The question can be most fruitfully pursued in the study of the Greek societies; for no other religion of which we have any record was so political as the Hellenic, not even, as I should judge, the Roman, to which it bears the closest resemblance in this respect. The very origin of the πόλις, the city-state, was often religious; for the name or title of the deity often gave a name to the city, and the temple was in this case probably the centre of the earliest residence. In the organised and complex Greek societies, every institution of the State--the assembly, the council, the law-courts, the agrarian economy, all the regulations of the family and clan--were consecrated and safeguarded by the supervision of some deity. Often he or she was worshipped as in a literal sense the {22} State ancestor, and in one of the temples might be found burning the perpetual fire which symbolised the permanence of the city’s life. And in Greece we find a unique phenomenon, which, though small, is of great significance--the deity might here and there be made to take the office and title of a civic magistrate. For instance, Apollo was στεφανηφόρος in Asia Minor cities, and in the later days of Sparta, as the recent excavations have shown, the ghost of Lykourgos was elected as the chief inspector of the education of the young. To the superficial observer, then, the Greek civic society might appear a theocracy. But such a view would imply ignorance of the average character of the ancient Greek world. There can be no theocracy where there is no theocrat. In Asia Minor the priest might be a great political power, but in Greece this was never so. Here the political, secular, utilitarian interest dominates the religion. The high divinities become politicians, and immersed in secular affairs, and even take sides in the party strife, as some of the religious titles attest. Thus Greek religion escaped morbidity and insanity, becoming genial and human, and compensating by its adaptability to the common needs of social life for what it lacked of mystery and aloofness. Therefore, also, in Greek invocations and hymns we do not often hear the echo of that sublimity that resounds in the Iranian, Assyrian, and still more in the Hebrew liturgies.