Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/85

 RELIGION. 65 The scattered mode of life in which the Phoenicians perse- vered helped to make them indifferent to the higher faith of their immediate neighbours. Cities in which the municipal life is intense will not allow themselves to be absorbed in the unity of a vast and powerful State ; they resist what to them seems a degradation, and thus we often find that small countries, in which the feeling of patriotism is strong, are a hindrance to the formation of great States. The same remark applies to the growth of religious conceptions. Among a people with whom FIG. 20. Astarte. From a Phoenician terra-cotta in the Louvre. P'IG 21. Bes. From a Phoenician terra- cotta in the Louvre. Height 8 inches. these jealous political habits have prevailed, each city has its own god or gods, and a combination of many exceptional circumstances is required before they can break their narrow moulds and enter upon a course of evolution by which they may, in time, become fused into a national god, and finally into a god of humanity. The Greeks, indeed, succeeded in rising to a spiritual unity unknown to the Phoenicians. With them too the notion of a State was confounded with that of a city, but the lofty intellectual gifts of their race led them at a very early date to endow their gods with powers far above those of mere protecting divinities of a VOL. i. K