The ethical element necessarily varies in richness of content and intensity of feeling in different religions. In the classifications which have been from time to time proposed, attention has often been fixed upon its presence as the marked characteristic of a group. Thus Prof. Tiele, of Leiden, proposed to treat the higher religions of Revelation under two heads: (1) religions embodying a sacred {220} law, and forming national communities, including Taoism, Confucianism, Brahmanism, Jainism, Mazdaism, Mosaism, Judaism, and (2) universalistic communions, Buddhism, Christianity, and to some extent Islam. Another writer forms a class of Morality-Religions above the savage Nature-Religions, and reckons in it the religions of Mexico and Peru, the earliest Babylonian (often called Akkadian), Egyptian, Chinese, Hindu, Persian, German, Roman, Greek. All such classifications are exposed to many difficulties, but they at least bear witness to the significance of the place which is occupied by morality in modern estimates of the worth of great historic faiths. The aspects of any particular development are so manifold, that any attempt to establish a scale of rank at once lays itself open to criticism. Where, for example, is Greece in Prof. Tiele's scheme? It is thrown back into the group of "half-ethical anthropomorphic polytheisms." But in the hands of poets and philosophers, the really shaping powers of Hellenic culture, polytheism was left far behind, and on the third of the questions suggested above in considering the relations of morality and religion (p. 208)--their attitude to ritual obligation--Greek official teaching sometimes reached the loftiest heights. For not only did philosophical and religious communities like the Pythagoreans enunciate such maxims as these: "Purity of soul is the {221} only divine service," or "God has no place on earth more akin to his nature than the pure soul," but the oracle of Delphi itself was supposed to have affirmed the worthlessness of ceremonial cleansing without corresponding holiness of heart. Dr. Farnell translates two utterances ascribed to the Pythia as follows: "O stranger, if holy of soul, enter the shrine of the holy God, having but touched the lustral water: lustration is an easy matter for the good; but all ocean with its streams cannot cleanse the evil man"; and again: "The temples of the gods are open to all good men, nor is there any need of purification; no stain can ever cleave to virtue. But depart, whosoever is baneful at heart; for thy soul will never be washed by the cleansing of the body." Over the sanctuary of Æsculapius at Epidaurus, where so many sufferers thronged for cure (p. 180), ran the inscription quoted by Porphyry-- "Into an odorous temple he who goes Should pure and holy be; but to be wise In what makes holiness is to be pure."