Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/318

 Thus the Romans had many festivals and a crowd of gods, which were connected with the fruitfulness of the earth as well as with the skill of men, who appropriate for their own use the operations of Nature. Thus we find a Jupiter Pistor; the art of baking ranks as something divine, and the power connected with the art as something having substantial existence. Fornax, the oven in which the corn is dried, is a goddess by herself; Vesta is the fire used for baking bread; for in her character as Ἑστία a higher meaning is attached to the name, and one which has reference to family piety. The Romans had their pig, sheep, and bullock festivals; in the rites connected with the worship of Pales they sought to propitiate the goddess who caused the hay to thrive for the cattle, and to whose protection the herds committed their flocks in order to assure them against any kind of injury. In the same way they had deities for the arts which were connected with the State, e.g., Juno Moneta, since coins play an essential part in the regulated life of a community.

When, however, such finite ends as the circumstances and various interests of the State and prosperity in what belongs to the physical necessities, the progress, and material wellbeing of man, are regarded as the highest of all ends; and when the main concern is for the prosperity and existence of an immediate reality, which as being such can, in virtue of what constitutes it, be merely a contingent reality; it follows that by way of contrast to what conduces to utility and prosperity, we have what conduces to injury and failure. So far as regards finite ends and circumstances man is dependent; what he has, or enjoys, or possesses, is something having a positive existence, and when he is conscious of some opposing limit or defect, and that what he has is in the power of another, and when further he finds this negated or denied to him, he has a feeling of dependence, and the legitimate development of this feeling leads him to revere the