The idea of a transaction by which the gods are legally bound—so much help for so much worship—may be present in all magical ritual; but in some religions the analogy of human relations according to law is explicitly extended to the relations of men with gods. The Jewish religion was based on a covenant; and, according to some theologians, so is the Christian. It has often been said that Roman religion implied a belief in legal obligation imposed upon the gods by rites duly performed; and Mr. Warde Fowler, who thinks more highly than some have done of the genuineness of religious feeling amongst the Romans, at least in private worship, yet says that in the _vota publica_ we find something like a bargain or covenant with the deity in the name of the State.[336] Legal obligation implies effectual sanctions that may be brought to bear upon transgressors, gods or men; and at a low stage of Animism, when no spirit exceeds the rank of demon, there may be no incongruity in bringing to reason a recalcitrant spirit by stopping his rations or maltreating his image; but when high gods have obtained the homage of men, to punish _them_ calls for great audacity or very subtle management. The Chinese have managed the matter to admiration. The Emperor of China acknowledged himself subject to the spirits of Earth and Heaven; but he himself was the son of Heaven, and all other spirits were subject to him. He ruled alike over the dead and the living. He made deities and appointed them their functions; promoted them and distributed amongst them titles of honour, if they did good works; or, if they failed in their duties, degraded them. In the _Pekin Gazette_ one finds “the deities figuring, not occasionally but very frequently, in every department of official business, and treated much as if they were highly respectable functionaries of a superior order, promoted to some kind of upper house, whose abilities and influence were nevertheless still at the service of the State.”[337] Nowhere has the unity of Church and State been so completely realised, and the _pax deorum_ so conclusively established. One may interpret the facts at discretion: an animist may accept them literally and seriously; a devotee of Magic may regard decrees in the _Pekin Gazette_ as spells that have coercive power in the spirit-world; a Confucian mandarin will think that an excellent plan has been devised for enlisting the superstitions of the simple-minded in support of law and order. We may suppose that for him Animism is but an episode in the history of human thought.