4.  God’s revelations, as coming, not only in nature, but also in inspired men, and in the intuitions of the soul; a conception which resulted in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

The good of polytheism was that it saw something divine in nature.  By dividing God into numberless deities, it was able to conceive of some divine power in all earthly objects.  Hence Wordsworth, complaining that we can see little of this divinity now in nature, cries out:—­

            “Good God!  I’d rather be
    A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
    So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
    Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
    Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
    Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.”

Chapter VIII.

The Religion of Rome.

  Sec. 1.  Origin and essential Character of the Religion of Rome. 
  Sec. 2.  The Gods of Rome. 
  Sec. 3.  Worship and Ritual. 
  Sec. 4.  The Decay of the Roman Religion. 
  Sec. 5.  Relation of the Roman Religion to Christianity.

Sec. 1.  Origin and essential Character of the Religion of Rome.

In the Roman state nothing grew, everything was made.  The practical understanding was the despotic faculty in the genius of this people.  Fancy, imagination, humor, seem to have been omitted in the character of the Latin race.  The only form of wit which appeared among them was satire, that is, wit used for a serious purpose, to punish crimes not amenable to other laws, to remove abuses not to be reached by the ordinary police.  The gay, light-hearted Greek must have felt in Rome very much as a Frenchman feels in England.  The Romans did not know how to amuse themselves; they pursued their recreations with ferocious earnestness, making always a labor of their pleasure.  They said, indeed, that it was well sometimes to unbend, Dulce est desipere in locis; but a Roman when unbent was like an unbent bow, almost as stiff as before.

In other words, all spontaneity was absent from the Roman mind.  Everything done was done on purpose, with a deliberate intention.  This also appears in their religion.  Their religion was not an inspiration, but an intention.  It was all regular, precise, exact.  The Roman cultus, like the Roman state, was a compact mass, in which all varieties were merged into a stern unity.  All forms of religion might come to Rome and take their places in its pantheon, but they must come as servants and soldiers of the state.  Rome opened a hospitable asylum to them, just as Rome had established a refuge on the Capitoline Hill to which all outlaws might come and be safe, on the condition of serving the community.