The Liberty of Rome

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: the public and private interests of life. The servants of the deities became the rulers of the worshippers. Their authority, whether equal or unequal among themselves, was one they claimed as their unalienable right; and the government they established was founded on the impotency and the despair of the inferior races of their fellow-beings. The terror arising from a want of knowledge, and increased by a want of vigour, amongst mankind, was the foundation of the hierocracy in India,1 or more particularly in the plain of the Ganges.2 It happened there, as in many other places, that the characteristics of nature affected to a great degree the development of man. Bound in by mountain ranges and composed of vast proportions, the land was shaped out for impressions of wonder, magnitude, and repose. A bright and ardent climate, however, while it enervated the hardier qualities, excited the imagination towards infinity, and filled the mind with yearnings to know the powers by which the world was created, and the wills by which it was ruled. The earliest generations were content to hunt through the forest, or drive their herds from field to field; but their descendants were soon inspired by the glowing colours on the ground, the murmuring winds among the trees, or the lofty forms of the mountains, to break through chaotic barbarism. 1 Thus Fr. Sehlegel says we son, in his Preface to the Vishnu may seck the origin of all paganism Purana (p. Ixvii.), lies betwecn in India.?Philos. of Hist., lect. v. the Drishadwati and Saraswati riv- 1 The holy land of Menu and ers, the Caggar and Sarsooty of our the Puranas, says Professor Wil- barbarous maps.1 And here one word of caution membering the Preist of the Mid- These longings after a different manner of life were far fro...