It is an inevitable consequence of military government that after every conquest the conquered impose their ideas on the conquerors. When Rome had subjugated Greece, she herself submitted to the dominion of the Hellenistic spirit, which imposed on the Romans its own forms of art, its literary culture, its mythology, and its philosophy. Rome, mistress of Asia, was invaded by Asiatic luxury, the East opened upon the West the floodgates of its superstitions, sensual, gloomy, frenzied, or ascetic; nothing was talked of save mysteries, funeral feasts, horoscopes, magic, purifications, Isis and Mithras, the passion of Attys, gods dead and risen again. Egypt had deified the Pharaohs, Rome deified the Cæsars. Finally, Judea, the last province conquered by the Romans, was the last to impose its religious thought upon the world. The obscure traditions of a despised people were destined to take the place of the glorious memories of Greece and Rome. A monarchy required a monarchial religion. The republic had vanished from the earth, it could not be left in the heavens. The images of the gods still stood in their temples, but since the time of Augustus the only god of the empire had been the emperor. Since the conscience of the conquerors of the world had not revolted from the apotheosis of tyrants, the conquered were fully entitled to seek among their own ranks for a worthier object. One nation alone had refused its incense to the emperors. That nation was destined to provide a God for the coming centuries. In the arrogant words of a Jew of our own times, this nation said to the world, “Till thou art able to understand me, behold a man of my race, make of him thy god.” Humanity had found its social ideal in servitude; it was just that the gibbet of slaves should become the symbol of the religion of the human race.