_War Existed for Conquest and Plunder_.--The kings of these Oriental despotisms seemed to be possessed with inordinate vanity, and when once raised to power used not only all the resources of the nation and of the people for magnifying that power, but also used the masses of the people at home at labor, and abroad in war, for the glory of the rulers. Hence, wars of conquest were frequent, always accompanied with the desire for plunder of territory, the wealth of temples, and the coffers of the rulers. Many times wars were based upon whims of kings and rulers and trivial matters, which can only be explained through excessive egoism and vanity; yet in nearly every instance the idea of conquest was to increase the wealth of the nation and power of the king by going to war. There was, of course, jealousy of nations and rivalry for supremacy, as the thousand years of war between Egypt and Babylonia illustrates, or as the conquest of Babylon by Assyria, or, indeed, the later conquest of the whole East by the Persian monarchs, testifies. These great wars were characterized by the crude struggle and slaughter of hordes of people. Not until the horse and chariot came into use was there any great improvement in methods of warfare. Bronze weapons and, later, iron were used in most of these wars. It was merely barbarism going to war with barbarism in order to increase barbaric splendor. _Religious Belief Was an Important Factor in Despotic Government_.--In the beginning we shall find that animism, or the belief in spirits, was common to all nations and tribes. There was in the early religious life of people a wild, unorganized superstition, which brought them in subjection to the control of the spirits of the world. In the slow development of the masses, these ideas always remained prominent, and however highly developed religious life became, however pure the system of religious philosophy and religious worship, as represented by the most intelligent and farthest advanced of the {172} people, it yet remains true that the masses of the people were mastered and ruled by a gross superstition; and possibly this answers the question to a large extent as to why the religion of the Orient could, on the one hand, reach such heights of purity of spirit and worship and, on the other, such a degradation in thought, conception, and practice. It could reach to the skies with one arm and into the grossest phases of nature-worship with the other.