Journal des Sçavans, 1717, Juin, p. 654. Hermiæ Irrisio Gentil, sec. xix. Tatian, Oratio ad Græcos, § 3. 5, pass. xli. †Tacitus. Plutarch expresses this strongly : ὡσπὲς ἐν κρατῆρι φιλοτησίῳ μίξας τοὺς βιοὺς καὶ τὰ nen, nai roùs váμous naì diαíras. De Fortun. Alexand. p. 329. Arrian, vii. 11. 14. the the Roman conquests had ended in bringing back into the metropolis, not only the spoils of Asia and of Egypt, but their opinions and gods. Chaldees and Magi, Gauls and Jews, priests of Isis and worshippers of Serapis swarmed in the capital itself; and the mode in which the worship of the last-mentioned god forced its way into Rome is a fair indication of the general progress of religious sentiment:--First celebrated in private chapels then publicly prohibited-then its temples ordered to be destroyedthen permitted within a mile of the city-then excluded only from the pomoerium-then formally recognised and established. The most rigid principle of Roman policy, namely, the exclusion of all foreign worship, was too weak to resist the popular feeling. The altars of Serapis and Isis, says Tertullian, were ordered to be overthrown by the senate, and were restored by the violence of the people. Even when the public soothsayers had commanded the demolition of their temples, the decree was reversed by the triumvirs; § and even the discovery by Tiberius of the profligacy of the priests of Isis could put no check on the mania for adopting their worship. But a religious spirit must embody itself in a definite creed, and in some positive form. And here was the difficulty. Throughout the whole of what was then considered the civilised world, definite creeds and positive forms had almost ceased to exist; and the mode in which this obliteration had been effected is worthy of notice. The great hierarchies of the East, especially of Egypt and Persia, which had been in those countries the original depositories of religious knowledge, and had fenced it round with singular precautions-with castes, and ceremonies, and mysteries, and the exclusive possession of science, had been undermined first by their own abuse of their authority, and then by the overthrow of the established political dynastics-either through foreign conquest or internal faction --and the spiritual supremacy in each case passed evidently into the hands of the civil power. Even the few hints now remaining of the state of Persia after the accession of Darius are full of interferences with religion on the part of the State. The same may be said of Egypt. Heathenism, as well as Christianity, had its princes who cut off the ears of their Magi, or burned them alive, plundered their temples, killed their sacred animals, established new idols, and patronised self-taught reformers, and new-invented rituals; and it is not a little remarkable that this transference of spiritual power from the church to the state commenced at a parallel period, the sixteenth century, both in the t. Ib. lib. xl. c. xlvii. *Dion Cassius, lib. liv. c. vi. § Dion Cassius, lib. xlvii. c. xv. See Dionys. Halicarn. Diluvian Diluvian and Christian æra: Zoroaster, Budha, Confucius-the Luthers of their day-all appeared about the same time. In Greece and Rome authentic records commence at a similar stage of history. The origin of both in colonization cut them off from the roots of their ancient traditions and hereditary hierarchies, and the scene opens with a view of the State in full possession of the spiritual rule. If in Greece oracles and family priesthoods imposed some check on the original regal powers, it seems to have been slight. And the history of Calchas, in Homer, probably indicated a general contempt for the heathen church, and its natural consequences, a curse from heaven, and dissension among men. When the civil power passed into the hands of the people, the spiritual supremacy attached to it was exercised, as it naturally will be, when religion is left at the mercy of popular will. The gods were maintained as a popular part of the government, and ridiculed by the very mob that wor shipped them, as images of Romish saints are first prayed to for assistance, and then pelted if assistance is withheld. They were worshipped with plays for the amusement, and with sacrifices for the dinners, of the populace. Religion became a luxury of the people at least, the pretence of religion-and so long as this was secured, reason might speculate at will, and exhaust every form of infidelity or heresy. And the influx of foreign deities was such as to become a standing jest against the nation.† In Rome, much more vigorous efforts were made to save the nation from this last curse, and to guard some definite line of religious belief. Though the church-to use a word which will familiarise the fact to our mind-was but an establishment,— the creation of the civil magistrate, with Romulus and Numa for its founders, they took care to give it some kind of independence by forming its priests or clergy into colleges (collegia et sodalitia), and perpetuating them by the privilege of co-optation. To secure its uniformity still more, they inculcated, as a fundamental maxim of state, the principle of an hereditary The oft-quoted words of Plato in the Timæus (vol. vii. p. 8. Leip. edit.) are too striking to be omitted. Solon, he says, on inquiring among the Egyptian priests, found that neither himself, nor any other Greek, knew scarcely an iota of ancient history—σχεδὸν οὔτε αύτον, οὔτε ἄλλον "Ελληνα οὐδενα οὐδεν, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, εἰδότα περὶ TOY TOLDÚTAY. "The Greeks are always in their childhood,' was the priest's address to him. Νέο ἐστὶ τὰς ψυχὰς πάντες· οὐδεμίαν γὰρ ἐν αὐταῖς ἔχετε, δι ̓ ἀρχαίαν ἀκοὴν, παλαίαν δόξαν, οὐδὲ μάθημα χρόνῳ πολιὸν οὐδέν. Ye have not among you one ancient dogma derived from the tradition of your fathers, nor one branch of knowledge covered with the hoar of time.' Strabo, x. 18. Plat. Repub. lib. i. sec. 1. Wetstein, in his notes to Acts xvii. 16, has collected the principal passages illustrating the duvidaimovíz of Athens. ¡ national |