In the earliest ages of the world, when brute force was regarded as the highest attribute of greatness, the men of might, the renowned warriors, the Nimrods and the Agamemnons, occupied the highest pinnacle of Society, and received homage from their fellows as supreme men. Of their age they were the supreme men. To our enlightened epoch, the fighting heroes of the past are but brutal bullies a little above the level of the animals whose powers and habits they so sedulously emulated. But if we plant ourselves in thought back in that savage era, if we reflect that its habits and instincts were almost wholly physical, that the chief controlling powers of the time were the arm of might and superstition, and if we ponder a moment upon the force of will, the dauntless courage, the inexorable rigor, the terrible energy, the ceaseless activity, and the gigantic personal strength which must have combined in a single man to have enabled him to rule so turbulent and so animal a people; we shall be apt to understand that the only being who could, in that age, stand first among his fellows, must have been the superior brute of all. If we consider still further the ferocious natures of the men of that time, we shall perceive the necessity which existed for a strong Government, regulating all the affairs of Society, and administered by the most severe and savage chieftain; one who could hold all others in subjection by the terror of his might, preserve a semblance at least of order in the community, and protect his subjects from outside wrong. But what could hold _him_ in subjection--an irresponsible despot, without human sympathy, without any awakened sense of moral responsibility, capricious, self-willed, ambitious, lustful, vindictive, without self-control, and possessing absolute power over the lives and property of his subjects? Nothing but the dread of an offended God or gods. And, as a consolidated despotism, wielded by brute force, was the best form of Government possible in this age; so a worship based chiefly upon the incitements and terrors of retributive law--the holding out of inducements of reward for the good, and of determents of direful punishment for the wicked, in a future world--was the best religion for which the time was prepared.