Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/321

 empirical features of the Roman spirit, and in Cicero we find this kind of cold reflection on the gods. Here reflection is the subjective power above the gods. Cicero institutes a comparison between their genealogies, their destinies, their actions; he enumerates many Vulcans, Apollos, Jupiters, and places them together in order to compare them. This is the kind of reflection which institutes comparisons, and in this way gives the hitherto fixed form belonging to the gods a dubious and vacillating character. The information which he gives in the treatise De Natura Deorum is in other respects of the highest importance, e.g., in reference to the origin of myths; and yet at the same time the gods are in this way degraded by reflection, definite representation of them is no longer possible, and the foundation is laid for unbelief and mistrust.

If we regard the matter from the other side however, we find that it was a universal religious necessity and along with it the stifling power of the Roman fate, which collected the individual gods into a unity. Rome is a Pantheon in which the gods stand side by side, and here they mutually extinguish each other and are made subject to the one Jupiter Capitolinus.

The Romans conquer Magna Græcia, Egypt, &c., they plunder the temples, and then we see whole shiploads of gods hurried off to Rome. Rome thus becomes a collection of all religions, of the Greek, Persian, Egyptian, Christian, and Mithra forms of worship. This kind of tolerance exists in Rome; all religions there meet together and are mixed up. The Romans lay hold of all religions, and the general result is a state of confusion in which all kinds of worship are jumbled up, and the outward form which belongs to art is lost.

C. The character of the worship connected with this religion and its characterisation are involved in the foregoing description. God is served for the sake of an end and this end is a human one. The content does