Sublime

There was no occasion for innovation. It was a duty to rest upon what the ancestors had done, and the highest piety consisted in imitating them.

They were never revealed to strangers. To reveal a rite, or a formula, would have been to betray the religion of the city, and to deliver its gods to the enemy. For greater precaution they were concealed from the citizens themselves, and the priests alone were allowed to know them. In the minds of the people, all that was ancient was venerable and

This government never had the affection of the Greeks; they accepted it only as a temporary resource, while the popular party should find a better one and should feel strong enough to govern itself.

The domestic religion forbade two families to mingle and unite; but it was possible for several families, without sacrificing anything of their special religions, to join, at least, for the celebration of another worship which might have been common to all of them.

History does not study material facts and institutions alone; its true object of study is the human mind: it should aspire to know what this mind has believed, thought, and felt in the different ages of the life of the human race.

We shall see, further along, that the stranger domiciled in a city could be neither a proprietor there, nor an heir, nor a testator; he could not make a contract of any sort, or appear before the ordinary tribunals of the citizens. At Athens, if he happened to be the creditor of a citizen, he could not sue him in the courts for the payment of the d

In Greece, too, each gens had its chief; the inscriptions confirm this, and they show us that this chief generally bore the title of archon.225

Gains gives an account of a man whose vines had been cut by his neighbor; the fact was settled; he pronounced the law. But the law said trees; he pronounced vines, and lost his case.

From this fact we may draw a double conclusion one is, that the origin of domestic institutions among the nations of this race is anterior to the period when its different branches separated; the other is, that the origin of political institutions is, on the contrary, later than this separation.