The Prophets knew their enemies, and perceived the roots of all the prevailing evil which gave life to the flourishing tree of immorality. They determined to dig up the tree and to clear away its roots. In the very front row stood the priesthood and the bloody service, upon which they turned with all the inextinguishable fanaticism of their noble passion. But the matter could not end here. The national enthusiasm which had been aroused in an earlier period, proved to be but a transient straw-fire; no noble element of that enthusiasm remained to help a new elevation of sentiment. For, independently of the corruptions of the priesthood, the political tendencies of the nation were such as to aid in slowly but surely undermining the idea of nationality. A tiny people, jammed in between great powers on the north and south, and itself nourishing vain desires of political power far above its capabilities and sufficient to wear it out, torn asunder as it was by internal dissensions,—such a people was constantly driven to seek alliance with those great powers. But these alliances soon put out the national fire which had blazed up for a short time in the temper of the people. The consciousness of being thrown on the protection of strangers kills the feeling of independent individuality. Moreover foreign, and especially Canaanitish, manners, were more and more naturalised at the courts of Hebrew kings; the kings connected themselves by marriage with adjacent courts, and the ladies obtained increased liberty for foreign habits in the midst of the Hebrews. The Canaanitish worships were again received in the capital, and soon obliterated whatever power and stimulus the Hebraised idea of Elôhîm still possessed in the direction of national elevation. It is an historical fact that the decline of nations begins when, instead of developing the elements and powers inherent in themselves, they carelessly throw up their own characteristics and yield themselves up without resistance to possibly more refined but foreign influences. What Cicero’s father said of the Hellenised Romans is very instructive on this point, that the better a Roman knew Greek the less he was worth.[696]